Prisoners of Love

"P.O. Box 1142" was the code name Army intelligence gave a top-secret prison camp outside Washington during World War II; a site devoted throughout the war to interning 3,400 German, Japanese and Italian prisoners of war.

A sequestered section of Fort Hunt, in Alexandria, Virginia, P.O. Box 1142 remained top secret until 2006, when Brandon Bies, a ranger with the National Park Service, uncovered it.

Eyewitnesses—now mostly deceased—told Bies that P.O. Box 1142 was indeed a prison camp, and that the interrogators who worked there persuaded enemy POWs to reveal their governments' closest-held military secrets—including Nazi Germany's rocket and atomic bomb programs. Interrogators' notes, written reports and photographs, archived in the Pentagon, verified their stories.

Right after the war, P.O. Box 1142 was bulldozed, the records sealed, and the eyewitnesses sworn to secrecy.

But the Pentagon missed one: my mother.

She served during World War II as a Woman Marine in the Pentagon. When I was a kid, she told me a story about P.O. Box 1142.

She told me it was the Pentagon's habit to send Women Marines from her barracks at nearby Henderson Hall to guard POWs at P.O. Box 1142—until amore put a stop to it.

It seems some of the Women Marines fell in love with the enemy prisoners—the Italian ones, in particular; some pledged to marry them; some became pregnant by them.

I asked Brandon Bies if he could confirm my mother's story.

"Putting it in the larger context of what I've learned about 1142, I would put this in the tall-tale category," he said. "I have never heard any evidence of Women Marines being at P.O. Box 1142. We do have evidence of a handful of WACs who were stationed there in 1945, as well as a handful of civilian typists, who served officers late- and immediately post-war.

"Furthermore, while we don't have exact numbers, the number of Italian prisoners was likely very low—my guess is that they made up about 1-2 percent of the total prisoner population. Maybe a dozen or so over the course of the war.

"Finally, while 1142 did 'relax' the rules from time to time in order to get information out of a prisoner, it is very hard for me to believe that they would have allowed women to guard prisoners, let alone present them with opportunities to spend intimate time together."

Matt Virta, also with the National Park Service, told me he couldn't confirm the story, either.

"I can find no information in the Fort Hunt records I have access to, nor can staff member Layesanna Rivera, regarding any female Marine guards at Fort Hunt and their potential links to Italian POWs," he said.

So is my mother's story unfounded?

Maybe not.

Tales of "POW coddling" in fact abounded during World War II, including tales of "too affectionate" Italians. When newspapers and magazines began to report them, Congress demanded a committee investigation.

While the Congressional committee found no evidence of coddling, you know what Italians say: Non c'è fumo senza arrosto. No smoke without fire.

Maybe "POW cuddling" should have been investigated.



PS: Have a safe and pleasant Memorial Day—and take time to remember our fallen warriors.

Godly Rule

Boosterism is taking a back seat to Puritanism as politicos in many states pass laws denying civil rights to women and LGBTQ citizens.

Legislators are passing anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ laws by the bucketful in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The laws may seem godly, but those that permit overt discrimination are particularly scary to business executives, as customer-facing brands increasingly embrace corporate social responsibility.

George W. Bush's former media advisor, Mark McKinnon, has called his state's anti-LGBTQ "bathroom bill," for example, "divisive, discriminatory, and unacceptable to Texas businesses."

Lawmakers who pass such bills are beholden to backers whose religiosity outweighs their business sense.

"During my 40 years in Texas, if you were a Republican, you were most certainly a pro-business politician," McKinnon says.

"But today, many in the state's GOP leadership are moving away from, even ignoring, the business community. That is surely not their intention, but it surely will be the result."

History shows "godly rule" usually has unintended consequences.

In 17th century England, following its victory in the Civil War, a Puritan elite tried to impose godly ideals on the rest of the country.

The Puritans restricted alcohol and coffee consumption, dancing, and the wearing of colored clothing and makeup. They outlawed travel on Sundays, closed down fairs and festivals, and shuttered all theaters. They criminalized cursing, and banned gambling, soccer, horse races, wresting matches, and erotic art. They made prostitution punishable by flogging and deportation, and adultery punishable by death (but only for women). They removed Easter from the calendars. They even abolished Christmas.
But fun-loving aristocrats and commoners wouldn't have it. Parliament restored the monarchy after a decade of godly rule and scrapped the Puritans' laws.

To close the loop, the king commanded that the body of the Puritans' leader, Oliver Cromwell, be removed from its crypt in Westminster Abbey and put on trial for treason and regicide.

Cromwell's body was found guilty and hanged from the gallows. His head was cut off and put on display, and his body thrown into a trash heap to rot.

Pushback is inevitable.

Things Happen

Why is autobiography the most popular form of fiction for modern readers?

— Jill Ker Conway

Memoirs fascinate because the best ones read like novels. We all want our lives to have a through-line, and memoirs provide one. They also confirm how unseemly and accidental our lives are.

Things happen.

Critics dislike memoirs' exhibitionist quality; but not me. I love them.

I find reading a memoir much more rewarding than, say, sitting in a coffee shop and peeping at other people's laptops (the woman beside me is Googling "how to deal with a cheating husband") or eavesdropping on other people's phone calls (the guy behind me is going to quadruple his prices, but not tell customers).

