Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Battle Of Attu 20240713

Todays presenter, mark obmascik. Mark is a native of chicago southside. Hes a graduate from the Medill School of journalism at northwestern. He started his career working for the miami herald and after a year or so came to denver as a reporter for the denver post. He was the lead writer for the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the denver post for covering the tragic Columbine High School shooting in april of 2005. He had been covering the political scene for the post on candidates running for senate and other environmental stories and things get pretty ugly with some of those things. He was exhausted from working the graveyard shift when a colleague suggested he write a feature story for a notable retiring law professor at the university of denver, dr. Thompson marsh who was an enthusiastic, avid ornithologist. Mark himself had always been interested in birds, but it was the birders who fascinated him. Thus he wrote a book about the people who had the time and wherewithal to spend a year tracking down sightings of rare birds. This book titled the big year was turned into a movie starring steve martin, jack black, and owen wilson. [ laughter ] i think the idea of that kind of quest was something that many people try but few succeed was the inspiration for his second book, halfway to heaven, a personal determination to climb all of 54 of colorados 14ers. I heard mark being interviewed on pbs about that book and was impressed that he had promised his wife merrill that he would not go climbing alone and so he turned to the internet to get climbing partners. They had two little boys at the time and that soothed merrills feelings and he succeeded his quest and the adventure turned into a second book which won the National Outdoor book award for outdoor literature and winner of the National Press club for environmental journalism. If you were watching 60 minutes on sunday, last april 7th, you would have had a glimpse of mark obmasciks latest book, a storm on our shores, a tale of facetoface conflict in the midst of our countrys earliest and most horrific battles in world war ii. One last thing, i asked mark if theres anything else he would like me to tell you, he said, yeah, tell them im thinner than i look. [ laughter ] [ applause ] thank you. Thanks a million for coming, what a terrific crowd. I really appreciate it. We live not far from here, and ive driven by this building many, many times, but its the first time ive been inside. Turn this one off . Okay. [ laughter ] usually i rely on our teenage sons for electronics here. Im at a loss today. Thanks a lot for coming. I really appreciate it. So as joan mentioned about 15 years ago i was working on my first book which was about competitive bird watching, of all things. They made it into a movie starring jack black and steve martin and owen wilson and when i was researching that book, i learned about an island, attu, attu. Maybe if you do crossword puzzles, youve heard of it. Otherwise, most people really havent. Attu is the westernmost point of alaska, of the aleutian chain. It is out there. It is so far west, they curve the International Dateline around attu to keep north america on the same calendar page. Its farther west than fiji. About the same longitude as new zealand, and for a time, it was the greatest place in north america to see rare species of birds. And so when i was investigating the history of this island, i looked and saw that in world war ii the japanese had invaded and conquered it. The u. S. Lost part of alaska during world war ii. I didnt know that. The first soil, first u. S. Soil lost since the war of 1812, didnt know that either. The first the only ground battle of world war ii that was fought on north american soil. And i learned that the battle was especially brutal. It had a causality rate that was exceeded in the pacific war only at iwo jima. Now, i took history classes. How come i never knew about this . I didnt know. But still, you know, im not a military historian, im a journalist and im interested in stories of people. But when i found out there were two men who had fought each other on attu, one was an appalachian coal miner, an american war hero, and the other was a surgeon from japan who fought against his will and i learned that those two families had spent almost 40 years trying to find each other after the battle and had attempted reconciliation, and i was hooked. It took me a long time to try to piece together the story. I spent a lot of time in a windowless room at Elmendorf Air force base in anchorage at the national archives, college park, maryland, College Libraries in atlanta, oregon, denver. I talked to people in california, families in arizona, in new mexico, ohio, pennsylvania. But finally the story began to come together and ultimately for me, a big deal was that i actually got to camp on one of the most spectacular places on our planet, attu island itself, which is uninhabited. Ill tell you a little bit more about that and show you some pictures. But ultimately it all came together in my book the storm on our shores. Ill read you the beginning to give you some flavor. Laura davis was confused. In the living room of her house stood a fidgety old man, but she did not know what the visitor wanted. He talked about his grown children, he talked about his arizona retirement and he talked on and on and on about his beloved orchids and all of their beauty and frajility and their rewards. Davis had little patience for idle chitchat or exotic flowers. She was an intensive care nurse scrambling at home with 5yearold fraternal twins, her livein elderly mom, and an increasingly rocky marriage. She