Was a devastating blow to the United States and general douglas macauthor. The corregidor was not just a rock or a target, but it was the site of a military feat that had to be redeemed. In february of 1945, a daring mission was launched to recapture this island. Author Kevin Maurer is going to join us tonight to discuss this mission. He is the author of several books including no easy day, the firsthand account that killed osama bin laden, and he has covered the military traveling to iraq, East Afghanistan and haiti covering the forces. This latest book the rock tells us about the retaking the of the corregidor. Please join me in welcoming Kevin Maurer. Thank you to the center for joining me to talk about the rock of corregidor. My brother lives in norfolk, and i grew up in that area, and so i am familiar what you have done there and so i appreciate the time to talk to me. The rock is an interesting book in that i had no idea about corregidor or about the 503rd, and i was in the office of my editor and his grandfather was there, and we were looking for a topic for a book, and he is the one who mentioned it, and we thought that it would be a great topic. But i had no idea. The only familiarity that i had with Rock Force was that they have a mannequin in the military museum in fayetteville, and so it was more of a journey more than anything, and it is a really overlooked operation that doesnt get the fanfare that many of the other operations get, and so in the end, it is an amazing journey. I will walk you through some of the events and the characters that you will meet when you read Rock Force you will be more well versed in the battle than when i started. So first off, lets talk about corregidor, the island. It is little more than four miles in length and shaped like a rocky tadpole, and sits in the mouth of the Manila Bay. It comes from the name of Magistrate Corrector because when the spanish took over the philippines, it was the first stop for ships in the Manila Bay and that is when you would go to get your records checked and that where the name came. So it became a fortress first when the spanish were there to defend the mouth of the bay, and then after the spanish american bay, the americans turned it into the gibraltar of the specific, and they dug into the massive bunkers and the giant coastal guns that were built to protect the bay. The head of the tadpole as you can see on the left side of the map is called topside. This is really a Builtup Mountain that looks like a head. It is looking like it is sticking the tadpole sticking the head out of the water, and this is where the parashoot drops were made. Where the tail is, around the middle there is a place called malenta hill, and that is where the storage was built, and as the japanese laid siege to the islandr a head quarters for general macauthor and then later a refuge for others. So why does it hold this history. In World War i, general macauthor was forced to retreat to corregidor, and months later under orders of president roosevelt, he was whisked away by pt boats there, and it was a humiliation for him and the american Military And Sort of haunted the american forces until the winter of 1945. You know, it is funny as you read the book, you will see that the paratroopers knew what happened at corregidor at the time, and they understood this mission to be somewhat of a little bit of a revenge and somewhat of getting back to the japanese, because when the japanese took corregidor, it was a tremendous blow. General macarthur was convinced that he was ready to surrender with the troops there but only by order of president roosevelt, but only that he was the general to lead the allied forces against the japanese. So to take back the island, he calls on the 503rd regimen and it was commanded by a Man Colonel George jones. The mission was to jump on to the island hemmed in by cliffs and bristling with deadly spiky tree trunks and wrested from the japanese defenders armed to fight to death. And general jones was from fort benny, and he was stationed at the Canal Zone before taking full command of the first parashoot 504 which was the first parashooter airborne, and so that earned him the nickname of panama jones. And it was the 503rd regimen that was sent to australia in 1942 and it was General Macarthurs regimen and the only airborne regimen in the pacific theatre. So as you are going through the book, you will meet Bill Calhoun and at the age of 21, sorry, 22, first lieutenant Bill Calhoun was a veteran paratrooper. He had a purple heart, and he took the order of going to take corregidor, and he was the leader of fcompany. In the picture he is holding a thomson Machine Gun. Anyone who has read band of brothers he represents character, and he really does represent that. I have two copies. The first was printed on paper and the second was on Dot Matrix and from his family and it is the native of the corregidor and his inner monologue and what stuck out to me with his memoir is how much of a toll being a Combat Commander took upon him, and how much he loved his men and how much he struggled with the mission, and struggled with the importance, and i thought that it was really telling, because a lot of times, you know, World War ii books