Are not happy. We get on the phone and call places in San Francisco and new york and say, we just got matched, we are ready to sign a contract but we wonder in before we sign what he had positions. They look at the rank order list at a look at that. I become we are talking to two different employers typically. They say look, shes better than some of those people we were assigned to match with. They figured sure, we just have an extra position, come on down. [inaudible] this was disruption. We had to restore stability of couples. Way to make sure we would ask couples what you want instead of asking him what your first choice, second choice of what your spouses first choice. We would ask what is your first choice as a couple . What pair of jobs would you like . What is your second choice . That presents a mathematical difficulty but into the ask that question you cant possibly give a couple what they want. The book is wonderful. Ucf hides ties all these things together. Its everything from why the oakland Football Team is called the sooners to why a turmoil country newborns are it goes on and on, these wonderful examples. Should we think of these as the are these anomalies with a matching doesnt quite work, is there a larger message for the people who read your book . What is the message you want your readers to take away from your book . I guess there are a couple of arguments. The simplest one is what you get from a reading of your guide to the for 20 to for a walk in the woods. You see the birth in a different way. Theres a variety of birds and they eat Different Things and they are built so they can catch fish or squirrels or gophers. So i would like people to look at mark is a little differently. Markets are not just the stock exchange. They are the farmers market. There are all sorts of ways we interact with each other that when you see them in the detail, you understand more about them. So, for example, let me describe to you how restaurants, different kinds of restaurants are organized to deal with congestion. After describe it to you, you will be able to tell me what color the tablecloth is a. Okay . The restaurant one, their suggestion is in the kitchen. So you need a reservation in order to get a seat at that restaurant. It takes a while for the food becomes the first are asked would you like some wine or cocktail . You place your order and to drink and converse and after while the food comes. Later youre asked if you want a cheese plate, and later the bill is brought to you and you put on your credit card and the server comes and goes. Theres a lot of interaction with the server and with the restaurant. They dont rush you typically. Restaurant number two doesnt take reservations. When you arrive you tell the hostess how big your party is education estimate, 20 minutes, and i will give you a pager and you Wander Around until your meal is ready. Not enter your meal is ready. Concert, until your table is ready. Vacancy just sung as summit gets up and leaves. As soon as you sit down, your order is immediately taken and quickly brought. And as youre finishing your dessert the check is put on the table and to get up with the go to the Cash Register of the front. The third restaurant is, you light up before cashier. You tell them what you want. You pay for it at the same time and now you carry your food to empty table and you eat better and then you bust your trip and you have only have one interaction with the rest on. Simultaneously you order what you want. Those are three restaurants to do with congestion giveaways. Restaurant one, or congestion is in the kitchen. They cant have more people in a restaurant in the kitchen the companies. Restaurant number two, they prepare a lot of it pretty well in advance and its tables that are in short supply. Number three is a fast food restaurant. They cook food before you go there and want to make your interaction fast say dont have to deal with them again. And, of course, the tablecloths are white at a fancy restaurant, and plastic checkered tablecloth that gets sponged clint at a restaurant with a serve as soon as someone else gets up. At the third restaurant is a mcdonalds, right . So the theme looking at different kinds of urgency that bird eats fish and that bird eats worms. Looking at different kinds of restaurant you can see how they all have to do with congestion. They have to do with matching their capacity to their customer. But whether congestion is matters and it tells you what color the tablecloth is. It does a lot of things about the restaurant. Want my hope is you look at markets anyways, see things as markets that you didnt see as markets before. Was the problem that needs to be solved in a matching business . What keeps you up at night . I can answer that perfectly for me and more generally for americans. I spent a lot of time on Kidney Exchange, so there are not at organ transplants. Like surgical colleagues, my economist colleagues and i felt her surgical colleagues do with whats now whats called Kidney Exchange. This real shortage of organs so its a shame not to use of those that are available. One way to these can become available is through living donation. If youre healthy, your two kidneys and you could remain healthy with one. If someone you loved was dying of Kidney Disease you could donate a kidney to them. To a more incompatible patient donor pairs cant engage in Kidney Exchange. Maybe you can give a kidney to the patient i love and i can give a kitty to the patient you love so that to transplants become available that were not available before. This is a market which we dont allow money to put any role. Its a felony and attended