Soldiers', statesmen's and victims' memoirs I could care less for; but artists' memoirs I find irresistible. I recommend those of Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, Ernest Borgnine, Sammy Davis, Jr., Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Anne Truitt, Carrie Fisher, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Graham Nash, Woody Allen and Martin Short.

And then there are the memoirs of artisans: I recommend those of Alfred P. Sloan, Katherine Graham, David Ogilvy, Ed Catmull, Rick Gekoski, Maryalice Huggins, Terry McDonell and James Rebanks.

If you like heady, try writers' memoirs: those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Elie Wiesel, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Herman Wouk, William Styron, Willie Morris, Philip Roth, Pete Hamill, Frank McCourt, James Lord, Tobias Wolff, Mary Karr, Richard Russo, Bill Bryson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Stephen King, A.E. Hotchner and Augusten Burroughs.

Novelist Richard Ford has just published a memoir and is completing a book tour (he recommends Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, by the way).

Ford said last week on The PBS News Hour the memoir's purpose is "to remind us that, in a world cloaked in supposition, in opinion, in misdirection, and often in outright untruth, things do actually happen."

Indeed.

Defense of the Indefensible

In our time, political speech and writing are
largely the defense of the indefensible.

— George Orwell

As powerful as threats of violence, authoritarians wield words, Orwell taught us.

They dress up their psychotic plans in stale metaphors, hoping to make us fear things that aren't dangers, and dismiss things that are.

Banalities like fake news and job killers are used to discredit problems, while canards like innovation, fair trade and healthcare access masquerade as solutions.

Fake news. "The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people," President Trump repeatedly says. In reality, Macedonian teenagers and other black hats generate fake news; The New York Times does not. But by declaring all news "fake," Trump can in two words cast doubt not only on unwelcomed news reports, but on poll results, census data, economic studies, and scientific findings.

Job killers. Trump labels all government regulations "job killers" without regard to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that shows only two tenths of one percent of job losses result from regulations. Job losses, in fact, result from long-term and seasonal business declines, financial mismanagement, and changes in ownership. But by rescinding "job killers," Trump can assist scheming real estate developers, hedge fund managers, chemical and refinery company owners, and Fortune 100 CEOs.

Innovation. "The government should be run like a great American company," Trump insists. That means stripping non-defense programs and outsourcing activities like public education, prison administration, drug addiction treatment, and veterans' healthcare. Trump ignores the fact that a lot of private-sector innovation is bolted onto government innovation. He's appointed his son-in-law to run his vulture fund, the "White House Office of American Innovation."

Fair trade. “I’m not sure that we have any good trade deals,” Trump has said, and plans to cancel or renegotiate every deal he thinks is "unfair" to the US. But "fair trade" is merely a euphemism for protectionism, the enemy of free trade. Research by the US International Trade Commission shows our membership in the World Trade Organization, for example, has doubled trade, creating new and bigger markets for American exporters and cheaper goods for American shoppers. But Trump ignores that.

Healthcare access. Trump's system to replace Obamacare would force people with pre-existing conditions into "risk pools." Healthcare premiums for those people would cost considerably more than everyone else's. The fact remains, while risk pools would lower premiums for well people, they'd make sick people's premiums unaffordable. They'd enjoy "healthcare access" in the same sense poor people can enjoy views of the greens by gazing through the fences around any Trump golf course.

What's the best defense against ready-made drivel?

Periodic reminders of your humanity.

As Orwell's contemporary Aldous Huxley said, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”

Content Marketers: Are You Running a Greasy Spoon?

I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards.

― Don DeLillo

Content Marketing Digest describes the difference between the work of an SEO consultant and that of a brand journalist as "the difference between a greasy spoon diner with a broken dishwasher and a five-star restaurant."

You not only handicap, but harm, your brand when you make SEO your content marketing goal.

Feeding your tribe Michelin-star morsels should be your goal.

SEO-focused content marketing tarnishes your brand, says content marketer Roman Kowalski, because the consultants who practice it consider content "just a wrapper to contain the backlink." That mindset "leads to the creation of articles that don’t measure up to journalistic standards."

Consultants who focus on SEO are also hoodwinking clients, Kowalski says, by pretending they can still just swipe other brands' content; have a student in India rewrite it; run the keyword-stuffed abomination through Copyscape; and generate Google juice. The days when that tactic worked have passed. Google is wise to it. The best you can hope for from the tactic are for a few backlinks to appear on some bottom-feeder's website. And you'd better pray no client reads your content.

More effective, Kowalski says, is to create original content customers might read―and enjoy. Like case studies, research reports, how-to manuals, insight papers, or opinion pieces.

Most effective is old-fashioned PR―the creation of well-researched pieces that would pass traditional editorial oversight by mainstream and trade media outlets.

"Creating this type of article is far beyond the domain of the SEO consultant," Kowalski says. "It requires the unbiased eye of a trained journalist who also has the mind of a marketer.

"The goal isn’t just to drive traffic―it is to provide useful content and to engage the audience.

"As search engine algorithms grow more sophisticated every year, marketers will have to continuously adjust their strategies to shift from simply capturing eyeballs to capturing mindshare."