The recent commander of “The Flight Test Center of the Universe” retires one day after the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The two dates, Dec. 7, 1941, and Dec. 8, 2023, have a personal and professional connection for Brig. Gen. Matthew Higer, former commander of the 412th Test Wing.
Higer, like many in top echelons of leadership, devoted his 29 years and six months to preventing another surprise attack on America by an aggressive military adversary.
“Compete,” is Higer’s watchword. “Always compete.”
When Higer’s retirement is observed with ceremony out at Edwards AFB on Dec. 8, along with new 412th Wing commander Col. Douglas Wickert, he will also be joined by his predecessor and friend, Brig. Gen. John E. “Dragon” Teichert, recently retired and running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.
All three Air Force leaders who share the unique trust of stewardship at the nation’s premier flight test facility also share the concern that another Pearl Harbor style attack never disables America’s national security.
The story of the attack by Imperial Japan on our Navy’s fleet and forces based at Pearl Harbor was more than the 2,403 lives lost, more than America’s entry into World War II.
Ultimately, it became not the historical attack, but a map to the future of American global military reach.
“It took us out of our isolationist stance,” said Juan Blanco, a Cold War era Army paratrooper and president of the weekly veterans gathering, Coffee4Vets at Crazy Otto’s Restaurant on Avenue I in Lancaster, Calif.
“It’s important that we maintain the alliances we have made and that we are able to support each other in a way our adversaries cannot,” said Teichert, himself recently retired and author of a new book on leadership and innovation titled “Boom!”
The competitors and rivals loom large on the world map, principally China which would like to push the United States out of the Indo-Pacific region. Joined by Russia, bent on conquering neighboring Ukraine and other states that border the former Soviet Union. Also, Iran and North Korea.
Before Japan’s surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, relatively few in America were aware of the dangers posed by the Axis powers of Japan, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. It is similar today, with millions of Americans unaware or indifferent to the threat posed by authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, each with interests utterly counter to the United States and its allies.
One reason Japan’s attempt to sweep the United States from the Pacific failed was although it sunk and destroyed a score of battleships at anchor, it failed to find U.S. aircraft carriers out to sea on drills. That combination of sea power, troops, and air power delivered the world from a nightmare of tyranny.
Edwards Air Force Base, then known as Muroc Army Air Force Base, became the nation’s premier forge of air power used to defeat the Axis powers, end their conquest and shut down the machineries of Holocaust and subjugation of captive peoples.
Bombing crews training out in the remote base on the edge of the Mojave Desert tested their target skills on an enormous wooden structure that loomed off Rogers Dry Lake, with the profile of a Japanese battleship. The target, nicknamed the “Muroc Maru,” took the name of a Japanese warship combined with the name a Mojave whistlestop train station.
Gen. Curtis LeMay, the “Iron Eagle” of World War II, trained bomber crews out on Edwards Dry Lake before sending them to Europe and the Pacific. After World War II, LeMay built the Strategic Air Command, which kept nuclear bombers airborne 24/7 around the world throughout the Cold War.
The SAC motto, “Peace is Our Profession.”
So, it was appropriate the recent, retiring commander of Edwards, Brig. Gen. Higer, turned out for the Dec. 5 regular Coffee4Vets session. With its more than a dozen service organizations, and nearly 100 veterans attending, Coffee4Vets for years has served as a clearinghouse for veteran information.
Higer, who retires from 29 years and six months of active service, at the end of the week posed the question, “Why not 30 years?” That, he quipped, “would make you a careerist.”
Higer, like his predecessor Teichert, made it a practice to drop in on the veterans periodically.
“You are the best,” Higer said. “I have never seen anything in my 29 years and six months that compares to what you have here.”
He lauded the social network that binds veterans of all branches and eras together in the Antelope Valley, an easy drive from Edwards, “Flight Test Center of the Universe.” As someone who will end the week as a veteran himself, he urged all veterans in the room to make sure that they are enrolled for Department of Veterans Affairs health benefits, the VA.
“I encourage all of you … if you don’t enroll, I think you are missing out,” he said.
Higer said he is no stranger to service-linked health needs, and added the VA is simply the best way for any veteran to ensure that they have the healthcare, and service-connected disability benefits.
“You have earned this,” he said.
The attack on Pearl Harbor gave way not only America’s victory with its Allies in World War II. It led to the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars service organizations successfully carrying legislation that led to the G.I. Bill that transformed postwar America with housing, education, and health benefits for Americans who served.
The Antelope Valley had a half-dozen Pearl Harbor attack survivors, all gone now, but they were “Greatest Generation” heroes who saved the freedom we enjoy today.
Editor’s note: Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group in Lancaster. An Army paratrooper veteran, he deployed to Iraq to cover the war for local and national publications. He serves on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.