On may 11, 1943, about 12,500 u. S. Soldiers landed on atule island, alaska to force out a Japanese Army that had occupied the area for almost a year. Fought in the harsh climate and terrain the battle of at t u as one of the blood attu. Next, journalist mark tells the story of experiences of a japanese medic and an american officer in his book the storm on our shores, one island, two soldiers, and the forgotten attle of world war ii. 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 column bine in april 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 ome 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 avid orntholings. Mark himself had always been interested in birds but it was the birders that fascinated him. Thus he wrote a book about the people who had the time and where withal to spend a year tracking down citings of rare birds. This book titled the big year was turned into a movie starring steve martin, jack black, and owen wilson. I think the idea of that kind of quest was something that many people try but few succeed. The inspiration for his second book, halfway to heaven. A personal determination to climb all of the 54 of colorados 14ers. I heard mark being interviewed on pbs about that book and was impressed that he had promised his wife that he would not go climbing alone. So he turned to the internet to get climbing partners. They had two little boys at the time and that soothed her feelings, and he succeeded his quest and the adventure turned into his second book which won the National Outdoor book award for outdoor literature and winner ofert National Press club for environmental journalism. If you were watching 60 minutes on sunday last april 7, you would have had a glimpse of marks latest book, a storm on our shores. A tale of face to face 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. [applause] thank you. Thanks for coming. What a terrific crowd. I really appreciate it. We live not far from here and ive driven by many times but the first time ive been nside. Usually i rely on our teen aged sons for electronics. Im at a loss today. Anyway, thanks for coming. I 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, steve martin, and owen wilson. When i was researching that book, i learned about an island attu, maybe if you do crossword puzzles youve heard of it, otherwise, most people really havent. Attu is the western most point of alaska, of the alution chain. It is out there. It is so far west they actually curve the International Dateline to keep it on the same calendar page. Its farther west than fiji, about the same long tude as new zealand. For a time, it was the greatest place in north america to see rare species of birds. 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. I learned that the battle was especially brutal. It had a casualty 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. Still, im not a military historian, im a journalist. Im interested in the stories of people. But when i found out there were two men who had fought each other on attu, one was an aplatchen coal miner and american war hero, and the other was a surgeon from japan who fought against his will. I learned that those two families had spent almost 40 years trying to find each other after the battle. In an attempt at 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 in anchorage at the air force base, national archives, college park, maryland, College Libraries in atlanta and oregon, denver. I talked to people in california, families in arizona, in new mexico, ohio, pennsylvania. 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 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. Warren davis was confused. In the living room of her house, to the fidgetty old man but she did not know what the visitor wanted. He talked about his grown children, he talks about his arizona retirement, and he talked on and on about his beloved orchids and their beauty, fragility, and rewards. Davis had little patience for ideyolchit chat, for exotic flowers. She was an intensive care nurse with her twins, mom, and rocky marriage. She tried to be polite but really wasnt it time for this guy to go . Finally, it was. As she 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 sick joke, by the way . What kind of talk was that . So casual yet so devastating. With his black framed glasses and shock of white hair the visitor looked like a grandfather not some demeanted 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 rear view 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 always had one deep hole in her life. She never met her father. He died when laura was a baby, before she had babbled even her first words. The little she knew came almost entirely from her mother who wasnt saying much. Lauras 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 california the lives of laura 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 courage, anger and forgiveness, the duty of a man to serve his country even if the result was a pain that would not go away. It would become enmeshed in a military battle long forgotten and a mizzral islands far from civilization, a place that claimed thousands of lives but ultimately yielded no prize for its conquerers. Dave davis and the visitor would discover the secrets that the had ruined lives and the truth that is had helped to heal them. It wound filed fathers who soared with joy and others who sholdrd burdens that zpwrue unbearable. They would learn about scars that could heal only through attonement. At the center of all 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 fair well to a family he had just started and the 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, dick lared. Born and raised poor, really dirt poor, in aplatcha. By the time he was six years old i think his family had moved ten times to different coal towns in pennsylvania, west virginia, ohio. He loved school but was forced to drop out at age 14 in the depths of the Great Depression to help support his family. An he age of 16, he was explosives expert underground in a coal mine in ohio. Now, all around him coal mining in the depression was really dangerous work. He was made to feel grateful to have it. But his friends were getting hurt, maimed, his neighbors were getting killed. He himself was in a number of eally tough accidents and so he saw that his coal mining life at aplatcha, 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 not families who are so candid and opened up their family chests with just so many letters and diaries, and photographs, and were just so honest and sincere about their own lives. Heres a guy who kind of got me started on this story. Paul, 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 undergrads, for medical school he went to loama Linda University east of los angeles and was a did his residency as a surgeon when he was a doctor at white Memorial Hospital in los angeles. Paul was america. He loved the freedom and the wander lust, he loved ice cream and the big buildings. He loved the notion of a nation that rewarded risk instead of encouraged conformity. Paul loved america so mitch that his girlfriend 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 heir honeymoon, to nigera falls. What more american thing can you do for that generation but honey moon in nigera falls. When they returned there was a tell gram waiting for them that while youre off 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. So the newlyweds, rushed back home to japan to buy his sister ut of a brothel. While in japan, apparel harbor happens. Pearl harbor happens. 