The Footnotes of History: Duane F Mosier as Witness

Most of us will never even make it into the footnotes. I was lucky that my Dad made it, not just once but many times. He was never famous but he had encounters with those who were. Billions of people living and dead are witnesses to history-making events or persons, but unless they wrote about it, or someone went digging, no one knows. An important aspect of family history research and writing is uncovering their witness. Particularly for many women men, exposing not only their contributions, but sometimes the successes claimed by others. I make no such claim for my father, but for many of you reading this—someone in your past was overlooked and someone claimed there work as their own. This could be their artistry, writing or research claimed by another or in the case of slaves or immigrants simply acting as if their work meant nothing.

General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

This first story, a humorous one happened when my Dad was about nineteen. This is from an interview about my Dad’s service in WWII and his first meeting of Gen Buckner, nicknamed Bucky. Bucky was born 18 July 1886. He graduated from West Point in 1908.

“Sometime after re joining the 2nd Marine Division on Saipan, the Division was reviewed (in full field transport packs with all their gear) by Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Commander of the Tenth U.S. Army, who would be in command of the Okinawa operation. The General escorted by the usual entourage of descending rank, strode through rank after rank, stopping now and then to examine an individual marine. In the hot sun it seemed like forever before he would swiftly pass through our section and we could relax a little, but No! The General stopped in front of me. My right arm whipped my M-1 Garand toward present arms, but my left hand hung limply at my side, the circulation in my left arm cut off by the field transport pack. The butt of my M-1 continued on an outward path right to the General’s groin. He was felled to the deck! Each member of the entourage in turn passed the question down the line until finally my platoon sergeant stepped to my side and queried ‘What happened?” I replied, “My arm went to sleep”. Then the General, in pain struggled to his feet. The word passed back up the entourage to the General who nodded and ordered me to fall out and remove my pack. “(D.F.M. 1996)

“The second one also involves Bucky. In mid-May, General Buckner specifically requested that the 8th Marines be returned to Okinawa. The general had originally inspected the 2d Marine Division in the preceding February and had been favorably impressed with the combat-tested 8th Marines. He gave particular praise to the battalion commanders. General Buckner was later quoted as saying ‘he had never before has the privilege of meeting such an alert group . . .’”(A Brief History of the 8th Marines by James Santelli pg 48)

My Dad wrote:

“On the 18th of June the Eight [Marines] relieved the Seventh and drove rapidly southward, establishing an observation point on a ridge overlooking the remaining Japanese held territory. It was here that I was sent, carrying a message to Colonel Wallace the Regimental Commander. It was also here that Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner found himself observing the ground yet to be won. After delivering the message and awaiting a reply for several minutes, I returned down the steep trail about thirty yards when a barrage of artillery shells punished the rocky point that I had just left. Continuing down the trail I returned to the Command Post of the 1st Battalion 8th and learned that the Lt. General had been killed. The second time I had been a few feet from him with disastrous results. (D.F.M. 1990)”

Tokyo Rose

I have already written about my Dad’s involvement in the Tokyo Rose Trial here. And here is the note of thanks he received from Iva Toguri D’Aquino. He just happened to have been asked to be a witness in a very famous trial for which the FBI had to later apologize. And for which “Tokyo Rose” received a pardon from President Gerald Ford

Element 102

After the war my dad went to the University of California at Berkeley under the GI bill. From there he graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1951. He went on to work for The University of California Institute of Engineering Research while he made application to the Federal Government and was hired by the University of California’s Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on Nov 1, 1951 as a Junior Accelerator Operator.

At this time he was working with the Nuclear Chemistry Division with world renowned scientists like Ernest Lawrence and Glenn Seaborg. The first announcement of the discovery of element 102 was announced by physicists at the Nobel Institute for Physics in Sweden in 1957. The next year in 1958 scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory repeated the experiment headed by Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, John R. Walton and Torbjørn Sikkeland, used the new heavy-ion linear accelerator. After some controversy it was eventually credited to the Berkeley team and named 102 Nobelium after Alfred Nobel. Her is a snapshot my Dad took. I assume the AG stands for Albert Ghiorso. When I was a girl and even until my parents moved to Yountville my Dad had a Champagne Bottle with everyone’s names etched into it who had worked on the discovery. It also had a sheet of calculations in it. I am not sure who my Dad gave it to but it is lost to me.

My dad authored this paper in April 1959 which was sent to the Atomic Energy Commission.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE: The Plate of Brass

In 1977 a Plate of Brass purported to have been left by Sir Francis Drake in 1579, was discovered in 1936. Supposedly left when Drake was anchored at what is know called Drake’s Bay in Northern California.

In July of 1977 Helen V Michel and Frank Asaro, friends and colleagues published their study “Chemical Study of the Plate of Brass.” They used neutron activation analysis to study the plate. They found it contained too much zinc and too few impurities to be Elizabethan English brass, while containing trace metals that corresponded to modern American brass. My Dad did the instrumentation and he is mentioned in the acknowledgments:

“A great deal of appreciation must go to Duane F. Mosier for many stimulating discussions

and his supervision of our electronic system.”

As a footnote my Dad died in 2000. In 2002 an account became public, that the plate was intended to be a joke among members of a playful fraternity of California history enthusiasts, the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus which originated during the 1849 California Gold Rush and was revived in the 1930s.

DINOSAUR EXTINCTION

There were lots of other research projects in which he was involved perhaps this is the most wide reaching. In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen V Michel, discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal. The theory is that an asteroid fell in the Yucatán Peninsula, at Chicxulub, Mexico and that its impact 66 million years ago led to and environmental disaster that led to the Dinosaurs extinction. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 55 pounds also became extinct, with the exception of some species like sea turtles and crocodilians. Still debated but largely excepted it is chronicled by Walter Alvarez in his book T.Rex and the Crater of Doom published in 1997. My Dad was responsible for building a “neutron activation machine that could achieve the necessary levels of precision.” When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time Michael J. Benton 2003.

My purpose here is two fold, one to honor my dad and his contributions to his country and science. And to inspire others to go digging. It could be letters, diaries or objects hidden in an attic or in plain site. Some people are blessed with brushes with history. Of the top of my head I can think of only two other than Frank Asaro, Helen Michel and the other scientists I met through my father. As a toddler I sat on Governor Edmund G Brown’s lap about 1960 and I met Robert Redford on New Year’s Day over a decade ago while hiking at Lake Hennesey. However, I was too busy interacting with his dogs to note it was “Bob.” In fact all 3 women didn’t notice, and all three men in my party did. What untold stories should you be writing now?

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