September 26, 2019 • 47 mins
Former President Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to public service, but even now few people know what exactly inspired him. Join Ben, Noel and special guest Ryan as they explore the astonishing adventures of Carter’s Uncle Tom Gordy — and how one man’s letter home set Carter on a path that would eventually lead to the presidency.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in today. As you know we are. We are
big fans of presidential trivia, obscure presidential facts, more untold,
and dare I say, ridiculous stories throughout the history of
this fine nation of ours. I'm ben these here, United
(00:49):
States been the very same me being null, all things
being equal? Yes, yes, and where would we be without
our super producer, Casey Pegraham. Let's give it up for
him and long time listeners. You may recall that in
our most recent presidential episode, we explored the story of
(01:10):
George Washington's little known but incredibly formative adventures in Barbados.
Short time listeners, even that was only like three episodes ago.
That's true. Yeah, I wonder let us know if you're
if you actually listen to these in order, if you
just jump around and you're like, I don't know, April seventeen,
that sounds like a winner. You're really missing out if
you aren't doing in order, because there is continuity here,
(01:30):
my friends, they're a little easter eggs. Were building a
world here. You we're building. Yeah, the the r h
CU exactly. But if you will recall from that earlier episode,
and also, I don't remember whether our show is around
in April, of it's possible we've Yeah, this is impossible
information to find. It's just lost to the sands of time.
(01:51):
So casey on the case. What about that new sound cute?
It's pretty great. Uh, the other one was getting a
little too expensive. So yeah, Wolf, Dick Wolf sent us
a season desist finally. Yeah, that guys like the sugar
Knight of daytime procedural name. Dick Wolf. It's an amazing name.
Speaking of amazing names, if you tuned into our episode
(02:15):
on George Washington, Barbados, you'll recall that we did not uh,
we did not sally fourth into that story alone. We
were joined by a good friend of ours, friend of
the show, our research associate, Ryan Barrish, and Ryan is
here today in this episode as well. Ryan, thanks so
much for coming back, man, Yeah, thanks for having me back, guys, dude,
(02:37):
it's a pleasure. And I have to I have to
paint a picture here. Ryan is wearing an amazing tidye
right now that says spent a little time in the
mountain fulsome Field, Boulder, Colorado, July five and six, twenty nineteen.
Is this some sort of hippie concert? Is just a
Grateful Dead situation? Yeah? It was the um last Grateful
Dead concert or Dead and Company concert on this tour.
Oh nice? Did you go? I didn't. I was invited
(02:58):
to go for Andrew's batch, probably a mutual friend of ours,
Andrew whose last name was escaping me. He does shirts
for all kinds of Bandsire Weekend and and the Dead
and Company. So you said, I'm not gonna go, but
give me the shirt. I hope your marriage works out. Um. Yeah,
basically you're more of a fair weather Dead fan, right. Yeah.
(03:18):
What's the way they called dead heads deadheads? Yeah? Okay,
that's right, not to be confused with parrot heads, which
is fans of Jimmy Buffett or gives heads heads, the
King Giz and the Liz Wiz. Um. I actually saw.
I was in Los Angeles recently, uh, and I saw
John Mayer at a restaurant and he is devilishly handsome.
Let me tell you. I mean I would love to
look like that when I'm like forty. Apparently very problematic
(03:42):
character though well. Also just in defense of anybody who
has felt the same way, or like if you've ever
looked at the celebrity and thought, wow, they look great
for their age and all that stuff. In in your
defense yours, Ryan and yours, not that you need to
casey and everyone listening, keep in mind those people have
teams of folks who are paid as like a paid
(04:04):
a living wage to only worry about, you know, that
person's teeth or that person's skin care. They're weird, you know,
ward like do we keep it is a good pr
do we get rid of it? You know what I mean?
So there's an army behind that. And speaking of weird segues,
we so often think of enormously influential historical figures, you know,
(04:27):
popes and prime ministers and presidents and so on, as
these sort of standalone episodes of human history, right, But
as we saw with George Washington, and as we've seen
with every historical figure, once you dig a little deeper,
they are the results or sort of an aggregate in
many ways, of all the amazing people and experiences they
(04:49):
had before they became you know, the lauded individual they're
known as today, like Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter indeed, and
I've always easily been an interesting figure here to me
and I'm sure you as well, Ben, because he looms
large here in our fair city of Atlanta, Georgia. We
have the Carter Center, which apparently has a lovely KOI
pond behind it. I just found out. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
(05:11):
It looks like Casey had some experience with that. I
would take good makeout spot, Yeah, I would take. I
would take a date there, especially if I really liked
or would go out to this this neat, little kind
of hidden garden. It's got a great view of the
city if you're ever in town. And also they don't
charge you to just go there with a picnic back, right,
it's a it's a cool little jim if you ever
(05:32):
want to have a learning experience. And Ryan you actually
you've done some work there, right, Yeah, you know, in
addition to being the Presidential Library and COI Pond and
also a great farmers market, they have a very large
presidential archive for President Carter's work and his foundation's work,
and it actually has the archive of most of those
(05:54):
family members as well. I think he's almost more famous
for his you know, his foundation than he has as
doing a great job as being president, right, Yeah, he had.
His presidency was not one of the most successful ones.
It is divisive even in Georgia to talk about his
time in office. We see him as kind of a philanthropist,
(06:15):
someone working for human rights. Him and Rosalind Carter have
a great organization UM. And it's housed actually at the
house that General Sherman took over when he sees Atlanta, UM,
so it's a pretty prominent part of Atlanta's while you
have the great view of downtown. So that was a
complete non sequitur. But what we're going to talk about
(06:36):
is related to the military and kind of the reason
behind Jimmy Carter's idea or desire to join the United
States Navy. He was actually inspired by his his uncle
on his mother's side. UM, Thomas Watson Gordy not the
populist senator slash presidential candidate from Georgia, Thomas Watson, who
(06:59):
he was named after. I would have thought that immediately. Yeah,
I'm kidding, I don't know that is you're like always
working Thomas Watson, the populist Georgist. But we're recording this
on a special day because it is Thomas Watson Gordy's
birthday today, so he would have been a hundred in
let's to the birthday math. I think it's right. Yeah.
(07:23):
He he was from a large family, had eight total children.
He was I said before President Jimmy Carter's mother was
one of them. But when he was married and was
starting young family, it was in the middle of the
Great Depression, so he was looking to provide for his
family during the difficult time and what he did in
order to do that was enroll in the Navy. It's
(07:47):
something that a lot of young men did at this
period because you couldn't really see the world. There wasn't
a lot of money, and the military ensured a comfortable living.
You know, people still do that to this day, or
at least kids I grew up with who didn't do
super well in high school and wanted to see the world,
didn't have any money to join the navy, you know,
join the military. Yeah, definitely. I think, um, the military,
(08:08):
if nothing else, is a good a good thing to
help you experience different cultures, to travel, and to be
stationed abroad. So this is something that entice Gordy to
do this. Um in addition to having the young children
and wife. Back home, he would send postcards to his family,
not just his immediate family, but his sister and Jimmy
Carter would read these postcards and it was something that
(08:30):
got him thinking about actually starting his own naval career.
At this point, I think he was in his late teens,
getting ready to graduate high school. So um, these cards
kind of arrived at a time when he was eligible
to enlist in the military. So we talked about this
a little bit off air, and one thing that I
found fascinating here was that not only have uh none
(08:53):
of us, including Casey, heard of Thomas Watson Gordy before,
but a lot of our listeners, even those who consider
themselves fairly uh well well read Jimmy Carter Buffs specifically,
may not know that much about Thomas Watson Gordy because
he's kind of hard to search for and you had
to do some real digging to learn about this guy. Right. Yeah,
(09:14):
at best you'll see Gordy's name come up, maybe in
a memoir or a biography about Jimmy Carter. In reference
to his political campaign, he used it a lot on
the campaign trail um to explain kind of as an
anecdote as as to why he joined the military, and also,
as we'll find out later, as kind of a tale
(09:35):
of forgiveness and um and redemptions. So he references him
almost as this like mythic figure, almost like a parable.
But there isn't a lot of information. If you do
a search on on Tom Watson Gordy, at best you
come up with sort of genealogy websites and and kind
of obituary pages. Did that about ten minutes ago, came
(09:57):
up with nothing. Yeah, he's um. He's not well known,
but fortunately he at least set the groundwork for him
to become well known because while he was UM, once
he had returned so spoiler, he does return, he created
a pretty detailed manuscript um telling his time. He was
also able to keep a diary while he was abroad,
(10:22):
and that's pretty odd, as you'll find out, because while
he was stationed abroad, it was a time where he
didn't necessarily have the most freedom. I gotta ask you, Ryan,
Um this being a sort of a deep, deep historical cut,
what was it the fascinating you about this guy that
made you kind of want to like dig in and
find out everything he could about him? One of my
(10:43):
hobbies is is locating someone or a piece of history
that hasn't really been explored. So I was working with
one of my professors who talked about Jimmy Carter's archives
and mentioned that there's a lot of just familiar content.
So there's there's pages and pages of of different family members,
personal belongings in this archive. So I started speaking with
(11:05):
the head archivists there and I just asked if you
had if you had any diaries or manuscripts or something
on kind of an auxiliary family member. And it was
fortunate that it ended up being someone that that did
play a role in Jimmy Carter's life, but also someone
who kind of has a big thruway in kind of
mid century America. His his life wasn't uncommon compared to
(11:28):
many veterans of the Pacific Theater, and his life was
also very parallel with just the changing time. Because something
I find so fascinating about mid century history UM is
existing during a period like the Great Depression and also
existing during the nineteen sixties. Those two periods are completely different. UM.