tried to be polite, but really, wasnt it time for this guy to go . Finally it was. As laura walked the man outside to his car, he paused and wheeled around, by the way, he told her, im the one who killed your father. Laura reeled. Was this some kind of a joke . By the way, what kind of talk was that . So causal, yet so devastating. With his blackframed glasses and shock of white hair, the visitor looked like a lanky grandfather, not some demented prankster. He seemed nervous too. His face was ashen and grim. Before laura could ask a question, the man dropped into his drivers seat, checked his Rearview Mirror and drove away. He left laura so stunned that she felt dizzy. She had been through a lot in her life, crushing childhood poverty, a lifechanging move from japan to the United States, the birth of her beloved children. But she had always had one deep whole in her life. She had never met her father. He died when laura was a baby before she had babbled even her first word. The little she knew about her father came almost entirely from her mother who wasnt saying much. Laura had been too busy raising her own family to spend time researching the past of a man who existed only as framed photographs on a family wall. With a few brief words uttered in front of a house in sherman oaks, california, the lives of laura davis and her visitor were changed forever. Laura would spend the next years scrambling to uncover her familys past. The visitor would struggle to overcome his own past. They would each learn about honor and encourage, anger and forgiveness, a duty of a man to serve his country even if the result was a pain that would not go away. It would become immeshed in a military battle long forgotten on a miserable island far from civilization, a place that claimed thousands of lives but ultimately yielded no prize for its conquerers. Davis and the visitor would discover the secrets that had ruined lives and the truths that helped to heal them. They would find fathers who soared with joy and others who shouldered burdens that grew unbearable. They would learn about scars that could heal only through atonement. And at the center of all of these revelations would be the diary. In his last 18 days on earth, when lauras father was doomed and knew it, he had written a diary, his final farewell to a family he had just started and a daughter he had never met. That diary had been recovered by the stranger at lauras door. It had been passed around to thousands of u. S. Servicemen. How the diary would change hands and change the hearts of so many who read it would be the greatest lesson of all to laura. So thats how it starts. It goes on [ applause ] so here he is, dirk laird, born and raised born, dirt poor in appalachia. By the time he was 6 years old, i think his family had moved ten times to different coal towns in pennsylvania, west virginia, ohio. Laird loved school but was forced to drop out at age 14 in the depths of the Great Depression to help support his family. By the age of 16, he was an explosives expert, underground in a coal mine in ohio. All around him, coal mining in the depression was really, really dangerous work. He was made to feel grateful to have it, but his friends were getting hurt, maimed, his neighbors were getting killed. Laird himself was in a number of really tough accidents and so he saw that his coal mining life saw that his coal mining life at appalachia, he wanted something better. And what was a safer alternative . U. S. Army. He signed up and on leave one day he met the love of his life, rose, who i think is probably fair to say, i think both would say that they fell in lust before they fell in love. They had a child before they were married, which was really something in those days. I am really so grateful to the laird and the tatsuguchi families who were so candid and opened up their family chest with just so many letters and diaries and photographs and were just so honest and sincere about their own lives. Heres the guy who kind of got me started on this story. Paul nobuo tatsuguchi, born and raised in hiroshima, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, who for college moved from his native japan to attend school in the napa valley of california. That was for undergrad. For medical school he went to Loma Linda University east of los angeles and was did his residency as a surgeon when he was a doctor at white Memorial Hospital in los angeles. Paul tatsuguchi loved america. He loved the freedom and the wanderlust, he loved ice cream and the big buildings and he loved the notion of a nation that rewarded risk instead of encouraged conformity. Paul loved america so much that his girlfriend came over from japan. He proposed to her at Yosemite National park. They married in los angeles and set off on one of the first Greyhound Bus tours from los angeles to on their honeymoon to niagra falls. What more american thing can you do in that generation but honeymoon in niagra falls. When they returned from their honeymoon, there was a telegram waiting for them saying that while you were off on your honeymoon, your parents died. Your brother panicked and nobody can really explain this, but his brother panicked and sold one of his sisters into a brothel in china. And so the newlyweds, paul and taeko, rushed back home to japan to buy his sister out of a brothel. While in japan, pearl harbor happens. So paul is drafted against his will to fight the country he loves. Hes a conflicted man. He is a devout Seventh Day Adventist who is morally opposed to war. He is a passivist and yet hes called to serve his home country. What does he do . Well, in his mind, he justifies this by saying that as a surgeon, hes here to heal and not to fight. But still his