Translator i saw a large object from 2,500 meters, and so i attacked it. Since there were no carrier, we were reattacking the battleships that the first wave had already hit. Host eri hotta, you were shaking, nodding your head listening to him. Was it interpreted correctly . Guest i couldnt hear the japanese clearly host oh, you couldnt. Guest what he seemed to have said made sense, that he was doing the best, he was doing the best that he could do in the job that he was given, and there was no sort of its almost like being a good student and demonstrating your skills and diligence. And i think that was probably how they survived this war, because so many things didnt make sense, and so many things seemed meaningless to lose your life for. So i think you just needed to concentrate on the job in front of you. Host craig nelson, was there a lot of vengeance in later battles in this war . Guest well, you take this incredible moment that happened, and the navy just responded with a fury. And the first thing they did was, i think, the really unexamined heroes of pearl harbor which was the salvage crews. They were able to resuscitate that entire operation, 96 ships were in the harbor. They brought back all but three of them. And, in fact, the cover of the book, of my book has the shaw blowing up in dry dock. Its a horizontal bomber thats striking, and its bomb is penetrating to its ammunition deck. And its, so its turning the ship itself into a bomb. That ship is back in business and taking part in the Pacific Campaign a year later, and its just extraordinary to me that they were able to do that. Then you have this outpouring of rage so that at midway, four of the six japanese Aircraft Carriers were sunk. The other two were essentially hunted down, and the yamamotos great ship was used as a test target. One of my friends said you should call your book american rage. [laughter] host lets go back to our callers. We also have social media if you cant get through on the phone lines. And, of course, our email, booktv cspan. Org. Larry, seven trail ya, washington, thanks for holding. Youre on with our three authors. Caller yes. Im really enjoying this. Im 80 years old, so so i was a boy during world war ii, but we were very well aware of what was going on, having the blackouts at night and pulling down curtains. But you mentioned dory miller, the black mamba machine gun was killed in philippines. He was actually killed off the coast of [inaudible] a small Aircraft Carrier and it was sunk by a Japanese Submarine. That was the third day of the invasion. My cousin was aboard there and was killed on that. There were just a very few survivors. But my question was you dont hear anything about unit 731. And the medical experimentation on people, what they called, termed as logs so theyd dehumanize them. And no one was prosecuted after the war for war crimes on that. I just wondered who makes those decisions to prosecute . In fact, you hardly even hear it mentioned anymore. On the history books, china doesnt even list tiananmen square, students that were killed there theyre not mentioned in their history books at all. Host thats larry who was 5 years old when pearl harbor happened. Theres a terrific book, and its not mine, called war without mercy about how savage the war in the pacific was on both sides. There were certainly racial beliefs on both sides that contributed to just enormous atrocities, far more than in europe, i think. And its a fascinating book. Im blanking on the name of the author [inaudible conversations] [laughter] guest got a good plug. But i highly recommend that book to you for further discussionover just how awful discussion of just how awful that war was. Host albert is on the line, a veteran of world war ii from houston, texas. Hi, albert. Please go ahead. Caller hi, i was stationed there was always this talk that roosevelt said it was a day of infamy and so on and so forth, but i could never understand why we were having blackouts on the island of oahu about six or eight months before the attack actually came. Host now, albert, where were you stationed during world war ii . Guest hiccum. Host and what year . Guest 19391941. Host and how old are you, sir . May i ask . Guest im 96. Ill be 97 in january. Host albert, thank you so much for calling in and contributing. What about the blackouts . Anybody . Guest they were routinely practicing prior to december 7th exactly that. Hawaii had gone sort of preparations in terms of possible inveigh for months. Invasion for months. One of the aspects of this that i think is most interesting to people is how militarized hawaii was prior to the attack. People were used to constant training by army and navy planes. You could hear the fleet practicing its gunnery over the horizon. Military convoys clogged the roads all the time. Honolulu was a booming city as the influx of army and navy troops kept building. And, yes, there were blackouts regularly planned and scheduled in preparation for, i think, what everyone knew was coming which was war. The local magazine, monthly magazine called paradise of the pacific was constantly talking about whats just beyond the horizon. So air raid practice was a given. Host i think in one of your books you talk about the fact that husband kimmel, when he came on as chief, really boosted training very, very stringently. Guest that must have been you. [laughter] guest one of the reasons, the reason that so many people responded so quickly in the opening minutes of the attack was due to him. He had relentlessly trained the fleet in the ten months that he had been in charge, and training was his thing. This was a task master, a drill sergeant for the entire fleet. Nothing escaped his anticipation. No detail was his attention. No detail was too small. And people would point out to him that he probably shouldnt be paying that much attention. He couldnt help himself. But he practiced he insisted on practicing maneuvers that everyone needed to be at their position, everyone needed to know their job. And by the late fall, people were saying to him and in subsequent testimony they had never seen the fleet in better condition than it was at that moment. And so what happened after december 7th, he wasnt there to see it. But the performance of the navy was due to him. Host whats on the cover of your book . Guest its a, an image of someone looking through the, through binoculars for an enemy. I think its more representational than a depiction of someone on that day. Host eri hotta, how militarized was Japanese Society by the time of pearl harbor . Guest i think it was militarized by default because so many people had to be sent off to battle fronts in china, and the home front had to show their support otherwise youll be called unpatriotic. So, for instance, a neighborhood was organized into small block of four or five households, and they would cooperate with each other. In other words, they sort of spied on each other that they were performing patriotic duties and attending drills against possible fire, fire or air raids actually already. Also they had the job of distributing food, rationed food amongst themselves equitably. And that was also a source of resentment for many, many families because people felt cheated. It was just a system of mutual distrust. So, but then every sort of neighborhood associate had an informer for the military police. Its speculated, theres