(11:51):
They're filled with despair and poverty and then excess and
kind of new budding technology. I think that's a really
in insting time to have have been alive, um, being
born before television, right, and then living to see someone
land on the Moon. There's there's a very dense amount
(12:11):
of progress in those in those eras. And also, I mean,
like this, this story is about to veer into some
pretty fun, ridiculous, heroic kind of territory right now too.
Like this guy, it was, on the one hand, sort
of a case study in like what a life like
this might have been. But he he got into some
interesting hijas, didn't he. Yeah, the journal that he wrote
(12:32):
it started just a few days before the Japanese invaded
Guam and took prisoners. So this happened the day after
Pearl Harbor, so there was almost no no knowledge, no
information had made it to Guam yet. And when Gordy
and his comrades were I guess that's communist. That's fine,
(12:55):
it's I think it's a word they don't own. Because
his brothers and brothers and his pals, yeah, his his
brothers in arms. They they were looking around and they
noticed the Japanese military coming on to the island from
from multiple ports of entry, and Gordy and his his
friend they were an operator of like a radio operator communications,
(13:18):
so they would have been the first to know, but
at this point they hadn't gotten information. There was no
expectation that they would see any military action because to
this point the Pacific theater was void of any real
Western interference. So it was basically Asian countries in Russia
kind of fighting amongst themselves. They had formed kind of
(13:40):
this normal life, and I think that this ability to
form a normal life in a in a foreign country
brought them a sort of comfort. They you know, they
were experiencing new people, new cultures, new drinks, um, new food.
It was a constant change that they were experiencing. But
it was a really calm experience until the day that
the Japanese came on to the island and started taking
(14:02):
the prisoners. December, correct, Yeah, and um, right before that,
I think a day or two before the the capture
takes place. Gordy rights in his diary that his one
regret was that he didn't mail the money order in
time for the holidays. He was looking to buy a
bicycle for his his youngest son and had not sent
(14:25):
the money in order for his wife to buy it
in time for Christmas Day, So you can see how
he had kind of developed this routine of normalcy on
the island. It was almost like having a job in
a in a different city. But um ironically, the first
time that he encountered the Japanese, what he noticed was
(14:46):
his bicycle was outside the house, and the Japanese were
looking at it. And that's what hinted them that somebody
was still stationed there. Right Because as you had established
before when you were when you were doing the research here,
the Japanese, these forces found a surreal Twilight Zone esque situation.
They were searching for Americans that survived earlier bombings, and
(15:10):
when they came to the area, the camp was a
ghost town, right, like everything except for with those little
dust devils that blew across main street. Yes, yeah, they're everything,
but the tumbleweeds. This this is a spooky situation. But
they're walking by these residencies, these dorms essentially, and they
(15:34):
see this pretty well maintained bicycle and what happens now,
So one of the Japanese soldiers actually steals the bike
and rides away on it. At this point, I think
that Gordy realizes he cannot escape the Japanese. He now
has lost his only mode of transportation, and at best
of bicycle against whatever soldiers might have with would hardly
(15:58):
stand a chance. So he convinced his housemate to surrender peacefully.
He explained to his housemaid that it would be better
for us to take a chance and turn in. They
weren't combative soldiers, so they weren't necessarily equipped to the
stage any sort of large, large coup or anything like that. Well,
I guess not cool resistance, and so as the as
(16:20):
the Japanese came by, they surrendered by walking out of
the house with their hands raised. Gordon's main priority at
this time, though, was to sneak cigarettes and his diary
with him, so those were things that he hid and
in his friend's socks. He hid the cigarettes, he had
the diary in his clothes, and they walked out. Um
They were driven to a plaza which which housed the hospital,
(16:40):
where they were asked to remove their shirts and searched. Somehow,
they didn't find the cigarettes or the diary in the
socks or the or the pants, but they were basically,
you know, left without anything any person belonging short of
those two and the the po ws in the Japanese
situation this time did not enjoy much in the ways
of like international conventions like Geneva conventions, things like treatment
(17:05):
of the captured in wartime. And as a matter of fact,
these guys are the very bottom of the social hierarchy, right, Yeah.
They Japanese customs typically don't involve taking prisoners. So in
their military code, you want to fight until your last breath,
and um, you never want to think about surrendering to
the enemy. It's almost a perplexing thought to surrender. In Japan,
(17:28):
they are taught to fight until until they passed away.
So I mean they're if they're even shamed in any
I mean, like at least in the old you know,
feudal feudal Japan days, in the samurai, I mean, they
would commit ritual suicide in front of everybody if they
were defeated in some way or like, you know, to
shame their family. I mean, that was absolutely part of
their culture. It makes sense, yeah, and we see it
(17:49):
even later with things like kamakaze pilots. So it's relatively
odd to have kind of accept a peaceful surrender and
accept prisoners, because if you are fighting a war, it's
also just another thing to consider, how are we going
to take care of them? How are they going to
house them? So what we see is Gordy and his
fellow captured UM prisoners. They are taken to a hospital
(18:12):
in Guam. Hospital can kind of act as a as
a makeshift prison based on the way it's set up,
but there there isn't really an infrastructure set up to
take care of these prisoners. We see a lot of abuse.
Gordy describes an instance of being punched with a belt
buckle while brushing his teeth. Um, he doesn't really it
(18:33):
makes me cringe. Yeah, it's probably on the bottom of
list of things to any any teeth things, there are
always a real red flag for me. Um. Yeah. And
there was all kinds of other mistreatment that he witnessed
as well. Yeah. I mean the hospitals did have nice rooms,
but they removed all the beds. So that's just one
(18:54):
aspect of this kind of prison environment that the Japanese
we're looking to create. They stayed in this hospit battle
for about two days before they moved to a Catholic
church where food was even more limited. So they had
been receiving two meals of ping pong sized potatoes and
a slice of bologna. Less than a month later, Gordy
had written that they were they were boarding a ship
(19:16):
and this kind of signaled the end of freedom for him. Uh,
he was leaving the country that he started to feel
at home in over the past few years, and now
he's headed to a foreign country for an uncertain amount
of time. Out of the frying pan, into the fire,
or perhaps we should say out of the frying pan,
onto the hibachi. Right, they take these po ws to Japan,
(19:44):
where things get worse and worse. And this this is
interesting because I was looking through some of your research
on this, right, and I noticed, like you said at
the top of the show, in his diary he list
he keep track of things like his income, and he
continues to do this in the Japanese prison. But we're
(20:07):
still I don't know. We have some speculation on what
he was doing. Most a lot of people in prison
don't have a job like that. Yeah, it is odd
that he was able to notate we still receiving income,
and um, it appeared that he was able to work
for different people, maybe doing odd jobs and bonus jobs
within the prison. The conditions in Japan were as you
(20:29):
can expect, poor. They didn't have prison set up. They're
only source of heat was actually a small habachi made
of ceramics that he wasn't really able to keep the
prisoners warm. It kind of just turned into a cause
of of actual physical headaches from all the carbon monoxide
that was coming from the habbachi's There's also sanitation issues, um,
(20:54):
things like a long slit cut in the floor that
was just the toilet. But despite the livings, he does
note that that he is being paid. He doesn't state
where it comes from, but based on based on reading
that um, that journal that he wrote, and also I
was able to find some books of people who were
actually captured in Guam at the same time as him,
(21:16):
and they note that they were able to work small
jobs or work extra hours, um, whether it was farming
or manufacturing, to earn a little bit of extra money.
So I would assume his his situation is the same.
But he does talk about creating a sort of a
barter system by stockpiling cigarettes and later selling or trading them.
That also is likely a source of income that he
(21:38):
had by um, you know, kind of hoarding cigarettes as
he had them and using them as a kind of
a leverage tool later on that allowed him to gain
a little bit of power kind of in the in
the prison socio economic life. He was able to swap
and buy things in secret. And it was also, like
I said, possible, he's being paid on his table, like, um,
(21:59):
he could he cook for Japanese officers who didn't feel
like cooking for themselves. That seemed to be a job
that some prisoners were able to do to earn some
money kind of in secret. Now at this time, he
was still allowed to send and receive mail. Is that correct?
I don't believe so, okay, because I know he would
write letters sort of as addressed to his family, but
(22:21):
they weren't actually going anywhere, right, Yeah, he had. He'd
write in his journal little letters that never were removed
from his journal. They were just kind of kept in
there um as a way to feel like he was
communicating possibly. And what is odd around this time, his
family was actually notified that that he was likely dead
(22:41):
by the Red Cross. So with that absence and communication
from him and that notification, his family back home was
starting to well most likely feared the worst. They were
presuming him dead. And we're looking at, you know, moving
on with with their life, which is pretty difficult. While
Gordy was still kind of doing the repetitive days in
(23:04):
the prison, which started to mess with him physically and mentally.
