During the battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, ships of America’s 7th fleet surprised a large taskforce of the Japanese fleet at Suriago Bay. Late in the ensuring gun battle between battleships, the Mississippi fired a salvo at the retreating Japanese ships. No one could have known at the time, but that twelve-gun volley was the last salvo fired by one battleship at another. The era of the decisive naval battle was ending.

For over 300 years, battleships had been one of the most important weapons a nation possessed.  By dominating sea lanes, battleships could decide the outcome of wars and the fates of nations.But after this last salvo, battleships stopped engaging each other in direct, decisive battle, and naval warfare came to rely on air and underwater forces.

Just as the age of the battleship ended, the age of the suicide bomber began. This is how William L. Worden, writing for the Post in 1945, described the appearance of kamikazes in Leyte Gulf.

A kamikaze pilot attacks the USS Columbia.

A lone aircraft comes out of a cloud with a strange deliberation. It reaches a spot over the outer rim of ships, and then, seeming more deliberate than ever, the plane tips over into a steep nosedive. It is not a smooth dive. Tracers cut holes in the plane before it is well started down. Bigger shells take off pieces of the wings and crash into the cockpit. But the plane is traveling on a near-vertical course and does not veer.

The plane crashes head-on into the rigging of a ship. A cargo boom swings wildly, wreathed in fire from the plane’s gasoline tanks. The plane [crashes] through radio aerials and cargo lines, and into the sea a hundred feet beyond the target vessel. There it burns awhile, then sinks.

Conservatively, there have been well over 1,000 such dives against shipping all the way from the Philippines to the sea 100 miles off the mouth of Tokyo Bay. ["Kamikaze: Aerial Banzai Charge," William L. Worden, June 23, 1945]

Suicide dives were not new, as Worden pointed out, nor were they unknown among American fliers.

Individual airmen of most of the world’s flying forces [have], at one time or another, used it as a desperate last-minute attack when they knew they were going to crash anyhow.

You may remember that Maj. Lofton Henderson, of the Marine Corps—for whom Henderson Field at Guadalcanal is named— was last seen diving his flaming, bomb-laden plane into the deck of a Jap carrier that was trying to flee from Midway.

It was also during the battle of Midway that fifteen pilots from a Navy Torpedo Squadron flew directly into the fire of Japanese ships knowing they had almost no chance of survival. (Just one pilot survived.)

The difference between a true suicide dive and the attacks Torpedo Squadron 8 made is an almost indistinguishable hair line.

A kamikaze pilot steers his plane toward a collision with the USS White Plains, October 25, 1944.

The important difference, Worden said, was the official nature of these suicide tactics. The Japanese military had purposely ordered the strategic suicide, making it a part of official government strategy.

Did it work? Official military reports at war’s end concluded that kamikazes had sunk 34 and damaged 368 ships. They had also killed 300 and wounded over 4,000 American servicemen.

The Japanese military might have thought kamikaze attacks would ensure victory. But by the end of the battle for Leyte Gulf, even they realized it was hopeless. Still they ordered their men to continue flying into U.S. ships. And they assured their men that vast numbers of kamikazes were held in reserve to halt any American invasion of Japan. In another Post article, a captured Japanese air commander told his American interrogator that—

“we had a plan to send out our entire kamikaze strength—more than two thousand planes—in wave after wave.”

What damage did be estimate this would have inflicted?

” Fifty to seventy-five per cent of your force,” he said. “All the carriers. Many other ships as well.” He added that they would have saved some six hundred of their best new fighter planes for a last-ditch aerial defense of the homeland. ["A Japanese Officer Explains Nippon Mistakes," Lt. S.P. Walker, USNR, Nov. 11, 1945]

The Japanese military hadn’t expected that their kamikazes would motivate the Navy to be more vigilant and to fight smarter. They hadn’t considered losing and answering for their barbarities. They couldn’t have dreamed that their suicide bombers would be a factor in America’s decision to use a nuclear weapon on them.

A government that employs suicide attacks ignores the historic failure of terrorism, the inevitable day of earthly reckoning with an outraged enemy, and the fact that America can’t always be relied on to forgive and forget. By stiffening the resolve of its enemies, terrorists forge the weapon that will destroy themselves.