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 pass fist and yet he is called to serve his home country. What does he do . Well, in his mind he justifies this by saying that as a surgeon he is 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 speaks fluent english, he wears american style wrist watches, glasses, and he is also christian in a buddhist country. There are a lot of suspicions that he is a spy. He is never actually fully trusted. Best i can tell he is the only surgeon inducted into the Imperial Army who was never given the rank of officer. What do you do qua guy you dont quite trust . Send him to the middle of nowhere. Attu. There it is at the top of the screen. Now, 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 who has ever been to attu thinks this is a good place to conduct military operations. The thinking by the japanese is that if you take attu you can island hop, maybe get on the mainland come down the west coast of the United States. Also, it might serve as a place for the real game, the big naval fight at midway. You can see between hawaii and attu on that map. But the reality on the ground is rough. It is it has some of the worst weather on earth. There are only eight days a year that are free of rain, snow, sleet or ice or fog. It is at the current, it is at if confluence of the colder berg sea and the warmer currents from the pacific ocean. When they mix, it creates just this crazy weather phenomenon. I experienced it myself firsthand. The mix of the hot and the cold creates these spontaneous unpredictable hurricaneforce winds, 80 mile an hour winds, 100 mile an hour winds, that knock you off your feet. It is a really bad place to build an air base. Thats only if you can see. The fog on attu i was there, there were times 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 d 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, school house to the right. There were its a volume canic island, mountains 3,000 feet high. Volume kanic mountains 3,000 feet high. Ice up top, incredible mud, snow melt, precipitation. Heer is the prize. Along with uts live 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 bull horn. Thai did not need a gun. But they had it. There it is, first time the flag is a foreign power is raised over u. S. Soil since the war of 1812, and they were prepared for it. The japanese had trained on some of their iletnds. They 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. June of 19 was in 42. The u. S. Looked at attu and said, you want this island with some of the worst weather on earth . You can have it for the winter. And they did. They let them have it for the winter. Ut then in may of 1943, they came back. They came back to claim it. Here are some photos, some still photos from the battle itself. Trn tu itself in attu itself in may reminded me of the high countries in mud season. This muck prevented u. S. Troops from moving equipment inland. They couldnt get much mechanized gear in. So they did have to doman to man passthroughs of supplies. At one point dick, 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. So what he did is crawled on his belly to a creek and caught a trout by hand. He lived on that. The terrain on attu was challenging to say the least. Made even worse by the fact that the u. S. Troops, all their training had been in the mow hauf desert of california. They were expecting and planning to fight the nazi field marshall in the sands, the desert sands of north africa when general decided to redeploy them to alaska. They sent many u. S. Troops wearing desert gear. One of the biggest problems was boots. As you can see when you do these traverses across places like fimb hook ridge, one misstep would cost you your life. Meanwhile, japanese are fortified in the high lands shooting down at them. So u. S. Troops had 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 remained 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. So the japanese decided not to fight the americans on the beaches. They holed up in the highlands, and with fog and clouds, lifting, you could see the clouds in this picture they would go up and down the mountains based on where the fog was and be on the edge. So u. S. Troops stuck in the mud below never knew who was shooting at them. They described that they said it was like trying to shoot birds out of clouds. 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. So they would try to massage each others feet back to life but this was just terrain that they had no experience fighting on. T was it was assault. Awful. While this happened, paul was a surgeon. 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 hold up in a cave and doing surgeries and getting shelled. He was suitering 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. S. Bombs. Writes this and it is moving. It is kind of in a doctors tone. Ts factual. And what happens then after 18 days of fighting, well passed 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 500 men. The commander grabs the troops together. They decide to mount a last final bonsai attack. Here is something outside, goes outside of the tent. A squad of eight japanese soldiers has cap shared captured. Turning it back on the americans themselves. This could change the course of the battle. Throws the grenade. Not all eight japanese soldiers are dead. Hes looking for any kind of. Lues, any kind of hint he starts ransacking materials. They find an address book. It is full of names and addresses from california. The bible has a handwritten verse inscribed in the cup in the cover. And this paper is handwritten in japanese. There was hoping it was an Intelligence Report that reveals key japanese strategy. What comes back is not military intelligence but something even more powerful. All the trading for u. S. Troops had been japanese soldiers would fight to the death. Ruthless, savage, heartless killing machines. Paul is a daughter has a because he never met shipped out when his wife was pregnant. He has nightmares, he has become convinced he has killed the wrong guy. He is awarded the silver star for bravery. He is given that for courage, for helping turn the course of battle. He did wha