Microsoft Surface

The coolest thing Microsoft has created since Windows 95.

Posted by admin Posted in: Science No Comments » May 2007

True Hero

When I was a boy growing up in Montana my dad had a good friend who we knew as Mr.Haws.  I was always impressed by the things he would do; cut wood with an axe, drive his manual transmission truck, kill chickens that would later be used for food. Mr. Haws was amazing to me because he only had one arm.

I remember lots of things about Mr. Haws. He drove all of us kids to camp every summer. He showed me how to pick rhubarb and eat it with sugar (yummy).  I remember trying to get a stain off a wall and not having much luck.  Mr. Haws grabbed the rag and told me I needed to use some “elbow grease”. He put some effort into the scrubbing and the stain came right off.  “Now you try it,” he said.  I did, and it worked.

As kids we were expressly forbidden to ask Mr. Haws about his arm.  I once thought of asking him what happened to his arm but my mother gave me a cold stare and I changed my mind quickly.

When I was older I learned that Mr. Haws survived the Baatan Death March.  He’d lost his arm while he was a POW in Japan.  I also learned that Mr. Haws brother was on that march, and died.

A photo of Alfred Haws taken by the Japanese sometime during his 3 years as a Prisonerof War.

A photo of Alfred Haws taken in 2007.  Alfred shows some of his WWII memorabilia, he is now 89 years old. I recently discovered that Alfred Haws is still alive.  He now lives in Amarillo,TX.  There was an article about him just recently. Here’s the article written by Jon Mark Beilue.  It was originally posted on Amarillo.com.

Sixty-five years ago. Alfred Haws shakes his head. April 9, 1942, doesn’t seem like that long ago to him, not that long at all. “Time flies,’ he said. “I try not to think about it too much, but it’s always there.

‘Odd, isn’t it, how fresh memories are of an older brother, Claude, dying in his arms just before they got onto a Filipino boxcar? Or what death must feel like when a Japanese soldier pulls him out of line, shoves a pistol in his stomach and repeatedly cocks and uncocks the hammer as he plays with his life?

Sixty-five years doesn’t dim anything when part of one of the most horrific war crimes of World War II, when losing 90 pounds and a right arm, when losing everything, it would seem, except his faith and hope that he would survive.

“I was a Christian and that helped an awful lot,’ Haws said. “I promised God I would serve him to the best of my ability as long as I lived if he would bring me back …and I’ve done that.’

Haws is now 89. He and wife Mary, married 61 years, have lived in a comfortable apartment on the fourth floor at the Continental Retirement Center since 2001. They have three grown children, including a son who is an area missionary in Clarkston, Wash.

They faithfully attend chapel service at the Continental each Sunday, especially this Easter Sunday. Haws used to serve as host of the service until recently, when arthritis began getting the better of him.

He knows he could have been dead, maybe should have been dead, at age 24 as an Army private just a year out of Clovis, N.M. All he can figure is the Lord had other plans.

Haws was part of an overwhelmed and undermanned U.S. Army contingent that surrendered to the Japanese 65 years ago. The U.S. was backed to the edge of the Bataan Peninsulain the Philippines with the South China Sea behind them and the Japanese in front.

“We were out of food, out of ammo, out of everything,’ he said. “We were eating horses and mules. We had no choice. All we had to fight with were our bare hands and some 30-30 rifles.’

And the next day, April 10, 1942, began The Death March of Bataan. It has always deserved capital letters, one of the most infamous times in American war history.

There were a total of 75,000 prisoners of war, of which 12,000 were American soldiers. It was a much larger number than the Japanese expected.

They were to move 63 miles north to a prison camp at Camp O’Donnell. Only 54,000 made it during the five brutal days.

There were some who escaped, but more who died. They succumbed to malaria, dysentery, and dehydration as they marched in the 100-degree heat with little water and no food.

They died at the hands of the Japanese. Atrocities such as beheadings, shootings, and bayonettings were frequent. Those who staggered and became too weak to continue were often put out of their misery.

“They were the most cruelest nation in the world at that time,’ Haws said. “We knew there was a prison camp somewhere, but had no idea what would happen.’

Haws was a strapping 190 pounds when he began, one reason he made it. That, and he already had malaria.

He was given a piece of rice the size of a golf ball during the march and no water. He never saw any atrocities committed, but he saw some buddies who were called out of line, never to return.