to by a kidney for transport. You cant buy a kidney from a donor. Thats a law that is almost universal in the west. The only country that has an explicitly legal market for kidneys is the Islamic Republic of iran. Although there are lots of black markets because its a transaction a lot of people like to engage in. There are people who are healthy, youre wealthy and they would like to have some money. And black markets tended to treat them very market very badly. The kidney a change, no money changes hands but its clearly a marketplace. Is good economics because people are engaging in exchange which they both profit, saved two lives and it obeys the law. I could do about a victory after victory. I devote a chapter in the book to Kidney Exchange. Weve had unexpected success in helping organize Kidney Exchange but these are victories in the war that we are still losing. There are 100,000 people waiting for kidneys and the train and we only get about 11,000 deceased donor kidneys, living kidneys. Ive also become very interested in this whole question of which things do about it is thought to be bought and sold and which do we not protect against the law to buy and sell kidneys. Its what i call a repugnant transaction, som some people lio engage in and the people who are not directly harmed by the transaction dont want to. Which you overturn double if youre in the legislature to . I would be prepared to endorse experiments to see what would have been better tried to design a carefully regulated market. What about were scummy tourist . We worry that the cash market would exploit would be a lesson. Thats a serious one. How do you know what is exploitation wind speed is exactly. When you look at the black markets its clear theres trafficking there. We are a country that is pretty powerful rule of law. Think about where we had alcohol consumption. The speakeasies where you would buy bootleg whiskey i very different from the fancy wine stores i can go to now and by chavanel 2012. Some markets would be different. When you see something thats against the law ever in the world cant make you think maybe we economist may be missing something. Where is your research adding . Im thinking a lot about school choice. Im thinking a lot about said not i would like to understand are also im also thinking about what makes a free market. Sometimes people think its hard to talk about markets as being designed. The New York Stock Exchange has lots of rules. The chicago board of trade has lots of rules, not just what kind of wheat goes into each trading pit, but whether youre about to try to some of those rules are produced by private providers and some are produced by government. There are government regulations to try to make markets safer. Make them work better. I think the political discussion better be focus on should there be regulation around and even who should provide it, but what kind of regulations help what kind of markets to work freely. This conversation could go on forever. The time has come. We will open it up for questions from the audience and i think theyre someone with a mic coming around. So, yes. Could you did you can pass it to your neighbor in front. Could you conceive of a matching regime where one side is not able to rank the other side . For example, matching patients with specialists, or matching clients with lawyers. Because it seems to be a very inexact focus now. Is based upon china going to see your intern, that does look good. Youve got to go see doctor soandso who just happens to be somebody that he knows or who worked with before, Something Like that. Whereas doctor someone else down the road may be better for you. Is it possible, because you dont know who any of these people are, and neither does your interest. So the less you know about who they are think about matching childrens schools. High schools have preferences your children and comes to preference over schools and schools have parents over kids. In Many American cities we know have preferential choice in a number of cities. Many dont have preferences over schools and School Principals and no predictable in the assignment process. Thats more like assigning children to school places. What the school board does is it tries developing rules, priorities for which schools they they would be good for the kids they some kind of education is available. The families have preferences, but the schools children have priorities. Thats a kind of matching pages have preferences on one side. So perhaps, but you have to know something about the school, like where they are. You have to know something about the special is before you cant intelligibly do that. When we dont have any information, if we dont have information which would be good matches, we wont have a match thats run transparently and fairly, we assign some things by lottery. Gentlemen in front. Im in the health care industry, so irrelevant question. A relevant question. I deal with data on a daily basis and i get interoperability across emr is, seems like a market that we cant get one record into another place without Electronic Medical records within hospital, in terms of regulation or perhaps a system that could be in place. How do you see that in the marketplace . So its certainly a problem that i cant really my electronic records from boston to california when a move. I brought my records as flat paper and they were at some point in into this and but not in a surgical way. So thats a problem of interoperability. When we handle it is the government to try to set the standard for another is how many can compete on a potentially the one set of common industry standards, think about video