countrymen are really suspicious of him. Paul has fallen in love with america and it shows. He is fluent in english. He wears american style wristwatches, glasses, and he is also christian in a shinto buddhist country. And there are a lot of suspicions that he is a spy. Hes never actually fully trusted. Best i can tell, hes the only surgeon inducted into the imperil army who was never given the rank of officer who do you do with a guy you dont quite trust . Send him in the middle of nowhere, attu. There it is up at the top of the screen. Attu is a place that looks like a good military target maybe if you are a general sitting in a Comfortable Office in tokyo. Nobody whos ever been to attu thinks this is a good place to conduct military operations. The thinking by the japanese was that if you take attu, you could island hop, maybe get on the mainland, come down the west coast of the United States. Also if you invade attu, it might serve as a place for the real game, the big naval fight at midway. You can see hawaii and attu on that map. But the reality on the ground of attu is rough. It has some of the worst weather on earth. There are only eight days of the year that are free of rain, snow, sleet, ice or fog. It is at the current it is at the confluence of the colder bering sea and the warmer currents from the pacific ocean. When they mix, it creates this crazy weather phenomenon. I experienced it myself firsthand called willow logs, a mix of the hot and the cold creates these spontaneous, unpredictable hurricaneforce winds, 80mileperhour winds, 100mileperhour winds that knock you off your feet. It is a really bad place to build an air base. [ laughter ] thats only if you can see. The fog on attu, i was there, there were times you would you could reach your hand out and not see it. Thats how dense it would be from this mix of hot and cold. But the japanese decided that this was where they were headed and almost six months to the day after the attack on pearl harbor, the japanese came and claimed this great military prize of attu island. You can see the church to the left, schoolhouse to the right. There were attu is a volcanic island. About 3,000 feet high. Volcanic mountains, 3,000 feet high. Ice up top. Incredible mud down at the bottom from snow melt and all of the precipitation that it gets. And here is their great prize. I think 48 native aleuts lived life on attu, along with a School Teacher and her husband. Japan sent a garrison of more than 2,000 men to invade and claim this island. They could have taken this island with a bullhorn. They did not need a gun. But they had it. There it is. First time flag is foreign power is raised over u. S. Soil since the war of 1812 and they were prepared for it. Japanese had trained on some of their islands that also have big snowfall. They were ready for the elements, as well see later, the u. S. Was not. The japanese were very smart, very strategic, very shrewd fighters, and so that was in june of 1942. The u. S. Looked at attu island to a and said, you want this island with some of the worst weather on earth, you can have it for the winter. [ laughter ] and they did. They let them have it for the winter. But then in may of 1943, they came back. They came back to claim it. And here are some photos some still photos from the battle itself. Attu itself in may when they fought reminded me a little bit of the high country in may during mud season. This volcanic muck really prevented u. S. Troops from moving equipment inland. They couldnt get much mechanized gear in and so they did have to do mantoman passthroughs of supplies. At one point. Dick laird, the u. S. Serviceman, he and the fellow soldiers had just run out of food. They had no food. They couldnt get inland. Theyre waging war with a ferocious enemy and so what laird did was he crawled on his belly to a creek and caught a trout by hand and lived on that. The terrain on attu was challenging to say the least. Maybe even worse by the fact that the u. S. Troops, all their training had been in the mohave desert of california. They were expecting and planning to fight rommel, the nazi in the desert sands of north africa when generals decided to redeploy them to alaska. They sent many u. S. Troops wearing desert gear. One of the biggest problems was boots. As you see, when you do these traverses across places like fish hook ridge, one misstep would cost you your life. Meanwhile, japanese are fortified in the highlands shooting down at them. And so u. S. Troops have been told this might take three days against the garrison of about 3,000 japanese men, almost three weeks later, theyre still fighting. The japanese were really smart. Although well, the japanese who remain on the island were really smart. An amazing thing was, they were a garrison of 3,000 men who were abandoned by their country. They never came for a rescue. The island was blockaded, surrounded by u. S. Troops, and the japanese government simply gave up on them. This turned into kind of the Japanese Version of the alamo. And so the japanese decided not to fight the americans on the beaches. They hold up in the highlands. And with fog and clouds lifting, you can see the clouds in this picture, they would go up and down the mountain based on where the fog was and be on the edge. And so u. S. Troops who were stuck in the mud below never knew who was shooting at them. They described it, they said it was like trying to shoot birds out of a cloud. With the elements, with the desert boots, dozens, hundreds, actually thousands of men ended up with weatherrelated casualties. Many, many people had amputated toes, amputated feet, hands from just standing around in the muck all day. And so they would try to massage each others feet