My cousin Nancy of WWND fame… WWND being What Would Nancy Do... One of my brothers and I were on a backpacking trip and having a discussion about a hypothetical moral dilemma. We were of differing opinions, but I resolved it to both our satisfactions by asking, “What would Nancy Milam do?”
Anyway, I wander… Nancy had a box of VCRs related to the USS Carr and Paul Henry Carr. Two subjects which the 3.141592 regular readers of my blog will know about. I took her videos and digitized them. After all, VCRs have gone the way of 8-track tape players. “What,” I can hear the younger generations asking, “are 8-track tapes?” Future generations may well find all our digital files are unreadable also. Ultimately, you need the right technology to access them.
Anyway, I wander again… Once I had them digitized I uploaded them to YouTube and placed them in a playlist entitled USS Carr – Family Videos. I also created another playlist entitled Paul Henry Carr / USS Carr. This one consists of existing YouTube videos from various sources that I found on YouTube that relate to the USS Carr, Paul Henry Carr, the USS Samuel B Roberts, the Battle of Leyete Gulf, or just WW II naval history in the Pacific . Just click the previous links to see and watch the playlists.
I had seen most of these videos before. The one I had not seen was Paul Henry Carr Checotah’s Own WW II Hero. It was interesting because it was new to me. I had not heard all my aunts talk about my Uncle Paul before except in spurts. Also very interesting to me was to hear my Aunt Tressie’s husband Johnny Woodard’s story about his time as a Japanese POW, He summarized four years in less than two minutes. He was on Corregidor Island when it fell to the Japanese. He then spent a few months in a POW camp somewhere in the Pacific. After that he was moved to Yokohama where he spent the next 42 months basically as slave labor in a Japanese shipyard. As a kid I knew he had been a POW, that he would not eat rice, and somehow I had gathered a precaution that you were not to ask him questions about it. I never heard him talk about it until now.
Addendum: My cousin Perry after reading this blog posting pointed out a book that in all likelihood comes close to my uncle’s experience. Written by another POW captured on Corregidor who was also a member of the coastal artillery, John M Wright, Jr,. it is available at Amazon: Captured on Corregidor: Diary of an American P.O.W. in World War II
While we all assume that YouTube and such platforms are permanent, they are not. Since the amount of data was too large to put up on any of the file sharing platforms for free, my plan is to create multiple copies of the digitized videos on a few thumb drives and send them to Nancy. That way if anyone wants their own copies they can just copy the thumb drive. I am sure Nancy will be glad to work with all comers, or you can contact me and will work something out.
Also, not as an apology, but as an explanation, some of videos are copies of copies, some were recorded off the TV back in ancient VCR times, most were not filmed by professional videographers, probably the video capture software further degraded the videos a bit, all to say the quality is a little lacking.
It was also a bit bittersweet for me to see my relatives, especially my aunts, so young and full of life, so happy and proud of the honor bestowed on my uncle and thus the family. It was bittersweet also as all of Minnie Mae’s children and their husbands have passed except my mother who is lost to dementia.
For simplicity’s sake here are the two playlists again:
USS Carr – Family Videos – Play in YouTube to see the full list
Paul Henry Carr / USS Carr- Play in YouTube to see the full list
And so it goes.
Several months ago, I became obsessed. Wanting to know uncle Johnny’s story. I did some research and found out he went into the service at Tahlaquah.
He also was on the coastal artillery, as was the author of this book.