recorders or video players with different standards to think about android as an authoring system, the reason edwards is a popular operating system and so is its rival for lots of different people can write apps for those. Loss of markets in which International Standards eventually emerged that allow people to trade over specific times but it can take a while. Its certainly taken a while in medicine. So that might be a role for government, but you know, the federal government wants to make a standardized and cramming language. The Defense Department originally imagined its goal is to make it all software written for the Defense Department should be programmed in but that fell by the wayside. Theres dangers in having the government try to figure out what [inaudible] health care in general is poorly designed into it because its been billed piecemeal, parts of an attitude chip and, of course, its a giant part of the economy so theres lots of institutions. By and large market decide is not a process that you start from scratch. Is a process that you going to try to make things a little better. And because its Health Care Market is such a complicated one, i would guess the place that has the most potential to initiate reforms are going to be a Large Companies that selfinsure. They capture the benefits when youre healthy as well as when youre health care doesnt cost so much. They are glad when youre helpinhealthy and work with thid party insurers mostly want things not to be too inexpensive. And, of course, those are expensive things and interest is set to pay for that. Medicare is set up to pay for that. Thats a giant part of medicare. Its harder to finance a clinic that would talk to diabetes patients about their nutrition in terms of controlling their disease. Thats hard to bill for and put under medical bills. So thats the kind of thing we are still having trouble with, because we pay for medicine as piecework. What parts of Representative Government do we have our matching markets, and how are they not matching markets speak with well, the federal government is a big employer, the labor markets our matching markets. They are certainly a big play labor markets. Parts of the federal government assigned people to jobs. The military gives people assignment when people graduate from the naval academy. They get to choose actually in rank order by class which service they will integrate the army has a different system. Theres a big problem in getting benefits to people who need them as other lots of federal benefits available that are hard to people access in an easy way. I was referring more to it like the people to choosing who are representatives are. I dont know that those are matching markets. They are clearly collective, problem is we can talk about elections. Start talking about ken arrow and the limit for aggregated votes of preferences. But you could certainly think about design problems come out of an elections should we require people to vote and that would give us better outcomes, should we make it more easily public who votes. It turns out who votes is available information and campaigns know whether your frequent voter or not. Should we conceal that . Theres lots of questions about data about who knows what, about what happened in the last election, things like that. We are sitting very data intensive campaigns know. It used to be when you got a phone call some about your a registered democrat or republican and want to let you know theres a president ial election coming up. Now youre likely t to get a congresswoman who voted for this candidate but who might not go to the polls without being reminded. They focus their attention on that. Theres lots of polling that goes on. Weve had some markets, it used to be the Election Results could be recorded for Eastern States before california polling places had closed. And not even listen on election night, the anchors will go through elaborate posturing as they say, dont know about the order in europe but [inaudible] whether new york went democrat or spirit exactly, exactly. Censure, michael weinstein, thank you, are connected to the robin hood foundation, lets have some fun with it. You are bringing together very wealthy people who, as you can tell the our, our motivator for Different Reasons to come and it could be social reasons and not necessarily concerns of people. And then you gather a lot of resources and have to outpace them. And how do you make choices, which charities are the most valuable, which advantage people to juicy benefiting and so on . How do you play with this as a market . So i regard this evening as let me say couple of words about markets. I often portray what i do at robin hood, i portrayed as a market. Into this market come ideas. People, Domestic Violence shelter or michael and programmed or a Job Training Program or Hep C Program are wouldve you want to do. Those ideas you are building winwin of the. They can come out of the heads of the report of the new times, i think that went on in san diego. We think we can do better. The ideas at the table, it just happens. Now the fun begins and now we impose a set of algorithms to decide which of those things deliver the most impact on the Living Standards of poor new yorkers per dollar than any of the other proposals. Icy water as a marketer you are on the other side, the donor site, and we live by the same rules we live by at the New York Times. Theres a chinese law of robin hood between the donors and the brand maker. So we dont listen, our donors dont tell us how to spend the money. We put it through a disinterested set of algorithms to find a way to spend but i do want to turn this