Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we talked about the Meiji
Speaker 1: restoration and the Meiji Jingoo Shrine today this week. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff, and
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk about it, in part because
Speaker 1: I had such a very moving experience there, which is
Speaker 1: kind of indicative to a lot of stuff you and
Speaker 1: I have been talking about on the show lately and
Speaker 1: the times that we're living in. But it hit me
Speaker 1: so hard while I was there that I just like
Speaker 1: kind of broke down because we mentioned at the end
Speaker 1: of the show that one of the things you can
Speaker 1: do is like write a letter essentially with your hopes
Speaker 1: and your wishes in it, and you tuck a little
Speaker 1: money in and you put it in their offering box.
Speaker 1: And like in my letter, I was trying to convey
Speaker 1: in a succinct way the troubles of the world were
Speaker 1: living in and how much I wanted all of us
Speaker 1: to pass through them and be in a better place.
Speaker 1: And it broke me, like it was just like I
Speaker 1: can't to try to parse it in a simple way
Speaker 1: made it so oddly painful and moving. I'm getting very
Speaker 1: choked up just talking about it that I literally my
Speaker 1: best friend was like, are you okay? Brian, who was
Speaker 1: not doing his letter. He was kind of standing around
Speaker 1: and enjoying the space. They were both a little like,
Speaker 1: this is not what we expected. No, no, but it's
Speaker 1: what happened. It was really really beautiful. But as a
Speaker 1: remedy to that, I will tell you about the spectacular
Speaker 1: car ride we had back to our hotel afterwards because
Speaker 1: we had a driver. I love this man with my
Speaker 1: whole soul. He does not speak English, but he ran
Speaker 1: all of his stuff through a translator, and he told
Speaker 1: great jokes, and he was really funny and really lovely.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was really interesting that
Speaker 1: he talked about was the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: Westerners will come to visit as tourists and they'll go
Speaker 1: to some place like the Meiji Jingu Shrine, and their
Speaker 1: takeaway is that it's really a shame that Christianity got
Speaker 1: pushed into this country and you know, somehow adulterated these
Speaker 1: beautiful religions that were already here and have existed for
Speaker 1: centuries and he was like, listen, we have gods of
Speaker 1: everything in this country, so adding Jesus was not a problem.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is the perspective of everyone, but it was so hilarious
Speaker 1: and sweet and funny. He was like, you know, we
Speaker 1: literally will worship the spirits of like pencils and leave.
Speaker 1: So like, it's fine, it's not in conflict for us.
Speaker 1: We can incorporate all of it together. And I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a cool way to consider it, because I
Speaker 1: have often been that person that's like, why do you
Speaker 1: have to go shift everybody's culture yas to match your own?
Speaker 1: But his being like, it's fine, it really doesn't change
Speaker 1: ours in any way. We've also talked about much earlier
Speaker 1: periods of Japanese history when like all of the Christian
Speaker 1: missionaries were either expelled or killed right way earlier on
Speaker 1: from what we were talking about today. My experience in
Speaker 1: Japan recently has been playing the video game Assassin's Creen Shadows,
Speaker 1: which is set in Japan at the end of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. There are shrines all over that game, uh,
Speaker 1: and there are you do the thing in the game
Speaker 1: where you clap and you bow. Yeah, you get a
Speaker 1: little shrine blessing. Sometimes, so you go to a shrine
Speaker 1: and it's it's full of enemies and you might end
Speaker 1: up having to kill all of them, and that's it
Speaker 1: feels disrespectful to me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: as a criticism of the game designers. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're thinking was. I don't know what people in
Speaker 1: Japan's thinking was. But anytime I get into a fight
Speaker 1: in a shrine, I'm like, I don't like that. This
Speaker 1: is why am I supposed to be doing this? I
Speaker 1: feel this feels a little bit bad to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have been thinking about doing something related to Japanese
Speaker 1: history because I've been spending so much time playing this game.
Speaker 1: But number one, I'm not to the end of the
Speaker 1: game yet, and I just I sort of I don't
Speaker 1: want to pick something that then is going to be
Speaker 1: influential to the end of the game, and there are
Speaker 1: it Also, the game does overlap with some things that
Speaker 1: we have talked about on the show before, and so
Speaker 1: I would not want to repeat those things. So I
Speaker 1: was glad that you picked something out of a completely
Speaker 1: different era of Japanese history to talk about Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, informed by my own curiosity
Speaker 1: and desire to know more about it. But it really
Speaker 1: is quite fascinating. There are shrines all over Japan, and
Speaker 1: I really do find the Shinto belief system very beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I just love the idea of, you know, there
Speaker 1: being many things we can appreciate and pay respects to.
Speaker 1: And I really love that driver who also sang with us. Oh.