back to life, but this was just terrain that they had no experience fighting on. It was, you know, awful. While all this happened, Paul Tatsuguchi was a surgeon and he started writing a diary that documented what its like to be on the receiving end of the most fearsome military in the history of our planet. He was holed up in a cave doing surgeries and getting shelled. He was suturing up a patient and the doctor next to him was hit by shrapnel and killed. He was performing amputations and having to duck because of u. S. Bombs. Tatsuguchi writes this and it is moving. It is its kind of in a doctors tone. Its just its factual. And what happens then after 18 days of fighting, well past the threeday stint that u. S. Troops thought they would be in for, the japanese are desperate. Theyre down to maybe only about 500 men. And the commander gathers the troops together and they realize that they are out of food. The japanese are out of bullets. Theyre out of hope. And so they decide to mount a last, final bonsai attack. A desperate attack, their last chance. And they do. They go out on the morning. Dick laird is in his tent on the side of a mountain and hears something outside, goes outside of his tent, and through the fog, sees above him that a squad of eight japanese soldiers has captured an american mortar. Theyre spinning that mortar around so that it doesnt point at the japanese. Theyre turning it back on the americans themselves. Laird realizes that this could change the course of the battle and so he sneaks out, pulls out a grenade, pulls the pin, waits, throws the grenade. Rushes up to see what hes done. Not all eight japanese soldiers are dead. Laird finishes that and in the middle of battle, hes looking for any kind of clues, any kind of of hint that can give away some of the japanese plans. And so he starts ransacking materials. He finds some remarkable things. He and the other troops find some remarkable things. They find an address book that is in english and it is full of names and addresses in california. These are the medical School Classmates of Paul Tatsuguchi. Find a bible. Bible has handwritten verse inscribed in the cover, Paul Tatsuguchis favorite verse from deuteronomy, therefore, choose life. And laird finds this paper, handwritten in japanese. Laird is really hoping this is an intelligence report, that it reveals he, japanese strategy. Sends the papers back to be translated and what comes back is not military intelligence but something even more powerful. It is the diary of Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi and laird is crestfallen. All of the training for u. S. Troops had been that japanese soldiers would fight to the death and that they were ruthless, savage, heartless, willing machines. And yet laird reads the diary and sees that Paul Tatsuguchi is a father like dick laird who loves his wife and misses his daughter who hes never even met because he was shipped out when his wife was pregnant. And laird is really troubled by this. He has nightmares. He becomes convinced that he has killed the wrong guy. Laird ends up winning the silver star or hes awarded the silver star for bravery. Thats the armys third highest citation that you can give in battle. Hes given that for courage, for helping to turn the course of the battle. And yet, he cant get over this feeling that hes done something wrong. He did he did what his country asked him to and more. But his conscious is really troubled. This diary really changes Many American views of who the enemy was. Is it the soldier that we were warned about in Training Camp . Sure, theres some of that. The japanese were fantastic i mean, really dedicated fighters. But ultimately in a lot of ways, they werent that different from the dick lairds of the world. And heres one reason why i do nonfiction instead of fiction because some of this you cant make up. Also on the battlefield, they recover a medical satchel. They look in the medical satchel, and it is a copy in english of greys anatomy, the great manual that doctors around the world use for surgery. A soldier opens up the book and sees a name signed on the inside cover, Paul Tatsuguchi. Bring the book back to the back lines, gives it to another doctors who is stunned. He recognizes this name, Paul Tatsuguchi. He goes out on the battlefield and identifies the body of his medical school classmate, Paul Tatsuguchi. And so laird buries a lot of his friends on attu. Laird goes onto fight some of the worst fire fights in world war ii, the philippines, okinawa, and finally hes seen so much combat and hes been so lucky to have survived that he is released before the end of the war. He returns home as a war hero but he cant shake the nightmares. They call them shellshock back then. Maybe today we call them ptsd. But he still did not give up this feeling that he killed the wrong guy on attu. That he killed an american. And so laird goes off and builds a life. Hes got a family. Living in tucson. Hes an asbestos working, working at industrial sites across the desert southwest, but he cant sleep. So many times his wife wakes him up at night because hes screaming. After 40 years, he and rose decided hes got to do something about it. He goes and seeks out Laura Tatsuguchi Davis and thats when they meet in that first scene that i read in the beginning of the book. Now, when laird showed up at laura daviss door, im not sure that he really knew what he wanted to do or say. Laird wasnt really a guy for words. But he wanted to feel something and he didnt. It was really hard and really awkward. And it was hard on him, it was even worse or as hard for Laura Tatsuguchi Davis who realized that she had always known how her father died, but never really knew how he lived. And