into a conversation about robin hood. In the back. Im interested in bias in matching markets and century book is called who gets what. When we think about google with a theres a big hiring labor market and increasingly public a lot of [inaudible] white people and men thats true and a lot of parts. [inaudible] could you talk about how we overcome that, how markets can become more fair . To us used to be a gender bis problem. That was by having blind auditions. You could do it for first violinist we see the people behind the screen playing, all plaintiffs in pieces or piece of the choosing. You could make your first decision based on how they think they sounded, rather than how they looked. So my colleague at harvard has looked at records of before and after when auditions were blind in this way. More women musicians were hired under blind auditions and under visible auditions. I presume incidentally used to have to invite them to come to the addition to what we are not talk about here is explicit conscious buyers. I assume its that when youre looking at the musicians you are unconscious bias is coming, you say im enjoying music more as a watch and listen to this musician. We have time for two more questions. Right here. The fcc was established to regulate stock markets as you point out. Do so but discourage people are exploiting an approaching the market. We look at matching markets, what percentage of your effort details steps to prevent people from exploiting taking a market . Think of a market like ebay. They build reputation systems and things like that. Some of it just to let you know that i pack things nice and ship them probably, but some are just fraud. Ff a lot of repetition, you can more confidently expect that when they could survive that look like what the picture look like, things like that. Think about payment security. Paypal grew up as sort of a credit card alternative when we were not sure we like having a credit card numbers into the internet. Because the people who could steal your money. So paypal was a different form of payment that allowed you to just have your credit card swipe once to paypal. College admissions, more and more Chinese Students are coming to american universities and one of the questions want to buy chinese goods is how well do they speak english. But when you take an english test in china, it turns out its hard to verify that the person who is admitted is what he took the test. The company has grew up that conducts video interviews in english and they can be cement along with the admissions packet and they dont try to how well the people speak english. They say heres the video, decide for yourself. Theyve checked identification and with person a ride you can see whether thats who you admitted into took the english test. Those are examples of design that are intended to stop bad behavior. Last question. A number of people use dating services to find the matches online. And at the people just go about their daily business, and one way or another find their spouses. I was just wondering, are there any statistics over time that show what approach versus the other as being better for a positive outcome . [laughter] i dont know if theres statistics like that but you can decode of time the age of marriage independent has been rising. That has to do with the fact that marketplaces have to be picked. At the turn of the last century the anticipation of women in Higher Education was much lower than that of men. What that meant was maybe you should marry her High School Sweetheart because when your high school to a lot of people the same age who are available, you can find someone you like. In the internet offers the possibility of the market. Now, dave markets are congested and women with attractive photos at dating sites get many more emails than they can answer. So men are sending emails and not getting any others. One way they respond is to send more emails to different people. You cant look a long time at the profiles should you have this real soul much there. They are more and more spec like. The science functionality will fall apart. So this is a little like to signal wire desirable but that youre interested that if i send your messages because i looked at your profile so it might be repaid. I have colleagues who ran an experiment with the dating paper they give people virtual voices. You can only send to and what that meant is when an email arrived with the rest attached it might be worth looking not at sending one of his or her roses to you. Sure enough they found that messages with roses lead to more content. You can find more about how to find a spouse. We should talk to each other in real life. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] hello, welcome tonight. This is politics prose at best poison pellets. My name is davis and i am here hosting the event with Stephen Harding nana spoke the last to die. Once ive make a short note, we have cspan live here filming the event, so good to have them here. Just to make you aware, we are politics prose, sponsoring this event. We are in three new busboys locations they resolve the books and host events here at the tacoma location. We are also the brooklyn location in the fort team in d. C. You can see us there as well. One of the great benefits of being here you can order food throughout the event would love to have you do that. Purchase the book after at the front of the store. Tonight we have Stephen Harding here. World war ii in japan has officially ended in ceasefire but still a few final moments the american story to be told. Stephen harding chronicles an american soldier in the side of its final flight