His experience. He enjoyed that so much that he set up this foundation called writers in residence the idea of which was to put writers in residence in some interesting places and in exchange for that you would write a book about your experience. I am a professional writer which means i will do anything to get out of the house so when he called and said was their summer i would like to go, i immediately liked the idea of it it. As i thought of where i might like to go it became very quickly apparent to me it would be a real waste to go anywhere that i might have access to in my normal life even a super luxury is bungalow in tahiti which of course i like that kind of stuff but the thing is i could go there under my own speed and with a bit of ingenuity i could probably arrange it for free as well. So there was no need, there was no point so very quickly i mean the thought process narrowed down to somewhere really somewhere military really somewhere you couldnt get to in your own life. Britain doesnt have an Aircraft Carrier because we are still kind of bankrupt from fighting the Second World War and there is one being built but in any case i wouldnt have wanted to be on a british Aircraft Carrier carrier. But i said if you could get me on an american Aircraft Carrier i would do it. Time went by about for months months i think, maybe less he called back and said okay thats it, youre on. When are you free to fly to bahrain and from bahrain we would fly onto the carrier. And then it was really striking to me how painless this process was because im here in america on a visa and its a real headache getting a visa. Its incredibly timeconsuming and you have to call in all sorts of favors from people to get to write letters for you. Where is getting on this Aircraft Carrier strangely involved no effort at all. So when i did the first public event in london with the book came out it wasnt as easy as it seems. He said no it was the most difficult thing he had ever been involved in. [laughter] and at one point he got a call from a quite high ranking Public Affairs person in the u. S. Navy who said look i have discovered there are to geoff dyers both that spell their names the same way one that writes these layabout novels and the others are perfectly respectable journalist with the financial times. Please tell me its the second one. [laughter] bet the person was trained and educated as a philosopher which means he is able to fudge these issues of truth. Anyway they accepted me and thats how it came about. This may be the funniest book about the military that i have ever read and one of the funny things about it is yourself. You write quite honestly that you have a total inability to get used to things that you dont really want to get used to and when you showed up on the ship you have asked for a room of your own. [laughter] not only have i asked for a room i was really adamant that i had to have a room of my own. They wrote back and said you have to understand that sometimes there are 400 people to adore them. Hes going to get vip treatment by sharing with just five other officers. I wrote back no, no no i would rather share with 405 because the more people are deluded the better really. Its better to share with five and one other person i think in a round. Although there are many circumstances in which id be very happy to be in a room with someone. This wasnt one of those circumstances where wanted to a bail myself of those privileges. And i wrote back and said oh you know i have to have a room of my own because i will be typing at night and i will keep other people away. They said you know coming into land with planes and taking off we wont be able to hear you. [laughter] so then the next thing i said oh my is shot to hell and to hell and 92 p. Twice a night. And it went on until this was the thing is i really had to have my own room. I just didnt think i could bear it. Im an only child. I have no brothers or sisters and as my wife is always saying and not entirely fond terms im incapable of sharing. So anyway i resigned myself to sharing this room and i was really dreading it. And then i should have added as well each writer in the series went to the institution that they were going to be in residence inn with a photographer so we land on the carrier and they take me in a snapper. I refer to this distinguished photographers never by name. He was the snapper something he was not too happy when he finally saw the proofs of it. Anyway they took me to my room and i ended up in the Vice President ial suite. The thing as i took on the u. S. Navy and one. Its always nice visiting peoples humiliations but if you look at some of the reviews on amazon you will see that my insisting on getting my own room was the first of many things that antagonized some other reviewers on amazon site to the extent that one of the great ones is it possible to load the person you have never met just on the basis of their writing . The great thing is you are not buying the book on amazon. You are buying it here so these credible antagonistic people. [laughter] you are very honest in the book. You didnt like the food. It was never quiet. You felt like you never fit in. The right the Aircraft Carrier quote known like a garage with 50,000 cars and at each suffering a major fuel leak and