He was eating the same thing every day, he was
working on farms and in steel factories. He didn't know
when it would end, if it would end, if he
would live to see it end. And I think that
lack of hope was kind of making it difficult for him,
especially around Christmas, which again if you remember at the
(23:26):
top of the podcast, we talked about him trying or
forgetting to send a money order to his wife for
a bicycle. Well, this Christmas marked about a year since
he'd been held captive, and he was he missed writing
letters to his family, but he uh in his notebook
he would write and there about how guilty he felt
about missing the important events. If you look in the calendar,
(23:48):
and we'll post some images of of his calendar, he'll
notate all the birthdays he misses, and it's it's really
sad to see. He also notates medical issues. He has
um teeth, he law, all sort of sorts of interesting
things on there. One interesting thing that he did keep
in his calendar. Was he would not take me shaved
(24:09):
his his beard, and at for a while he actually
had a beard growth count that he was he was
working on. Growing out of beard became a little bit
of a distraction for him, and whenever he was asked
to shave his beard, he would typically write about it
in his journal and express some some frustration that they
were trying to take away one thing that he can control.
(24:30):
So he was trying to create some sort of rhythm
and meaning for himself and his life and through writing
in this journal and keeping a calendar, but the days
were still strenuous, um and you know, the diary provided
some relief, but it really it was kind of a
small thing in the in the grand scheme of things.
Of course, he also wrote about revenge fantasies, right, and
(24:53):
hopes for hopes for retribution. Yeah, if you recall when
he was captured, he convinced his housemate to go peacefully,
so he really didn't have a violent streak or an
aggressive streak it it appeared before being captured. But towards
the end of his journal, you start to see things
(25:16):
like him saying that he would like to watch them
die or be the one that kills them. He starts
to talk about about in in pretty physical Lee grew
someome detail or very specific detail about how he would
like to harm them. Yeah, I mean I can relate
to that. Sure, that's long. How long was he in
(25:37):
prison total at this point? It was at this point
when he starts writing it about it, it's about a year.
That's enough. I don't know I'd make it that long
without thinking some pretty pretty uh impure thoughts about what
I want to do to the folks that were like
torturing me and making me sleep on the floor and
you know, all of this stuff. It just seems very
(25:57):
very very awful. Thank you years more than enough, you
know what I mean. And if I'm sure we have
people listening now who have kept journals and diaries who
are not in uh military prison situation, right, and they
probably already have some some pretty heartfelt, uh graphic angry
(26:18):
things in their own life experience during peacetime. It was
interesting to me Ryan the story of Miyasaki, who was
like one of the big bads for Gordy at least. Yeah, Miyasaki,
who was actually the person who punched Gordy with the
belt buckle, earlier, while brushing his teeth, he is uh.
He's brought up a couple of times throughout this journal.
(26:41):
One time he writes that I hope he gets killed
in the first air rate here, and I hope that
I will be here to see it. So that kind
of gives you an example of he not only wants
wishes death upon him, but he also would like to
witness it, which is I think, to me, the the
ultimate uh disdain for somebody. And what's really interesting is
(27:02):
that Donald Giles, who's the author of Captive of a
Rising Sun, which is his memoir um that he wrote
while being captured with Gordy, he doesn't mention Gordy specifically
in a book, but it's really interesting because they mentioned
a lot of the same characters. So while they may
not have been necessarily close enough to write about each other,
they were having a shared experience within this prison. Again,
(27:24):
like we said, he was really noncombative. He was, he
was willfully surrendering to them. Now he's moved towards wishing
death upon Japanese guards. Yeah, this is weird too because
we can kind of see this inner world that has
been constructed, right because whenever people are isolated from the
larger world. We sort of conform to the size of
(27:49):
our container, right in every sense of the words. So
he's monitoring things as closely as he can so he
doesn't get lost in the sameness and the routine. And
one thing it's fascinating here is, like many people who
are imprisoned, he is trying ardently to learn any news
of the larger world, right, and he figures out some
(28:13):
ways to do this. But it's not as simple as
you know, hopping on a phone or hopping on a computer,
reading a newspaper. Even he has to kind of guess
based on the changing behavior of what the guards, the authorities. Yeah,
he would often assume that the way that he's being treated,
if he's being treated positively, it meant that it's possible
(28:34):
that the Americans were winning, that the Japanese keeping him
captive might be coming to an end, And as he's
being treated worse, he would assume the opposite, so that
the Japanese were winning the Pacific theater kind of towards
the end, close to his release, he actually writes that
he says, my god, we must be winning the war.
(28:55):
Because there was one day where he went to a
concert that they held there. He had free cigarettes and
a large meal, which was definitely not the common situation
for him in the prison. Let's cut back to the
good old us of a let's go across the pond.
I believe earlier you said that, uh, many of Gordon's
(29:17):
relatives were convinced that he was dead and that was
based off the uh, the estimation of the Red Cross. Right. Yeah,
so they were unable to verify whether he was taken,
captive or killed in a previous bombing raid, so that
he was assumed dead by the Red Cross. This had
an impact on multiple members of his family. Jimmy Carter,
(29:39):
it kind of was the final nail in the coffin,
I guess, or the final thing that made him decide
to enlisten the Navy because he wanted to honor his
uncle who had paid the ultimate sacrifice during his time
in the military, or so he believed at the time.
World War two is still going strong. So at seventeen
he had listed um which was definitely a major life
(30:03):
change and is something the sailor identity is is actually
something that was really important to Jimmy Carter in the
early part of his life as far as the rest
of his family goes. His wife getting the news that
her husband had died with her two young children. She
was living in San Francisco, across the country from family
that can help, so she moved back to Rule Georgia
(30:26):
to be close to Tom's family and the Carters as well.
She was living there for a little while until she
found out that he was confirmed or supposedly confirmed dead.
So from the time he left the time he found out,
she was spending the time in Georgia. But once she
found out he was dead, she decided to move back
to San Francisco and try to continue her life there
where she actually got remarried um and started a new life. Now,
(30:52):
as you guys know, he does return home, so this,
this remarriage kind of sets up an awkward situation. So
upon his return, he weighed less than a hundred pounds,
so obviously it had taken a toll on him. Dorothy.
When she found out he came home, she offered to
annul her current marriage, which is I don't know, how
(31:12):
do you guys feel about that. I feel like it's
a nice thought, yeah, but that's that some things can't
be mended. It's a little, too little, too late in
a situation I think, right, Yeah, it feels like maybe
she was doing what she thought was the right thing
to do. Yeah, many in the in the Carter family,
I thought she got married too soon. It was kind
(31:33):
of a common thing that they they blame his his
first wife, Dorothy with with contributing to his mental anguish
and depression that he experienced in the rest of his life.
While Jimmy Carter actually spoke about this on the campaign
trail is something that is way more nuanced than just
being remarried, because if you assume that your husband's dead,
(31:57):
especially after a couple of years of UM of him
being detained, you're going to assume that you, well, you're
going to want to continue your life. You're going to
want to find some sense of normalcy, whether that's a husband,
a new job, steady place to live. UM, there's going
to usually be changed involved in that. And I'm sure
(32:19):
she wasn't expecting her husband to reappear. So I do
think it was a sweet gesture, but it is one
of those I don't think there is a winning situation
in any of it, um, because someone's going to be
terribly bothered by by a decision that's made, and unfortunately
Dorothy was put in kind of that impossible situation. Yeah,
(32:40):
it's sort of a rock and a hard place, as
you said, Kobyashi Maru for the Star Trek fans out there,
Thomas Watson, Gordy, I have to say, I think you
made the right decision by saying no, don't don't anno
your marriage, just because you feel like it's the right
thing to do, do what you truly want to do.
And he lived out the rest of his life in
(33:01):
the US. He passed away in nineteen seventy five, and
by the time he had passed away, Jimmy Carter's career
was already in like he had seen the career begin
from the Navy days so on. And and I think
it's safe to say that for a long time, Jimmy
(33:22):
Carter considered Gordy to be like one of his personal heroes, right. Yeah.
He looked at Gordy as someone who was willing to
take take chances and to change his life and to
stand up for what he believed in. And that's something
that Carter carried with him, whether it was joining the
Navy at seventeen, running for governor, being involved in politics
(33:44):
in general. Carter was someone who wanted to provide for
his family by carving his own lane in life, rather
than relying on his family's peanut farm, which he does
go and help with in the future, but not before
he's created his own identity. So he's someone who, even
at a young age, was looking to eclipse the shadows
(34:05):
of his parents, which is a pretty good trait to
having is something he picked up from his uncle, who
u there is a little bit of a happy ending.
He does remarry at some point in the in the
final thirty years, and so he does have a partner,
and she was actually pivotal in encouraging him to write
the manuscript to try to process the feelings because he
(34:28):
did become sort of a racial curmudgeon in a in
a way racist curmudgeon. Towards the end of his life.
He he really couldn't bring him around people of color,
particularly Asians, because he would trigger this this PTSD type feeling,
which reminds me of like Cotton Hill from King of
the Hill, where he would just have these like fire flashbacks. Apparently.
(34:56):
It's worth noting though, that while his life was to cold,
he did get to live. You know, a long life.
He did get to come back to America, which he
was seeing rapidly had changed. I can't imagine what it
would be like to leave during the Great Depression and
return once the economic boom had had kind of turned
(35:18):
America around, you know, very different world. When he left.