through japan and the boat last to die. Its a researched account of the day following japans to render. Detail is impressive and inspiring as its determination to tell it. While harding expresses commitment as a journalist to remain object is and not emotionally attached to the individual stories to be told, he admits his personal connection with tony for my service in the vietnam war to his detailed journalism of the American Military affairs, tardiness to share the legacy of patriotism. Stephen harding is the author of a previous books include in the New York Times bestseller, the last battle. Its a onetime longtime journalist specializing in military affairs. For nearly two decades he was the official magazine of the u. S. Army reporting from northern ireland, israel, new zealand and iraq. Currently editorinchief of military history magazine. His contributions without further ado, Stephen Harding. [applause] well, that was impressive. I want to thank davis for the nice introduction. Of course for them having me here tonight. I do know how much you know about the story that makes up last to die. I want to get a reprieve overview and tell you a few things about how i brought the story together. In a nutshell, the book is the star of the last american killed in combat in world war ii. His name is tony mercy health from pottstown, pennsylvania and he was about a week passes 20th birthday. He was an obscure american dominator flying over tokyo on august 18th 1945 when the aircraft was attacked by japanese spiders and tony died and two other people on the plane were seriously wounded. His death is a tragedy obviously for his family in the country as a whole but it would have been more than a foot note in history except for the fact that his dad could very well have brought about the prolonging of world war ii, a war that most people assumed was already over. A little background. Ive heard tony story about 30 years ago. I was working in san diego as a matter of fact and i cowrote a book on the skier airplane i mentioned early, to be 30 to dominator. To be 32 was built about the same time as the b29. The difference was there were several thousand built and only 118 featured. The reason while the b. 32 was quite an airplane when it worked it off and did not work. It had issues such as engine fires, landing gear that would come down or go out. But when it worked, is comparable to the b29. Only a handful of b. 32 mated to the pacific and the last weeks of world war ii. So now spreading the book i heard the story about the young guy from pennsylvania who was unfortunate enough to be the last guy killed in world war ii. I thought thats a great story. I really want to tell it. So of course i waited 30 years to do that because life gets in the way. You have family spirit guided reporting from various parts of the world. A couple years ago i thought this was the time to tell him we were coming up to the anniversary of the end of the war. Most americans have a slightly incorrect view of how world war ii and the pacific ended. If i asked most of you when you thought bj day was coming if you understand what that means, you would say august 18 of whatever year we are in, but thats not entirely accurate. World war ii ended september 2nd, 1945 when the surrender documents were signed by the japanese aboard the uss missouri. August 18th comes up for august 15th in a lot of peoples minds because the two dates are significant in their adult lives in the book. August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima. Three days later august 9th and not the sake. You would think watching two major cities in japan disappear to make a Mushroom Cloud wouldve prompted the japanese to win the war at the time it didnt. There is a Strong Movement within the Senior Leadership of the japanese leadership in government to continue the war. Not because they thought they could win but because if they inflicted mass casualties taken when a negotiated settlement because if you remember the allies had declared untraditional surrender of japan. No commissions at all. These japanese diehards figured if they caused enough trouble for the allied forces we would negotiate. Torpedo on the other hand saw it differently. Hed seen several hundred thousand people vaporized not to mention the firebomb rates weve been conduct for months before that. Hed like most knowledgeable japanese assumed renovation of japan was in a plane agent was. It was called operation downfall. It had two parts. One in 1945 in the second 1946. Would have been the largest amphibious in history. Even successful, disastrous for the allies in defending japanese or the casualty estimates among the allied invasion and the birds were the hundreds of thousands and in terms of the japanese casualties, it couldve been in the millions because of the resistance offered. So he decided he was going to go against literally hundreds of years of japanese tradition and again the coder who she does, which the japanese militarist and make teen 30s manipulated to be calm a political concept rather than cultural concept. As they interpreted it, it was always shameful, Never Acceptable in japan would have to fight on until victory. He surprised many advisers by agreeing to the terms of the declaration. August 14th he recorded an audio message that would be broadcast the following day to the japanese people and which he announced his intention to surrender. That recording and the knowledge within the diehard sections of the government and military triggered a palace to that was ultimately unsuccessful but for some number of hours, it was in play. There were troops, people dying from a senior