in particular are written with such a stark right and wrong and good versus evil and i liked the idea of following calhoun through the battle to seeing how he deals with combat and being a combat leader. The second important character that you will meet is a guy named charlie bradford. And Doc Bradford is the second battalion surgeon. In 1926 graduate of harvard, he was part of a team of Boston Area surgeons who travelled with the hospital expeditionary to london and then he joined the army as a captain and as an orthopedic surgeon and started his career in the hospital in australia, but after several broken bones of the 503th came in, he decided it would be good for them to have a surgeon. So he got qualified to join the 503rd. And this memoir was passed around to many historians writing about corregidor, and a real soldiers basis, and a couple of reasons. Bradford writes beautifully and he has great insight for story, and because he was the surgeon, a lot of guys passing in and out, and so he picked up a lot of stories as the wounded guys came in, and he painted a broader picture of what happened on corregidor. But he has such a great writer and brings such humanity that you get to understand the war a little bit. But he also brings great admiration for the men around him, and he is really a guy who saw the big picture, saw the valor that he was seeing, and really able to capture eloquently on the page. The last point of View Character that i really focused on a guy named private first class lopez. He was from colorado and the youngest of five brothers and grew up without a father, but the army was a new family when he enlisted in 1943. Lopez is the only man that i interviewed that i wrote deeply about that was alive. He has passed away since, but i was able to get one of his final interviews is at his home in colorado, and really interesting guy. He is a good storyteller, and he tells a couple of good stories in the book and one about how he and his friends stole a Supply Truck and able to find apples and lard and used what they stole to make fresh apple pies around the holidays which was a hit with the unit mates. What is interesng about Tony Lopez is that his story is important because there is a part in the book, because of the sheer cliffs around corregidor, some of the guys would miss the drop zone, and they were in the ravines which is where the japanese defenders were, and at one point tony goes down the save a wounded paratrooper, and it is a moving and heroic story, but what stuck with me most with time of Tony Lopez, he did not want to talk about that, but he wanted to talk about the apple pies and the funny pranks that he and his unit mattmates were doing. But he was the Heart And Soul of the unit, and it was a privilege to spend some time with him. Lastly, the guy that most people will have some familiarity with is Lloyd Carter. What is interesting about Lloyd Carter is that he is a former platoon leader, and he says, he is not going to battle without lloyd mccarter, so when they go to get on the mission to jump on the plane, and they go to stockade to get him out, because he had a habit to leave the unit when they were in garrison. So when they were not in combat, he would disappear, and always rumors of where was he, and the rumor was before corregidor, he was in new Guinea Fighting with the australians and he had a reputation of reckless and brawl with anyone who challenged him, but what is interesting about him, that he is the character in fiction that cant be at peace. He is always out in combat, and he always has the reckless mentality, but such an essential part of the unit, and the eyes and the ears and the guys trusted him. When you read the book, you will find that, you know, when they needed help the most, you know, at one point there is a Bonsai Charge, and it is mccarter who goes down to put himself in harms way, and blunts this Bonsai Charge, so he is the character that is kind of the classic guy. He was a Lumer Jack in idaho before joining the military and he has a colorful past and yet, if i invented him, and said that he is a lumberjack, and he won the congressional medal of on nor medal of honor, you would have thought that i went over the top, but it is true. He is an interesting part of the story, but i never got to the depth of what i wanted to really flesh him out more on that i did. So, back to the map now. If you are looking at more of the tactical map, and this is the plan, so when jones gets mission to take corregidor, he arranges a ride with the Bomber Crew to do a ride over the island and on one passing, he spots two clearings, and that top was the boldest, and one was a old Ninehole Golf Course and the other was a parade field, but on another pass, he can see that there is an airfield on the Tail Section towards right of the map on the tail. That is where he decides that he is going to jump. He is going to jump on the airfield, and it is flat and wide and easy to jump on. But he is overruled, and they order him to jump topside because they had set up the japanese to repel amphibious. Because if you jump to the top and the middle, they would have the high ground and fight down. So they are going to be using two columns of the C47 Cargo planes and