Broadsides and Suicides: How War Changed During Three Days The Saturday Evening Post

Swimming Hole by Norman Rockwell

Swimming Hole
Norman Rockwell
August 11, 1945
© SEPS 1945

This is a charming story-in-a-picture of a salesman making a long drive on a hot August day. No air conditioning in the car, of course. He spots a swimming hole, pulls over and goes for it. He carefully lays his glasses on a newspaper and his lit cigar on his shoe, to be picked up when he emerges (Rockwell was all about details). And then shows us a face of pure bliss. “George Zimmer, my model,” reported Norman Rockwell, “was an awful good sport. He stripped and I poured several buckets of water over his head to get the effect.” And you thought modeling was easy!

Drink of Water by Frank X. Leyendecker

Drink of Water
Frank X. Leyendecker
August 22, 1914
© SEPS 1914

We love this cover from August of 1914 by artist Frank X. Leyendecker (brother of Post cover artist J.C.). Frank did sixteen Post covers, and this one is delightful. Delivering papers in August is hot, tiring work, and the kid deserves a cool drink. The fact that his drinking buddy happens to be a horse doesn’t concern him.

Watering Father by Richard Sargent

Watering Father
Richard Sargent
June 4, 1955
© SEPS 1955

We’d all like to see this scene three seconds later, but this is what we have to work with. While Mom is busy planting and watering flowers, Junior is thinking Dad’s pasty white skin needs a cool-down. Whether Dad agreed it was a good idea is a mystery left up to the viewer. Sargent was great with humorous scenes and a master at the pregnant pause, the “what-happens-next” moment.

Wet Swim Suit by Clarence F. Underwood

Wet Swim Suit
Clarence F. Underwood
August 24, 1912
© SEPS 1912

We know, you’re shocked. A pretty young lady in a swimsuit on the cover of the staid and venerable Saturday Evening Post. And in 1912 yet! Well, even young ladies in 1912 deserved a cool-down. At least we don’t have to wring out the heavy skirts of our swimsuits these days. Artist Clarence F. Underwood did over forty Post covers. Even though most of them were in the 19-teens, many showed active women: fishing, playing tennis, canoeing, even plowing a field. Of course, they looked surprisingly pretty doing all this.

Sitting on the Diving Board by Penrhyn Stanlaws

Sitting On the Diving Board
Penrhyn Stanlaws
August 19, 1933
© 1933 SEPS.

My, how bathing suits changed in a mere twenty-one years! In a swimsuit more suited for immersion, the pretty lady from 1933 is just dipping her toes in the water. Go figure. Curtis Publishing (curtispublishing.com) shows many gorgeous Stanlaws covers, usually of lovely young ladies holding a teacup or bouquet. He did a total of thirty-seven Post covers between 1913 and 1938. (Warning: if you look up his covers on the Curtis website, you’ll want to buy prints of them all.)

Cool Bear by Charles Livingston Bull

Cool Bear
Charles Livingston Bull
August 19, 1922
© SEPS 1922

Then there’s the total immersion therapy. This is from Country Gentleman magazine (a sister publication) in 1922 by great wildlife artist, Charles Livingston Bull. If that water looks good to you, a word of advice: Find another place to cool down.

Classic Covers: August Cool-Down The Saturday Evening Post

The human animal is a perverse creature. Dr. Louis Berg, a psychiatrist who has studied this aspect of personality, points out that we seek not only security but also insecurity.

“From childhood on,” Doctor Berg says, “the human being likes to flirt with danger. Every child likes to be thrown into the air. It will scream in terror, and yet ask you to throw it up again. The child likes to skirt the edge of danger. It is a kind of secure insecurity. And an amusement park ride must always be dangerous and yet safe. This tendency goes so deep that I would call it a “prepotent reflex,” an instinct to seek mild suffering. More people are masochistic than sadistic, really.

“For the adult to go on a roller coaster is for him to experience a pattern of emotions which brings him back to the ‘secure insecurity’ of childhood, and this is one of the sources of the perverse pleasure attached to riding on a roller coaster.”

The greater the perceived risk, then, the greater the pleasure (if you enjoy that sort of thing).

