Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Carl E. Clark, 95, stood before a cheering crowd of 600 on Tuesday at Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View to receive a combat medal for bravery in World War II, an honor he was originally denied because he’s black…

On May 3, 1945, in the Battle of Okinawa, Japan, six kamikaze planes hit the U.S.S. Aaron Ward, engulfing the ship’s deck in a deadly inferno. As the fire approached an ammunition locker that would have exploded and destroyed the ship, Mr. Clark — who broke his collarbone in the attacks and was the only survivor of a damage control team — grabbed a hose typically operated by several men and doused the flames.

His actions saved the vessel, but they were not mentioned in the battle report. In the deeply segregated Navy of that time, Mr. Clark was just a servant — a ship’s steward — and it was common practice then for the heroics of blacks in the military to be ignored or discredited…

Mr. Clark’s deeds would have remained unrecognized except for Sheila Dunec, an instructor at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, who met him in 1999 as part of a project to document veterans’ remembrances. She eventually brought the matter to the attention of Representative Eshoo, who pressed the Navy to investigate…

For Mr. Clark and other black servicemen in 1945 the war raged on two fronts: the battle against the enemy, and the relentless racism within the military. The constant struggles led to a complex view of the war.

“I couldn’t hate the Japanese,” Mr. Clark said. “I couldn’t have the same feelings toward the enemy as the Caucasians because of the way we were treated at home…”

At Tuesday’s ceremony he accepted the medal on behalf of other black servicemen whose deeds and deaths were never noted. “I want to share this honor with all of those men,” he said in his speech.

He stayed in the Navy after the war to provide for his family, rising to the rank of chief petty officer to command 175 men. He finally retired in 1958, but he said in the 22 years he served the racism never relented. When he received his discharge papers a young white clerk said, “Here you go, boy.” Embittered, he left without saying goodbye to his men…

And now Mr. Clark, who appears decades younger than his age…finds himself looking forward — hoping his story teaches younger blacks, who he said don’t fully appreciate his generation’s struggles.

“Racial relations in the country have come a long way,” he said, “but I know it has quite a way to go.”

At the rate with which our pundits and politicians approach tasks requiring backbone and a sense of history and justice — turning around bigotry in this Land of Liberty seems always to be measured in decades. If you leave it up to that mythic grassroots American, the timespan might be centuries. Or so it seems.

In response to calls for increased security from enterprise clients, Apple has hired cybersecurity expert and author David Rice as its director of global security…

A “deeply respected name in IT security circles,” according to those who know him, Rice is reportedly being brought on to bolster Apple’s security and gain the trust of corporate CIOs.

Rice graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 and received a master’s degree in Information Warfare and Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously worked as a Global Network Vulnerability analyst for the National Security Agency and as a Special Duty Cryptologic officer for the Navy…Rice is also the author of “Geekonomics,” a 2007 book which likens software security vulnerabilities to weakened bridges and other physical infrastructure.

Apple has ramped up its security efforts in recent years, in part to gain the trust of corporations and government agencies who have begun adopting the iPhone and iPad. As the iPhone maker has upgraded the security of iOS, it has found itself gaining ground on Research in Motion, the self-professed leader in “CIO friendliness…”

A recent partnership with Unisys is also meant to boost Apple’s security reputation. In an interview last October, a Unisys executive said the deal came about because his company had “put a lot of heavyweight engineering into securing the [iPhone], which, frankly, no one else has figured out yet.”

My experiences with government security types lead me to believe that Rice’s own top-level clearances are somewhat compromised by the fact that he went to work with geeks at Apple. That has nothing to do with the realities of security or politics. Just bureaucratic silliness.

BTW – if you’d like a look into his public brain, drop by his blog.

Captain Richard Phillips, (R), alongside Cmdr. Frank Castellano, CO of USS Bainbridge
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Hero Capt. Richard Phillips was freed today in a dramatic ending to a four-day high seas standoff that riveted the world.

Three of the four ragtag pirates who held the world’s most powerful Navy at bay on the Indian Ocean were killed, and the fourth was taken into custody.

Phillips was said to be in good condition.

On Saturday negotiations had broken down when the Somali pirates reportedly insisted they would only free Phillips in exchange for their own freedom – a deal nixed by US officials.

Phillips, 53, captain of the 17,000-ton relief cargo vessel Maersk Alabama, offered himself as a hostage to save his 19-man crew Wednesday when armed pirates took his ship.

He and the pirates had been drifting in an out-of-gas lifeboat, surrounded by massive US warships who could do little but keep pirate reinforcements from reaching the lifeboat.

The audacious pirates even opened fire Saturday on a small Navy vessel sent from the destroyer USS Bainbridge.

Bravo!

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Two US navy vessels have collided in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, lightly injuring 15 sailors, the US navy said. A nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Hartford, and amphibious transporter the USS New Orleans collided early on Friday, the US Navy Fifth Fleet said.

The incident is being investigated and damage to both ships is being evaluated, a navy statement said.

The New Orleans’ fuel tank was ruptured in the crash, causing a spill of 25,000 gallons of diesel.

No injuries were reported aboard the New Orleans, according to the statement from the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.

The atomic propulsion system of the submarine was not damaged by the incident, the statement said.

The US Fifth Fleet…patrols an area of about 7.5 million square miles of sea in the Middle East and eastern Africa. You’d think with that much room they could keep from running into each other.

Of course, by the time the weekend talk shows roll around, Rush and the RNC will have figured out some way to blame Iran, China and Obama – not necessarily in that order.

The U.S. military ordered its navy ships away from the coast of Myanmar on Wednesday, after the country’s ruling junta refused to give them permission to help survivors of the cyclone that devastated the country more than a month ago.

Admiral Timothy Keating, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific, ordered the Essex and its accompanying vessels to leave the Myanmar area after what he said were 15 separate attempts to obtain authorization to help relief efforts.

State media in Myanmar reported that the country feared an invasion by U.S. forces interested in seizing its oil deposits.

There’s paranoid. And then there’s really paranoid!