yet you are writing about it is funny and witty. Its kind in generous so were you taking notes on the ship and writing at night or did you sort of have the time and distance to recast your thoughts . Well a bit of oath. I certainly was taking notes all the time because it was one of the most intense experiences. I was only on this ship for two weeks. Each day was jampacked and i would be seeing one incredible thing and that would make quite an impression on me and that would be instantly overlaid with another incredible thing so taking notes all the time. Actually it was rather wise of me to insist on my own room because im used to just flopping around in my pajamas. Im not used to spending the days with other people. I was meeting a lot of people for the first time. It was really enjoyable but with all the demands that made on me every time i got a moment had come back to my escape room shut the door with a huge sense of relief and then start writing and it was essential to preserve my impressions and the memories that were shot because every time i went back to the room i had already been to for amazing places so yeah it was necessary to take those notes. But then of course i had many months to rewrite the whole thing properly when i was back. Anyone who writes knows house important it is to make notes. Would the read a little bit from the book . Certainly. Its funny because i read a piece and it was an interview with somebody on the ship. It was one of the most satirical pieces in the book. I really want to read that bit. I dont want to come here and people will think that i just got onto this incredible ship and i was making fun of it. What i would do is read you two other passages the second of which will be another set of making fun of someone but i feel okay about it because the person being made fun of this myself. I thought it was funny i just described to you we flew from bahrain on the plane and as we came into land we missed the wires and then we landed successfully copy arresting wire and once we checked in as it were then we were back where of course i was happy to be on the flight deck which is where all the action is as it were. I will just described my First Impressions of the flight deck. There was a lot to take in her a lot to be able to take in. Like the size of the flight deck deck. How big was that . Impossible to say. As big as it was there was nothing to compare it with. Well there were were people in jets and tons of other equipment but there was nothing bigger than it except the cm the sky was always serves to emphasize the lack of Everything Else. So intangible ethical terms the carrier was the world and as such was all that was the case. I was not the first rider ever to set foot on an Aircraft Carrier. One of my predecessors have been holed up by an editor for fiddling his expenses. Somethings are not unheard of in the world of journalism but this time the editor had to write claiming taxi fares during the period being on board the carrier. I know said the journalist but have you seen the size of these things . [laughter] i heard another story about two brothers working in different sections of the same character who didnt set eyes on each other during the seven months of their deployment. Didnt matter whether stories like these were factually correct the truth to which they attest its carriers are big enough to generate stories about how big they are. The flight deck is not only big, its also overwhelmingly horizontal. That is what the carrier has come appeared undisturbed length of wars and apology. What remains that we would jabber this he pitches at it. The teams in their floats are my tomato time i visited the Chicago Stock Exchange with this traitors and the color coordinated lasers on the floor all gesturing and clamoring in the repeated daily ritual that make perfect sense the consequences of which were potentially catastrophic. Here too the functions of each teamwork clearly differentiated from one another according to a code i did not yet understand except for the brownshirts. We were on one of the most technologically advanced places on earth. The guys in greece smeared jerseys and flood coats draped with heavy chains look like they were ready to face the burning oil poured on them from the wars of an pardonable castles. The combination of many evil in chains and sciencefiction their cranial helmets and dark visors didnt quite cover it. There was also an element of a biker gang about them. All Things Considered theirs was one of the toughest and roughest looks going. No wonder they stood there lounging with the grace of heavy gunslingers about to sway into a saloon. Every gesture was determined by having to move in this underwater weight of chains. I couldnt keep my eyes off of them. They werent posing but in the silent world everyone is looking at everyone else so its silent because on the flight deck you are wearing these intense ear protectors. Everyone is looking at everyone else the whole time. All communication is visual so you are conscious if you are a guy with a lot of chains around her shoulders like a ammo belt that its sure for whom it is some kind of fantasy. Not a sexual one, more like a fantasy of evolution itself and they were swaggering. There was just a grace that comes from having to minimize