the paratroops would approach from the southwest at 400 feet, and the planes over the landing fields for six seconds per pass, so they would have to jump in six pairs of eight, and so two passes with 68 guys a pass, and make three passes. So the prevailing intelligence says about 800 japanese men there, and when they get on the ground, they realize it is over 6,000. So it is 3,000 paratroopers jumping into the middle of 6,000 japanese defenders. So here is the view of corregidor as you are coming in. The white specks are the discarded parashoots, and the longer building there is the barracks which is a landmark on the topside. It becomes the Center Hub where the headquarters is. And the first look is what it looks like as a parashooter in the c47, and you can see the ravine here with the jungle. What is interesting, there is something special about the paratrooper if you think about it, because if you can see the trooper there in the picture, and he is jumping out with all of the gear, and two days worth of food, and all of the ammunition that he is going to need, and weapons, and there is something special about the paratroopers, and that they have this idea to jump out of an airplane into the middle of the Combat Zone and survive two to three days. And that mentality is sort of special, and unique. It is had the pleasure of going over seas with the 82nd airborne modern paratroopers, and it is the same mentality and idea. There is a ruggedness to the way that the paratroopers see the world, and the way they fight. I think it starts with the fact that they are trained and convinced that if you give them two days of food, and healthy parachute drop, they will be fine in fighting the enemy. This is how you land. If you will notice, this is how rugged the material is, and this is the crater. This is chet, and i have a great history of chet talking about his time on corregidor, and he describes landing pretty vividly. He says that after the volt of the parachute he says that he looked up in the canopy and floated enough to get his bearings, and the wind blew him, and no time to adjust and ike landed hard in a cloud of dust. Before, the other parachuters snapped his thompson Machine Gun in his case, and chambered around. When he got to the lip, he spotted a american cameraman who had seen him making it into the newsreels with his Leggings Landing to make the assault on corregidor. When i wrote that section, i reached out to Paul Whitman, one of the historians who is an expert of corregidor. He had shot one of the pictures of ike there landing in the crater just as he had described. I mentioned the mile long barracks and the worlds largest military barracks and had been used for the building of the american officers and enlisted personnel assigned to corregidor, in the american invasion, they took the island and the barracks was seized and Doc Bradford who we talked about before, he set up his Aid Station there in the mile long barracks and if you go to visit now, it is going to be looking similar to here, and it has a damaged skeleton look, and when i went to visit, i was there with Paul Whitman and he started to dig in the debris in front of mile long barracks and got parts of the parachute, and i was able to get part of the barracks there, and if you are there today, you can walk around a little bit. So once they get to corregidor, you can see the rugged landscape. Corregidor had been bombed for weeks before the paratroopers landed, so that the ground was chewed up, and broken trees everywhere. It is not what you would expect to see when you think about the war in the pacific, and it was not stick jungle, but it was baron wasteland that was, you know, the trees were all shattered by bombs and craters and massive tunnels and caves throughout the island and so it was fought in the claustrophobic jungles and corridors and corregidor was no different. What is interesting to me, too, it says that the more i read about this and having covered the war in iraq and afghanistan, it was shocking how little was offered, and the american soldiers and sailors and marines and they hated the japanese and the japanese hated the americans and more so than you could see over in europe. Now a paratroopers would approach the tunnels and the caves and they would throw white phosphorous flames to get the japanese out. They were not going to go in there and dig them out and fight them if they didnt have to. Much of the battle is fought that way in close quarter. Sometimes with bayonets and there is one scene where they go into a Machine Shop and the initial fight starts with Someone Shooting and the ricochets hit friendly fire, so they have to end up having to fight with trench knives and bayonet, so it is a savage fight, and at one point, the battalion sends out a message to all of the men, and they say, look, we need intelligence and capture the japanese defenders and where they are hiding and what is going on, and we will offer a Threeday Pass for every prisoner we get, and they still could not get prisoners and so as this battle, the jump is a success, but as they try to break out from the topside, and start to clear out the ravine, it is a daily slog, and in close quarters, but finally after a couple of weeks, the