general were shot and decapitated because he failed to go along with the coup plotters. Ultimately the japanese announced to the allies acceptance of the deck duration or surrendered although in his radio broadcast, he never actually said the word surrender. He said things that we have to endure the and durable endure the adorable come accept the unacceptable and never said we will submit her. Two military organizations now come into play. Two Imperial Japanese navy fighter squadrons. One was 300 outside of tokyo and the other was the cusco south of tokyo based at a place called upon it. The groups of aviators for Different Reasons decided not to go along with the emperors ordered to lay down their arms and accept a ceasefire and prepare for surrender. The people of the 302nd were driven by their commander who was just a diehard bush ego driven militarist. He wasnt thinking very clearly. But we cannot surrender will shame our country and emperor. His core group of Fighter Pilots who had the best surviving Fighter Pilots japan had in some of the few surviving plans decided they would not go along with the surrender and they would attack and the allied aircraft that showed up over japan. Down the road the mood was different. There were Fighter Pilots they are from one of the best japanese pilots of world war ii decided they would resist for a different reason. They saw it as a question of National Sovereignty japan had not surrendered yet. So they thought it is a question of defending the sovereign airs race until the country surrendered. They also decided they would attack an aircraft that that were to be hostile. In both of the atomic bombings they had been conduct by two aircraft. Both b29s on each occasion. To the japanese, a b29 and a b. Two were identical. A tall tale so on august 16, General Macarthur who was the commander of allied forces in the southwest pacific ultimately would become the Supreme Commander of allied powers in occupied japan wanted to test fidelity of the japanese to see if they were going to follow through on their agreement to surrender. August 16th he said four b. 32 is another aircraft over different parts of the plane which is the area around metropolitan tokyo to photographed airfields as part of the ceasefire aircraft so they couldnt fly. He wanted to see if that was happening. August 16, nothing happened. The crews usually over tokyo, took some pictures and flew back to okinawa. August 17th he decided to dispatch another specific set of missions. These were aircraft encountered with the in size collusion and more importantly were attacked by japanese fighter planes. There were no casualties, but some of the aircraft were damaged so they again fled back to okinawa. At this point, Douglas Macarthur has a decision to make. Was this attack is on the japanese would renege on their agreement to surrender or was it the work of diehards. He did something military commanders have had to do throughout history. He had to make a hard decision to send people in harms way to find out what would happen when really its that simple. August 18, 1945 im a ford e. 32 dominators to dr. Szoka now a. They headed towards japan two hours into the flight two of them had to abort because of mechanical difficulties. At that point the other two aircraft to fly towards japan, which in retrospect may not like a decision. When they arrived over tokyo, they are taken under it i aircraft fire and intensely attacked by japanese fighter planes. At this point, especially for tony marchione, he wanted to be a pilot and when he enlisted in the air force is in 1943, his intent was to be a pilot. Unfortunately that didnt work out said he was trained as a governor. He trained at the crew that was supposed to go to italy to bomb the germans but at the last moment the crew was converted from a bombardment to a reconnaissance unit. Same kind of airplane flying to be 24 liberator and they switch to the conference version. By the time they got to okinawa there were very few japanese aircraft at it anywhere except over japan to the need for aerial gunners had fallen off significantly. Tony and his fellow governors were dragooned into being photographers assistant. On august 15th. They volunteered over tokyo. Worst decision ever made. The reason he volunteered how soon you went home dependent on the number of points you had. You got more points for flying over hostile territory which japan still technically was that everybody thought the war was going to end and on august 15th the emperors acceptance of the surrender conditions made it look like a war was going to be over. Tony who wanted to get home had volunteered for what he thought was going to be a fairly long but uninvolved machine. That didnt turn out to be the way it was an august 17th when the b. 32s came back from the first contested rate i can imagine he was regretted the choice he made. At that point is a done deal. On the morning of august 18 through the b. 32 took off, tony was working as an assistant to an aerial photographer from massachusetts joe had been a photographer in civilian life. Tony was interested in cameras. They sort of worked together couple times. They were Close Friends but they knew each other. Another man from their unit because they were not in the same unit that operated the b32 they were flown by the 386 bombardment squadron. So they didnt know anybody on the airplane. Tony had never seen a b32 until the first day he got on one and he was amazed at the size of it. It was like to be 24 or product of the consolidated Aircraft Companies said there were similarities but it was gigantic. Ever larger plane. So they get on the airplane, flew