Speaker 1: He told us, Oh, you're gonna laugh, it's much. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're charming songs, but you're it's not gonna be what
Speaker 1: you think. He was telling us that, you know, for
Speaker 1: a long time, a lot of kids in Japan, because
Speaker 1: everything they got from the West in terms of television
Speaker 1: was dubbed okay, that there were many kids that he
Speaker 1: knew growing up that thought that Americans were all bilingual
Speaker 1: and could speak Japanese. And when American movie stars first
Speaker 1: started really doing stuff in Japan, you know, like promoting
Speaker 1: films and like going and doing interviews, they realized they
Speaker 1: had been so wrong that those people did not speak Japanese.
Speaker 1: But his point was that what English he knows he
Speaker 1: learned from nineteen eighties television. And then we sang the
Speaker 1: theme Tonight Writer Together and the A Team theme together. Okay,
Speaker 1: I love that man. That was the best forty five
Speaker 1: minutes of my life. That's fun. He was so charming
Speaker 1: and so delightful and really really lovely. I mean, we
Speaker 1: met a lot of wonderful, wonderful people in Japan, but
Speaker 1: that was the best ride we had for sure. He
Speaker 1: was great and really really interested in like sharing their
Speaker 1: culture with us and talking about our perceptions of it,
Speaker 1: and praise technology for translator apps because right you know,
Speaker 1: he and Brian were making jokes to each other through
Speaker 1: a translator app, which was the funny thing on the
Speaker 1: planet to watch because they were both just belly laughing.
Speaker 1: It was the best. It was the absolute best. And
Speaker 1: it was nice because I had had my little breakdown
Speaker 1: at the shrine, so I liked having a big eagle moment.
Speaker 1: That's fun. And I will always think about him talking
Speaker 1: about the spirits of pencils and how well we'll worship
Speaker 1: that just like anything else. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: love you man. One of the things that we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show this week was the Triple Nickels
Speaker 1: parachute Battalion. I do not know the answer to why
Speaker 1: they went with the spelling n C K L E S,
Speaker 1: which is not how we would normally spell the nickel coin,
Speaker 1: and I did not find a conclusive explanation for why
Speaker 1: that spelling was the one that they wound up with.
Speaker 1: I did again want to thank Josiah for submitting this
Speaker 1: topic because number one great topic, very much appreciated number two.
Speaker 1: Just as the email arrived, I was thinking about wanting
Speaker 1: to find a similar topic to cover on the show,
Speaker 1: because while we do have topics that are about combat
Speaker 1: units or battles or aspects that like that related to
Speaker 1: the military and warfare, I also really like the ones
Speaker 1: about units that are doing things that aren't necessarily what
Speaker 1: a person might initially think of in terms of the military,
Speaker 1: So things like smoke jumpers and the people sorting the mail,
Speaker 1: and the people going on test long distance bike ride. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the women Air Force Service pilots that we've talked about
Speaker 1: a number of times a long time ago, all of that.
Speaker 1: So yes, thank you so much for sending It's a
Speaker 1: super engaging story. I'm really glad you did this one.
Speaker 1: Thank you me too. I did have to do way
Speaker 1: more research than usual at the WaybackMachine at archive dot org.
Speaker 1: If anyone is not familiar with the WaybackMachine, archive dot
Speaker 1: org maintains an archive of websites. It does not have
Speaker 1: every single website in the world. It is possible for
Speaker 1: people to opt their website out of it, but it
Speaker 1: contained sort of snapshots of prior versions of websites. This
Speaker 1: is how a very long time ago, when we we
Speaker 1: had been part of a company called How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and we had a website for the podcast, and eventually
Speaker 1: after we were acquired by iHeartRadio. Like iHeartRadio did not
Speaker 1: control that previous website. It did not belong to iHeart
Speaker 1: it belongs to How Stuff Works, and so we lost
Speaker 1: access to it. And so for a long time, the
Speaker 1: wayback machine is how I would find old stuff related
Speaker 1: to old episodes of the show that had had some
Speaker 1: kind of something that was on the website that I
Speaker 1: did not have saved on my machine anymore or whatever.
Speaker 1: It got used a lot in the research for this,
Speaker 1: because there were a couple of things that seemed to
Speaker 1: have been reorganized or removed from government websites some years
Speaker 1: in the past, but then there were also quite a
Speaker 1: number of things that they disappeared in January or early February,
Speaker 1: presumably because they fell afoul of the executive orders relating
Speaker 1: to DEI, and I did not enjoy that. It made
Speaker 1: me angry every single time I followed a link from
Speaker 1: somewhere and it took me to a four h four page,
Speaker 1: And then I put that same link into archive dot
Speaker 1: org and I would find the exact same correct thing,
Speaker 1: but you know, on a page that's no longer actually
Speaker 1: there via the military, via a government website. It may
Speaker 1: be mad didn't like it. Yeah, that's some justified anger.
Speaker 1: I also went down kind of a rabbit hole with
Speaker 1: this episode. I did read the memoir by Lieutenant Colonel
Speaker 1: Bradley Biggs for this episode about called the Triple Nickels,
Speaker 1: America's first all black paratroope unit, and he described the
Speaker 1: accident that we talked about briefly that happened at Eggln Field.
