Fredericksburg, Texas

This is a Nuclear Bomb at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. The museum is located in what was a hotel founded by Adm. Chester Nimitz's granfather. The museum includes a Japanese Peace Garden, given by the gov't of Japan to the museum, a very well done outdoor recreation of a Pacific island-hopping scene, and the impressive (larger than the Nimitz museum itself) George Bush Gallery, named after the first president Bush. We actually ran out of time and could not even see the entire George Bush Gallery, but it was well worth the visit.

Fredericksburg is a very pretty and tourist little town. It's in the middle of the Hill Country of Texas and is more or less the capital of German Texas. There are enclaves of Texas where German was spoken at home up to a generation ago, with its own unique dialog, like Pennsylvania Dutch. Many of the Germans who emigrated to Central Texas were Fourty-Eighters, mostly educated and liberal Europeans who left after that tumultious year of 1848.

From Wikipedia:
"Fredericksburg (German: Friedrichsburg) was founded in 1846 by Baron Otfried Hans von Meusebach, new Commissioner General of the "Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas", also known as the "Noblemen's Society" (in German: Mainzer Adelsverein), and named in honor of Prince Frederick of Prussia, nephew of Prussia's King Frederick William III, and highest ranking member of the Mainzer Adelsverein. Baron von Meusebach renounced his noble title and became known in Texas as John O. Meusebach. Settled largely by liberal, educated Germans fleeing the failed Revolution of 1848, Gillespie County voted against secession prior to the American Civil War."

One might think it odd that the most famous WWII admiral is from a remote small town in Central Texas, hundreds of miles from the ocean. Nimitz was raised by his grandfather after his father died sometime around his birth. His grandfather was a merchant sailor and when Chester Nimitz wanted to go to the Army Academy at West Point however his congressman already made his appointment so he went to Annapolis, which Nimitz had never heard of. Nimitz is also one of the few people who survived running a ship aground under his command and susbsquent court marshal and continued to have an (extremely successful) Naval Career.

We had a lunch at a very German restaurant whose name escapes me and they had some good beers, I think I had a Franziskaner.