effort if the task is to be properly done especially if a good part of that task involves standing around waiting with all that weight on your shoulders. The air was an ecological disaster. It was hot anyway in the heat reared up the deck and then the fumes of jet fuel. Whenever a jet maneuvered towards the catapult back to the elevator there was a wash of superheated wind like death valley with an oil tail blowing through it. Critics argue that the First World War and the invasion of iraq were all of their americas insatiable need for oil. What did we need this oil for to sustain our presence here to keep flying missions. The whole enterprise reeked of Oil Paintings were taking off. The fact that cranials insulated us from the sky spitting noise emphasized the tremendous forces at work. There was an acute sense of thousands of years of history of irvine meant the refinement of the urge to make war and the need for oil in order to do so converging here. I think we will leave it at that at the moment and we will read a passage later on if we have a chance. You write about that there are 5000 people on that ship. It is a huge place that you can never really get away from. Well thats right. Its just this past thing and there are 5000 people on board. I didnt realize it was going to be as crowded as the bombay slum is the phrase i use. I was naively thinking that i thought there might be Tennis Courts on board. I was expecting something of a cruise liner. What it really reminded me of very much my dad when i was a 17yearold i used to borrow my dads car to go out. He would never let me park it in his garage because i was always crammed so full of tools. It was very very difficult to maneuver the car and he never trusted me to do it. But it was very like that. Every bit of space on this huge thing was used in underneath the flight deck which is big and empty of course there is the hangar deck where 66 planes are being stored and repaired. So that gives you a sense of all the stuff thats going on there. So its very very crowded. To the navy put any conditions on you . One of the interesting chapters here is you got to interview i dont know the exact term but they director the prison on the ship and there wasnt anyone in the prison at the time but didnt the navy say to you cannot talk to this person for that department . No. At first the snapper and i were told that we would always be escorted by this guy to stop me from seeing stuff. But in fact it was because its very easy to have an accident. Its an industrial environment as much as anything. On the flight deck there is a guy running big flight deck operations. The flight deck is the safest most dangerous place on earth. You have to be very closely escorted when youre on the flight deck. Just more generally you have to have an escort because its so its on seven levels. They all look the same. Honestly the photographer and i would still be trying to find the exit door now if we hadnt had the escort. Whenever a set i wanted to speak or whenever i wanted to go they arranged it. There were really no restrictions put on me. I didnt go to the reactor room understandably and there was just this incredible openness really. They could have been more accommodating. You interviewed a number of servicemembers on the carrier. Is there one who sticks in your mind as being less memorable . There were so many. The other thing of course i complain about the food but its all at my expense. I knew i was going to like it. Like many english people when i first came to america i was in my late 20s and i loved it so i knew i was going to like it on the carrier. And in many ways this was a concentration of americanness sort of a version of america that i hadnt really seen the bible belt midwest kind of thing. Still in it was going to be an american experience. And i did really really love it. I met loads of incredible people. One of the reasons that riggs was empty, the navy is evolved since the days of captain bly in a mutiny on the bounty in there are two things. One of the reasons i think the english people love america is the incredible politeness of american society. And the politeness that i have eyes associated with america was raised to an incredible level on the carrier. For quite obvious reasons. A way of making your way through the world famous. So its just a way of keeping things going so the captain of the ship created a very nice atmosphere. These kids were all crammed together for seven months. The other thing that had a huge effect on it i should have said this actually. Obviously its a military ship. They need the politeness there is that iron inflexible discipline which has to be there in the military or a military organization which are originally hierarchy. You cant run it like it where you spend hours or days saying why we are not going to get the soya milk from the supplier anymore. So anyway but incredibly hierarchical. Very polite and the other thing that made it so much easier for everybody i went to Oxford College which was found in whatever year it was in 600 years probably made this momentous decision while i was there. They were going to allow women in and at Oxford College there was this thing of hey it was no problem at all. Why did we do this 500 years ago . Similarly decamped member exactly, maybe