Model t s were like the only car and uh,
you know, mid forties were starting to see real real
car models were starting to see, uh, modern cities really
grow and boom. And part of that boom was was
the tiki bar boom. One of my favorite things in
(35:39):
the whole world. So now we're going to we're indy
out a more positive note. Let's let's bring it, let's
bring it back around. And something that many people brought
from the Pacific was that memory of of a tropical
drink um kind of a a shady, dark place which
they would use to escape the heat, and it was
somewhere where they can kind of just hide away from
(36:02):
from the day to day life. Sometimes it's from the
frenzies of war. Sometimes it's just a way to pass
the time. But as soldiers returned, they returned kind of
with this trend started by Don Beach, who opened on
the Beach Comber in Hollywood, California. Four real name Ernest
Raymond Bouma gons right, And I want to say, Ben,
(36:24):
you and I went to a pretty old school Hollywood
tiki bar. The other ones called tiki t Dicky Tie,
and I believe that Beach Comber recipe for the my
taie is like a big deal. It's like considered like
the holy grail of like my tai recipes. Is a
friend of ours. You've got to meet Ryan. His name
is Robert Lamb. He's a co host of a couple
(36:44):
of different shows here, stuff to blow your mind and invention.
It's also a huge tiki fanatic. So whenever on the
road with him, Actually, you know what, if you ever
just meet him and run into him, ask him about
some tiki places, make sure you have like thirty minutes
and makes you're ready to drive somewhere with them or fly.
I'm not mistaken. This story is gonna end up at
(37:04):
one of my favorite places in all of Atlanta, Georgia.
Trader Vix. Yeah, Trader Vix was kind of the second
tiki bar to really established itself an American culture. Trader
Vix incorporated food as well as the ma Taie and
the other drinks they brought over the famous poop Poop
latter sorry I cannot And Trader vix Is is kind
(37:28):
of the the legacy of this this old guard of
of tiki bars. It's the one that, as Noel said,
we still have here in Atlanta. It's a great establishment.
It's really exciting during Dragon Conics. I was there this
time around. It so much fun. Yeah, it's it's a
it's a place to be got a live band, which
I always love. Yeah, yeah, and um, you know, we're
(37:49):
seeing these resurgeons here in Atlanta. But there was a
period of time kind of sixties through the nineties when
tiki bars were considered not in vogue. Um, so you
started seeing a lot of them clothes. Fortunately, as we know,
they've made a comeback and we we see them, particularly
around two thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen, we see a
(38:11):
new desire to escape. And it's so lucky that some
of the historical ones are still around, you know, like
Traitor vis As pretty much as it's always been. There's
a place in Portland called Alibi that's like another older one.
Maybe it is a circle of the sixties or seventies,
though de'st the crazy. There are a lot of There
are a lot more on the West coast. That's right,
that's right. Yeah, the sixties and seventies still had teakey bars.
(38:33):
We were just seeing the bigger brands, um, their their
growth kind of slow down. Um kind of eighties and nineties.
You're not seeing any new tea bars open. But what
is interesting about the teaky bar formula is it it's
based on cheap rum, which at the time was it
the Pacific wasn't. It wasn't in the Pacific yet, So
(38:55):
so Don, who was kind of a world traveler, he
wasn't necessarily in the military. That's not how he well
he was later, but that's not how he found Don
the beach combers my Thai recipe as he thought, what
is the cheapest liquer I can get my hands on?
And at that point in the Caribbeans, rum was was
(39:15):
very inexpensive and very sweet and worked as a fine
substitute for what he had tried when he was in
the Pacific. Back to this sort of escapism and the
fall of the tiki boom, what we see in in
nineteen nine, UM current President Donald Trump, he made a
purchase of the Plaza Hotel in New York. He doesn't
(39:37):
own it anymore, thankfully, But what he did was close
an original Trader vix um in Midtown Manhattan, which is
pretty disappointing because it would be really cool to have
an original total And he thought it was tacky, right,
or say it wasn't on brand or something. Yeah, he
said it. It was. Um, it was tacky and it
(39:59):
wasn't in line with what he would like to achieve.
You can read the original nine Um article where it's
literally titled Trump to close ATTACKI Trader vix and the
New York Times. So it's Trump called it tacky. Yeah. Yeah,
talk about the pot calling the kettle gold plated. Yeah,
(40:21):
it's definitely ironic. Um. And like Trump has become sort
of attacking and out of fashion, what we're seeing is
is this resurgence in in tiki bars. But what we
can't forget about is the impact this situation had on
the island of Guam. Guam, like many territories or colonial islands,
(40:43):
never really gets a fair shake. You know, they're occupied,
they become an advantageous piece of land, whether for resources
or military reasons. But when it was time to take
care of the citizens of Guam who had lost their
property there belongings, a lot of them their lives. The
agreement was that Japan was not responsible. America agreed to
(41:08):
assume responsibility. But due to high literacy rates, a language
barrier between the U. S. Navy and locals, no newspaper,
telephone communication, and only a six month window to file claims,
many were left without even knowing that there was an
option for compensation under the Guam Meritorious Claims Act of
(41:31):
So you're still seeing this kind of today and and
it ties into modern history as we think about um
what is owed to two people who are marginalized. So
in two thousand five this came up again, and we
had a headed divisive president at this time who was
looking to uh reboot the economy post nine eleven, and
(41:52):
they were slashing any sort of superfluous or what they
felt to be extracurricular financial commitments. So we're seeing this
act get a lot of support in Congress to to
start to provide reparations to the island and its people.
But his Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Affairs,
(42:14):
David B. Cohen, said that reasonable people might disagree in
good faith, however, about the appropriate level of financial compensation
to be paid by the federal government for damages that
were caused not by the fault of the United States,
but rather by the fault of a foreign occupying power.
See Okay, I get I understand why they would make
(42:37):
that argument, But it reminds me of the old quotation,
you know, when elephants wage war, only the grass suffers.
There there is an entire not just one episode, there's
a entire series worth of topics about the the chaos
rot upon this area of the world, of these island
(42:59):
nations before World War two, after World War two. You know.
It also reminds me how here in the US nobody
really talks about the US colonization of the Philippines. Right.
There's so much stuff that we forget here, and we
can't really prove this. But it's strange to think whether
Gordie's adventures influenced Carter's policy later on. It definitely inspired
(43:24):
him to do stuff, right, but did he was he
thinking of his uncle when he was working with hostage situations?
Stuff like that. We don't know, and we probably never
will unless Jimmy Carter decides to mention it one day,
we should he just had a talk the other day
at Emory University. We should try to pop in on
one and just bring this random question. Um. You know
(43:46):
something else that's that's important to think about in this
is the way that these large nations America, England, France, Germany,
all these large countries who have colonized nations in the past,
when they cause damages to people who aren't major players
in the game, but actually are kind of vital to
the creation of the wealth that these countries are desiring.
(44:08):
So if we look at the enslaved people in America
asks and their descendants asking for reparations is a similar situation.
You can make the argument that well, the Confederate nations,
they were the ones fighting for slavery. It's over. We
see that argument comes sometimes we also see the argument
of well, that was a long time ago or that
(44:29):
was previous generations, doesn't have anything to do with me.
But we see the the problems that systemic and institutionalized
racism and oppression of cause throughout the world. And that's
why we have massive inequality today throughout nations. And also
we have to say, of course that these kind of
impacts are multigenerational. They don't stop just because people die,
(44:54):
you know, and it affects the children and their children's
children and so on and this. Okay, so this is
this is our story, and I think this gives us
some insight into President Carter, former President Carter that would
surprise most people. Now Here in Georgia. Of course, we
tend to know a little bit more about Carter than
(45:15):
the average bear, because again, he's got the Carter Center
in the library here, and teach a Sunday school here
and speaks at Emory here. Uh. You know, sometimes you
can see him at the right restaurant. But even here
in Georgia, a lot of people are unaware of the
tremendous influence that his uncle had on the young Jimmy Carter. Ryan,
(45:35):
thank you so much for returning to the show. You know. Yeah,
where can people learn more about your institution the work
you guys are doing. Um, you can follow us on
Instagram at g s U Underscore MHP. That's the Georgia's
State Master's Program of Historic Preservation and Heritage Preservation is
(45:58):
what our program is called. But we kind of dabble
in all sorts of public history and preservation topics. Fantastic
And while you are on the internet, folks, this does
conclude our episode, but not our show. This story continues.
You can be part of it if you check out
our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us
as a group and as individuals on Instagram and Twitter.
(46:22):
I am at Ben Bullan on Instagram, and I am
at Ben bull in hs W on Twitter. And I
am just a gramster. You can find me at how
Now Noel Brown Big. Thanks to our super producer Casey
Pegram to Alex Williams, who composed our track. And it's
weird because you know, now you're in person, and usually
when we're talking about you, you're just sort of existing
(46:43):
in the ether of ideas. But you're a real person.
You're right here, right now, Ryan Barrass, thank you, Yeah,
thank you guys. Yeah, and all his technicolor tidye glory,
nice call back. Thanks man Big. Thanks to Gabe Lucier,
our other research associate and compatriot comrade brother are in
arms whatever you wanna call it. Thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. Thanks to Christopher haciotas here in
(47:05):
spirit thanks to the quister for not showing up once again.
But I have a feeling that we're our luck is
going to run out on that very soon. Thanks to
you Ben for having such a well quoft a bit
of facial hair going on today. It's very very dapper looking.
Thanks man. This is something that we don't see a
lot because this is an audio podcast. But my favorite
thing to do nowadays is to flip the phone the
(47:27):
headphones over so I look like either Jordie LaForge or
Cyclops when you guys think, or a little bit like RoboCop.