so laura has a busy life with twins and a career of her own, but in the process, she, laura, decides to go off on her own quest to learn about the life of her father. She meets his college classmates, his medical school roommates, and ultimately after a number of years decides its time. She decides to call the phone number that dick laird left her with those years earlier when he showed up at her door. Laura is really scared but feels like she really wants to meet this guy and she does. She sets up a meeting, a lunch meeting, with dick laird and his native tucson. Shes going to lunch with the man who killed her father and shes scared. And she goes and they go out to lunch. And they look at each other and size each other up and they tell some stories about attu and laura tells, heres what i learned about my father, and laird says, heres what i know about the battle. I know that my country gave me a silver star for what i did, and i just read about you in the diary and i wanted to meet you. And they leave. They part ways. And laura can see that laird is haunted. He is really broken in some ways. He cant escape his actions over the course of three weeks, 40 years ago, in some ways still loom over his life. So laura goes home and sits down that night and writes a letter that is one of the most moving pieces of writing ive seen. She realizes shes the only one who can do this. That dick laird is a troubled soul. And what she does is she wishes peace upon dick laird. She realizes that it was war and he had to do what he had to do. Both men were courageous for their countries. She grants him peace and she grants him atonement. Laird gets that letter and he weeps. Hes a tough guy. And he weeps. And that night is the first time in years that he sleeps without nightmares. And i always come back to this. Look at that picture. What do these people have in common . You know what, were a divided country today, america is divided. Look at these people. This man killed this womans father and you know what . They could figure it out. They could figure it out. Theres some inspiration for me. We can do better as a country. If they can do it, we can do it. So the story took me a long time to do, but it wasnt what i thought it was when i started. But im grateful to the families for helping me bring it through. But i think it still has some for me, at least, its got value today. We could do better. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. [ applause ] when you ask a question, we need to have you come up and use the microphone. I was a reporter and i asked people of questions a lot over the years. This is your chance to stump the chump. [ laughter ] was any of this information about the battle covered in any of the newspapers . Back on the mainland . Yes, it was. But attu was really a pretty the battle of attu was a pretty shameful chapter in the history of both countries. The u. S. For quite a while would not even admit that the island was lost. They feared the propaganda value of that. They knew it really didnt have military or strategic import, but just the notion just six months after pearl harbor, the japanese were still gaining, there was no interest in the War Department to let that message out. For the japanese, they abandoned a garrison of 3,000 men, of 3,000 japanese soldiers. I think there were 28 survivors. It was awful and frankly shameful. They never rescued or really attempted to rescue. And so neither country knew more although, the japanese probably know a little bit more about it because of attu and then a subsequent battle where they outsmarted American Forces. They evacuated thousands of they evacuated thousands of japanese troops from another island in the fog while the u. S. Thought they had the island surrounded and blockaded. It turns out that the u. S. Was firing its gun ships at massive rafts of seabirds. They werent the japanese. While the u. S. Were firing at seabirds, the japanese sneak out and they had very few casualties at that island. So, no, its nobody was very anxious to talk about that and thats probably the reason why at least i never heard of attu. For me, world war ii i think probably for many people, we definitely theres so much focus on europe and germany and the nazis and the pacific war is much less. We might know about pearl harsher, hiroshima, but the japanese were really smart fighters and really dedicated fighters. And for the americans who were called to serve, it is staggering what they went through. My generation got off really easy. Its really something to read the letters and the diaries of the men who fought. Were the japanese ever evacuated . Did the americans when they left the island and the japanese somehow share resources to get those people off the island . Well, the japanese after the battle, there were only i think the japanese had the code which is, you know, death before dishonor. You werent supposed to be taken alive. The few japanese who were taken as prisoners of war, the u. S. Was the u. S. Interrogators were startled because they said that the japanese would tell them everything they knew. The japanese had no training of what to do if youre taken as a prisoner of war because youre not supposed to be taken as a prisoner of war. To the man they asked to never to be sent home to japan because it would be too shameful. They had humiliated themselves and their families. Now, the natives who were on the island before, they were taken as prisoners as well and sent to japan and, you know, im bad with numbers, but i think only half survived. It was awful. Japan was not a good place to be in world war ii, much less in a camp like that. There was no food for japanese much less the natives were living by scrounging in the garbage