eight hours to tokyo and of course the attack happens. They discovered just before they got to tokyo that the aerial camera did not work. When a charter breakaway, the camera would work. So they are flying back and forth over tokyo when they are attacked. Joe matt gray had been crosstrained originally as a gunner. They decided they could take pictures and they would help the airplane spot incoming fighters. They were standing on opposite sides of the airplane and a fighter came in, fired machinegun rounds that hit joe black rate in both legs. He took seven or eight bullets. Tony immediately went to his aid, lifted him up and put them on a folddown settee built into the side of the lodge and was starting to give them first aid when a 20milliliter cannon round hit him square in the chest, not him across the airplane and he bled out in a few minutes despite the help he was getting from other people on the crew. His staff again was a tragedy but the radio message that went out from the airplane back to okay now im makes up a large part of what i deal with in the book because the message was flushed immediately to the headquarters in manila and that was really to make a decision. The day before there had been attacked but no injuries. Today there was a fatality and other injuries because several other crewmen were mildly injured. Arthur at that point could literally have restarted the war against japan. The options open to him ranged everything from fairly low level attacks by Navy Fighters on airfields to seeking authorization to drop the third atomic bomb. As i mentioned earlier there was an invasion plan and depending what sources you read had a third atomic bomb the necessary with, but not of been ready for some links or possibly some of what has happened in the meantime. The japanese maybe not surrendering. The United States and allies continuing against japan which would result in the allied casualties but probably fairly significant. So he said the japanese were supposed to be sending a surrender delegation by air from japan with in a stock as an american occupied island off okay now. Said if those two airplanes specially marked in painted white with green crosses, if they take off than we know it is the japanese government is serious. If they dont take off, we know the japanese decided to continue the war and at that point he wouldve decided how far to go in resuming their campaign against japan in the air campaign had gone on, ultimately so with the lamentation of japan. My father and my wifes father were both scheduled to be the first wave and i cant honestly say im sorry it didnt happen. It wouldve changed my life considerably probably. So macarthur waited 12 hours in the aircraft took off from japan and ultimately made their way to manila. The 302nd air group pilot were still sort of been renegade and they had about the surrender flag ever going to intend to shoot them down. Imagine what wouldve happened then. But to surrender planes carrying senior military commanders, diplomatic personnel down in flames over japan shot down by their down by their own naval air forces. It would have been seen as a complete reputation of japans render agreement and begin triggering all of these things. That is the crux of the story. A lot of been made in the book is about the personalities involved. One of the people who plays a big role in it is a Japanese Naval captain and who she do it recognize her name because he loved the first wave of the japanese attack on December December 1941. He originally was going to support the coup and realize to do so would be to invalidate everything he believed at the naval officer said he decided not to any help defuse the situation. Theyre like one of the highscoring japanese bases of world war ii. Of course after his death is now known as emperor show off. Two other people briefly i was fortunate enough to meet in researching this book. Tony marchione is the oldest of three children to an italian immigrant family. He was the only son. He had two younger sisters, teresa and geraldine two years ago my wife and i went and met them and spent a wonderful incredibly emotional day. Tonys death demand happened yesterday and to get done very sharing and they talked about in and gave me letters, everything else. Is literally painful to do that. Part of the reason like everybody else in america on august 15th the announcement came the japanese with the render and days later comes the amount meant that their brother had been killed in combat. It completely devastated tonys parents as you can imagine and then was the added in final pain he was initially interred in okay now what an individual grave and his remains were not repatriated to the United States until 1949 and they conduct their full military funeral preceded by a catholic funeral mass. At the church but its still there. There was a tremendously moving van to talk to his sisters about those events been able to find people like that that make these stories real. When you read military history you get too wrapped up in maneuvers and commanders and great sweeping strategies when the reality is that war is about individual people. Ive been able to talk about tony, they really brought it home to me. So that is the general theme. I havent told your thing about the book so we will have to read it. You dont have to read it but id appreciate it if you did. I would be happy if this point to entertain questions if anybody has any. Yes. [inaudible] having spent some time on guam in knowing the philippines and the holdout japanese soldiers they are coming did you choose to cut off the time the nation japan rendered, how did you pick that