Rhonda Reinhart – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Victory and Defeat

framed photograph — This inscribed and signed Ronald Reagan photograph with a piece of the Berlin Wall sold for $93,750 in a May 2022 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Our war with Japan formally ended on September 2, 1945. A week earlier, the battleship Missouri had slipped into Tokyo Bay and anchored where Commodore Matthew Perry had sailed four warships in 1853 to open up trade with Japan. Since the 1600s, Japanese rulers had refused to engage with the outside world. Perry’s Kanagawa Treaty permitted the United States to establish a base and conduct trade in Asia.

Now, nearly 100 years later, U.S. naval crewmen set up a table on the Missouri’s deck and laid out surrender documents. They displayed on a bulkhead the 31-star flag that Perry had sailed into Tokyo Bay a century earlier. High atop the big battleship’s flagstaff luffed the 48-star flag that had flown above the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C., on December 7, 1941.

At 9 a.m. sharp the Japanese delegates arrived – civilian officials in formal morning clothes, naval and military officers in dress uniform. Then General MacArthur and Admirals Nimitz and Halsey stepped on deck, dressed casually in open-collar khaki shirts. MacArthur’s brief speech noted his hope that “a better world shall emerge.” Then Japanese officials signed the surrender documents under the shadow of the Missouri’s 16-inch guns. After MacArthur and Nimitz signed for the Americans, both countries were officially at peace.

Of the men who had survived the Great War of 1914-18 and led the major powers into World War II, only one still stood on history’s stage by the end of 1945. FDR died of a massive intracerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, while sitting for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia (at his Little White House). Hitler and Konoye Fumimaro died by their own hands (cyanide). Winston Churchill was shunted out of office in 1945 along with the conservatives by an electorate weary of sacrifice. (He also lost the 1950 election but returned to office in 1951.) Only Joseph Stalin remained, and he would die in 1953.

Following WWII, the United States and the Soviet Union established a vast Cold War in a fierce competition for global supremacy. The two sides never engaged in a physical war, but across nine U.S. presidents and six Soviet premiers, the two superpowers competed with each other. There was a decades-long arms race, building arsenals of nuclear and conventional weapons, and a space race that led to brilliant technological breakthroughs. They even vied for control of countries like Germany, dividing it into two parts. The city of Berlin was itself divided east and west, with a physical wall.

The Berlin Wall became the preeminent symbol of Cold War tensions and Communistic totalitarianism.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan was in West Berlin to celebrate its 750th anniversary. He gave a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, advocating freedom and liberty. He then addressed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (who was not present) in words for the ages: “General Secretary Gorbachev…come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Two years later the Soviet empire entered a state of terminal collapse. The USSR was no longer able to underwrite the Soviet bloc countries, and in 1989 country after country threw off the Communist rule. The Berlin Wall fell in November. In 1990 Soviet republics began breaking away, leaving only Russia. On Christmas Day 1999, the Soviet Union officially dissolved. The United States had won the Cold War.

In the intervening years the U.S. was actively involved in two other major wars: the Korean War (“the Forgotten War”) and the Vietnam War (the wrong war fought the wrong way). Now we are peering into the abyss of another European war as Russia systematically destroys Ukraine. Some experts believe the real threat to our security rests in China, which is patiently waiting on deck until its number is called. I’m brushing up on my rusty Mandarin just in case.

Maybe it was Toynbee who once said that countries don’t get defeated; they commit suicide.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

The Wages of War

book log — An autograph logbook of Captain Robert A. Lewis, co-pilot of the ‘Enola Gay’ – the only in-flight account of the bombing of Hiroshima – sold for $543,000 in a July 2022 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Air Force General Curtis LeMay landed on Guam Island on Jan. 7, 1945. He had been transferred there specifically to assume command of the 21st Bomber Command and lead the effort to force Japan to surrender. One of the younger generals in the Army, he constantly chewed a cigar butt to help mask a nerve disorder that made his mouth droop. Thought to be Bell’s palsy, it was probably the result of flying high-altitude bombing missions over Europe.

He was one of the first to abandon the tactic of precision bombing designed to minimize collateral damage to nonmilitary targets and noncombatants. In response to a question, his caustic reply was “I’ll tell you what war is about. You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough, they stop fighting.”

