These are the stories that America’s ruling class wants excluded from any and all education. And they have already successfully managed to prevent us all from learning so much of our history. Primarily, there are different social classes in America.
Agreed. But I’ve been trying to change that. As a long time instructor to future social studies teachers, I've looked for ways to inspire students to be the historian in the classroom. Here’s how my pre-service students used the 1940 Census to make a personal connection with historical redlining maps. "Mapping Inequality: Exploring Personal History in Redline Maps and the 1940 Census"
I really appreciate your mapping project (Don't know if anyone's still looking at the old entries, but I recently responded to a student's post about San Jose). I'm here today to tell a story about my family's indirect connection to the Philippine-American war, titled "Why I am Californian and not Minnesotan" (there are maps involved).
My dad's father went from Minnesota to war in France in 1918. He was a footsoldier in the trenches. During combat, his trench was hit by mortar fire and he was knocked unconscious. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to fall on his back, otherwise he would have drowned in the mud. When he came to he was in prodigious pain and covered in mud. He stumbled around awhile and eventually found his CO who told him to get back in the war. Finally a lull came and he made his way from the front line to a hospital where he got cleaned up enough so they could see he had a massive wound in his neck. He'd been hit by shrapnel.
The field hospital did not have the skills needed to remove the shrapnel without possibly paralyzing him. They sent him home to Minnesota and recommended the Veterans Bureau hospital there. He was still in horrific pain and went there several times to get treatment. The doctor who met with him said they did not have the experience or skills to help him. He kept at it and finally (here's where our family mythology might be filling in some of the details) the doctor pulled a $50 gold piece out of his pocket, handed it to my grandfather, saying "Go to the station and take the train to San Francisco. Go to Letterman Hospital in the Presidio – it's the only place in the country that can help you."
So my grandfather did that. Letterman Hospital's staff took care of him, removing the shrapnel that was resting against his spinal cord. He kept that shrapnel (eventually hammering it into a ring that my brother still has). He used the remainder of the $50 to catch a train back to Minnesota, where he married his childhood sweetheart, who was a nurse stationed in France during the war. They immediately headed west and settled in the south San Francisco Bay area. That is why I am Californian. Fun story, blah, blah, blah.
Something about it bothered me. If US soldiers came back from the war in Europe, why did my grandfather not go to a hospital on the east coast where everyone disembarked? Why was San Francisco the only place that had the expertise?
Decades went by. By this time I worked in an office in the old Letterman Hospital, that had been turned into community organization offices and the like following the transfer of the Presidio to the National Park Service. Many interesting public functions, historic presentations, music, dance, play...a fine reuse of 1600 acres of the most expensive real estate on earth. Anyway, one night a military historian presented a program titled something like "Mapping the Philippine War". He had lots of interesting insights into the war and the way it was portrayed in the press here, with weird maps playing a central role in the propaganda of the time.
The war was bad, as wars always are, and many hundreds of US soldiers were wounded. All soldiers, wounded or not, were shipped home thru San Francisco and the Presidio. That is, all the wounded were treated at Letterman Hospital. So by the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, Letterman staff had more experience handling war wounds than anywhere in the country. They were uniquely prepared for the wounded returning from France a few years later. THAT's the REAL reason I am Californian.
Notes
1) I mentioned above that I worked in the Presidio in the early 2000's. After the military historian's presentation I talked with him and another historian, probly longer than they wanted to. They agreed my theory about my grandfather's treatment was likely correct. Then the other historian asked if I wanted to take a walk around the Letterman complex to get a better idea of where my grandfather might have been treated. I enthusiastically agreed, so the next day I took a long lunch and we walked the corridors and the grounds while I told him my story. He said "We need to get outside." The buildings that make up the complex have been burned, rebuilt, reconfigured, dismantled and otherwise changed over the decades since the place was first built. He took me to a spot in the middle of a small parking lot and said "Here we are, in surgery." That building was long gone. But then I pointed from that spot to the front door of my office. It was only a couple hundred feet away.
2) I've placed a link to a piece by a friend of mine, Amy Henderson, historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery, who recently posted a review of the Portrait Gallery's new exhibit “1898: U.S. IMPERIAL VISIONS AND REVISIONS.” There are many maps, as weird as the ones I'd seen years before. Amy's review is worth a read. Her take is as mine.
The exhibit is open through the end of February of next year.
3) We lived for a little while in Omaha and I would sometimes ride thru the footprint of that 1899 exhibition. Seemed an unlikely place for it but civic boosterism and all that...Omaha is an interesting place (especially the bits nearby to the river), best seen by bicycle (as are all places, in my opinion).
Bern, thanks for taking the time to share your story. It's a fascinating one. I saw your comments on Francesca's post. She was in my course a few years back. I sent her your comments via her old university email. But not sure if that's still active. So no response. Sadly I lose touch with students.
How wonderful that your family's lore about granddad, was validated by the military historian discussing medical treatment during the Philippine-American war. That explains why he had to go there for treatment.
I would recommend you give Immerwahr's book a read. He discusses Philippine-US relations in the wake of the war. And spends some time discussion close ties in the medical field. To this day we have loads of Philippine nurses in US.
Thanks for subscribing to The Forgotten Files and sharing your reactions. It's why I do this.
These are the stories that America’s ruling class wants excluded from any and all education. And they have already successfully managed to prevent us all from learning so much of our history. Primarily, there are different social classes in America.
