A Day at the Museum

Saturday my grandson Emery had errands to run and ended up at the Idaho Military Museum (it was Emery’s idea).

The museum is well done. It mostly follows history from WWI to the present. It does have a Civil War era Cannon and a few other military items, but mostly it deals with the military from 1914 to the present. The Idaho Military Museum also has artifacts and weapons from The different countries we fought during those wars and conflicts.

For at least an hour, Emery and I were the only people in the museum, reading the stories, learning about items, even getting instruction on how to shoot a howitzer from Erik Kunkle who was our host.

Now I’m a history nut, especially military history and I learned things during the visit, including the fact that Boise had a battleship named after it. Well in military terms it was a Light Cruiser. The USS Boise was over 600ft long and had 14 inch guns. It fought during WWII in both the Atlantic and Pacific and was well decorated. It even carried General Douglas MacArthur on his tour of the Philippines.

In 1946 the USS Boise was decommissioned and in 1951 sold to Argentina where it was renamed the Nueve de Julio (July the 9th, Argentina’s independence day). It served until 1978 when it was decommissioned again, towed to Japan and sold for scrap.

The Idaho Military Museum is open Tuesday thru Friday from 10-4 and Saturday, noon to 4. Admission is free and donations are accepted. I encourage you to take your kids and let them really see history. Too much is lost today with social media and not enough learned with being in the present. Emery and I spent over two hours there we bought some model planes home, spent the night building them and then went online to see how more about them.

Thanks retired Msgt Erik Kunkle for the tour and time, it was well worth it.

Kevin Mee

Uss Boise at sea. Photo United States Armed Forces Library.