In May 1864, during the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman said something similar. After burning Atlanta during his infamous March to the Sea, he declared, “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

General Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy should be defeated by the complete destruction of both its military and civilians’ ability to wage war. In his March to Savannah, he cut a wide swath destroying cities, plantations, livestock and crops. His intent was to break the spirit of everyone and everything that stood in his way. Today his name provokes animosity in the South for his cruel, wanton destruction, despite the fact that it helped bring the war to a conclusion.

With General LeMay now in Asia, the primary question involved how to convince Japan that surrender was the most prudent decision. The American military had fought their way across the Pacific Ocean to Japan’s doorstep, defeating Japanese troops on a series of islands with strange names like Saipan, Guadalcanal, Corregidor, Tarawa, Iwo Jima and, finally, Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa’s initial invasion on April 1, 1945, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The 82-day battle lasted until June 22, 1944. The Allies intended to use the air base for Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

However, the battles in the Pacific had been bloody. The capture of Iwo Jima, less than 8 square miles of volcanic ash, had cost the lives of 25,849 Marines (one-third of the landing force). Okinawa’s price was 49,151, and kamikazes diving from the sky had sunk 34 U.S war ships and damaged an additional 368. If the Japanese could draw that much blood on the outer islands of their defense perimeter, how formidable would they be on the 142,000 square miles on their five home islands? The Joint Chiefs had estimated a minimum of 1 to 2 million deaths in a full assault.

When LeMay assumed command, he implemented the strategic bombing concept that had been so successful in defeating Germany. He also added two new technologies that seemed tailor-made for use against Japan’s predominantly flammable cities. The first was a highly efficient 6-pound incendiary bomblet developed by Standard Oil: the M-69 projectile. It spewed burning gelatinized gasoline that stuck to the ubiquitous wooden houses. The second was the B-29 Superfortress, a long-range, intercontinental bomber. Soon LeMay had 350 bombers parked in the Marianas, with more arriving every day. The 11-man crew bomber had a range of 4,000 miles at 35,000 feet. Importantly LeMay had perfected the optimum mix of explosives and incendiary bombs that resulted in firestorms that evolved into virtual thermal hurricanes that killed by heat suffocation.

The first raid consisted of 344 bombers that crisscrossed a target area and then merged into a sea of flames. They left 1 million homeless and 90,000 dead. In the ensuing five months, LeMay’s bombers attacked the 66 largest Japanese cities, killing 900,000 citizens. In addition, 1.3 million were injured, and 8 million houses were destroyed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intentionally spared.

Every Japanese citizen took a sacred vow to fight until the last person was dead.

They spent their time constructing 9,000-plus high-altitude incendiary bombs to float across the Pacific Ocean, using the strong trade winds, and drop them on the West Coast of the American mainland. Japanese schoolgirls labored to assemble the balloon bombs. An Oregon family of six were the only American mainland casualties of the entire war.

Meanwhile, Air Force Colonel Paul Tibbets went to Omaha to hand-pick his B-39 #82 off the production line of Glenn Martin. He renamed it Enola Gay, his mother’s name, and got it back in theater ready to go. President Harry Truman was at sea, returning from Potsdam. On Aug. 6, the White House issued a statement: “16 hours ago an American airplane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima … harnessing the power of the Universe.”

Still the Japanese refused to surrender.

Only on Aug. 10, a day after a second nuclear explosion had devastated Nagasaki, killing an additional 70,000 people, did Japanese experts agree that their country was under an atomic attack. Emperor Hirohito recorded an announcement that was broadcast on the radio.

Most Japanese citizens had never heard his voice before.

This particular war was ended.

Let There Be Light

photograph of vintage lightbulbs — These five lightbulbs and one socket, used as court exhibits in patent infringement lawsuits filed by the Edison Electric Light Company in the late 19th century, sold for $30,000 in a December 2016 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The Gilded Age was an exciting time in American history and roughly spans the period following the Civil War and extending to the start of the 19th century. The powerful combination of technical advances in manufacturing, communications and transportation marked the transformation of America from an agrarian society to a major industrial pioneer.

In the brief time between 1870 and the beginning of the first World War in Europe, the American economy grew faster, became more diversified and changed more profoundly than at any earlier 50-year period in the nation’s history. In the process, the United States created the largest and most modern industrial economy on earth. In 1890, the Census Bureau declared that the frontier, a hallmark of “The American Story,” had quietly ceased to exist. Newspaperman Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West, young man” had become apocryphal.