a fifth of the crewmembers were women. That was another great thing, there were so much resistance to it. One of the older highranking officers said after all this fear about what women would do women have become this incredible thing. They said the only real effect was the vote smelled a bit nicer because the guys showered more. The military weirdly was at the forefront of racial integration so its a funny thing. It felt like a very progressive place. I didnt see any the funny thing after i had been on the vote for two weeks and when i flew off the boat there was a woman flying off with me and she wasnt in her uniform. She was just wearing a normal tshirt and she had long hair and i was kind of noticing her shall we say. I wrote about this in the book in another comment on amazon was from one of the crewmembers who said yeah the bit about buying of this woman he said yeah hes a bit creepy. Basically i was the creepy guy on the boat. I was also the only guy on the boat the call that a boat read. The politeness the heightened politeness that you mentioned seemed pretty important because you do right that quote for everyone except the pilot and helicopter crews that carrier was a kind of prison ship. These 5000 people on board who had to stay on the ship much longer than you did is it because of that politeness that they are able to withstand it . There are all sorts of things. They are kept incredibly busy as well. Another naive assumption is i assume there would be a bar. I was really looking forward to racking up some expense claims. Of course there is no bar and you know they are kept incredibly busy. The kids are basically college age. When i was in college a lot of that time was spent drinking. They are working really hard and when their long arduous days in a duo one of two things essentially. They are in the gym a lot or trying to work their way up to the next level. Its really very impressive. I should have said when you asked if i meet some impressive people. The captain was incredibly impressive even or impressive in a way that for five days on the carrier he was outranked by the admiral of the whole fleet who came to stay on the ship and she which i think is incredibly cool in itself avril admiral norah tyson from kentucky was an english major. So lots of people, i mean there were a lot of kids i was talking to and you would expect didnt have much else going on in their lives and many of those kids that word academically gifted at all but they would be at the age of 12 able to repair it bike. I know that doesnt sound very impressive to you but maybe at the age of five. Obviously this is a mechanically minded audience. But i think the single most impressive guy i met was this guy was an amazing name. He was from birmingham alabama and his name was clintons stonewall the third grade he was an africanamerican guy. When he introduced himself like that i said is it possible to get more history into your name . He was just an extraordinary guy and gave us some aging amazing speech when he was promoted. It was just an incredible speech. At the end of that all of his friends were going up to him in that very punching him on the back of the sort of stuff. I sort of one of time as well and congratulated him but honestly tears running down my cheeks in a rather pathetic way. Was just so impressive. Do you want to read one more passage . One of the things about the book, im glad you said it was funny. The humor comes from just this kind of collision really between this world where everyone everybody is told what to do all the time. I come from this life where from college onward i have just done whatever i wanted 365 days a year. So this collision is quite interesting. I was always selfconscious on the boat. I know it should be called a ship that im calling it a boat. He never felt like it was blending in. The crewmembers were too busy with their long shifts and Everything Else that occupy their crowded days but i felt as though i stuck out like a hitchhikers thumb. I kept going back to joan didions declaration of her advantages as a reporter towards bethlehem one of which she was quote so physically small that people forgot all about her. I on the other hand was probably the tallest, thinnest and my great chagrin oldest person on the boat. I was ever in the way constantly saying sorry, excuse me and generally gangling around the place never more conspicuous than when i was attempting lurk unseen on the edges of the gym lemming into the penalty box. Hes a very tall skinny english player. There was a line getting to the gym and there wasnt a lot of space once you got them. Wasnt just the room was small there was also the small matter of every person and it being the size of two people. Arms were as big as legs next the size of waste ways and so on. Three guys were running marathons on treadmills. The rest were inflating themselves with weights. They wore baggy shorts to prove there was always room for further expansion. Even the guys who didnt look that date were plenty big. The bald guys look like their schools were pumped. And then slinking the mermaid on the bicep had become six months pregnant by the time seven reps have been completed. I have always been intimidated by it gems. Ive never been able to enjoy the confidence of someone who knows