The house is quiet here now as everyone who has skates has gone out to find a frozen pond. Ced, who has no skates anyway, is working on his car. Incidentally, I have bought him a pair of skates with your Christmas money and Dick a pair of skis.

While we were at dinner the phone rang and Dave, who answered it, reported that the American Railway Express in Bridgeport had a box of fruit from Florida consigned to us and asked if we were coming down to get it. With the possibility that we might stop in there when we went down for Elsie (Duryee, Grandpa’s sister) we said maybe, but no one has gone down yet, so we don’t know who sent it to us and will have to wait now until Tuesday to find out.

Mack has just come in and squatted down near this machine…

USS Reno fighting the fires on the USS Princeton

1 February 1942 is the earliest mention of a Kamikaze attack, but it was more likely an opportunist rather than a planned event. The USS Enterprise was damaged by the crashed plane. Admiral Takijiro Onishi did not create the Special Attacks Groups (Tokubetsu Kogeki Tai) until 19 October 1944, and gave them the title of Kamikaze after the ‘Divine Wind’ that scattered the Mongol invasion of Kublai Khan in 1274 and 1281.

Adm. Takijiro Onishi

These men volunteered mainly out of a sense of duty, generally university students, in their 20’s, being taught to “transcend life and death… which will enable you to concentrate your attention on eradicating the enemy with unwavering determination…” — an excerpt from the Kamikaze manual kept in their cockpit. Three times as many men volunteered as the number of planes available and experienced pilots were rejected…

16 December – Douglas MacArthur was promoted to Five-Star General. It seemed that General MacArthur’s promotion to General of the Army would require assistance from many sides. It posed a problem in the respect that there was no such object as a five-star insignia in existence in the Pacific. A clever Filipino silversmith created one from a miscellaneous collection of Dutch, Australian and Filipino coins.

Deck of the USS Anzio during Typhoon Cobra

17 December – Typhoon Cobra hit the Philippine Islands. TF-38 was caught off-guard and the destroyers, USSHull, MonghamandSpencewere sunk and 22 other vessels received damage. While 150 aircraft were blown off the decks of the carriers, more than 750 sailors drowned.

19 December – Adm. Nimitz was made Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Fleet and Pacific Areas, thereby promoting him to Fleet Admiral of the US Navy, a 5-Star Admiral.

USS Bryant

21→22…