However, it is still possible to trace the roots back to 1830, when men with vision and courage began pushing the fantastical idea that railroads (which barely existed) should be flung across the entire American continent. President Lincoln, agile enough to plan on how to win a war and also consider the nation’s future, was a railroad supporter. In 1862 he had the Pacific Railway Act attached to the important Homestead Act. Two companies, one in the San Francisco area and one in the East, started laying tracks.

On May 10, 1869, they met in Utah and celebrated by driving a golden spike. A telegraph was sent to both coasts with a single word: “DONE!” By 1876 it took just 88 hours and 33 minutes to travel from San Francisco to New York City. Also on board was the United States mail (the telegraph had killed the Pony Express 10 years earlier), fresh vegetables, real beef instead of bison, and gold deposits. Businessmen used it to cut down on travel time, and pioneers abandoned their prairie schooners.

Cities flourished as the rapid growth of factories accelerated urbanization and waves of migrants were attracted to the promise of better jobs. As America raced to become the largest economy, by the 1870s it became clear what was needed most: light. Light for the factories now running 24 hours a day. Light for the streets and homes and even for the library where people congregated to improve their English or hone their skills. The problem was how to get it. Whale oil was out, kerosene too smoky and gaslight too dim and dangerous. The magic elixir was electricity! It had been known since Ben Franklin and had been appropriated to invent the telegraph, telephone and phonograph – three world-changing devices in which Thomas Edison had played a role.

In April 1881, Scientific American dedicated an issue to the enhancement of electricity. On the cover was a sketch of the lights on NYC sidewalks. Seeing the cityscape glow with faces and objects at night suggested a new immense opportunity. Broadway owed the credit to a young inventor from Cleveland named Charles Brush. For a brief time, Brush’s system dominated the field. Not surprisingly, Edison – aka “The Wizard of Menlo Park” – would overtake him.

On New Year’s Eve 1879, using 1 million lightbulbs, there was a demonstration of what would become “The Great White Way.” The Wizard, always looking to the future, thought of the superb potential for expansion, and soon Hollywood was involved and Edison invented moving pictures. In time he would boldly predict, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” And so it was with oil, transportation, publishing, retail and steel. When Andrew Carnegie sold his steel interests to J.P Morgan for $480 million ($300 billion today), it was the largest personal sale in world history.

In 1873, a few years before we met Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain published his novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. He had spotted the irony of the situation and how the splendor of a gold patina was masking the workers’ low wages and the dangerous and unhealthy conditions – a glittering surface obscuring the corruption underneath.

Harry Truman’s Big Challenge

This rare Truman campaign button sold for $13,750 in a February 2020 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Harry Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri. This was during the White House years of Chester Arthur, who had succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of James Garfield. Garfield had been shot on July 2, 1881, in a Washington train station. The doctors were unable to locate and remove the bullet and, in the process, exposed Garfield to unsterile instruments that caused a fatal infection.

Alexander Graham Bell made two attempts to locate the bullet with a homemade metal detector, but Garfield was on a mattress composed of steel wires that distorted the sound. President Garfield lasted until September 19, but Dr. Doctor Bliss (yes, that’s his real name) had ignored the new medical research of Joseph Lister linking germs to infections and the critical need for clean hands and instruments. Garfield’s death could have been ruled medical malpractice even in those early days.

In Truman’s lifetime, two more vice presidents — Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge — would become president following the deaths of William McKinley (1901) and Warren Harding (1923). John Tyler had become the 10th president in 1841 by establishing this important precedent for vice presidents — since there were others who favored vice president “acting as president” and the Constitution had been ambiguous on the question of presidential succession.

Now it was 104 years later and the United States was heavily involved in World War II. Truman had only been vice president for 82 days when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Chief Justice Harlan Stone administered the oath of office to President Truman at 7:09 p.m. Earlier that day he had been hurriedly told of a new, highly destructive weapon; however, there had not been time to brief him on the details. He was the seventh vice president to follow the death of a president.

Most historians agree that the new president was faced with an unprecedented surge of history, with larger, more difficult global decisions than any president before him. Neither Abraham Lincoln, with a pending civil war, nor FDR, in his tumultuous first 100 days, had to contend with issues of this magnitude. His big advantage was that he was savvy enough to recognize it. On his first full day, he famously told a group of reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now…when they told me…I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me!”