americans eventually prevail, and General Macarthur is able to come back to corregidor, after three years of being evacuated, he finally comes back with members of the entourage, and when he stepped off of the boat though, there was still the stench on enemy corpses, and the smell was so bad that the sailors reported smelling it sailing around the island. So when they got to the top side for the ceremony, he goes around the island and goes to where he used to lives and goes to the tunnel where he was evacuated with the family and goes to look at the batteries that what was corregidors claim to fame was, and what is interesting is that one of the things he says standing in front of the Battery Wheeler which is one of the big massive coastal guns and he says, corregidor is living proof that the day of the living fortress is over. And i have had that quote in there and it has stuck with me, because i think that what he is saying that when the japanese took it, they took corregidor, they bombed it. They didnt attack it with ships. And corregidor was meant to fight a naval attack and to shoot back at ships, but when the bombers are involved and you drop parachuters on top, and to get to Manila Bay, it is way in the past by the time you get, there and the fact that he recognizes that is telling. So when he is done with the tour, he comes to preside over the at the final ceremony at the parade ground, and there is paratroopers there, and there is infantry from the 34th regimen, and they were part of the amphibious assault on corregidor, and he says, General Macarthur says that the capture of corregidor is one of the most brilliant operations in military history, and he looks at the flagpole, and he says it still stands and have your troops hoist the colors to the beak, and have no enemy haul them down. And so, of course, they hoist the colors again, and what i thought was interesting, too is that in bradfords memoirs, all of the officers are standing around the barracks and watching the ceremony and at the end of it, one of bradfords friends turns to him, and he says that ends true story of corregidor, and from now, it is legend and they will make comic strip heroes of the real men who fought here, and they can have their part, and we will have ours. So even they were aware that this battle is going to go down with its own mythology, and part of that is baked in to the fact that it was such a symbolic, and such a bitter loss in 42. When they finally get back to take it back to assuage that loss, but the soldiers were aware it was going to be much bigger and trumped up a little bit, and that the battle that they saw was not going to be the one that was going to be betrayed in the history books, at the end of the day, that quote was my North Star as i tried to dig into giving the readers a view of the fight, and really staying as close to the soldier, and as close to what they were thinking and the big muscle movements of the battle. So, i just, that quote is i think it sticks in my head, that it was really the emphasis and what set up the battle. As for the 503rd. Corregidor really becomes the defining moments. If you can see here, this is the modern patch for 503rd now, and the unit served in Vietnam And Iraq and afghanistan, and it is out of italy, and if you have seen the documentary made by silvestro, you will see the tadpoleshaped island with the rock written in it, and this is the tadpole island there, and so it is still worn to this. First, i want everybody to know i than you for coming here. And i went to corregidor and we walked to many of the locations as i could, and if you are reading the book, many of the locations are in the book. The one to the left is Wheeler Battery looking at where calhoun and his platoon get into a fight on the first day. This middle one is where in the Bonsai Attack that you will see in the book, it is where that takes place here, and then Malenta Tunnel is in the mid of the island where macarthur took refuge, and all of these places are there, and it is amazing to go and study and the tour is great. But more importantly, you have a sense of how tough of a fight it was. And really what was accomplished by the paratroopers who did jump. Thank you very much for tuning in. I appreciate the time. Hey, kevin. How are you, jim . Thank you for the presentation and the book is great. Glad you could join us tonight, and we have some questions coming in tonight. The first is the assault on corregidor was made by the 503rd parachute regimen and i was told that they used the parachutes in the 511 parachute airborne division, and some of the parachutes did not deploy properly and that resulted in death, and this would have been at the time of the battle in manila deploying from the south. That is a great question. I am almost positive, but i dont believe that anybody died in the parachute jumps. They had injuries, but far fewer injuries, and they were accounting for 50 injuries, but they didnt get it. They must have had injuries, and i am guessing, because they thought they were jumping into manila, and they didnt know why they were left off, and then slowly they were told they were coming to corregidor. And i didnt know that, i knew they were jumping in nickels, but it never