Maybe oh yeah, yeah, there we go. Picture it. We'll
see you next time. Cox. For more podcasts for My
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
(47:49):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in today. As you know we are. We are
big fans of presidential trivia, obscure presidential facts, more untold,
and dare I say, ridiculous stories throughout the history of
this fine nation of ours. I'm ben these here, United
(00:49):
States been the very same me being null, all things
being equal? Yes, yes, and where would we be without
our super producer, Casey Pegraham. Let's give it up for
him and long time listeners. You may recall that in
our most recent presidential episode, we explored the story of
(01:10):
George Washington's little known but incredibly formative adventures in Barbados.
Short time listeners, even that was only like three episodes ago.
That's true. Yeah, I wonder let us know if you're
if you actually listen to these in order, if you
just jump around and you're like, I don't know, April seventeen,
that sounds like a winner. You're really missing out if
you aren't doing in order, because there is continuity here,
(01:30):
my friends, they're a little easter eggs. Were building a
world here. You we're building. Yeah, the the r h
CU exactly. But if you will recall from that earlier episode,
and also, I don't remember whether our show is around
in April, of it's possible we've Yeah, this is impossible
information to find. It's just lost to the sands of time.
(01:51):
So casey on the case. What about that new sound cute?
It's pretty great. Uh, the other one was getting a
little too expensive. So yeah, Wolf, Dick Wolf sent us
a season desist finally. Yeah, that guys like the sugar
Knight of daytime procedural name. Dick Wolf. It's an amazing name.
Speaking of amazing names, if you tuned into our episode
(02:15):
on George Washington, Barbados, you'll recall that we did not uh,
we did not sally fourth into that story alone. We
were joined by a good friend of ours, friend of
the show, our research associate, Ryan Barrish, and Ryan is
here today in this episode as well. Ryan, thanks so
much for coming back, man, Yeah, thanks for having me back, guys, dude,
(02:37):
it's a pleasure. And I have to I have to
paint a picture here. Ryan is wearing an amazing tidye
right now that says spent a little time in the
mountain fulsome Field, Boulder, Colorado, July five and six, twenty nineteen.
Is this some sort of hippie concert? Is just a
Grateful Dead situation? Yeah? It was the um last Grateful
Dead concert or Dead and Company concert on this tour.
Oh nice? Did you go? I didn't. I was invited
(02:58):
to go for Andrew's batch, probably a mutual friend of ours,
Andrew whose last name was escaping me. He does shirts
for all kinds of Bandsire Weekend and and the Dead
and Company. So you said, I'm not gonna go, but
give me the shirt. I hope your marriage works out. Um. Yeah,
basically you're more of a fair weather Dead fan, right. Yeah.
(03:18):
What's the way they called dead heads deadheads? Yeah? Okay,
that's right, not to be confused with parrot heads, which
is fans of Jimmy Buffett or gives heads heads, the
King Giz and the Liz Wiz. Um. I actually saw.
I was in Los Angeles recently, uh, and I saw
John Mayer at a restaurant and he is devilishly handsome.
Let me tell you. I mean I would love to
look like that when I'm like forty. Apparently very problematic
(03:42):
character though well. Also just in defense of anybody who
has felt the same way, or like if you've ever
looked at the celebrity and thought, wow, they look great
for their age and all that stuff. In in your
defense yours, Ryan and yours, not that you need to
casey and everyone listening, keep in mind those people have
teams of folks who are paid as like a paid
(04:04):
a living wage to only worry about, you know, that
person's teeth or that person's skin care. They're weird, you know,
ward like do we keep it is a good pr
do we get rid of it? You know what I mean?
So there's an army behind that. And speaking of weird segues,
we so often think of enormously influential historical figures, you know,
(04:27):
popes and prime ministers and presidents and so on, as
these sort of standalone episodes of human history, right, But
as we saw with George Washington, and as we've seen
with every historical figure, once you dig a little deeper,
they are the results or sort of an aggregate in
many ways, of all the amazing people and experiences they
(04:49):
had before they became you know, the lauded individual they're
known as today, like Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter indeed, and
I've always easily been an interesting figure here to me
and I'm sure you as well, Ben, because he looms
large here in our fair city of Atlanta, Georgia. We
have the Carter Center, which apparently has a lovely KOI
pond behind it. I just found out. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
(05:11):
It looks like Casey had some experience with that. I
would take good makeout spot, Yeah, I would take. I
would take a date there, especially if I really liked
or would go out to this this neat, little kind
of hidden garden. It's got a great view of the
city if you're ever in town. And also they don't
charge you to just go there with a picnic back, right,
it's a it's a cool little jim if you ever
(05:32):
want to have a learning experience. And Ryan you actually
you've done some work there, right, Yeah, you know, in
addition to being the Presidential Library and COI Pond and
also a great farmers market, they have a very large
presidential archive for President Carter's work and his foundation's work,
and it actually has the archive of most of those
(05:54):
family members as well. I think he's almost more famous
for his you know, his foundation than he has as
doing a great job as being president, right, Yeah, he had.
His presidency was not one of the most successful ones.
It is divisive even in Georgia to talk about his
time in office. We see him as kind of a philanthropist,
(06:15):
someone working for human rights. Him and Rosalind Carter have
a great organization UM. And it's housed actually at the
house that General Sherman took over when he sees Atlanta, UM,
so it's a pretty prominent part of Atlanta's while you
have the great view of downtown. So that was a
complete non sequitur. But what we're going to talk about
(06:36):
is related to the military and kind of the reason
behind Jimmy Carter's idea or desire to join the United
States Navy. He was actually inspired by his his uncle
on his mother's side. UM, Thomas Watson Gordy not the
populist senator slash presidential candidate from Georgia, Thomas Watson, who
(06:59):
he was named after. I would have thought that immediately. Yeah,
I'm kidding, I don't know that is you're like always
working Thomas Watson, the populist Georgist. But we're recording this
on a special day because it is Thomas Watson Gordy's
birthday today, so he would have been a hundred in
let's to the birthday math. I think it's right. Yeah.
(07:23):
He he was from a large family, had eight total children.
He was I said before President Jimmy Carter's mother was
one of them. But when he was married and was
starting young family, it was in the middle of the
Great Depression, so he was looking to provide for his
family during the difficult time and what he did in
order to do that was enroll in the Navy. It's
(07:47):
something that a lot of young men did at this
period because you couldn't really see the world. There wasn't
a lot of money, and the military ensured a comfortable living.
You know, people still do that to this day, or
at least kids I grew up with who didn't do
super well in high school and wanted to see the world,
didn't have any money to join the navy, you know,
join the military. Yeah, definitely. I think, um, the military,
(08:08):
if nothing else, is a good a good thing to
help you experience different cultures, to travel, and to be
stationed abroad. So this is something that entice Gordy to
do this. Um in addition to having the young children
and wife. Back home, he would send postcards to his family,
not just his immediate family, but his sister and Jimmy
Carter would read these postcards and it was something that
(08:30):
got him thinking about actually starting his own naval career.
At this point, I think he was in his late teens,
getting ready to graduate high school. So um, these cards
kind of arrived at a time when he was eligible
to enlist in the military. So we talked about this
a little bit off air, and one thing that I
found fascinating here was that not only have uh none
(08:53):
of us, including Casey, heard of Thomas Watson Gordy before,
but a lot of our listeners, even those who consider
themselves fairly uh well well read Jimmy Carter Buffs specifically,
may not know that much about Thomas Watson Gordy because
he's kind of hard to search for and you had
to do some real digging to learn about this guy. Right. Yeah,
(09:14):
at best you'll see Gordy's name come up, maybe in
a memoir or a biography about Jimmy Carter. In reference
to his political campaign, he used it a lot on
the campaign trail um to explain kind of as an
anecdote as as to why he joined the military, and also,
as we'll find out later, as kind of a tale
(09:35):
of forgiveness and um and redemptions. So he references him
almost as this like mythic figure, almost like a parable.
But there isn't a lot of information. If you do
a search on on Tom Watson Gordy, at best you
come up with sort of genealogy websites and and kind
of obituary pages. Did that about ten minutes ago, came
(09:57):
up with nothing. Yeah, he's um. He's not well known,
but fortunately he at least set the groundwork for him
to become well known because while he was UM, once
he had returned so spoiler, he does return, he created
a pretty detailed manuscript um telling his time. He was
also able to keep a diary while he was abroad,
(10:22):
and that's pretty odd, as you'll find out, because while
he was stationed abroad, it was a time where he
didn't necessarily have the most freedom. I gotta ask you, Ryan,
Um this being a sort of a deep, deep historical cut,
what was it the fascinating you about this guy that
made you kind of want to like dig in and
find out everything he could about him? One of my
(10:43):
hobbies is is locating someone or a piece of history
that hasn't really been explored. So I was working with
one of my professors who talked about Jimmy Carter's archives
and mentioned that there's a lot of just familiar content.
So there's there's pages and pages of of different family members,
personal belongings in this archive. So I started speaking with
(11:05):
the head archivists there and I just asked if you
had if you had any diaries or manuscripts or something
on kind of an auxiliary family member. And it was
fortunate that it ended up being someone that that did
play a role in Jimmy Carter's life, but also someone
who kind of has a big thruway in kind of
mid century America. His his life wasn't uncommon compared to
(11:28):
many veterans of the Pacific Theater, and his life was
also very parallel with just the changing time. Because something
I find so fascinating about mid century history UM is
existing during a period like the Great Depression and also
existing during the nineteen sixties. Those two periods are completely different. UM.