This question of the danger of rides baffles most of the men in the industry. Some of them say that an accident actually booms business. Now and then, a drunk or a youthful bravo stands up in the car as the coaster takes the dip, and is flung out to his death. In some parks, there will be a long line of customers at the ticket office the next day. In other places, business will drop off for weeks afterward until the accident is forgotten.

Amusement parks knew how extremely safe their rides were, but they could never reveal this to customers. Rather, they engineered the ride to increase the perception of danger.

What seems to make the roller coaster the most zestfully dangerous of all rides is that it involves a speedy rising and falling motion, and also that the car is, so to speak, not under any control, but is proceeding by gravitational pull.

The nauseating experience of pleasant agony is the combination of drops and turns, of banks and dips, the contrasts between slow and fast, and the general illusion of danger which the designer creates.

“I been building these twisters about forty, forty-one years, I guess,” [Jim] McKee said. McKee, now the chief engineer in charge of torment, mayhem and hysteria at Palisades Amusement Park, in New Jersey, studied engineering at Carnegie Tech.

“The main idea of the thing,” he explained, his blue eyes twinkling genially, “is you got to scare the people mentally because actually there is nothing to be afraid of in the ride. The whole thing is in the mind. You take the roller coaster. The average twister don’t do no more than thirty, forty miles an hour. Our Bobsled ride, here at Palisades, she’s fast — she does about sixty an hour, just about the fastest coaster in the business. Our Skyrocket does about fifty. Well, sir, you know the average person will think nothing of doing seventy, eighty in a car.

“Or take, on the other hand, a pilot on a pursuit plane that does three hundred miles an hour. He will take a ride on the Skyrocket and she’ll scare the pants off him. It’s all in the illusion. It’s in the mind of the rider. A feller in a plane; he’s up in the sky all by himself, riding with the clouds, and it don’t seem so terrible fast. But we put him in a roller coaster, and we get the cars jangling and screeching, and those wooden posts go by like crazy, and of course the wind is slapping him in the face, and, by gosh, he thinks he is going like a bat out of hell. It’s all in the mind, mister,” concluded McKee.

Engineering has improved greatly since 1945, though. Today, there’s less need for illusion because passengers are moving faster, going farther, riding higher and falling quicker than ever before. The fastest roller coaster moves at more than 125 miles per hour; you don’t need to appeal to riders’ imagined fears when you move that fast. You can find roller coasters that rise 456 feet in the air, or travel over 8,000 feet. And the most challenging rides don’t simply descend at forty-five or sixty degrees, but at 90 degrees. Straight down.

I just understand the appeal. I think there’s something wrong with my “prepotent reflex.”

Read “Ride ‘Em And Weep,” [PDF].

When Science Takes You for a Ride The Saturday Evening Post

But in war time, when your family, your relatives, or your friends are risking death every day in distant lands, you can’t rely on platitudes. In these two editorials, the Post writers tried to keep the big picture in focus, while acknowledge the intense worry and suffering of family members.

Addressing War in Wartime: Post Editorials from the 1940s The Saturday Evening Post

A few deserve special recognition — not because their sacrifice was more noble, but because the accounts of their sacrifice, offered by their surviving comrades, illustrate the nature of courage, which we may never know until, by chance, it is required of us.

These stories show that heroism is unromantic, and sometimes pathetic, but something that lies within average Americans. Such a story is “A Boy Named Rodger Young,” [PDF] from 1945. Written by Chief Warrant Officer E. J. Kahn, Jr., it is a moving tribute to the courage of this young man, which earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor. But it is also reminder of the ordinariness of great heroes.

“Rodger Young was a very ordinary man who became a great one. There is no typical American foot soldier—our doughboys rightly deny the existence of any such insult to their individuality—but in a nation where type casting has become an institution, both on the screen and off it, Rodger Young could be said to have a pretty close resemblance to the average soldier. Perhaps his peacetime lack of distinction is in itself symbolic of the incredible change so many Americans made from obscure citizens to artful practitioners of a difficult and dangerous trade.