came off at that point. When this battle takes place, when is it in relation to the recapture of manila . The recapture of manila is still on going in this battle. So it is in conjunction of one another. Kind of right in the middle of the battle, and February 16th is the Drop Date so exactly. So ten days on corregidor, so about the middle. And i think that when macarthur comes the battle of manila has ended like that day. Is there anything in the book about the 503rd drop in new guinea . I make a reference it to, but i make a conscious reference to write it as closely to corregidor. Im not a historian, but a reporter, so i write it as if i were a reporter there with them as opposed to doing a real history book. Very good. Very good. Can you tell me who built the Malenta Tunnel . The americans. They dug it out after they took over corregidor after the spanishamerican war. I was once explained to me that the 503rd were not professional soldiers, but civilians in uniform, and how do you compare those soldiers with the ones that you met in iraq and afghanistan, and have you ever looked into Survivors Guilt . A couple of things. I see a couple of similarities of the parachuters then and now. And when you convince a soldier, you will give them everything that they need on a battlefield and push them out of a plane, there is a certain mentality to that either previous or modern paratrooper. Colonel jones has a issue with that, and as you get through the book, he is holding back some of the awards from the guys and not the real professional soldiers, but the citizen soldiers thinking it was not that important to them or that they were not soldiers, but it is zen soldiers and that divide was there, and so, anybody who gets through something like this, you have a little bit of that and i know that Tony Lopez when i spoke to him before he passed away, he had that. He didnt want to talk about what he did in the battle. He wanted to talk about the things before and after, and the funny stories and didnt want to remember the guys that didnt make it. So it is a lasting impact. Remembering the good things, and the people who are gone. Yes, we see it quite a bit. Can you comment on the condition of the Battle Site Today . Is it readily accessible to tourists . I Cant Say and jim, you have been there, and it is an amazing place to go. If you can just spare a day and take the tour, you wont be disappointed, but if you can spare a couple of days and the great part of that battlefield, you can walk around and i climbed all through Wheeler Battery which is a massive battery where a good chunk of the book takes place, and i crawled through the ravines, and it is overgrown, but it is not like an american battlefield where they cordon it off and you cant touch anything, and you can get in as deep as you want to, and so it is really cool. I agree. If i go to the philippines, that is the only place that i want to stay the whole time i am there, and the my favorite place on earth. How hard to clean tout Malenta Tunnels, and it must have been tough . That is the narrative of the book that we break it up a little bit, and a good researcher who does a lot with the imperial army found a Firstperson Account from a japanese defender, and that where you really get into tunnel, and you start to see, it was impossible. They were pouring fuel into the air shafts and burning them up. They were not going in there to clear it, because it is impossible to clear it. When you get into the tour, and you get into the tour, i would not want to do it. I did not like being in that tunnel, and nobody was trying to kill me. Why was an airborne assault preferred rather than amphibious landing after sustained naval bombardment . A couple of reasons. One was that the americans had learned a lot from island hopping, and the japanese attacked corregidor on barges, and the americans were able to hold them off for a while, because of it. And the japanese defense was a raid to repel an amphibious assault, and so it was actually what made corregidor work, and the Battle Plan Work is that they did jump on top, and the middle of the defenses and able to have the high ground, and so when you see, and it does look like a tadpole that is cresting with its head, and so those two hills are difficult to fight over, and the easiest way to take corregidor is to take it from the top, and they had the perfect unit to do it. How hard of a fight did the japanese give from the recapture of corregidor, and like they did from the battle of manila . Absolutely. Lieutenant endo organizes most of the defenders into a Bonsai Charge. It was the turning point, because it forces colonel jones at that point to compress the lines, because they realize that the guys were too spread out, but that battle was hinging a little bit from the beginning, and had that Bonsai Charge worked, they fought hard and fought to the end. It was a nastier fight because you have the deep tunnels that some of them were concrete, and a lot of them were flame throwers and white phosphorous grenades and they teeter right there on the edge. So yeah, they were not quitting, and they fought hard. Now, your book just came out today, so i think that a lot of people are asking questions, because they have