dumps of japanese. And so the island of attu is for years, the u. S. Set it up as a station. People do ship navigation. Its been replaced by gps to tell you how to get around these days. And so attu has been uninhabited for ten years. Until we got there, nobody landed a plane there for two years. It was nerveracking to go in. Its one of the most seismically active areas on the globe. Its a volcanic island. When we came from 500 miles away, the closest civilian population to attu, 500 miles away, we didnt know if we could land a plane. We didnt know if the runway would be cracked. So we had to circle. We got there and the clouds were too low, the pilot was under orders that the cloud ceiling the clouds had to be at 1,000 feet and they were only at 750 feet, and so we had to circle to look at the condition of the runway. It was hairball. I salute that pilot. It was something. You said that many soldiers read this diary. How was it distributed . It went it was the World War Two version of going viral. Remember those purple sheets, they got passed around that way. Sometimes soldiers would handwrite what they saw in the translated version of the diary and sometimes i ended up finding i think it was eight or ten different versions of the diary where some words would change and as i describe in the book, thats a big deal. Some episodes that dr. Tatsuguchi write about are really controversial, what japanese doctors do either for or to their patients under this code and so that and another the big issue with the diary, the big one was not only were there ten different versions that had been passed around all over between u. S. Servicemen, but the big issue of course was that the u. S. Government either lost or whatever, could not find, some people think it was destroyed, the original version of the diary. So all that survive or english translations. Of course part of the problem was that tatsuguchi was a doctor and he had bad handwriting. Even his wife says that. So theres controversy about what specific passages say and i spent a lot of Research Time and parts of the book discerning what different interpretations are of what he wrote. This is an overwhelming story and if it wouldnt be too personal, i would like to ask you, was there a moment of spirituality in this whole thing that struck you and you said i just you know what, yeah. I learned a lot of things through this. In any career as a journalist, ive seen a lot of bad things, you know, ive covered a lot of murders, spent a lot of time on columbine, a lot of polluted people. But a lot of times in journalism, you end up covering people with titles, senator this or mayor that or general this. And what really struck me about this story was that these are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. There was no audience. There was nobody instagraming a reunion between dick laird and Laura Tatsuguchi Davis. They did it because theyre humans with big hearts. And, you know, i laura was religious. I dont know that laird particularly was. But they just connected on an emotional level. Ultimately you know what, they ended up exchanging christmas cards. Laird was in an assisted living facility and lauras one of lauras twins was going to college at university of arizona tucson. Shed come to visit her son and check up on dick laird. She would check up on the guy who killed her father and theyd go out to lunch. And thats just a that really gave me kind of hope with i guess the resolve and the resilience and the heart of just regular americans. They didnt have to do that. Just a little side, my mothers husband was stationed in alaska. He was a navy pilot and he threw recognizance to the Aleutian Islands. He said the japanese were in the aleutians and he said there were some planes that went out on recognizance and did not come back. And we said, we do not know if it was weatherrelated or the japanese. Just a personal youre flying volcanic islands that go from 0 to 3,000 feet in a short distance. It goes up. And if your socked in fog, you know, it wasnt like there was in fact when the u. S. Came to invade, to take back attu, pilots were actually relying on hold rand mcnally maps. The natives called attu island the cradle of storms, the cradle of storms, where weather is born. It was just an unknown, raw spectacularly beautiful, but also really dangerous place, that people just didnt know about it. How do you send them on a mission to fly in fog like that, and yeah. Man. Hi, mark. Im really good youre here. This was an extraordinary story. I was wondering, you talked about 11,000 americans coming to attu. How many of them survived . You said it was a ghastly loss. It was. I think the final the final american death toll was 549. What really was crippling especially for the americans was the causality rate which i think it worked out to for every 100 japanese on the island, 71 americans were either killed orders became casualties. The terrain in attu because you couldnt move equipment in, if a man was wounded, if he got hurt, it would require six, eight people to haul him back and so i think probably in some ways the japanese adopted a strategy of trying to get casualties instead of deaths because that would zap the American Force even more. But so many of the casualties were weatherrelated, just from having the wrong equipment, from having desert gear to fight in the islands of alaska. The u. S. Generals, if the Imperial Army generals looked at that map and thought that looked like a good place to fight, well, the american generals thought it would be an easy thing to take back. And for a threeday battle, youve got the island completely surrounded, your enemy is unable to restock, to resupply. For that to have taken almost three