(11:51):
They're filled with despair and poverty and then excess and
kind of new budding technology. I think that's a really
in insting time to have have been alive, um, being
born before television, right, and then living to see someone
land on the Moon. There's there's a very dense amount
(12:11):
of progress in those in those eras. And also, I mean,
like this, this story is about to veer into some
pretty fun, ridiculous, heroic kind of territory right now too.
Like this guy, it was, on the one hand, sort
of a case study in like what a life like
this might have been. But he he got into some
interesting hijas, didn't he. Yeah, the journal that he wrote
(12:32):
it started just a few days before the Japanese invaded
Guam and took prisoners. So this happened the day after
Pearl Harbor, so there was almost no no knowledge, no
information had made it to Guam yet. And when Gordy
and his comrades were I guess that's communist. That's fine,
(12:55):
it's I think it's a word they don't own. Because
his brothers and brothers and his pals, yeah, his his
brothers in arms. They they were looking around and they
noticed the Japanese military coming on to the island from
from multiple ports of entry, and Gordy and his his
friend they were an operator of like a radio operator communications,
(13:18):
so they would have been the first to know, but
at this point they hadn't gotten information. There was no
expectation that they would see any military action because to
this point the Pacific theater was void of any real
Western interference. So it was basically Asian countries in Russia
kind of fighting amongst themselves. They had formed kind of
(13:40):
this normal life, and I think that this ability to
form a normal life in a in a foreign country
brought them a sort of comfort. They you know, they
were experiencing new people, new cultures, new drinks, um, new food.
It was a constant change that they were experiencing. But
it was a really calm experience until the day that
the Japanese came on to the island and started taking
(14:02):
the prisoners. December, correct, Yeah, and um, right before that,
I think a day or two before the the capture
takes place. Gordy rights in his diary that his one
regret was that he didn't mail the money order in
time for the holidays. He was looking to buy a
bicycle for his his youngest son and had not sent
(14:25):
the money in order for his wife to buy it
in time for Christmas Day, So you can see how
he had kind of developed this routine of normalcy on
the island. It was almost like having a job in
a in a different city. But um ironically, the first
time that he encountered the Japanese, what he noticed was
(14:46):
his bicycle was outside the house, and the Japanese were
looking at it. And that's what hinted them that somebody
was still stationed there. Right Because as you had established
before when you were when you were doing the research here,
the Japanese, these forces found a surreal Twilight Zone esque situation.
They were searching for Americans that survived earlier bombings, and
(15:10):
when they came to the area, the camp was a
ghost town, right, like everything except for with those little
dust devils that blew across main street. Yes, yeah, they're everything,
but the tumbleweeds. This this is a spooky situation. But
they're walking by these residencies, these dorms essentially, and they
(15:34):
see this pretty well maintained bicycle and what happens now,
So one of the Japanese soldiers actually steals the bike
and rides away on it. At this point, I think
that Gordy realizes he cannot escape the Japanese. He now
has lost his only mode of transportation, and at best
of bicycle against whatever soldiers might have with would hardly
(15:58):
stand a chance. So he convinced his housemate to surrender peacefully.
He explained to his housemaid that it would be better
for us to take a chance and turn in. They
weren't combative soldiers, so they weren't necessarily equipped to the
stage any sort of large, large coup or anything like that. Well,
I guess not cool resistance, and so as the as
(16:20):
the Japanese came by, they surrendered by walking out of
the house with their hands raised. Gordon's main priority at
this time, though, was to sneak cigarettes and his diary
with him, so those were things that he hid and
in his friend's socks. He hid the cigarettes, he had
the diary in his clothes, and they walked out. Um
They were driven to a plaza which which housed the hospital,
(16:40):
where they were asked to remove their shirts and searched. Somehow,
they didn't find the cigarettes or the diary in the
socks or the or the pants, but they were basically,
you know, left without anything any person belonging short of
those two and the the po ws in the Japanese
situation this time did not enjoy much in the ways
of like international conventions like Geneva conventions, things like treatment
(17:05):
of the captured in wartime. And as a matter of fact,
these guys are the very bottom of the social hierarchy, right, Yeah.
They Japanese customs typically don't involve taking prisoners. So in
their military code, you want to fight until your last breath,
and um, you never want to think about surrendering to
the enemy. It's almost a perplexing thought to surrender. In Japan,
(17:28):
they are taught to fight until until they passed away.
So I mean they're if they're even shamed in any
I mean, like at least in the old you know,
feudal feudal Japan days, in the samurai, I mean, they
would commit ritual suicide in front of everybody if they
were defeated in some way or like, you know, to
shame their family. I mean, that was absolutely part of
their culture. It makes sense, yeah, and we see it
(17:49):
even later with things like kamakaze pilots. So it's relatively
odd to have kind of accept a peaceful surrender and
accept prisoners, because if you are fighting a war, it's
also just another thing to consider, how are we going
to take care of them? How are they going to
house them? So what we see is Gordy and his
fellow captured UM prisoners. They are taken to a hospital
(18:12):
in Guam. Hospital can kind of act as a as
a makeshift prison based on the way it's set up,
but there there isn't really an infrastructure set up to
take care of these prisoners. We see a lot of abuse.
Gordy describes an instance of being punched with a belt
buckle while brushing his teeth. Um, he doesn't really it
(18:33):
makes me cringe. Yeah, it's probably on the bottom of
list of things to any any teeth things, there are
always a real red flag for me. Um. Yeah. And
there was all kinds of other mistreatment that he witnessed
as well. Yeah. I mean the hospitals did have nice rooms,
but they removed all the beds. So that's just one
(18:54):
aspect of this kind of prison environment that the Japanese
we're looking to create. They stayed in this hospit battle
for about two days before they moved to a Catholic
church where food was even more limited. So they had
been receiving two meals of ping pong sized potatoes and
a slice of bologna. Less than a month later, Gordy
had written that they were they were boarding a ship
(19:16):
and this kind of signaled the end of freedom for him. Uh,
he was leaving the country that he started to feel
at home in over the past few years, and now
he's headed to a foreign country for an uncertain amount
of time. Out of the frying pan, into the fire,
or perhaps we should say out of the frying pan,
onto the hibachi. Right, they take these po ws to Japan,
(19:44):
where things get worse and worse. And this this is
interesting because I was looking through some of your research
on this, right, and I noticed, like you said at
the top of the show, in his diary he list
he keep track of things like his income, and he
continues to do this in the Japanese prison. But we're
(20:07):
still I don't know. We have some speculation on what
he was doing. Most a lot of people in prison
don't have a job like that. Yeah, it is odd
that he was able to notate we still receiving income,
and um, it appeared that he was able to work
for different people, maybe doing odd jobs and bonus jobs
within the prison. The conditions in Japan were as you
(20:29):
can expect, poor. They didn't have prison set up. They're
only source of heat was actually a small habachi made
of ceramics that he wasn't really able to keep the
prisoners warm. It kind of just turned into a cause
of of actual physical headaches from all the carbon monoxide
that was coming from the habbachi's There's also sanitation issues, um,
(20:54):
things like a long slit cut in the floor that
was just the toilet. But despite the livings, he does
note that that he is being paid. He doesn't state
where it comes from, but based on based on reading
that um, that journal that he wrote, and also I
was able to find some books of people who were
actually captured in Guam at the same time as him,
(21:16):
and they note that they were able to work small
jobs or work extra hours, um, whether it was farming
or manufacturing, to earn a little bit of extra money.
So I would assume his his situation is the same.
But he does talk about creating a sort of a
barter system by stockpiling cigarettes and later selling or trading them.
That also is likely a source of income that he
(21:38):
had by um, you know, kind of hoarding cigarettes as
he had them and using them as a kind of
a leverage tool later on that allowed him to gain
a little bit of power kind of in the in
the prison socio economic life. He was able to swap
and buy things in secret. And it was also, like
I said, possible, he's being paid on his table, like, um,
(21:59):
he could he cook for Japanese officers who didn't feel
like cooking for themselves. That seemed to be a job
that some prisoners were able to do to earn some
money kind of in secret. Now at this time, he
was still allowed to send and receive mail. Is that correct?
I don't believe so, okay, because I know he would
write letters sort of as addressed to his family, but
(22:21):
they weren't actually going anywhere, right, Yeah, he had. He'd
write in his journal little letters that never were removed
from his journal. They were just kind of kept in
there um as a way to feel like he was
communicating possibly. And what is odd around this time, his
family was actually notified that that he was likely dead
(22:41):
by the Red Cross. So with that absence and communication
from him and that notification, his family back home was
starting to well most likely feared the worst. They were
presuming him dead. And we're looking at, you know, moving
on with with their life, which is pretty difficult. While
Gordy was still kind of doing the repetitive days in
(23:04):
the prison, which started to mess with him physically and mentally.