not had a chance to see it yet, and was the 503rd provided air and naval Gunfire Support . Yes, they were. An battle, there were so many dead bodies that there were so many naval destroyers around that there was a stench. There was a constant ring around them, and there is a scene in the book where bradford, the surgeon, is on top of the mile high barracks, and he is watching the planes attack, and bombardments, and so it is a constant support on that. And i think that you are pointing out in the book, definitely, that almost 15, 20 days prior to the landing, they are just bombing every square inch of the island as they are getting ready for this . And they would fly over with them, and the bombing runs would go, and colonel jones went, and he had an island and they would send other officers to scout this island to the point that they did not think that the japanese sailors were believed to be 800, but it was 6,000. They were bombing it so heavily. Were there any japanese prisoners of war as a result of the war . I just started your book and i love it. Yes, a few. Thank you. They had no idea how many defenders were there, and so colonel jones says a extra three daysley if they can get a prisoner, and they could not find them. So there is a good scene where calhouns men go down to try to get a prisoner and it almost costs them. Jim, that is going back to what we said before, the japanese were fighting and they were not quitting or surrendering, and the fact that you run into that a couple times in the book, they were going to fight to the end. That is the way the whole war was really. Do you know the height of the c47s when the men jumped. I heard it was low, is that because they had jumped at a higher altitude and they thought they would be shot out of the sky . It was 400 to 800 feet because of the Cross Wind and they had such a small landing zone, if you missed it, you were going into the ravines or the water. And the ravines were controlled by the japanese. So it is the discipline of the parachutes not easily driven and flown to hit the drop zones, and a par 3 Golf Course, and a parade course. So if you have to hit it, it is not that big. And after the first jump, they kind of saw them moving too far, and then they decreased the height more, is that true . Yes, calhoun makes them go much lower, and he is talking to the pilot at 300 feet, which i was talking to a buddy of mine who is an army ranger, and he is marvelingt that, because he would not want to do that as a modern parachuter, one, two, down. And how did they coordinate with the amphibious forces and how did the paratroopers coordinate with the tanks . Well, they had radios and they had the communication as they got in, and what you will find is that endo who is the commander, and they should shut the radios off at night, and it hurts them that night when they are attacked because they Cant Coordinate because the radios are off as part of the sop. Any idea why the japanese had over 6,000 on corregidor with the ongoing battle of manila . It seems they would have been needed in manila. Well, i think they understood the significance of it. Again, these were not combat troops, and the japanese defenders were crew from some of the ships that were sunk in america, and you will find that some of the defenders will have rifles, and if they did, they were sharing them with another guy, and a couple of them get in a fight with the rebar and the bayonet attached to the front of it, and so it was a savage, savage fight, and the defenders were not cannon fodder, but they were not crack defenders, but just guys they had. And here is a comment from paul, who went around corregidor with, and he said 20 pows surrendered january 21st, 1946 and thank you, paul. Yes, he is the man. He is the man. And i visited this is another person i visited corregidor in 2015, but i dont remember any flat ground on top side, and please describe the landing zone. Okay. Two of them. You have in front of the mile high or mile long barracks, the open Field Right where the flag is now, right. That is the parade field, and that is one of the landing zones and the other one is on the other side of that memorial area where you had Golf Course there. All overgrown. It is all overgrown, and without paul, i would have missed it, because paul showed it to me. And we have a couple of comments from steve who used to live on corregidor, and he said 20 died on the jump, and most stuck on the trees and that is because the japanese were patrolling the beaches. No tours right now, because of covid, and he worries about the condition of the island at this point. I think that you talked about this in the talk, but what was the primary research for your book. Well, two things. One, i used Calhouns Memoir which i had two versions of it, and one that he had printed out, and i got it from his daughter from his home in texas. That had some of the handwritten notes in it, and then paul, Paul Whitman who runs the basically the Corregidor Site and greatest source of information on corregidor, and he had a edited version that he had edited and added context to, and i had that as well, and i was able to merge those two with captain bradfords book the surgeon. And then there was an oral history and