To magnify the complexity of the challenge, Truman had no relations with our main allies British or Russian. No firsthand knowledge of Stalin or Churchill. He had no background in foreign policy, and Roosevelt had not included him in high-level decisions or plans. He didn’t even know his secretary of state, except to say hello. He was unprepared, confused and even frightened to some degree. The Washington Post summed it up as gently as possible: “It is needless to say that President Truman comes into this gigantic assignment under a handicap.” The paper then went on to write a candid editorial that left nothing to interpretation.

One thing he did have, although he wouldn’t find out until April 25, was an atomic bomb. This would prove to be one of the most astonishing game changers in recorded history. Then two weeks later, Germany surrendered and the nation celebrated victory in Europe (V-E Day). The date was May 8, Truman’s birthday. He was now 61 years old. The problem had been simplified. Defeat Japan.

We know now how the war ended; however, at the time, there were options. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of the cities had devastated the country and the economy. Okinawa had been captured, and the Allies could easily launch an invasion of the main home islands. An invasion would be 10 times worse than Normandy, and the Japanese would fight to the last death.

The issue remained: how to get a full Japanese surrender.

In the end it would take two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to obtain a full surrender.

The man from Missouri continues to rise in the ranks of American presidents.

He was one tough dude.

The Rocky Path to Proving Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

A first edition of Albert Einstein’s ‘Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, a Popular Exposition’ sold for $10,625 in a December 2021 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

While watching TV someone mentioned Principe and it piqued my interest, primarily because I knew so little about this relatively small island off the West Coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. After digging a little deeper, I discovered Principe was where Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity was corroborated by a gifted mathematician, Sir Arthur Eddington, during a total solar eclipse.

The date was May 29, 1919.

To fully understand the sequence of events, it helps to start about 75 years earlier.

During the 19th century, the map of Europe was frequently redrawn as old empires crumbled and new powers emerged. You may not know that in 1850, the countries of Germany and Italy that we know so well today did not exist. Instead, there were many German-speaking and Italian-speaking states, each with their own leaders.

Then in the 1860s and 1870s ambitious politicians started merging these states through a combination of hostile actions and political agreements. A prime example was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The German states, led by Otto von Bismarck (the “Iron Chancellor”), defeated France soundly. This ended France’s domination of Europe and forced Napoleon into exile in Britain.

The formerly feuding 25 German principalities were transformed into a new unified German Empire on January 18, 1871. The new superpower had an enormous Army, a streamlined economy and intellectual institutions that dwarfed the European continent. The seeds of Germanic militarism would plague the world well into the 20th century. Following a visit by the peripatetic Mark Twain in 1878 he wrote, “What a paradise this land is! Such clean clothes and good faces, what tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what superb government! And I am so happy, for I am responsible for none of it. I am only here to enjoy.” High praise for a country that would wreak havoc upon the world twice in the next century.

By the turn of the 20th century, a peculiar devolution emerged with a complicated network of alliances and rivalries. When the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia. Then the others followed like a line of dominoes cascading helter-skelter. In Europe the fighting took place on two fronts: the Western Front, stretching from Belgium to Switzerland, and the Eastern Front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Then it quickly spread to the European colonies throughout the world. The war raged for four and a half years, and more than 20 million lost their lives.

In the United States, seemingly isolated by two great oceans, President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 under the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Five months later he asked Congress to declare war against Germany, and 60 days later American troops landed in France. The distant sounds of guns had somehow morphed into a cacophony of a world war.

At the time, very few were aware of the effects the Great War had on Einstein’s efforts to prove his general theory of relativity. The industrialized slaughter bled Europe from 1914-1918 without regard for the weak or strong, the right or the wrong. Wars do not have a conscience or any pity for the young or old. Their objective is destruction. Men make these decisions.

At age 39, Einstein was working in Berlin, literally starving due to food blockades. He lost 50 pounds in three months and was unable to communicate with his closest colleagues. He was alone, honing his theory of relativity, hailed at birth as “one of the greatest — perhaps the greatest — of achievements in the history of human thought.” This was the first complete revision of our conception of the universe since Sir Isaac Newton.

Scientists seeking to confirm Einstein’s ideas were arrested as spies. Technical journals were banned as enemy propaganda. His closest ally was separated by barbed wire and U-boats. Sir Arthur Eddington became secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society and they secretly collaborated. It was actually Eddington who supplied Einstein’s astonishingly mathematical work to help prove the theory. He was convinced that Einstein was correct. But how to physically prove it?

