One of the more interesting things I've learned about the JFK assassination is that it may have been the Japanese who killed him... no, really. It just took 20 years for the final results.

JFK was never physically very healthy and there are indications that he entered the service with some political help, as he was technically 4F. When PT-109 was sunk, he badly injured his fragile back and never truly recovered. For the rest of his life, he wore massive braces and body bindings to support his back and help him cope with the pain.

The braces and bindings left him unable to turn his body and with limited ability to turn his head - you can see in some footage that he tends to pivot like a Ken doll rather than turn more naturally.

So when it came to Dallas, he was unable to duck when the shots began. The first shot missed; had he been able to, he likely would have ducked at least some, reducing the target. The second shot was not necessarily fatal, but would have knocked him over, out of range, had he not literally had a steel bar on his spine. Even badly wounded, he remained upright like a target dummy, and the third shot finished the job the Japanese had started 20 years earlier.

Seriously strange, eh?

I think you're right about the brace holding him up after the second shot hit. But partly because of the acoustics of the area, no one really seems to have realized the first shot was a rifle, as opposed to a car backfire or something.

You could use the same logic to say Joe Kennedy Jr.'s death in 1944 killed JFK. If Young Joe had survived the war he's the one that would have been pushed toward the Presidency. It is a fascinating study how all the various factors over many years brought JFK and Oswald to that spot in Dallas 48 years ago today.

Yes, it's a very slightly absurdist take, but it almost certainly was a factor in the outcome, and one of the many details most folks (even aficionados of the event, if that's the right word) aren't aware of.

In June 1963, I traveled to Germany for my two weeks active duty training in the Tennessee Air National Guard. We had reservations in the Von Streubin Hotel in Wiesbaden but found that the hotel had been taken over for President Kennedy’s visit to Germany so we had to find another hotel.

On the day of Kennedy’s arrival we walked over to the Von Streubin but couldn’t get close enough to see anything except his helicopter landing. I did get to see President Kennedy later that night as he rode down a dimly lit street in downtown Wiesbaden. As I stood in the crown lining the street watching President Kennedy ride past in an open convertible, I looked up at all the dark upper floor windows on either side of the street and observed how easy it would be for a sniper to kill the President. Five months later a sniper did just that in broad daylight in Dallas Texas.

you could say that Joseph kennedy Sr's own failed political ambitions were the prime cause of JFK's (aka jack) death- Joe senior was the us ambassador to great britain and had eyes on the presidency for himself- after a very public verbal gaffe where he called democracy dead (was labeled a defeatist) and was recalled from england, he then began to politically groom his sons- if he couldn't be president, come hell or high water, one of his boys would be!

JFK's back problems were a lifelong health issue- political strings had to be pulled to even get him into the navy! while his pt boat getting rammed by a japanese destroyer may not have been the cause of jack's severe back problems, it certainly had to aggravate them- most importantly what this ramming did accomplish was creating the scenario where jfk would become a hero

in absurd fashion it could be conjectured that jack's heroics directly led to the death of his older brother, Joe Jr- the kennedy's were a fiercely competitive clan- after jack became a "hero", elder brother, joe jr may have felt compelled to become a hero himself which led to volunteering for very risky bombing mission- joe's b-24 liberator bomber went down in the english channel and was never found- as the eldest surviving son, jack became the spear point of his father's political ambitions

in the end, joe sr's money, clout, and personal political ambitions for his sons led to jack's presidency, another son, bobby being assassinated while campaigning for the presidency, and lastly ted's failed bid for the oval office- ultimately joe sr's political ambitions could be construed as the motive force behind the death of 3 of his 4 sons

obviously i've been watching too much history channel lately

Good points, Nick. The boys seem to have got the serial adultery bug from the Old Man, as well. But that's a whole 'nother story.

On November 22, 1963, at 1:05 p.m., I was walking to Freshman English class at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, 12 miles from Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was shot, when the announcement came over the school intercom. At that time, unbeknownst to me, Marina Oswald, wife of Lee Harvey, was staying at the home of the Irving chief of police, four houses down from ours on Princeton Street. Much later, in 1998, I dived the waters of the Solomon Islands where JFK's PT-109 was based, aboard the . One day, we dived at White's Beach, which we were told was one of the places PT-109 was stationed. There were sunken WW II trucks and planes in the shallow water to dive on. Even with all that connection I've never been to the Texas Schoolbook Depository Museum, which a friend who went there as part of attending Steven King's launch party for his book , said was a complete rip-off (the museum, not the launch party).

And I drove past the cemetery Oswald was buried in for years without ever realizing his remains were there. Didn't ever bother looking for his grave after I learned that fact, as it's supposed to be unmarked.[/quote]

Actually the grave is marked, but his mother, who is buried beside him is unmarked.

My parents lived near Mrs Oswald and a teenaged Lee during the late 40s,
and I probably met Mrs Oswald when she worked at the candy counter at a
department store in west Ft Worth in the 50s.

Interesting take on JFK. I actually remember the assassination, although I was under three years old at the time. Nov. 22 was my father's birthday, and we lived in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas. My parents were planning to go to dinner and stay overnight in Dallas. That meant my grandmother Mama (whom I loved) was coming over and spending the night with me and my baby sister, just three weeks old at the time. Mama came over, but my parents didn't go anywhere. I remember my mother's face, white and scared and sad. (And as I found out later, my mother was no fan of JFK or the Kennedys politically -- it didn't matter.)