weeks is really a question, how come people didnt know about attu . If you look at the logistics and how the data was waged, there are lessons to learn from attu, but i think theyre mostly cautionary tales. Will you share some of your process . How do you know when you have a story that will be a book and how do you balance the Extensive Research that had to go into it . How do you pace yourself . Just tell us how it all comes together in five minutes. [ laughter ] well, this book especially was tricky for me because originally i was just i was just struck by the japanese took part of alaska during world war ii, i didnt know that. So i started looking into the battle and i actually had a number of different threads for the battle, but then when i found the laird tatsuguchi thing, two men who had not only fought each other, but had families that met each other afterward, then i just pairreed lot of branches off the tree. Its a crazy thing that you can still find world war ii stories like this. We spent a lot of time talking when we camped in attu, where are these comparable stories for afghanistan and comparable stories for iraq . I think it probably happened, but people arent ready to talk about it yet. This generation, in some ways it was really difficult and in some ways i was really lucky. We were talking before that another woman had several relatives who had fought in world war ii and just people didnt instagram their fights back then. Our kids are putting their lunches on facebook. Theyre just a lot more public than that generation, where people were really circumspect. A lot of people i know tried to talk to their dads about what combat was like and could never get it out of them. It wasnt even something that they liked to talk about much at the vfw hall for some place like that. However, they did write letters home to their sweet hearts and many of them also wrote diaries. And again, im grateful to the laird and tatsuguchi families who kind of opened their family archives to me to be able to document so much of what their dads never talked about, they in some cases wrote about. So i had the premise of japan and alaska and then i found a really human for me a really compelling and inspiring people about two people. I want to thank you for an incredibly inspiring morning. I agree, we can do better. What is your next book going to do to help us do better . [ laughter ] im always open. Hit me up. If you have good ideas, let me know. I did not start i did not seek this, nobody pitched this to me. I found it. But it really persuaded me that theres just there are so many Great Stories that happened that nobody is interested in publicity for. So many people do good things not for recognition, but because theyre good people. They do hard things. But they do the right things. Mark, you didnt say anything about the japanese wife of the doctor, whatever happened to her. Did she know the story . Yeah, she is a Pretty Amazing person as well. She thought she had signed on to be a doctors wife, and instead she was a widow with two very young daughters getting shelled every night in japan. And moved her daughters from city to city in wartime japan. And ended up her parents, her father was actually a Seventh Day Adventist minister in honolulu and he had no idea what had happened to his soninlaw or his daughter. After the war was over, she was able to contact her parents and it still took many years for her to save money, for her parents to save money for their congregation in honolulu to raise money. And they were reunited in honolulu and for years i mean, laura told me that for a long time a big meal for the tatsuguchi girls was like whale bluber soup, and they show up in honolulu and theres Fruit Growing on trees. And laura became a u. S. Citizen. I met taiacho just a few weeks before she died. She had been living with laura for years, for decades, actually, in l. A. I met her out there and i really felt like she had just been through so much and she had survived so much with her daughters. She had poured her life into her daughters, who both came from really nothing in japan. They moved to the United States and they both went to college and ended up as nurses. Those girls taiacho gave her life for her daughters. When i met her, i felt i was in the presence of quiet greatness. So i have the microphone, but youve answered my question already. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful presentation. Thanks. Mark, i was wondering, do you have any plans to try to market the book in japan itself . Yeah, yeah, theyre working on selling it overseas. My first book is in i dont know, ten countries, a lot of different languages. And i hope this one goes as well. The views of world war ii, its the pacific war. But we have a different view of the war than whats taught in japanese schools. So did laura ever see the document that her father wrote . Yes, laura did see the document that her father wrote. Not the original in his japanese handwriting, but she saw many of the translated copies. One of the great things with having a last name like tatsuguchi is that people can find you. So after the war, many servicemen would find tatsuguchi in the phone book or whatever and they would mail their copy of the diary to laura. And laura met many u. S. Vets that way. So did that happen before she met laird, then . Yes, she knew about the diary in the 50s. Well, her mother knew about the diary in the 50s. Thank you. Sure. Thanks for coming. How did the laird family handle this whole situation . We heard so much about the tatsuguchi family reaching out. How did the laird family did they embrace the tatsuguchi family in any way . It was most dick laird and the tatsuguchi family, because laird