He was eating the same thing every day, he was
working on farms and in steel factories. He didn't know
when it would end, if it would end, if he
would live to see it end. And I think that
lack of hope was kind of making it difficult for him,
especially around Christmas, which again if you remember at the
(23:26):
top of the podcast, we talked about him trying or
forgetting to send a money order to his wife for
a bicycle. Well, this Christmas marked about a year since
he'd been held captive, and he was he missed writing
letters to his family, but he uh in his notebook
he would write and there about how guilty he felt
about missing the important events. If you look in the calendar,
(23:48):
and we'll post some images of of his calendar, he'll
notate all the birthdays he misses, and it's it's really
sad to see. He also notates medical issues. He has
um teeth, he law, all sort of sorts of interesting
things on there. One interesting thing that he did keep
in his calendar. Was he would not take me shaved
(24:09):
his his beard, and at for a while he actually
had a beard growth count that he was he was
working on. Growing out of beard became a little bit
of a distraction for him, and whenever he was asked
to shave his beard, he would typically write about it
in his journal and express some some frustration that they
were trying to take away one thing that he can control.
(24:30):
So he was trying to create some sort of rhythm
and meaning for himself and his life and through writing
in this journal and keeping a calendar, but the days
were still strenuous, um and you know, the diary provided
some relief, but it really it was kind of a
small thing in the in the grand scheme of things.
Of course, he also wrote about revenge fantasies, right, and
(24:53):
hopes for hopes for retribution. Yeah, if you recall when
he was captured, he convinced his housemate to go peacefully,
so he really didn't have a violent streak or an
aggressive streak it it appeared before being captured. But towards
the end of his journal, you start to see things
(25:16):
like him saying that he would like to watch them
die or be the one that kills them. He starts
to talk about about in in pretty physical Lee grew
someome detail or very specific detail about how he would
like to harm them. Yeah, I mean I can relate
to that. Sure, that's long. How long was he in
(25:37):
prison total at this point? It was at this point
when he starts writing it about it, it's about a year.
That's enough. I don't know I'd make it that long
without thinking some pretty pretty uh impure thoughts about what
I want to do to the folks that were like
torturing me and making me sleep on the floor and
you know, all of this stuff. It just seems very
(25:57):
very very awful. Thank you years more than enough, you
know what I mean. And if I'm sure we have
people listening now who have kept journals and diaries who
are not in uh military prison situation, right, and they
probably already have some some pretty heartfelt, uh graphic angry
(26:18):
things in their own life experience during peacetime. It was
interesting to me Ryan the story of Miyasaki, who was
like one of the big bads for Gordy at least. Yeah, Miyasaki,
who was actually the person who punched Gordy with the
belt buckle, earlier, while brushing his teeth, he is uh.
He's brought up a couple of times throughout this journal.
(26:41):
One time he writes that I hope he gets killed
in the first air rate here, and I hope that
I will be here to see it. So that kind
of gives you an example of he not only wants
wishes death upon him, but he also would like to
witness it, which is I think, to me, the the
ultimate uh disdain for somebody. And what's really interesting is
(27:02):
that Donald Giles, who's the author of Captive of a
Rising Sun, which is his memoir um that he wrote
while being captured with Gordy, he doesn't mention Gordy specifically
in a book, but it's really interesting because they mentioned
a lot of the same characters. So while they may
not have been necessarily close enough to write about each other,
they were having a shared experience within this prison. Again,
(27:24):
like we said, he was really noncombative. He was, he
was willfully surrendering to them. Now he's moved towards wishing
death upon Japanese guards. Yeah, this is weird too because
we can kind of see this inner world that has
been constructed, right because whenever people are isolated from the
larger world. We sort of conform to the size of
(27:49):
our container, right in every sense of the words. So
he's monitoring things as closely as he can so he
doesn't get lost in the sameness and the routine. And
one thing it's fascinating here is, like many people who
are imprisoned, he is trying ardently to learn any news
of the larger world, right, and he figures out some
(28:13):
ways to do this. But it's not as simple as
you know, hopping on a phone or hopping on a computer,
reading a newspaper. Even he has to kind of guess
based on the changing behavior of what the guards, the authorities. Yeah,
he would often assume that the way that he's being treated,
if he's being treated positively, it meant that it's possible
(28:34):
that the Americans were winning, that the Japanese keeping him
captive might be coming to an end, And as he's
being treated worse, he would assume the opposite, so that
the Japanese were winning the Pacific theater kind of towards
the end, close to his release, he actually writes that
he says, my god, we must be winning the war.
(28:55):
Because there was one day where he went to a
concert that they held there. He had free cigarettes and
a large meal, which was definitely not the common situation
for him in the prison. Let's cut back to the
good old us of a let's go across the pond.
I believe earlier you said that, uh, many of Gordon's
(29:17):
relatives were convinced that he was dead and that was
based off the uh, the estimation of the Red Cross. Right. Yeah,
so they were unable to verify whether he was taken,
captive or killed in a previous bombing raid, so that
he was assumed dead by the Red Cross. This had
an impact on multiple members of his family. Jimmy Carter,
(29:39):
it kind of was the final nail in the coffin,
I guess, or the final thing that made him decide
to enlisten the Navy because he wanted to honor his
uncle who had paid the ultimate sacrifice during his time
in the military, or so he believed at the time.
World War two is still going strong. So at seventeen
he had listed um which was definitely a major life
(30:03):
change and is something the sailor identity is is actually
something that was really important to Jimmy Carter in the
early part of his life as far as the rest
of his family goes. His wife getting the news that
her husband had died with her two young children. She
was living in San Francisco, across the country from family
that can help, so she moved back to Rule Georgia
(30:26):
to be close to Tom's family and the Carters as well.
She was living there for a little while until she
found out that he was confirmed or supposedly confirmed dead.
So from the time he left the time he found out,
she was spending the time in Georgia. But once she
found out he was dead, she decided to move back
to San Francisco and try to continue her life there
where she actually got remarried um and started a new life. Now,
(30:52):
as you guys know, he does return home, so this,
this remarriage kind of sets up an awkward situation. So
upon his return, he weighed less than a hundred pounds,
so obviously it had taken a toll on him. Dorothy.
When she found out he came home, she offered to
annul her current marriage, which is I don't know, how
(31:12):
do you guys feel about that. I feel like it's
a nice thought, yeah, but that's that some things can't
be mended. It's a little, too little, too late in
a situation I think, right, Yeah, it feels like maybe
she was doing what she thought was the right thing
to do. Yeah, many in the in the Carter family,
I thought she got married too soon. It was kind
(31:33):
of a common thing that they they blame his his
first wife, Dorothy with with contributing to his mental anguish
and depression that he experienced in the rest of his life.
While Jimmy Carter actually spoke about this on the campaign
trail is something that is way more nuanced than just
being remarried, because if you assume that your husband's dead,
(31:57):
especially after a couple of years of UM of him
being detained, you're going to assume that you, well, you're
going to want to continue your life. You're going to
want to find some sense of normalcy, whether that's a husband,
a new job, steady place to live. UM, there's going
to usually be changed involved in that. And I'm sure
(32:19):
she wasn't expecting her husband to reappear. So I do
think it was a sweet gesture, but it is one
of those I don't think there is a winning situation
in any of it, um, because someone's going to be
terribly bothered by by a decision that's made, and unfortunately
Dorothy was put in kind of that impossible situation. Yeah,
(32:40):
it's sort of a rock and a hard place, as
you said, Kobyashi Maru for the Star Trek fans out there,
Thomas Watson, Gordy, I have to say, I think you
made the right decision by saying no, don't don't anno
your marriage, just because you feel like it's the right
thing to do, do what you truly want to do.
And he lived out the rest of his life in
(33:01):
the US. He passed away in nineteen seventy five, and
by the time he had passed away, Jimmy Carter's career
was already in like he had seen the career begin
from the Navy days so on. And and I think
it's safe to say that for a long time, Jimmy
(33:22):
Carter considered Gordy to be like one of his personal heroes, right. Yeah.
He looked at Gordy as someone who was willing to
take take chances and to change his life and to
stand up for what he believed in. And that's something
that Carter carried with him, whether it was joining the
Navy at seventeen, running for governor, being involved in politics
(33:44):
in general. Carter was someone who wanted to provide for
his family by carving his own lane in life, rather
than relying on his family's peanut farm, which he does
go and help with in the future, but not before
he's created his own identity. So he's someone who, even
at a young age, was looking to eclipse the shadows
(34:05):
of his parents, which is a pretty good trait to
having is something he picked up from his uncle, who
u there is a little bit of a happy ending.
He does remarry at some point in the in the
final thirty years, and so he does have a partner,
and she was actually pivotal in encouraging him to write
the manuscript to try to process the feelings because he
(34:28):
did become sort of a racial curmudgeon in a in
a way racist curmudgeon. Towards the end of his life.
He he really couldn't bring him around people of color,
particularly Asians, because he would trigger this this PTSD type feeling,
which reminds me of like Cotton Hill from King of
the Hill, where he would just have these like fire flashbacks. Apparently.
(34:56):
It's worth noting though, that while his life was to cold,
he did get to live. You know, a long life.
He did get to come back to America, which he
was seeing rapidly had changed. I can't imagine what it
would be like to leave during the Great Depression and
return once the economic boom had had kind of turned
(35:18):
America around, you know, very different world. When he left.