How many remember watching Ruby shoot Oswald on TV?

If you were watching network TV when Oswall was shot, then you had to see the killing. There was nothing else on ABC, NBC, or CBS. I happened to interrupt reading my book long enough to see the killing.

I was on leave from the Army and visiting my old fraternity at college. We were sitting around the fire talking and watching TV when it happened. We were absolutely astounded.

i was a 9 year old school boy playing at school recess when i heard- as you heard the news you kinda just quit playing- i recall a blanket of profound sadness falling over our schoolyard - JFK was still an unsullied hero to us........

as for oswalt's death, well i recall thinking we were all cheated out of a lot of answers- the warren commission report provided too few. ruby was no hero- he robbed america of closure

while i never read the full 22 volume warren commission report, i did closely read the 400 page version- maybe some of the answers i didn't find were included in the full investigation. i'll preface this with the fact i'm not much of a conspiracy theory advocate- i'll also add that i don't trust pat answers either- like many others, i guess i was left wondering who lee harvey oswald really was and what his true reasons were for assassinating JFK- i think much of america who experienced this tragedy wonders the same- call it my distrust of big government in general- the lies it has told the american public have proven to be epic- call me a skeptic of government and the info it is willing to share

was the mob involved? joe senior's connections to crime are proven- he was a bootlegger during prohibition- would JFK had been introduced to these powerful friends by his dad ? was oswalt a russian assassin ? or just a small man looking to make a big splash before he left this planet? or did LBJ remove the roadblock to his own presidency? the questions go on and on- yeah perhaps oliver stone's movie "JFK" threw red herrings america's way in the name of selling a movie

sometimes the answer we seek is the obvious one- sometimes not- do i have any personal theories? not really - i do know fact sometimes can be much stranger than fiction - in this case i doubt any of us will ever truly know the full answer as to why oswalt pulled the trigger- i'll keep on questioning - it's tough to divine answers though when the facts can closely resemble contrived bullshit

maybe i'm the product of my era, maybe i'm just a skeptic, but there's just too many shadowy areas which reek of bs to me. and yeah that 9 year old who's hero was slain is still wondering "why?" 50 years later

The answer, Nick, is that JFK was killed by a disaffected loner who probably had no real reason to do it.

All of the contrary thinking begins with the refusal to accept that self-evident, adequately proven truth, and continues because the observer can't come to terms with the fact that tremendous, literally world-shaking consequences can come from miniscule sources. And many times in history, have.

jim i can agree the preponderance of evidence points to oswald as the classic disaffected loner with nothing left to lose. 99% of me can accept and live with that. It's that 1% of me which compels me to consider there may be more to this. sorry, after all these years, i still detect the faint odor of bs emanating from the whole thing. <checks the bottom of my shoes> i'll remain a skeptic

I'm afraid Jim is right. See Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed."

I want as much as anyone for JFK to have been done in by the CIA, Mafia, or Castro. We demand of our great men and women that they meet great ends, that they be defeated by a worthy foe, or at least a powerful one. To fall afoul of a piker, or worse, happenstance, just does not jibe with our sense of fairness. Life should follow the same rules as good stories, and in any epic, the hero does not get done in by slipping on a banana skin.

Reality, unfortunately, often disagrees. Isadora Duncan met her end when her scarf got wrapped around the car's wheel. Houdini died from a ruptured appendix due to a punch from a fan. (I love the movie, but they just couldn't face the truth.) Princess Diana died in a car crash from an inebriated chauffeur trying to outrun the paparazzi.

At least one acid test of conspiracy BS is when there are multiple competing theories that can't be reduced. If any of them were feasible it would be the only one under discussion. Yet in an Olympian feat of cognitive dissonance, JFK conspiracists manage to believe simultaneously that he was assassinated by the CIA, the mob, and the Russians. There couldn't have been any innocent witnesses to the shooting because there wouldn't have been room in Dealey Plaza for anyone not toting some firearm used in the attack.

I prefer to honor JFK's memory by hewing to what I know to be true rather than what I want to be true. He deserves nothing less.

I'm with Jim and Peter on this, especially Peter. The buzz of multiple contradictory competing conspiracy theories none of which is provable or even particularly plausible is the key here. We don't like to accept that small people can do great harm, so when one does, we go looking for a villain as big as the crime. :/

Coincidentally, I just finished Reclaiming History last week. I read Case Closed some years ago, but Reclaiming History is where to go if you want to finish the question once and for all. Just a tremendous read. For an express verision, just go through the first two main sections, "Four Days in Dallas" and the Oswald biography. The sections making fun of all of the various conspiracies are not quite as vital, nor as tight.

Happy reading! It took me almost a month of every moment I could carve out to finish it.

Actually, I think there's an entire 'second edition' that omits the conspiracy debunking half. At least, it seems to be the same book but half the size...

He may have gotten details wrong and new data can always come to light, but as I said... anyone who wants to challenge the matter has to go THROUGH Bugliosi. There's no getting around it.

As far as LHO's grave markers go...

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cg ... r&GRid=781