Agreed. But I’ve been trying to change that. As a long time instructor to future social studies teachers, I've looked for ways to inspire students to be the historian in the classroom. Here’s how my pre-service students used the 1940 Census to make a personal connection with historical redlining maps. "Mapping Inequality: Exploring Personal History in Redline Maps and the 1940 Census"
https://peterpappas.com/2020/11/mapping-inequality-exploring-personal-history-in-redline-maps-and-the-1940-census.html
Thanks for doing this Peter. Howard Zinn would be proud of you as well.
Blush
I really appreciate your mapping project (Don't know if anyone's still looking at the old entries, but I recently responded to a student's post about San Jose). I'm here today to tell a story about my family's indirect connection to the Philippine-American war, titled "Why I am Californian and not Minnesotan" (there are maps involved).
My dad's father went from Minnesota to war in France in 1918. He was a footsoldier in the trenches. During combat, his trench was hit by mortar fire and he was knocked unconscious. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to fall on his back, otherwise he would have drowned in the mud. When he came to he was in prodigious pain and covered in mud. He stumbled around awhile and eventually found his CO who told him to get back in the war. Finally a lull came and he made his way from the front line to a hospital where he got cleaned up enough so they could see he had a massive wound in his neck. He'd been hit by shrapnel.
The field hospital did not have the skills needed to remove the shrapnel without possibly paralyzing him. They sent him home to Minnesota and recommended the Veterans Bureau hospital there. He was still in horrific pain and went there several times to get treatment. The doctor who met with him said they did not have the experience or skills to help him. He kept at it and finally (here's where our family mythology might be filling in some of the details) the doctor pulled a $50 gold piece out of his pocket, handed it to my grandfather, saying "Go to the station and take the train to San Francisco. Go to Letterman Hospital in the Presidio – it's the only place in the country that can help you."
So my grandfather did that. Letterman Hospital's staff took care of him, removing the shrapnel that was resting against his spinal cord. He kept that shrapnel (eventually hammering it into a ring that my brother still has). He used the remainder of the $50 to catch a train back to Minnesota, where he married his childhood sweetheart, who was a nurse stationed in France during the war. They immediately headed west and settled in the south San Francisco Bay area. That is why I am Californian. Fun story, blah, blah, blah.
Something about it bothered me. If US soldiers came back from the war in Europe, why did my grandfather not go to a hospital on the east coast where everyone disembarked? Why was San Francisco the only place that had the expertise?
Decades went by. By this time I worked in an office in the old Letterman Hospital, that had been turned into community organization offices and the like following the transfer of the Presidio to the National Park Service. Many interesting public functions, historic presentations, music, dance, play...a fine reuse of 1600 acres of the most expensive real estate on earth. Anyway, one night a military historian presented a program titled something like "Mapping the Philippine War". He had lots of interesting insights into the war and the way it was portrayed in the press here, with weird maps playing a central role in the propaganda of the time.
The war was bad, as wars always are, and many hundreds of US soldiers were wounded. All soldiers, wounded or not, were shipped home thru San Francisco and the Presidio. That is, all the wounded were treated at Letterman Hospital. So by the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, Letterman staff had more experience handling war wounds than anywhere in the country. They were uniquely prepared for the wounded returning from France a few years later. THAT's the REAL reason I am Californian.
Notes
1) I mentioned above that I worked in the Presidio in the early 2000's. After the military historian's presentation I talked with him and another historian, probly longer than they wanted to. They agreed my theory about my grandfather's treatment was likely correct. Then the other historian asked if I wanted to take a walk around the Letterman complex to get a better idea of where my grandfather might have been treated. I enthusiastically agreed, so the next day I took a long lunch and we walked the corridors and the grounds while I told him my story. He said "We need to get outside." The buildings that make up the complex have been burned, rebuilt, reconfigured, dismantled and otherwise changed over the decades since the place was first built. He took me to a spot in the middle of a small parking lot and said "Here we are, in surgery." That building was long gone. But then I pointed from that spot to the front door of my office. It was only a couple hundred feet away.
2) I've placed a link to a piece by a friend of mine, Amy Henderson, historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery, who recently posted a review of the Portrait Gallery's new exhibit “1898: U.S. IMPERIAL VISIONS AND REVISIONS.” There are many maps, as weird as the ones I'd seen years before. Amy's review is worth a read. Her take is as mine.
The exhibit is open through the end of February of next year.
https://artesmagazine.com/?p=25518
3) We lived for a little while in Omaha and I would sometimes ride thru the footprint of that 1899 exhibition. Seemed an unlikely place for it but civic boosterism and all that...Omaha is an interesting place (especially the bits nearby to the river), best seen by bicycle (as are all places, in my opinion).
Bern, thanks for taking the time to share your story. It's a fascinating one. I saw your comments on Francesca's post. She was in my course a few years back. I sent her your comments via her old university email. But not sure if that's still active. So no response. Sadly I lose touch with students.
How wonderful that your family's lore about granddad, was validated by the military historian discussing medical treatment during the Philippine-American war. That explains why he had to go there for treatment.
I would recommend you give Immerwahr's book a read. He discusses Philippine-US relations in the wake of the war. And spends some time discussion close ties in the medical field. To this day we have loads of Philippine nurses in US.
Thanks for subscribing to The Forgotten Files and sharing your reactions. It's why I do this.
Thanks Peter. I'll look for the book.
Fuck, Yeah!
Down, boy.