2013 JOURNEY TO CHRISTMAS: DESTINY

Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking

2013 JOURNEY TO CHRISTMAS:

DESTINY

Copyright 2013

Sometimes  you meet a person who changes your life. 

 

That's a blessing.

Sometimes -  if you are in the right place at the right time - you have the opportunity to meet a person who changes history. 

That's destiny.

Today, you just happen to be in the right place at the right time.  

You have the opportunity to meet someone who changed history,  and not just one person - but twelve people whose incredible stories will challenge history as you know it. 

They have been called "The Disciples."  They are the twelve remaining members of a special elite team of the United States Army.  There were twenty-four members in the beginning.

They  came from different farms across the United States.  

They were asked:  "Do you want to be remembered in the history books 20 years from now?  Do you want to serve your country and make your fellow Americans proud?"

That was 74 years ago.

Their story is not in the history books, yet.

All that changes today.

I am proud to introduce you to these American Heroes.  

They were teenagers living on American farms  when they were recruited by secret service agents in 1939.  

After boot camp, and a visit to The White House, they were sent on foreign soil to serve their country with this admonition:  "This can not be spoken.  Word can not get out that you exist."

Twenty-four people disguised as foreign exchange students from Harvard University went to Japan in 1941, on the pretense of studying botany.  That cover story allowed them to roam the hills of Japan, where they served four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  

They didn't think of Japan as a threat.  They thought of it as another training ground. 

Their  mission was to collect intelligence, and block enemy forces from overtaking the USS James O'Hara, an American battleship that was docked between Japanese battleships in Japan in 1941.    

They lived on a small, abandoned Japanese military base in the hills of Japan.  They could see the USS O'Hara from their perch in the treetops.

USS James O'Hara.  Wikipedia

They were trained as snipers.   You know what snipers are, don't you?  People who take out other people from a distance.  You can't see them coming.  You don't know where they're coming from.  They just get the job done.  

LOUISA:  "We were big, hot farm girls.  We knew how to get dirty, and we knew how to get the job done."  

LISA:   "Young teenage girls wanted to be patriotic back then.    I wanted to be patriotic, and be a part of what our forefathers paid in their own blood.  We were the first of our group.  We had to go through boot camp - a certain boot camp.  Our lives would never be the same again after that." 

  "We learned about the attack on Pearl Harbor when we were in Japan.  Our commander's voice over the radio told us to go for the hills that something was about to happen.  I was in charge of a squadron.  It was my job to radio the other groups.  I put out the call on the radio for everyone to get out of the trees and go for the hills.  We hiked, and placed ourselves in a safe spot on the hills.  We got a radio frequency about 11 PM that night.  We were told to get back on base immediately.  We hiked the remaining four miles back to the base, and ran into the food hall. Our commander was there.  I don't know how he got there.  They threw bags of clothes at us...with nurses uniforms inside."  

"Clean up and then put on these clothes," our commander said.

LISA:  "We were handed  nurses uniforms and folders that briefed us on our next mission:  Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  We studied countries including Japan and Hawaii in geography class at boot camp.  Our training also included counter-intelligence.  We knew how to get people to talk."

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941.  It was December 8 in Japan. 

 

Twenty-four  teenagers, farm girls trained for an elite team, boarded a private plane in Japan, and flew close to Hawaii.  The plane hovered as they repelled out of the plane hatch, and climbed  down a ladder toward a huge mat on a fishing boat below.    

It was dark.   

They left the fishing boat and got into small Army life rafts.  They paddled to the shore of Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941:  one day after "the date that will live in infamy." 

LISA: 

 "We were taken immediately to hospital at the army base at Pearl Harbor.  It was  a couple miles away from the point of attack.  It was chaos...a war zone. We registered as nurses, and made sure to go on the floors so people saw us.  People were covered with blood and debris.  Their injuries were so bad you couldn't tell a person's ethnicity.  There weren't enough hands to help everyone.  We had only brief medical training, but we helped with casualties."

 "Our mission in Hawaii was to gather intelligence, shoot down enemy planes, and look for nuclear devices.  We were trained to disarm them.   There was a rumor that Japan had nuclear missiles in Pearl Harbor that they could launch on us.  President Roosevelt had removed some American ships from Pearl Harbor.   The rumors were that Japan might launch more attacks,  nuclear attacks on our land and sea forces."

"We came across a cloth-making facility.  We invaded it out of curiosity because armed guards surrounded it.  Yes!  There were armed Japanese in Hawaii.  We snuck through the back door and saw crates.  Under the crates filled with cloth were crates of guns.  We called in the information on the radio, and another team was sent in."

"We got into the trees at Pearl Harbor.  It's what we do best.  We shot down a couple Japanese planes.  The Japanese didn't like us, and sent spies after us.  We shot down their planes, so they fired at us with mini-bombs that we called "cow turds."  They were like giant bullets fired from Japanese planes."

"The second day we were at Pearl Harbor  Japanese spies spotted our Charlie and Delta team's position and fired on them."

Charlie team called, "May Day."

"They were told to evacuate and go to higher ground just before our radios stopped working."

"Juliette was a member of Delta team.  She was 16 years and 2 months old.  She had the fire of an angry bull, and passion beyond anyone's belief.  She was our little midget.    Juliette didn't have a mom or dad.  They passed in a fire.  She lived by herself."

"When we met her, Juliette told us she had nothing to lose, and a lot to gain."

"Juliette quoted Esther in the Bible:  'If I perish - I shall perish. I might even help thousands of people.'"

"Most of us owe Juliette our lives.  She knew how to hot wire things.  She's the one who fixed our radios.  The last thing she did before she died was fix our radios that short-circuited." 

Twelve young women, members of Charlie and Delta teams gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country at Pearl Harbor. 

The remaining twelve, (members of Alpha and Bravo teams), now known as The Disciples, left Hawaii on Christmas Eve, 1941. 

 

They had served at Pearl Harbor for three weeks, and left the same way they came in.  They paddled life rafts out to a fishing boat.  The only thing different was that Christmas Eve, 1941, they climbed a ladder into two helicopters. 

 

Four teams:  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, were now down to two teams with six women in each. 

The Disciples spent Christmas Day, 1941, on an island somewhere in the world called, The Boot.  To this day - they don't know exactly where that is.   

They do remember that Christmas on  a tropical island...drinking and telling stories. They didn't know where they were going next.  They had no idea it would be back to Japan.

Let me introduce you to The Disciples:   

          twelve American Heroes; 

                              twelve WOMEN...

             who were teenagers living on American farms  

             when they were recruited by secret service agents.

Alpha Team:

Lisa (17) from California

Louisa  (18) from Iowa

Morgan  (17) from Iowa

Hannah (18) from Washington state

Jordan (16) from Texas

Emily ( 16 1/2) from California 

Bravo Team:

Elisabeth (18) from Florida

Jacquelyn (17) from New Jersey

Beth (16) from Nebraska

Bede (16) from Florida

Christy (17) from New York

Kelly (18 1/2) from New York

They thought the Army was desperate for recruits, because in 1939,  it couldn't recruit anyone under 20 years old without a parent's signature; or anyone wounded in another war, or anyone 70 or older.   

The girls heard rumors that there might be another war, but they never really thought there would be another war after the first World War.

The Disciples are together again in 2013.

They trust me to tell you their story.

Their story is not in the history books, yet.

All that changes today.

Come back often,  

thegraphicsfairy.com

and invite a friend 
to hear more stories

from  
The Disciples 

as we  

JOURNEY TO CHRISTMAS. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Marcia Norwood

America's STORYTELLER

Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking