美海軍注意到「為何而戰」的議題？

【縛雞之論】英文拷到 G / D 找中文翻譯
Two vessels will be named after Robert Smalls, a mariner who commandeered a Confederate ship to freedom from slavery, and Marie Tharp, an ocean geologist who studied continental drift.
As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro aptly stated, the purpose of renaming ships is not to rewrite history but to change America's commemoration and attention towards events and figures that do not align with national ideals, while also bringing neglected historical events and figures back into public awareness.
This issue reminds us that the majority of war vessels in the ROC Navy are named after Chinese provinces, mountains, rivers, and lakes. It is no wonder that the military asked what soil they are defending for if the enemy comes from China.

兩艘船將分別以羅伯特·史莫爾斯（Robert Smalls）和瑪麗·塞普（Marie Tharp）的名字命名，前者是一位從奴隸制度中逃脫的水手，曾從一艘南方邦聯的船隻上奪取自由，後者是一位研究大陸漂移的海洋地質學家。
正如海軍部長卡洛斯·德爾托羅（Carlos Del Toro）所言，艦艇更名目的不是改寫歷史，而是改變美國對「不符合國家理念」的紀念與關注，同時讓過去被忽視的歷史事件與人物，重新為人所知。
這個問題提醒我們，中華民國海軍的大多數軍艦都是以中國的省份、山脈、河流和湖泊命名的。難怪軍方問：如果敵人來自中國，他們在捍衛什麼山河？

移除南軍象徵 美艦CG 62改名史摩爾斯號    青年日報20230301

　美國海軍2月27日宣布，紀念南北戰爭中南軍勝利戰役的神盾巡洋艦「錢斯勒斯維爾號」（CG 62），將正式改名為「史摩爾斯號」，紀念當時偷走南軍艦艇，交給北軍的黑奴史摩爾斯。

　美國先前成立委員會，以從五角大廈與美軍中移除所有紀念南軍的名稱，「錢斯勒斯維爾號」即是其一。該艦艦名不只紀念1863年春天發生，由南軍獲得大勝的「錢斯勒斯維爾之役」，委員會還發現艦內官廳掛有南軍統帥李將軍，以及在「錢斯勒斯維爾之役」中負傷而亡的名將「石牆」傑克遜的畫像，因此要求更改艦名。

　史摩爾斯生於1839年，原本是黑奴，但他在查爾斯頓工作期間，成功掌握航海所需的各種能力，並且在1862年成為南軍輕型運輸艦「種植者號」（CSS Planter）的舵手，也讓他有機會與其他黑奴船員帶著家人駕船逃出南方勢力範圍，加入北軍行列；他的事蹟也說服時任總統林肯，組建非裔部隊。他在南北戰爭後步入政壇，多次連任地方與聯邦議員。

　美國海軍部長德爾托羅表示，他很自豪能以史摩爾斯的名字，重新為CG 62命名，他強調艦艇更名目的不是改寫歷史，而是改變美國對「不符合國家理念」的紀念與關注，同時讓過去被忽視的歷史事件與人物，重新為人所知。

 

Stripping Confederate Ties, the U.S. Navy Renames Two Vessels    NYT 20230312

One night in 1862, as the Civil War raged, an enslaved mariner named Robert Smalls seized an opportunity.

When the enlisted crew of a Confederate steamer disembarked for a night of carousing in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Smalls, the ship’s pilot, gathered his family and the other enslaved sailors and their families. He then steered the ship for a dramatic escape past heavy fortifications to Union-controlled waters and freedom.

Disguised in a top hat and a Confederate captain’s long overcoat, Mr. Smalls gave the passcodes at each of five Confederate forts and, once past the reach of cannon fire, hoisted a white flag of sewn-together bedsheets that his wife Hannah had made — delivering the ship to Union forces.

Mr. Smalls and the crew had lined the bottom of the boat with explosives to detonate rather than be recaptured and face execution.

Now Mr. Smalls will be immortalized on a U.S. Navy warship named after him, as will Marie Tharp, a pioneering ocean geologist. Both are receiving broader recognition under a Pentagon program to rid military installations and other property of Confederate ties.

The Naming Commission, a committee created by Congress in response to a public backlash against Confederate memorials in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, identified two ships to be rechristened in the Navy’s fleet.

One, a warship deployed in the waters off Japan, called the U.S.S. Chancellorsville after the Confederate Civil War victory in Virginia, will be renamed the U.S.S. Robert Smalls.

The other, a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship called the U.S.N.S. Maury, was named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a U.S. Navy commander who resigned in 1861 to join the Confederate Navy during the Civil War and who is known as “Pathfinder of the Seas” for his work charting the global paths of ocean currents. It will be rechristened the U.S.N.S. Marie Tharp, after the ocean cartographer, who helped document the phenomenon of continental drift.