In May 1919, with Europe still in the chaos left by war, Eddington led a globe-spanning expedition to catch a fleeting solar eclipse on film. This confirmed Einstein’s boldest prediction that light has weight and could be bent around an orbiting object — in this case Earth itself. The event put Einstein’s picture on front pages around the world!

Later, on August 2, 1939, he would write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him that an atomic bomb was feasible and the Germans, with all their talented rocket scientists, could be dangerously close to making one. He encouraged the president to secure a supply of uranium and make it a priority.

We now know how this ended.

Even the World’s Architectural Wonders Once Had Their Critics

black and white photograph — Frank Horvat’s ‘Stern, Chaussure, a Shoe and Eiffel Tower, Paris’, 1974, sold for $3,585 in a November 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When we lived in Central London in the 1990s, #10 Walton Street became a convenient place to host our American friends and family. We had plenty of room, one block from the world-famous Harrods department store, and the Walton Street restaurants were some of the finest in London. Our neighbor in #12 owned the superb Osteria San Lorenzo restaurant that Lady Diana claimed was her favorite, perhaps because it was three doors down from her exclusive couturier and go-to designer Bruce Oldfield. Michael Caine shopped at our Italian bakery, and Ringo Starr sightings were frequent.

However, it soon became de rigueur to tack on a side trip to Paris via the new Eurostar high-speed trains that attained 180 mph under the English Channel that connected France and England. Once there, a pleasant lunch awaited visitors to the Eiffel Tower and the elegant Le Jules Verne, a one-star Michelin restaurant on the second level. It had a dedicated lift some 240 feet (thankfully).

The 360-degree view of Paris is wonderful at lunch and spectacular at night. “The City of Light” (La Ville Lumiere) derives from the city’s role in the Age of Enlightenment and the extensive use of gas lights on streets (56,000) and monuments. Located on the Champ de Mars, the Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair. It was named for the man who designed and built it. Gustave Eiffel had started working in a family vinegar factory owned by an uncle. When the business failed he switched to engineering, which proved to be quite rewarding.

He built bridges, viaducts and railway concourses that were awe-inspiring in addition to burnishing his reputation. It worked so well he won the commission to build the interior of the remarkable Statue of Liberty in 1884 that ended up being a gift from the French people to celebrate the founding of the young United States.

Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi generally gets credit for “Liberty Enlightening the World” and, of course, it was his design. However, without the ingenious interior engineering to hold it aloft, it was a hollow structure of beaten copper one-tenth of an inch thick. What Eiffel contributed was the ability of the 150-foot structure to withstand the wind, rain, snow, heat, cold and all the other physical weather assaults 24 hours, seven days a week year after year. These were all engineering challenges that Eiffel solved with a skeleton of trusses and springs that support the copper skin and is worn like a suit of clothes. It marked the invention of curtain wall construction, the most important building technique of the 20th century, but with little credit to the man who conceived it.

This new technique enabled the building of skyscrapers and the design of wings for airplanes. Eiffel’s contributions were about to be recognized for this breakthrough when he received the commission for his big project in Paris that we now call the Eiffel Tower. There were over 100 other proposals submitted, including a 900-foot-high guillotine, presumably as a tribute to France’s contribution to popularizing decapitation during the French Revolution.

Then, predictably, many scoffed at Eiffel’s design since it was so enormous and, on the surface, useless. It appeared to be an oil derrick but without any oil. Many people detested it, and unfortunately that included artists, architects and other high-profile notables. This highly influential group wrote a scathing petition on Feb. 14, 1887, denouncing “the grotesque mercenary invention of a lowly machine builder” and signed it “Artists against the Eiffel Tower.” Today we know just how totally wrong they were as 20 million people actually pay admission to tour what is probably the world’s most recognizable landmark-monument.

A similar controversy was roiling San Francisco in 1969, when we moved to San Jose, over the new Transamerica Pyramid. One critic called it “the most portentous and insidiously bad building in The City.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s architectural critic simply called it an abomination, while the Los Angeles Times called the spire gratuitous and compared it to a dunce cap. Angry mobs demonstrated by Mayor Alioto’s office to protest, but it was all in vain. The building was finished in 1972 and has gradually become a cherished, iconic symbol of the SFO skyline.

I wonder if the pyramids had to suffer through similar periods of rejection or ridicule? Retract that musing — I totally overlooked the presence of the Pharaohs. It is much easier to gain consensus when decision-making doesn’t involve others.