“Rodger Young did not look like a storybook soldier. He was short and light, with poor eyes and poorer ears, and yet he was an expert marksman who never faltered on the longest march. He had never been a particularly dashing young man, and he deeply loved his small-town life in the heart of the United States. And yet he elected to die violently on a remote and ugly island he had probably never heard of until a few weeks before he was buried there.

“In every conceivable way, he was an average man. He was only fair in his studies, and left high school after his junior year. He was far from well-to-do, but never so poor as to be hungry. He was devoted to his family. He went to church, but only now and then. He was fond of children. He was fond of dogs. He liked to play practical jokes on his friends, but would readily admit that be had an inferior sense of humor. He worked hard and faithfully at an unskilled job. He played a middling game of poker and pinochle. He went out with a variety of girls, owned a battered old car, was an eager, though inexpert, photographer, was punished by his mother for smoking at too precocious an age, and was so utterly inconspicuous that, after he became nationally recognized as a hero, the home folks in Sandusky County, Ohio, trying to reminisce about him, could not say for certain whether they recalled ever having seen him or not.

“He quit school because he had trouble reading.  He had to wear glasses all the time, and became slightly deaf… He may well have been a legitimate 4-F.

Sgt. Rodger Young

“He was cheerful and not in the least apprehensive about his prospects.  He refused to worry about himself and, in letters home, good-naturedly scolded his parents for worrying about him.  “I can run faster than any Jap,” he used to say,” and I’ll be all right as long as I see the Japs first.”

” July 31,1943, was his company’s second day in battle.  The doughboys had a rough introduction to the practical side of war.  They had scarcely gone into the line when, three miles from the Jap-held airfield at Munda, they found themselves cut off.  An order came thorough to withdraw.  Sgt. Walter Rigby, commanding the platoon Young was assigned to, got the word and passed it along to his men, scattered throughout the jungle and under rifle fire from Japs close by.  The order was relayed from man to man.  A private lying near Young, suspecting that he might not have heard the order, poked him with a stick and, drawing his attention, motioned to the rear.

“Just about then a Jap machine gun opened up on the platoon, raking it with fire.  The men tried to pull back, but movement was virtually impossible under the deadly surveillance of that gun, shooting from a hidden jungle position.  Withdrawal seemed difficult; so, for that matter, did survival.

“Then the soldier who had announced gaily months before that he would be all right as long as he saw the Japs first, got a chance to confirm his prediction.  He saw them first.  He called out that he had spotted the gun.  According to the role he had elected to play in his own combat story, he should have beaten the hastiest possible retreat.  But Rodger Young forgot his cut.  He forgot that he was only a private and had no official responsibility for the men around him.  He opened fire with his rifle.  The Japs answered him with a burst in his direction, and hit him.  Then Rodger Young went in to action.

“With his rifle in one hand and a few grenades in his uniform pocket, he began crawling slowly toward the machine gun.  Nobody can say what he was thinking.  Perhaps he figured that his skill as a marksman gave him the best chance of all his buddies to knock out the gun.  Whatever he figured, he must have had a pretty good idea that he was going on a one-way trip.  The Japs saw him coming and turned the gun on him.  They hit him a second time and he flinched.  But he didn’t stop.  He kept on inching forward and, and he got closer to the Japs. They ignored the rest of the platoon and concentrated their whole murderous fire on Rodger Young.  That was the break the men needed to get out of the trap.

“As they crawled back successfully, Rodger Young dragged himself even nearer to the Jap position, and began tossing grenades into it.  He was too close to the Japs by now for them to miss, and they didn’t.  They hit him a third time and stopped him for good, just as one of his grenades fell into their position and stopped their gun.

“It was the next day before the platoon could get back in and recover his body.  They buried him where he fell, wrapped in his shelter half, with a rough wooden cross over him and his helmet mounting the cross.  His regimental chaplain gave a talk and said a prayer, and the mourners bowed their head extra low because Jap bullets were still flying around the area.  Later, when there was time for it, they gave him a more dignified funeral.”

Average and unexceptional, Rodger Young showed that heroism was within us all, and none of us should think ourselves incapable of such courage.

Read “A Boy Named Rodger Young” by Chief Warrant Officer E. J. Kahn, Jr. [PDF]

The Ability and the Duty to Be Heroic The Saturday Evening Post