January, 1944, while I was snug in my crib

 We sometimes forget how fortunate we are to live where we do, amid the turmoil and dangers and poverty and disease elsewhere in the world. 
While I was snug in my crib 70 years ago, children and grown ups were starving, being murdered, dying, with no possibility of safety, much less warmth.
Here's the evidence:

Jan 1st - Army defeats Navy 10-7 in football "Arab Bowl," Oran, North Africa
Jan 1st - Gen Clark replaces Gen Patton as commander of 7th Army
Jan 2nd - 1st use of helicopters during warfare (British Atlantic patrol)
Jan 3rd - Top Ace Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington is shot down in his Corsair by Captain Masajiro Kawato flying a Zero.
Jan 4th - Ralph Bunche appointed 1st Negro official in US State Department
Jan 5th - The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.
Jan 7th - Air Force announces production of 1st US jet fighter, the Bell P-59
Jan 10th - British troops conquer Maungdaw, Burma
Jan 11th - Crakow-Plaszow Concentration Camp established
Jan 12th - Churchill & de Gaulle begin a 2-day wartime conference in Marrakesh
Jan 15th - European Advisory Commission decides to divide Germany
Jan 15th - General Eisenhower arrives in England
Jan 15th - Vught Concentration Camp puts 74 women in 1 cell, 10 die
Jan 16th - Gen Eisenhower took command of Allied Invasion Force in London
Jan 17th - Korvet Violet sinks U-641 in Atlantic Ocean
Jan 18th - 1st Chinese naturalized US citizen since repeal of exclusion acts
Jan 18th - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.
Jan 20th - RAF drops 2300 tons  of bombs on Berlin
Jan 21st - 447 German bombers attack London
Jan 21st - 649 British bombers attack Magdeburg
Jan 22nd - Allied forces begin landing at Anzio Italy
Jan 24th - Allied troops occupy Nettuno Italy
Jan 27th - Leningrad liberated from Germany after 880 day seige with 600,000 killed
Jan 28th - 683 British bombers attack Berlin
Jan 28th - U-271 & U-571 sunk off Ireland
Jan 29th - 285 German bombers attack London
Jan 29th - USS Missouri the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy is launched.
Jan 29th - The Battle of Cisterna takes place in central Italy.
Jan 29th - About 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland.
Jan 30th - US invades Majuro, Marshall Islands
Jan 30th - United States troops land on Majuro.
Jan 31st - Operation-Overlord (D-Day) postponed until June
Jan 31st - U-592 sunk off Ireland
Jan 31st - US forces invade Kwajalein Atoll

Flag surviving invasions, wars, division, dictators

Flags tell stories, and one flag of the readers of this blog this week has survived years of invasions, wars, dictators and political division as a symbol of peace and unity in a region of continuing danger to free people.
The distinctive and perhaps most deeply symbolic of flags belongs to the Republic of Korea, known to us as South Korea.
Koreans are hardy, intelligent, hard-working people. They have to be or they wouldn't have survived. The name comes from a Middle Ages dynasty that ruled the peninsula, Goryeo. That and another dynasty ruled for hundreds of years in peace until the rest of the world intruded. Japan annexed it in 1910, and held it until the end of WWII. That's when the country was divided into north and south zones of occupation for the Russians and Americans. A 1948 election led to the creation of the republic and the UN recognized it as the only lawful government. The Russians promptly set up a rival government in the north.

North  Korean flag

In 1950 the North, backed by the Chinese and Soviet Union,  invaded the South, starting the Korean War that involved the US and other nations in a UN "Police Action" to stop communism, just five years after the end of WWII. When MacArthur invaded the north, Communist China retaliated, sending waves of troops into battle and pushing the Americans back. America came close to using another nuclear bomb, but when Eisenhower was elected president, he decided not to.
The war lasted three years and solidified the previous boundaries. The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along a so-called 2 mile-wide "demilitarized" zone. No peace treaty was ever signed,  so the countries are still technically at war. That border is the most heavily fortified in the world, one of the world's danger points, with U.S. military stationed there. North Korea continues to be in the news, raising the dangers of nuclear war.

Mike Clark's ship in the Korean War

The war is personal to me because my late uncle  Mike was in combat at the Inchon Landing in September, 1852. A signalman on LST 975, he was under fire as the first wave hit the beach in the decisive battle near Seoul behind enemy lines. And my late cousin Charles Rogers Lutrick also served in the war.
Still South Korea suffered under despots until 1987, when military rule ended and civilians took over. Today, the country has perhaps the fastest Internet in the world, the fourth largest Asian economy and is a model of progress and economic growth. South Korea also has strict gun control laws, with the fewest firearms per capital. And just north of it, sits this backward country of have-nots, ruled by someone who calls himself the "Supreme Leader." We Americans don't take to people who think they're supreme over anybody.

Flying over this turmoil is the flag influenced by Taoism and Chinese culture. The white background symbolizes cleanliness of the people, and the center symbol, the "yin and yang" the perfect balance of the universe, a continuous move in infinity. The four trigrams represent justice, fruition, wisdom and vitality.
Just to the north flies the red star flag of the so-called "People's Republic of Korea. " Originally that flag also carried the yin and yang symbol but adopted the red star of communism. Today, the rogue state is puts less emphasis on communism, but hasn't changed its ruthless dictatorship and determinatipn to subject its people and threaten the world with war. I have no readers of this blog from that heavily censored country.

Koreas, at night, from space

If you want to see the difference in two countries, look at nighttime energy usage. Electricity usage is the clearest indicator of economy and personal strength, and in this case, freedom, where everything seems to be in balance, regardless of the outside world. I have colleagues and have had students from South Korea. They reflect those values.