he can bench press 250 pounds or even knows what that means or how much 250 pounds actually ways. I just know i dont like knitting heavy things. Especially since i have this wrist injury would stop me from playing tennis in which meant i had been going from fit and fitted to a streak of manhood who was only saving grace that he doesnt take up much space and leave plenty for others. I slunk in the corner like a pop wondering if the visible tattoo vocal dog wouldnt have made me look more or less pathetic. The room was bursting with straining flesh and grimacing biceps. Breath came in fierce snorts. There was a clank of heavy metal being laid roughly to rest. I was conscious that i was staring at these arms and chest that might have been construed as. Anthony bennett the fit boss was standing next to me wearing it tshirt. He had grown up in a military family and was actually a civilian supervising exercise program on a ship. From what i could see his job was that of a stopping people from getting in. The gym was filled to capacity so he was operating the one in and one out policy that you get overcrowded nightclubs. I didnt know what to say but i asked how big can make human arm become before it stops being a limb and morphs into Something Else . Excuse me said it will have to hope so i changed my tune tuning came up question. Still physical but less matter. I said are you the person on the boat click a lot of people are vitter than me. A lot of people fatter than me i quipped back. The conversation was taking out an unhinged quality and its compatibility otherwise with fitness and wellbeing. Most people eat healthier on the ship than they do at home he said. This seems to utterly plausible. I nodded and away that i hoped would not seem to tough tofu snooty. We stood without speaking arms folded his massively mind meagerly like spectators at a muscular i dont suppose you know anyone that i could score some steroids from . He smiled and shook his head. Better make room for somebody else i said. Squeezing past him as though i just shattered the Bench Press Reps record read. I think we have time for a quick question or two. Does anybody have a question for our tofu eating snooty clerks. So you got to take two weeks on a boat. What would you pick for your next two weeks if you have a choice of anything . Oh a good question. I would love to go into space. So yeah i would be really up for that. You are quite right, no no but if you have an in im certainly ready for that. Did you have to split the manuscript with the pentagon before was published . No i didnt because all of these books of reportage that have come out of afghanistan and iraq you will find in all of them are writers always end up accommodating the military because the great thing about a book is theres not really any case to be made for jeopardizing the operational security. This is so anecdotal and observational. There was nothing. I saw the planes taking off and then they would land again. Whatever the planes have been doing i wouldnt have seen what they were doing but it really wasnt an issue. Also the truth is the military comes out of this looking pretty well and justifiably so. The bigger question which i dont get into of whether the aircraft should be there at all that seemed to me a whole other question whether iraq should have been invaded. We havent got time to get into that now. Would the do you think of the experience of being caught in the catapult to launch you off the ship . What did you think of that . That was great and on the way out the plane i was taking off on i was sitting backwards so the g. Force was going to throw me back into this trap. They had made this big fuss about strapping yourself in really tight and all this. The buckles were right over my collarbone and it was really noisy. I yelled to the guy, i said that buckles are over my caller bones. He said what do you want me to do about it sir . I was going to say could you bring me a gin and tonic. But i worried it was going to shatter my collarbone. It wasnt going to happen and there was no problem at all. If there had been room to me have gone up in the twoseater in the passenger seat i would have gone. I love all this stuff. There are some twoseaters but the navigator is a function that i would not have been able to fulfill myself. Yes sir. Lets wait for the person with the mica will come to you. In the vietnam era i served and i had a cousin that was going into the navy and they went to a Swimming Pool during basic training, a Swimming Pool and he said the drill instructor said to can swim here . They jumped into the ninefoot. Who cant swim . Go to 3 feet. So he didnt know how to swim. Did they have a pool on the ship ship . He could swim but he was in the navy. They didnt have a pool but earlier in the deployment when i was there they had a suspended flight and they had a party up on the flight deck. Earlier on they have this thing come i cant remember what the name of it is but they stopped the carrier and they have this thing where they would jump off the carrier and some around. So that would be a way of discovering if you could swim. I love jumping off high places and the water so all of that i was really up for. I couldnt really ask the captain to stop the boat so we could all clown around in the sea. No