Saturday, February 2, 2008

WW2 Museum, New Orleans, LA (Thur.1/24)

The WW2 museum is under construction and will be a couple more years before complete, but there's plenty to see.

The valor of these young men was amazing. As they were about to unload the boats at Normandy, a simple “motivational” word from the platoon leaders to his mainly inexperienced men went like this, “We can't turn back, if you stay on this beach you WILL die -- we have to move forward”. So they made the best of the choices they were given.

In the Pacific, things were often worse with the heat, disease, incredible cruelty and “take no prisoners” mentality of the Japanese – the Allied forces took back ground, island by island.

I reviewed a lot and learned a lot, the story doesn't get old to hear our history. It almost didn't seem right to show those pictures, stories,and videos and then have toy guns for sale in the gift store. I'm alright with guns, and our boys have toy guns, it's just the combo of the situation that seemed awkward. The boys definitely took a lot in, only skipping one video and one extra graphic section of the “Pacific”. It's not like watching a History Channel show, this museum is worth seeing.

Levi in front of a picture showing the relative size of military forces at the beginning of WW2. The US was #16 (I think, it might have been #14) worldwide at the beginning and had #1 military by the end of the war.

A partial illustration of the nearly 5000 vessels deployed on June 6 at Normandy. One German officer marveled “It's impossible... there can't be that many ships in the world”

I'm again very thankful for my dad and all those who fought for our freedom in WW2.

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