because you can probably do other things. The way i came to the conclusion that tony was the last american killed in combat in world war ii is because he is so listed as such where i was the one time ago a staff historian. It is one of those judgment calls. There were a lot of American Service personnel died after the ceasefire went into effect. They died of wounds suffered previously. They died of injuries. A lot of people died of disease. But tony was the last American Servicemember killed by direct enemy action in a combat action meeting he and his comrades were shooting back at the time it happened. You are right there as holdouts in the philippines. The last i came out and made 276. Terms of the last People Killed in combat, it is tony and there were seven Navy Aviators killed on august 14 before they got the ceasefire order. Thats how the determination was made. 50 years here in washington, tremendously informed on world wars and all that. But where do you sort out my dearest friends are sister megyn rice who went to jail for three years for getting into our army in tennessee. Tom gumbel 10, calm loves it but it gave him the title of their retired fired auxiliary bishop of picture it. These are two of the most highly motivated people i know. Megyn had just moved to washington last weekend was the person at 83 years old broke in to our socalled safe comic stars area in tennessee. Tom is the cofounder here in the United States. When you hear about those people, how do you sort them out . How do i sort out people who are against the concept of nuclear war . I think everybody is against the concept of nuclear war. [inaudible] well again, any rational human eating is against violence if at all possible. In terms of world war ii, and writing about the last days of war between japan which is something i did not know a whole lot about before i started writing this book, you find out that the japanese were equally separated by ideology about the war but after the dropping of the two atomic bombs, the japanese leadership is deeply divided about whether to continue the war or not. Again, japanese did know how many comic weapons we had almost certainly would have been on tokyo. What if theyve been a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. What would modern japan be right now if tokyo had been vaporized in 1945. Do not send them to assert a great a good thing wouldve taken a while to prepare additional bombs. In that sense when the ageold question about World War Ii History as was it necessary to use the Nuclear Weapons or was it not. I think you can find arguments on both sides. Again, had the japanese not been sort of shoved rather brutally into thinking about surrendering , consequences could have been worse in terms of casualties and so on. One quick story about that. Years ago i ran the museum in San Francisco bay and we were offered a mockup of the little boy bomb to put on display them i thought about it long and hard because it would install for free and i thought that i really want to put an atomic bomb on display in San Francisco in the late 1970s and i have to say i chickened out and said no because it is that evocative a message. In this book, quite honestly the atomic bombs are part of the background story. But you could write volumes about what might have happened. A review but came across my desk at the magazine the other day. St. Mary seven atomic bombs in the locker. I dont want to consider what wouldve happened and what the world would look like today if that had happened. Im curious about your Research Process and the japanese to. Have more access to tonys story, but how did you get into the minds of the japanese strategists peer is very difficult because you probably know the japanese destroyed a lot of records within a short period of time after the announcement of surrender and a lot of them were official records. The japanese pilots involved were essentially told to go home and hide and they destroy their own personal military record and of course we arent arming of japan had destroyed a lot of records as well. The short answer is theres been a lot of scholarship in japan over the last 10 years making use of allied records. There is a thing called a Strategic Bombing which gave a list of all the targets we hit in japan and the greater japanese occupied area. So there is a lot of Data Available and its actually the basis for what the japanese are writing about in english because it was created by american and allied military organizations. The other is to hire a good translator. It just turned out i went to google looking for japanese translators and i found a very nice gentleman who just buy complete finance is an atomic california where i was born and raised. He is totally bilingual, born in the United States the growth in japan and when i first contacted him, just by sheer coincidence was about japan to do research on a completely different topic. Im a very good researcher on military records because ive been doing it for years. Japanese records not so much. Having to be able to do it and of course being able to go at the National Archives and other places, the air force History Center in alabama consolidated aircraft archives in san diego at the air and base museum. Its all about pulling together not just fax but trying to make the most logical conclusions based on those facts. You can get carried away. Theres afraid some of you might be familiar with called research rapture. You get so into finding stuff out that you have to literally force yourself to stop researching and start rating. In the book i have coming out next summer, it was a real problem because it was a