AP Features, June 5th, 2007
The National World War II Museum continues to press its emphasis on the war in the Pacific, with a new exhibit on the Battle of Midway.
The battle, in which U.S. naval forces crushed a Japanese attempt to seize the strategic island 65 years ago this month, is widely viewed as the turning point in the war against Japan.
"Had we lost at Midway, we likely could have lost the entire Pacific Theater, and perhaps the war," said the museum's president, Gordon "Nick" Mueller.
"Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway," includes photographs, artifacts and a 35-minute video of testimonials from veterans who fought at Midway on June 4, 1942, or participated in battles leading up to it.
Midway matched three U.S. aircraft carriers under command of admirals Raymond Spruance and Jack Fletcher against four Japanese carriers under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier.
In a matter of minutes on June 4, U.S. dive bombers avenged the "day of infamy," sinking three of the carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor. A fourth carrier was sunk later that day.
"We were outgunned, out-manned and outnumbered in every way except one _ intelligence," said Martin K.A. Morgan, director of research for the museum. "With our intelligence, we were able to be in the right place at the right time."
U.S. code-breakers had deciphered Japanese naval communications, and knew an attack was planned at Midway. Pacific fleet commander Adm. Chester Nimitz sent the carriers Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise to wait for the Japanese force northeast of Midway. Had the Japanese taken the island, it could have been a strategic base from which to threaten Hawaii and possibly the U.S. West Coast.
Curators of the exhibit took care to recognize civilians who played an important part in the victory at Midway, including shipyard workers who had the USS Yorktown _ badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea _ ready for the Midway force in just a few days. The Yorktown was the major U.S. loss in the battle.
The exhibit contains such artifacts as infantry weapons, including machine guns, a jacket worn by one of the pilots who flew in the morning raid, as well as flags, canteens and binoculars.
It also examines the situation in the Pacific in early 1942 that led to the confrontation at Midway.
For example, there's a journal from Peter Dzimba, who joined the Army Air Corps in 1939 and was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.
"It was one horrible day I shall never forget as long as I live," Dzimba wrote in an entry dated April 8, 1942. He wrote of being beaten, tortured and starved by his captors, and then stricken with malaria. Next to his journal in the exhibit is a photo of Dzimba at the time of his liberation, when he weighed only about 80 pounds after a diet of little more than rice and water.
Vernon Main, 85, was in the Army Air Forces and flew three days of raids against Japanese forces in the Philippines in April 1942. Last week, he looked at an oil painting by Richard Taylor of a B-25C Mitchell medium bomber taking flight from the island of Mindanao.
Main said the Midway exhibit is poignant. "It was the turning point. It was the end of the Japanese expansion that started with Pearl Harbor," he said.
But the exhibit is also important to Main on a personal level. He lost his entire collection of war memorabilia when Hurricane Katrina flooded his hangar at New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Among the losses: about 150 books, 75 paintings and his collection of maps, photos and "every military record I ever had," he said.
On a pedestal beside the painting of the B-25C Mitchell is a canteen Main donated to the museum before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005.
"I'm glad I gave it to them," he said.
The exhibit will be on view through Oct. 28 at the museum, which changed its name from the National D-Day Museum a year ago and is in the midst of a $300 million expansion that will triple its size.
The expansion is scheduled for completion in 2014 and will include more exhibit space, library and archives, collections and conservation space, a hotel and conference facility and a research center. A theater is scheduled to open in early 2009.
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On the Net:
National WWII Museum, http://www.nationalww2museum.org