did the interview with Tony Lopez and i weaved in the archival documents from Pauls Site, because he has all of it. And that was it, and a couple of the books that have been written previous to this that were a bigger, wider scope. But this book, i tried to focus in on only those couple of guys to give you an incident walk through the battle. It is a great day by day account. Probably one of the few i have ever seen. What was the Press Reaction to the retaking the of corregidor . The fall was a major news story, was the retaking of corregidor the same . Sure. It was looked at as redemption, and it is important, and it was important, and it restored some of that which was lost in 42 and that is why there was correspondence and the Nicam Landing was part of the newsreels and a big deal to take it back. Do you know how many press guys were put in with the 503rd and a couple who made the jump with them, wasnt there . Yes, one of them with lopez, if you recall he shoves him out of the door, and then i will let you read it in the book, but it is an interesting story in its own. Paul might know the exact number to be honest, but i dont have it in my notes to be honest, and id have to look it up. We have one more comment to say it is the best preserved battlefield in the pacific. I have to agree with that. It doesnt look like it did, but definitely the structure is all there and everything is there. And most definitely. And there is another question, what role if any did fort drum, the concrete Battleship Play in the battle. Paul, if you are here and correct me if i am wrong, but none, not a major one if i am aware of, and 42 had a major role, but not during that point. And do you know the date that macarthur raised the flag, and you answered it, march 2nd, the day he comes out there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There is a couple of questions they have asked for me about research. You are correct. No role in the retaking of corregidor, and paul is right on top of it. And he said tonight, very good, Paul Whitman. I Cant Stress enough though, if this is something that you are interested in and you read the book, and paul has got not only does Pauls Site corregidor. Com, but the battle in 1942 and about the coastal guns, and i mean, that site is a Treasure Trove and you will get lost in it, but he has done a lot of cool picture books that will only supplement what i am able to do in this. I mean, paul flew from australia, and i met him from here in the United States and we spent a week out there, and it was great, and it is like walking around with wikipedia. He has all of it. For all of you interested in beyond the book, go to that site and look around, because it is fantastic stuff. Can you speak about the role of the 34rd infantry and their landing . I mean, they were important in that, you know, you have the twopronged attack with the paratroopers on top taking the pressure off and changed the defense to land the plane. They are important, too, because they are able to come up to top side and get some of the wounded and get them back out of the beach, and evacuated out of the island and great combined arms to bring the heavier equipment to have the paratroopers to bring the equipment with them, and they alleviate some of the pressure, and malenta hill. I have been there four or five times and the last time was to brace the mile long barracks, and the way up there. And i recommend one of the overnight tours, and staying there. And he was having a comment there about the place now, and where it is now. And steve again, brutal on fort drum, and it was separate, and separate assault that he made there, and the japanese were still resisting as macarthur returned. That is all of the questions for tonight, but we really do appreciate your time, and thanks a lot, and let us know if you ever have been working on something else. I will, and thank you so much, jim. Thank you for coming, everyone. Take care. American history looking back on this day in history. It was quiet with a mannerly rhythm and aroused in the centers a right of the negros to share not only equally the air clear and free, but their rights of americans to share Opportunity And Privilege as well. Pleasure now to present the moral leader of our nation. One who has conducted a massive moral campaign in the southern area of the nation against the citadel of racism. Dr. Martin luther king, jr. Thank you, mr. Randolph. I would like to simply say that i think this is one of the great days of america, and i think that this march will go down as one of the greatest if not the greatest marches for human dignity ever held in the United States. Follow us on social media on Cspan History for more of this date in history posts. Up next, washington post writer, discuss challenges they faced. They argue that, while fighting fascism overseas, these soldiers had to battle racism at home. This event was hosted by the u. S. Holocaust memorial museum and they provided the video. A different aspect of Holocaust History and its connections to its influence on its relevance to our world today. Here in the United States february is black History Month and to commemorate this special month. We will honor today black americans who served in the