pool and no bar. It sounds great. It really was great. Thats what i want to emphasize. It was amazing. Any more questions . I have a question. Go ahead. [inaudible] the question was whether i got any feedback from the personnel. The guy who chaperoned me around we got on so well. He was an amazing guy. Its this thing, isnt it . Obviously on a ship like this the other thing is what a delight it was. Theres a lot of joking and bantering. Im english so im always up for that. So we really had great fun. He was a real bornagain christian really evangelical and they sell it really. A zealot really. I am every bit as an atheist and we had so much time joshing around. So yeah i really got on well with everybody. I heard from quite a few people including admiral norah tyson saying how much she had liked the book and about the person who said i was creepy. Anything ive heard has been really quite positive. The thing is about the book when im making a fuss about not liking the food im not unaware that im behaving like a spoiled brat and a jerk. Its of buying into that valley. Either find it funny or you find me the author pain in the back. I know which side im on nonthat. Incredibly charming. [laughter] lets thank our pain and in that for down today. [applause] geoff is going to sign books on the second floor such as meet medium up there. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] now the final panel from the san antonio book festival Jan Jarboe Russell and Richard Reeves discuss american internment camps during world war ii. [inaudible conversations] is impossible to close the doors in the back . That would be great, thank you. I have been looking forward to this. I have read both of the books that you need to. First of all i want to thank everybody for coming to the third san antonio book festival and clearly this crowd is Getting Better every year. I need to tell you that afterwards the authors will be in the reference section on the second floor to help you buy their books and to sign them. Also it says here very important to tell you that a portion of the proceeds from book sales benefits the San Antonio Public Library foundation which is the group putting this on and which is becoming ever more important as the city revenues for the library are static or worse so thats a really good thing to support. All right let me introduce the authors. We have of course Jan Jarboe Russell with whom i have been a colleague on a couple of occasions. We go back 60 years but you are not that old. She is a contributing editor that to the Texas Monthly and has written for express news and the light. You didnt do the like, did you . Thats right you did for a while. I wrote for them twice. The New York Times life and other magazines and she is the author of Lady Bird Johnson has compiled and edited they lived to tell the tale she lives in San Antonio San Antonio texas with her husband louis s. Russell junior and we are here to talk about her book the train to crystal city. Richard reeves and we are here for his book infamy. Theyre both of course about internment during world war ii. This book is infamy the shocking story of the japanese internment in world war ii. He is a bestselling author of such books as president kennedy and awardwinning journalist who has written for the New York Times, the new yorker, served as chief correspondent for pbs frontline and is currently a senior lecturer at the university of Southern California and splits his time living between new york and los angeles read welcome to you both. Richard i want to start with you you. Your book the fundamental baseline of it is its about the incredible exercise in or what i would like you to help us out in the beginning is to help us understand the level of hysteria and the racism that led to 120000 japanese people putting them basically in concentration camps. Left you left out greed which was a big factor too. At the beginning of world war ii there were 120,000 japanese living japaneseamericans. 75 of them were citizens. The other 25 were not citizens because asians could not become citizens of the United States from 1924 to 1952. Citizenship was reserved for white people of good character according to the oriental exclusion law law of 1924. So they were enemy aliens. We were at war with japan. Their children had been born in the United States, were american citizens were totally american eyes. They were going to berkeley, to ucla two usc. Most of them didnt speak a word of japanese and none of them had ever seen japan. The reaction on the west coast after pearl harbor by what many people would call the best people in the country basically lead within two months to them being shipped off into horse stables. They were living in horse stables and livestock pavilions for three months while barracks were built in 10 places across the country in the high deserts, in the west end and swamps in arkansas where no people had ever lived before nor ever did again. What drove it was first the press which was within a couple of weeks of pearl harbor absolutely spreading the message that the japanese were about to invade the west coast which they knew really. The japanese did not have that time that kind of military capability. The charge to put these people
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