When the Naming Commission informed the Navy that it would have four assets to rename — two buildings at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and two ships — dozens of suggestions flooded Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro’s office, said Tralene Hunston, a civilian employee in the public affairs office.

The Navy is planning namesake ceremonies that do not disrupt operations of either ship, Ms. Hunston said.

The ships were renamed after two people who “have historically been overlooked, but leveled significant impact on not just our Navy, but also the nation,” Mr. Del Toro said in emailed comments to The New York Times.

“It’s a wonderful honor for my family and for Robert’s legacy,” said Michael Moore, Mr. Smalls’s great-great-grandson and a businessman in Charleston, S.C. “I think it’s an appropriate elevation of a true American hero.”

Mr. Smalls was born to an enslaved woman, Lydia Polite, in 1839, on a plantation in Beaufort, S.C. As part of the Gullah community, made up of descendants of West African enslaved people, he grew up on the water, learning to fish, build and sail a boat at a young age, Mr. Moore said.

He was working as an enslaved pilot of a steamer ship when war was declared. After his daring escape, he fought for the Union, becoming the first Black American to command a Navy vessel. After the war, he represented South Carolina in Congress, owned a newspaper and founded a railroad.

“At a time in which there was so much that needed to be done in America, he rolled up his sleeves and stepped in and made an enormous difference. He led a life of extraordinary consequence,” said Mr. Moore, who said he is planning to run for his relative’s congressional seat.

The eponymous oceanographer, Ms. Tharp, was pioneering in her field, creating the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean’s floor and helping to shape the U.S. military’s understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift, with some of her research funded by the Navy.

Born in 1920, Ms. Tharp took advantage of a change in university admissions allowing women to enroll during World War II to receive an education that until then had been restricted to men. Ms. Tharp and a colleague studied sonar data taken from the research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Atlantis, to create highly detailed seafloor profiles and maps.

Ms. Tharp noticed a cleft in the ocean floor that she hypothesized to be a rift valley that ran along the ridge crest and continued along the length of its axis, which she posited (and was later proven) to be evidence of continental drift.

“I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world’s vast hidden seafloor,” Ms. Tharp wrote in a book about the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, where she once worked. “It was a once-in-the-history-of-the-world opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s.”

The significance of her contributions would become evident as research in her field continued over the decades, others said.

“For most of her working career, her contributions weren’t really celebrated. Her intellectual contributions were discounted,” Maureen Raymo, dean of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said, even though her “evidence of sea floor spreading was probably the biggest scientific revolution of the 20th century, certainly in earth sciences.”

The vessels’ renaming is part of a broader Pentagon project to grapple with a legacy that for more than a century has paid homage to Confederate victories and leaders.

Naming Army bases and other military property, and erecting monuments and memorials, to honor the Confederacy was part of a campaign by the children of Confederate soldiers “to reimagine their fathers as not the villains of a treasonous war for slavery but instead for the Southern way of life,” said Michel Paradis, a lecturer at Columbia University.

President Woodrow Wilson, an ardent segregationist, saw granting the requests to honor Confederate soldiers as a good way to rally support among his southern base during a draft for World War I, Paradis said.

In the protests that broke out across the U.S. after Mr. Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020, demonstrators took down dozens of Confederate memorials and monuments. That summer, Congress voted to expunge from Defense Department assets “names, symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia” that commemorate the Confederate States of America. The same legislation established the Naming Commission, which quickly proposed new names for nine Army installations in the South.

In September 2022, it produced a report with recommendations to rename 1,111 places from bases to ships to monuments, according to a committee member, the retired Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, emeritus history professor at West Point and professor at Hamilton College.

Mr. Del Toro said both Mr. Smalls and Ms. Tharp were among people whose work was worthy of historical recognition.

“Last year I visited Robert Smalls’s home and I knew his courageous endeavors in the face of the most harrowing scenarios, for me, made him the right choice for the renaming of the former U.S.S. Chancellorsville,” Mr. Del Toro said.

“Marie Tharp, as a pioneering oceanographer who had her work dismissed for most of her career, was also the right candidate for the renaming of the former U.S.N.S. Maury, a ship tasked with continuing her life’s work,” he added.

Many of the Confederate names that remain are attached to Army posts, Professor Seidule said, because the Civil War was largely fought on land.

“When the posts were being named in World War I and World War II, and the South was a one-party apartheid state, they would name them for people in their local community, these Confederate soldiers,” he said.

“It’s not just about getting rid of names. Whom you choose to honor is who you value,” he added. “I would be incredibly proud to serve on the U.S.S. Robert Smalls.”