Beech Tree News Network

Some years back I ran into the word, INTRACTABLE.  I don’t recall ever using the word.  However, the dictionary describes it as:  impossible to reason with, non-compliant, or non-agreeable; stubborn, unruly, or disorderly.  

I once knew a man who call himself a preacher.  He would not hear of his daughter getting married although she was of age.  He called her degrading, dirty names.  The young man she married was a good, decent fellow they made a happy couple.  The jerk of a father, being intractable, also had a mean streak about a mile wide.  

In the bible account of the rich, young, ruler, (Luke 18: 22-23) pretty well describes an intractable person.  

He came to Jesus and said… “Master I have kept all the rules from my youth up (The Ten Commandments), what else must I do to be saved?”  He obviously felt he still lacked something.  Of course Jesus knew no mortal person was capable of “keeping all the rules,” else he/she would have no need to be saved.  

Jesus told him:  “You still lack one thing.  Sell all you have and give the money to the poor ; take up the cross and follow me, and you will have treasures in Heaven.”  They young man was very rich and “he went away sorrowful,” the Bible tells us.  He refused the most important thing in life:  salvation through Jesus Christ.  Here we must be careful reading this.  Some may think it sinful to be rich.  Riches are only wrong when they stand between us and God.  

On December 8, 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched the invasion of the Philippine Islands with the occupation of the island of Luzon.  

General Douglas MacArthur, the Island’s Commander; under the order of President Franklin Roosevelt, departed for Australia on March 11, 1942, from Corregidor, leaving General Jonahtan “Skinny” Wainwright in charge of the Philippines.  

The brass hats in Washington promised reinforcements.  The promise never came to fruition.  Wainwright could not defend the Islands against the overwhelming Japanese.  He was forced to surrender the Philippines to the Japanese Army, having been taken a prisoner of war, along with the small U.S. Army Contingent there.  General Wainwright remained a POW until after World War II.  

In his book about his prisoner of war years, Wainwright described his captor as intractable:  “I saw a Japanese guard try to make a child’s toy piano play.  He looked in over from end to end, trying to find a switch or button with which to turn it on.  It had none.  It was a real piano.  He became so furious he found a club and beat it to pieces.  There was nothing left of the small piano.”  General Wainwright said, that for the most part the Japanese guards were ignorant.  “However, from the guards who could speak English, we got better treatment.”  

If General Wainwright was skinny before his capture, he was double skinny when he was repatriated.  I recall seeing his pictures in Life Magazine soon after he came back to the U.S.  He was eating a large hotdog and drinking a big glass of milk.  

General MacArthur did General Wainwright the honor of signing, as a second witness, the Japanese surrender, aboard the battleship Missouri immediately below MacArthur’s own signature.  

Kindest regards…