Model t s were like the only car and uh,
you know, mid forties were starting to see real real
car models were starting to see, uh, modern cities really
grow and boom. And part of that boom was was
the tiki bar boom. One of my favorite things in
(35:39):
the whole world. So now we're going to we're indy
out a more positive note. Let's let's bring it, let's
bring it back around. And something that many people brought
from the Pacific was that memory of of a tropical
drink um kind of a a shady, dark place which
they would use to escape the heat, and it was
somewhere where they can kind of just hide away from
(36:02):
from the day to day life. Sometimes it's from the
frenzies of war. Sometimes it's just a way to pass
the time. But as soldiers returned, they returned kind of
with this trend started by Don Beach, who opened on
the Beach Comber in Hollywood, California. Four real name Ernest
Raymond Bouma gons right, And I want to say, Ben,
(36:24):
you and I went to a pretty old school Hollywood
tiki bar. The other ones called tiki t Dicky Tie,
and I believe that Beach Comber recipe for the my
taie is like a big deal. It's like considered like
the holy grail of like my tai recipes. Is a
friend of ours. You've got to meet Ryan. His name
is Robert Lamb. He's a co host of a couple
(36:44):
of different shows here, stuff to blow your mind and invention.
It's also a huge tiki fanatic. So whenever on the
road with him, Actually, you know what, if you ever
just meet him and run into him, ask him about
some tiki places, make sure you have like thirty minutes
and makes you're ready to drive somewhere with them or fly.
I'm not mistaken. This story is gonna end up at
(37:04):
one of my favorite places in all of Atlanta, Georgia.
Trader Vix. Yeah, Trader Vix was kind of the second
tiki bar to really established itself an American culture. Trader
Vix incorporated food as well as the ma Taie and
the other drinks they brought over the famous poop Poop
latter sorry I cannot And Trader vix Is is kind
(37:28):
of the the legacy of this this old guard of
of tiki bars. It's the one that, as Noel said,
we still have here in Atlanta. It's a great establishment.
It's really exciting during Dragon Conics. I was there this
time around. It so much fun. Yeah, it's it's a
it's a place to be got a live band, which
I always love. Yeah, yeah, and um, you know, we're
(37:49):
seeing these resurgeons here in Atlanta. But there was a
period of time kind of sixties through the nineties when
tiki bars were considered not in vogue. Um, so you
started seeing a lot of them clothes. Fortunately, as we know,
they've made a comeback and we we see them, particularly
around two thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen, we see a
(38:11):
new desire to escape. And it's so lucky that some
of the historical ones are still around, you know, like
Traitor vis As pretty much as it's always been. There's
a place in Portland called Alibi that's like another older one.
Maybe it is a circle of the sixties or seventies,
though de'st the crazy. There are a lot of There
are a lot more on the West coast. That's right,
that's right. Yeah, the sixties and seventies still had teakey bars.
(38:33):
We were just seeing the bigger brands, um, their their
growth kind of slow down. Um kind of eighties and nineties.
You're not seeing any new tea bars open. But what
is interesting about the teaky bar formula is it it's
based on cheap rum, which at the time was it
the Pacific wasn't. It wasn't in the Pacific yet, So
(38:55):
so Don, who was kind of a world traveler, he
wasn't necessarily in the military. That's not how he well
he was later, but that's not how he found Don
the beach combers my Thai recipe as he thought, what
is the cheapest liquer I can get my hands on?
And at that point in the Caribbeans, rum was was
(39:15):
very inexpensive and very sweet and worked as a fine
substitute for what he had tried when he was in
the Pacific. Back to this sort of escapism and the
fall of the tiki boom, what we see in in
nineteen nine, UM current President Donald Trump, he made a
purchase of the Plaza Hotel in New York. He doesn't
(39:37):
own it anymore, thankfully, But what he did was close
an original Trader vix um in Midtown Manhattan, which is
pretty disappointing because it would be really cool to have
an original total And he thought it was tacky, right,
or say it wasn't on brand or something. Yeah, he
said it. It was. Um, it was tacky and it
(39:59):
wasn't in line with what he would like to achieve.
You can read the original nine Um article where it's
literally titled Trump to close ATTACKI Trader vix and the
New York Times. So it's Trump called it tacky. Yeah. Yeah,
talk about the pot calling the kettle gold plated. Yeah,
(40:21):
it's definitely ironic. Um. And like Trump has become sort
of attacking and out of fashion, what we're seeing is
is this resurgence in in tiki bars. But what we
can't forget about is the impact this situation had on
the island of Guam. Guam, like many territories or colonial islands,
(40:43):
never really gets a fair shake. You know, they're occupied,
they become an advantageous piece of land, whether for resources
or military reasons. But when it was time to take
care of the citizens of Guam who had lost their
property there belongings, a lot of them their lives. The
agreement was that Japan was not responsible. America agreed to
(41:08):
assume responsibility. But due to high literacy rates, a language
barrier between the U. S. Navy and locals, no newspaper,
telephone communication, and only a six month window to file claims,
many were left without even knowing that there was an
option for compensation under the Guam Meritorious Claims Act of
(41:31):
So you're still seeing this kind of today and and
it ties into modern history as we think about um
what is owed to two people who are marginalized. So
in two thousand five this came up again, and we
had a headed divisive president at this time who was
looking to uh reboot the economy post nine eleven, and
(41:52):
they were slashing any sort of superfluous or what they
felt to be extracurricular financial commitments. So we're seeing this
act get a lot of support in Congress to to
start to provide reparations to the island and its people.
But his Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Affairs,
(42:14):
David B. Cohen, said that reasonable people might disagree in
good faith, however, about the appropriate level of financial compensation
to be paid by the federal government for damages that
were caused not by the fault of the United States,
but rather by the fault of a foreign occupying power.
See Okay, I get I understand why they would make
(42:37):
that argument, But it reminds me of the old quotation,
you know, when elephants wage war, only the grass suffers.
There there is an entire not just one episode, there's
a entire series worth of topics about the the chaos
rot upon this area of the world, of these island
(42:59):
nations before World War two, after World War two. You know.
It also reminds me how here in the US nobody
really talks about the US colonization of the Philippines. Right.
There's so much stuff that we forget here, and we
can't really prove this. But it's strange to think whether
Gordie's adventures influenced Carter's policy later on. It definitely inspired
(43:24):
him to do stuff, right, but did he was he
thinking of his uncle when he was working with hostage situations?
Stuff like that. We don't know, and we probably never
will unless Jimmy Carter decides to mention it one day,
we should he just had a talk the other day
at Emory University. We should try to pop in on
one and just bring this random question. Um. You know
(43:46):
something else that's that's important to think about in this
is the way that these large nations America, England, France, Germany,
all these large countries who have colonized nations in the past,
when they cause damages to people who aren't major players
in the game, but actually are kind of vital to
the creation of the wealth that these countries are desiring.
(44:08):
So if we look at the enslaved people in America
asks and their descendants asking for reparations is a similar situation.
You can make the argument that well, the Confederate nations,
they were the ones fighting for slavery. It's over. We
see that argument comes sometimes we also see the argument
of well, that was a long time ago or that
(44:29):
was previous generations, doesn't have anything to do with me.
But we see the the problems that systemic and institutionalized
racism and oppression of cause throughout the world. And that's
why we have massive inequality today throughout nations. And also
we have to say, of course that these kind of
impacts are multigenerational. They don't stop just because people die,
(44:54):
you know, and it affects the children and their children's
children and so on and this. Okay, so this is
this is our story, and I think this gives us
some insight into President Carter, former President Carter that would
surprise most people. Now Here in Georgia. Of course, we
tend to know a little bit more about Carter than
(45:15):
the average bear, because again, he's got the Carter Center
in the library here, and teach a Sunday school here
and speaks at Emory here. Uh. You know, sometimes you
can see him at the right restaurant. But even here
in Georgia, a lot of people are unaware of the
tremendous influence that his uncle had on the young Jimmy Carter. Ryan,
(45:35):
thank you so much for returning to the show. You know. Yeah,
where can people learn more about your institution the work
you guys are doing. Um, you can follow us on
Instagram at g s U Underscore MHP. That's the Georgia's
State Master's Program of Historic Preservation and Heritage Preservation is
(45:58):
what our program is called. But we kind of dabble
in all sorts of public history and preservation topics. Fantastic
And while you are on the internet, folks, this does
conclude our episode, but not our show. This story continues.
You can be part of it if you check out
our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us
as a group and as individuals on Instagram and Twitter.
(46:22):
I am at Ben Bullan on Instagram, and I am
at Ben bull in hs W on Twitter. And I
am just a gramster. You can find me at how
Now Noel Brown Big. Thanks to our super producer Casey
Pegram to Alex Williams, who composed our track. And it's
weird because you know, now you're in person, and usually
when we're talking about you, you're just sort of existing
(46:43):
in the ether of ideas. But you're a real person.
You're right here, right now, Ryan Barrass, thank you, Yeah,
thank you guys. Yeah, and all his technicolor tidye glory,
nice call back. Thanks man Big. Thanks to Gabe Lucier,
our other research associate and compatriot comrade brother are in
arms whatever you wanna call it. Thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. Thanks to Christopher haciotas here in
(47:05):
spirit thanks to the quister for not showing up once again.
But I have a feeling that we're our luck is
going to run out on that very soon. Thanks to
you Ben for having such a well quoft a bit
of facial hair going on today. It's very very dapper looking.
Thanks man. This is something that we don't see a
lot because this is an audio podcast. But my favorite
thing to do nowadays is to flip the phone the
(47:27):
headphones over so I look like either Jordie LaForge or
Cyclops when you guys think, or a little bit like RoboCop.
Maybe oh yeah, yeah, there we go. Picture it. We'll
see you next time. Cox. For more podcasts for My
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
(47:49):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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