Speaker 1: He did not name specific like dates that that had
Speaker 1: happened in the memoir, so it took me a little
Speaker 1: bit to figure out exactly when this accident happened and
Speaker 1: a little bit more detail about what involved. It was
Speaker 1: clear from his memoir that he did not feel that
Speaker 1: it had been appropriately investigated or handled by the military.
Speaker 1: And so as I was looking into it, I was like,
Speaker 1: do I need to put in some Floyer requests for this? Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the Freedom of Information Act. Had I done that,
Speaker 1: I definitely would not have gotten an answer by the
Speaker 1: time we needed to record the episode. So I don't
Speaker 1: really know if there is further information from the military
Speaker 1: about that accident and what happened. It was reported in
Speaker 1: the local newspapers immediately after it happened. I did not
Speaker 1: find any follow ups in newspapers about the results of
Speaker 1: any kind of investigation from later on though, right yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned in an aside, I grew up not
Speaker 1: far from England Air Force Base in Herlbert Field, which
Speaker 1: is a little ways away, but they often work in conjunction,
Speaker 1: and I certainly don't recall ever hearing anything about it.
Speaker 1: I was there, of course, decades later, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, historical markers and whatnot about
Speaker 1: many things that have happened in the area and specifically
Speaker 1: related to the bases, and I never recall ever see
Speaker 1: anything about it. Now it's also possible that I a
Speaker 1: self involved in stupid kid maybe just never noticed it,
Speaker 1: but right, yeah, yeah, My starting point had been lists
Speaker 1: of incidents associated with the with the airfield, and I
Speaker 1: was not finding it on those lists. But also those
Speaker 1: lists were primarily about things involving an aircraft crashing, right,
Speaker 1: not what happened in this case, which was bombs being
Speaker 1: deployed in the wrong place. Yeah, so, yeah, I wish
Speaker 1: I had more detail about that. I don't know, if
Speaker 1: maybe as some side project later on, I might be
Speaker 1: FOIA time, I don't know, but yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was clear from his memoir that he did not feel
Speaker 1: that it had been handled appropriately. Do you need comedic
Speaker 1: relief from the sort of sadness of that? And oh sure,
Speaker 1: the general racism that's part of this episode. Yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: this is a big confession because, as everybody knows, I'm
Speaker 1: a military kid. Yeah, I do not understand military division names.
Speaker 1: I either honestly never grasped them, like when we were
Speaker 1: doing the third Battalion, five oh fifth Airborne Infantry, eighty
Speaker 1: second Airborne what. And I know my dad has tried
Speaker 1: to explain this stuff to me before, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is so needlessly complicated and convoluted. Nobody needs this
Speaker 1: many names. I'm sure they do in some way. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's justification in some I never understand them. And
Speaker 1: like when I meet people or I have friends who
Speaker 1: are really big fans of military history and they could
Speaker 1: just rattle these things off and they look at me
Speaker 1: like I am Princess ding Dong that I don't grasp
Speaker 1: what all of these mean. I'm like, shrug, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to tell you, dude, Yeah, do you want
Speaker 1: me to tell you a lot of Star Wars details
Speaker 1: that you probably don't understand? Like I don't. It's just
Speaker 1: not something that has ever clicked for me. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: got kind of in the weeds about exactly exactly what's
Speaker 1: the platoon and how big is the platoon? But the
Speaker 1: word test platoon was used so consistently in the description
Speaker 1: of this that I was like, Okay, test platoon has
Speaker 1: to be correct. There was also there were multiple different
Speaker 1: dates that came up in the creation of it, like
Speaker 1: there were We did not mention a lot of these
Speaker 1: dates in the in the episode because I found them
Speaker 1: a little bit confusing and they would not have added
Speaker 1: to the overall understanding of this. But there was a
Speaker 1: date for when the President ordered it, a date for
Speaker 1: when it was created, a date for when it was activated,
Speaker 1: which was another separate thing. There were just lots of
Speaker 1: different dates, and I had some similar some similar confusion
Speaker 1: about exactly what each of the different dates signified. Graduating
Speaker 1: from training that I understood, It makes total sense. Departing
Speaker 1: for Pendleton, that makes sense. Also, various dates associated with
Speaker 1: the creation of the unit. I found a little bit
Speaker 1: more confusing. Yeah uh so, yeah, yeah, confusing. I do
Speaker 1: my best, but I finally very confusing. So whatever's coming
Speaker 1: up on your weekend? Boy do? I hope it's as
Speaker 1: good as it can possibly possibly be. I took a
Speaker 1: little time off for myself recently and was able to
Speaker 1: recharge a little bit do some things that I enjoy,
Speaker 1: which is important to all of us in these times
Speaker 1: to be able to keep ourselves going. So whatever's coming
Speaker 1: up for you, I hope you have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that. Also, we will be back with a Saturday
Speaker 1: Classic tomorrow and with something brand new on Monday. Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.