On January 15

On this day in ...
... 1976 (35 years ago today), a woman who'd tried 4 months earlier to assassinate President Gerald Ford was sentenced to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti deemed her behavior "'a product of our times, a product of a permissive society,'" and in giving her the maximum possible term, asserted that the defendant, Sara Jane Moore (left), "a one-time F.B.I. informer and would-be revolutionary," would never have shot at the President as he left San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel "'if we had in this country any effective capital punishment law.'" (photo credit) (Conti, an appointee of President Richard M. Nixon, currently serves as a Senior District Judge in San Francisco.) Moore's life sentence followed another given the same month to another woman, Lynette Fromme (right), a Charles Manson devotée who, like Moore, had tried to assassinate Ford the prior September. (photo credit) Moore would be released on parole in 2007, at age 77; Fromme's parole followed, in 2009, when she was 60 years old.

(Prior January 15 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 12

On this day in ...
... 1975 (35 years ago today), naval gunboats of Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia seized the American freighter Mayaguez and its 39 crew members. U.S. President Gerald R. Ford (left) called the capture "an 'act of piracy' and promised swift action to rescue the captured Americans." Two days later, he sent Marines to the island where the crew was being held and ordered the port bombed; Cambodia "was already in the process of releasing the crew of the Mayaguez and the ship," and 41 "Americans died, most of them in an accidental explosion during the attack." A later congressional inquiry criticized the administration for failing to exhaust diplomatic channels before using force; nevertheless, as indicated by the Time cover above, the rescue effort won popular support in the United States.


(Prior May 12 posts are here, here, and here)

On January 19

On this day in ...

... 1977, on the day before the inauguration of his successor, outgoing U.S. President Gerald Ford pardoned the woman who, under the name "Tokyo Rose," had made radio broadcasts for Japan during World War II. The woman had served 6-1/2 years in prison after a federal jury in San Francisco convicted her of treason in 1949. (Another woman so convicted was known as "Axis Sally"; our post on her is here.) Her real name was Iva Toguri D'Aquino, and she'd been born on the 4th of July, 1919, in Los Angeles, where she'd earned a degree in zoology from UCLA in 1940. After Pearl Harbor the 22-year-old Toguri found herself barred from returning to the United States from Japan, where she'd gone to visit a sick aunt. The New York Times reported that Ford's pardon of her

had been expected for some time with a growing feeling that Mrs. D'Aquino had been caught in an unfortunate web of circumstance.

In 2006 Toguri D'Aquino died in Chicago, where she ran an Asian grocery and gift shop that yours truly frequently passed en route to law school. (credit for military mugshot of Toguri)

... 1989 (20 years ago today) , Heather Erxleben became Canada's 1st woman combat soldier, having completed her training at the Canadian Forces Base in Wainwright, Alberta. Last year, on the 19th anniversary of this event, Erxleben gave an interview to the Ottawa Sun, in which she condemned Canadian involvement in Afghanistan with these words:

'We should get out of Afghanistan immediately. Pull out, bring the soldiers home. How do we do it? Get rid of our prime minister, I guess. War is ridiculous. I’m very much against it. The only ones who suffer in war are the innocent people, not the politicians who run it. Why are we there anyway? Is it not because we’re just following the policy of the United States in this?
'When I graduated from battle school at Wainwright, Alberta, our military role was peace-keeping. We were in Cyprus, peace-keeping. That should still be our role. War is always lose, lose.'

On September 16

On this day in ...

... 1963 (45 years ago today), in Kuala Lumpur, The New York Times reported, "The country of Malaysia came into being this morning with the raising of her new flag and the release of 101 white pigeons." The country was formed by a federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah. Unrest ensued, and Singapore withdrew 2 years later.

... 1974, U.S. President Gerald Ford announced that men who'd evaded the draft or deserted from the armed forces during the Vietnam War could get amnesty by completion of 2 years' public service. Cases of men already punished would be reviewed by a clemency board. It was estimated that nearly 13,000 evaders and deserters were fugitives, and that 4,500 of them had found refuge in Canada. (Today it's reported that the number who fled north was much larger -- depending on the source, 30,000 or 90,000 or 125,000.) Canada has become less welcoming, however; this past July Canada expelled an American who'd deserted from service in the Iraq War.

On August 1

On this day in ...
... 1975, more than 3 dozen states, including all of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, signed the Helsinki Final Act. The document, which included "a list of agreements concerning political freedom, mutual cooperation, and human rights; it can be considered the major achievement of détente," the name given to the Cold War thawing process. Part of the process included establishment of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a body whose 56 member states hail from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. (credit for photo of signing by, from left, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, East German leader Erich Honecker, and U.S. President Gerald Ford)
... 1291, the Old Swiss Confederation was founded as an alliance for peace and free trade among various communities in Europe's Alps. Today remains a national holiday in Switzerland. (map credit)