Haws said the Japanese motioned some Americans to a hut and some welcome shade. More than a few went, and he never saw them again.

A Japanese soldier pulled Haws out of line to carry his pack. He searched him, and then took what he could from him.

“Then he shoved a revolver in my gut and kept cocking it and uncocking it,’ Haws said. “Then he yelled at me to get back in line. I didn’t save myself - God saved me. Nobody told that Jap not to shoot me.’

After several days, a portion of the trek was on rail cars. Many prisoners suffocated in the transfer. Haws would have liked for him and his brother Claude to have risked it.

“He made it all that way, and then he just gave up on the way to the train,’ Haws said. “No noise, not a sound. Just died in my arms.’

Haws said when soldiers surrendered, he expected it to be no more than six weeks before they were freed. Instead, for the next 40 months, Haws was a prisoner of war. Japanese looked at prisoners as cowards, and in their samurai culture, a waste of a human life. They were often treated as such.

“The Jap in charge of the camp got on a table and said that he’d kill us all if he had his way,’ Haws said. “And, listen, we thought any of them could kill us at anytime.’

He saw executions by firing squad. He saw a Filipino head perched on a pole. An American POW was tied to a guard post, and every guard change, the new guard beat him with a club. That continued until he died.

Haws was never beaten, but he contracted dry beriberi, a painful nervous system ailment.His weight dropped to almost 100 pounds, lowered by work and a diet of a bit of rice and something called whistle-weed soup.

He was at McDonnell, moved to Cabanatuan camp, and eventually volunteered to go to Japan to work there. His reasoning was it was better to volunteer then than later when U.S. ships would have a better chance to sink a Japanese vessel that Haws might be on.

How terribly ironic. It was in the last days of the war in August 1945 that Haws lost an arm from an American bomb. He was working as a prisoner in a Japanese steel mill, unaware how near the end of the war was.

He could see the glow of the atomic bomb on the seaport city of Nagasaki, about 100 miles away on that Aug. 9, 1945. Something was happening.

The next day, U.S. planes dropped conventional and incendiary bombs on key industrialsites. Including the steel mill where Haws was.

It was the darndest thing. Haws had survived for three years as a POW, and then an American bomb exploded one week before the war’s official end. Haws didn’t feel a thing, but his right arm was blown off.

He took his belt and used it as a tourniquet. Sulfa powder was put on his burns, and he was told to lay on a bunk for three days, in Haws words, “to see if I’d live.’

He did, and he has.

Haws came home, married Mary Moss from Clovis, who lost two brothers in the Philippines. His final surgery on his arm was March 1946.

He took home with him a Japanese samurai sword, but thinks a grandson may have it now. There are framed reminders of that time that began in earnest 65 years ago, some small newspaper clippings, the belt that later saved his life, a POW declaration.

To look at Haws now at his kitchen table is to see a man’s man, generous, yet firm, sometimes funny, but often stern. It’s easy to imagine 65 years ago what a tough son of a gun he must have been.

He’s still strong at nearly 90, one of just a few living survivors of The Death March of Bataan. But life has taken its toll, too, and a proud man can’t do what he once could.

But it’s Easter, and Albert Haws has celebrated maybe 65 of them that odds say he probably shouldn’t have. But he knows why he has.

“God brought me back,’ he said. “It was all up to him.’

Posted by admin Posted in: Family Stuff, God, History No Comments » May 2007

YouTube - Authors@Google Presents: John Scalzi

I found this hour long speech by John Scalzi very interesting.  He’sgot some interesting thoughts about how the internet is helping writers and artists. Give your books away and people will buy them…

Posted by admin Posted in: Books, Science, Useful Info No Comments » May 2007

Death for Dessert

One of my sisters books, Death for Dessert, is now being carried by eHarlequin.com. My sister has written several books and you can buy them on Amazon.  Just searchfor “T Dawn Richard” and you’ll get the goods.

The dark stain on the dead woman was chocolate, but it may as well have been blood.Mrs. Berkowitz had gone to her death savoring poisoned brownies. New to the ActiveSenior Living complex, May List finds the body, but has her own reasons for keepingquiet—the brownies had been meant for her

www.eharlequin.com: Death for Dessert.

Posted by admin Posted in: Books No Comments » May 2007