frankly was the one who had the wartime experience. The tatsuguchis lost their father. The laird family had a father who was troubled. But they didnt feel i dont know how to say it really, but he was kind of a stoic guy who wasnt big on emotions, not particularly eloquent. He was sturdy and hardworking and really saw right and wrong in things. But he wasnt a speech giver. And so i think his family i think this was kind of lairds own healing, that only he could do it. They couldnt help him so much. Its a hard thing when you do i mean, hes a decorated hero. And for one of the greatest things he did in his life, he had great regrets. How do you handle that . Would you want to talk with your kids about that . He talked with his wife about it, but, you know, we talk about feelings probably more now than we did then. I was 9 years old, like many of you here, when pearl harbor happened. And i have a lot of memories of growing up in a small town in michigan during the war. But i have one memory that occurred, in 1942 that is as clear in my mind today as it was back when it happened. I was in school and one of the workers brought a note in and handed it to the teacher and she walked back to my desk. And i thought, my god, im in trouble. But the note said go to the Principals Office right now. So i did. And the principal was standing outside of his office waiting for me, and he said, joe, youve got to go to the train station right now. Your mother wants to see you there. I got on my bicycle and i started riding toward the train station and i realized that it was a very long, unusually long passenger train that was cutting off all of the streets so i had to wind my way around to get to the station. And when i finally did, i saw my mother and my dad and my sister and my uncle bob standing there at the train station. And i came up and i said, mom, whats going on . She said uncle bob is leaving to go in the army. Uncle bob was only 10 years older than i was. He was my fathers youngest brother. He had just graduated from high school. Never been out of our little home town, never been out of the town, let alone the state. And he was getting on this train. The strange thing about this train was back in those days they didnt have airconditioning, all the windows were open. And out of every window was a young boy hanging out of the window and farmers wives and people who were walking along the train handing them apples and fruit and pieces of pie and so forth. And so my uncle bob got on there with all these young boys and went to some place they didnt know where they were going. They didnt know if they would ever come back. Just out of high school. And bob never did come back. He went to, like all the other bias, to the swamps of louisiana to train to go to war in the pacific, and he was bob wrote me a letter at one time. I still have it. He wrote it from a hospital in, i think, australia. It was one of those where he couldnt see where he was. But he managed to say that he thought that he was probably going to have to go back to new guinea, and he did. And bob was killed, oddly enough, we were talking about attu. He was killed on the landing at atipay in new guinea, but the erie thing about it is all of these young boys, farm boys, this train was coming along and scraping them up and taking them. They didnt know where they were going or when they were coming back. And it reminds us all that actually world war ii was fought by young boys. Every battle you would think of, they were young boys. And it strikes your memory. Thank you. Thank you. [ applause ] i have a question. Youve talked about the diary, but you didnt talk a lot about the entries into the diary. So im curious what one of the more interesting entries in the diary was . Well, you can read the book. [ laughter ] i think just in general, you know what, this is really kind of the only surviving account of what it was like to be on the receiving end of the American Military and what its like to be doomed. If youve got a commander saying that this is it, were going out in a few hours, what are you going to do . What are you going to write to your wife . What are you going to write to the daughter you never met . And we just we ask a lot of these boys and they gave a lot. You talked about visiting attu and no one was living on the island. What happened to the native people who were there . Yeah, we didnt learn our lesson with native americans and reservations, but in general after the invasion of attu, the u. S. Kind of evicted all natives from the islands and resettled them in places like anchorage, seattle, and in many cases they were never allowed to return to their home islands. And a culture was destroyed. In some cases theyre trying to put together and reclaim the vestiges of what held them together. But attu, for example, they never lived on attu again and a number of islands. It is a sfek tapectacular place the weather is okay. [ laughter ] i am grateful. Thanks so much for coming. [ applause ] campaign 2020, watch our live coverage of the president ial candidates on the campaign trail and make up your own mind. Cspans campaign 2020, your unfiltered view of politics. 150 years ago on march 30th, 1867, the United States purchased alaska from the russian empire for 7. 2 million. After the attack on pearl harbor in 1941, the territory became strategically vital for the american war effort because of its close approximaproximity to. Up next on reel america, a report from the aleutians, about the long island chain. The documentary tells the story of the early stages of the Aleutian Islands campaign during world war ii and depicts the harsh weather and Living Conditions faced by u. S. 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