nothing to prove, but i think that it was based on fear of being singled out. So people really kept really low profile. Jazz music was banned and dance hallses were chosed, shut down halls were closed, shut down. So there was no sort of accelerately western entertainment overtly western entertainment. People were Still Holding american football matches in the fall of a 1941, but i think you didnt want to be singled out for all the wrong reasons. Host i think i read in your book that, basically, private cars were banned because of the use of oil. They invented cars running on charcoal and one bottle of beer every six months or two bottles of beer guest can you imagine . [laughter] not a society for alcohol. Host john is in new york city, another world war ii veteran. John, or please go ahead. Caller yeah. My story is i was in japan, isnt by the army to japan sent by the army to japan in september of 1945. And i got out of the service there, and i continued to stay in japan for a total of five years. And i taught at a Japanese University and another school. Anyway, i was wondering about the japanese, how they got into this, and my experience is the man in the street really didnt seem to understand what they were doing. [laughter] what had happened. Host john, how or were you treated in japan when you were there . Caller well, as soon as i got out of the service, i continued to work in Japanese University, and i was treated as a curiosity, of course. And i gave, and i talked to the japanese a lot, and i speak japanese. Host now, do you remember feeling angry after pearl harbor . Caller no. I was young, younger then and, no. Well, we were all kind of crazy about the war. [laughter] but when i was sent to japan, i wasnt angry at the japanese at all. In fact, i was curious. And my, and what i discovered is the man in the street really didnt have any feelings about the war at all. Host before we have our panel answer that question, just one final question to you. Do you think its fair to compare 9 11 to pearl hard or boar . Pearl harbor . Guest no. Host why . Guest well, because i think the japanese, there was two groups of people there, there were the common citizens who really were not told very much, and then there was the military class. And i made kind of a study of that, because i was very curious. And when i returned to the United States after five year ares in japan years in japan, i gave 105 talks about my experiences to the locals, any convention or any kiwanis club or or anybody who invited me to speak. And my message was always pretty much the man in the street didnt know what was going on. Host thank you, sir. Eri hotta. Guest its true that japan was not an open democracy for various reasons that we discussed already. But to say that military was responsible be oversimplifying the picture a bit, in my mind, because military was not a monolithic organ. And it was dieded divided into different cliques, different interests and, of course, navy and army never got along. [laughter] i think it was far more complicated structure of bargaining and deal making, plus, civilians were involved as well and the emperor in some indirect, very, very strange but very powerful way in the end. Very much the glue Holding Together those different fragments of interests. So i think its okay to say that, of course, commoners, regular people in the street didnt really know why that happened, but thats different from not asking why it happened. So i think they should, they shouldnt be automatically excused or disengaged from the whole why did this happen picture, myself included as the inheritor of that sort of collected guilt. I think i have the responsibility, one way of dealing with the issue myself. People have different ways of dealing with it. But to say that people didnt know what was going on, people in the government didnt know what was going on, so lets try to figure out host did your family have a connection to world war ii . Guest i have a both my grandparents, grandfathers didnt go to war for Health Reasons or the age, but i have great uncle who died in iwo jima, another one who was an English Literature student at tokyo university, was considered quite dispensable because he was not an engineering student. So at the end of the war, he gets called on to become a kamikaze pilot. He actually doesnt go. The war ends right before his mission. So i didnt know him, sadly, enough because he died in his 60s, and i was quite ignorant about these things and not really conscious about these problems. But i think he lived with survivors guilt all along. I think he ran a Pilot Flight School somewhere on the west coast of america. So he sort of half immigrated to america in a strange sort of twist of fate. But i think i dont think he quite knew why he was left to live. Host craig nelson, this is an email from robert hyde in syracuse, new york. Why did the japanese not invade and occupy the Hawaiian Islands as part of the pearl harbor attack . Guest well, they were so busy invading and occupying all of Southeast Asia from the northeast boundaries to the southwest boundaries of india that they really didnt have enough left over to take on the 43,000 servicemen that were in hawaii. So i really think that as mr. Twomey had said, hawaii was very much a sideline item towards this great big operation to turn, to expand their chinese territory into all of Southeast Asia territory. But i to want to explain one thing about the attack we havent discussed yet, and thats how really nutty this idea was. Its something that mystifies me about yamamoto, that he spent so much time in america and naught, well, if we cull 2,403 americans on hawaii, the american citizen is going to go, oh, well, we certainly cant fight them, weve just got to turn asia over to the chinese. I just dont understand why he was so keen on that. Its just so nutty, and you take that as sort of a foundation of why pearl harbor was attacked, and it makes no sense. Host how long did the japanese occupy that great expansion of sea in asia . Guest well, it took them is six months to get it, so by the middle of 42, so they have the great empire of japan, and they hold onto it for 44. Host when was the next major battle or the first battle after pearl harbor . Guest well, the great story is about midway which is another three hour conversation we could have because its such an amazing story. Midway happened six months after well, three months after pearl hard or boar comes the incredible doolittle raid. So that is the only time for twice in their entire life the navy and army have cooperated, were talking about japanese. In america the navy and the term have cooperated twice, and thats one of them. In april. Six months after pearl harbor comes midway which completely turns the course of the pacific war and nimitz could it the greatest squeaker of all time. But thats a story for another threehour panel. Host bo is in sylvester, georgia. Please go ahead with your question or comment for our authors. Caller thank you for letting me join your conversation this afternoon. Ive got two quick things. Ive been listening. I lived down the street in tipton from a pearl harbor survive, and his name probably will bring a bell, William Outerbridge. Guest wow. Caller he commanded the [inaudible] that spotted the japanese midget9 submarine. They could not confirm they sunk it because the way it went down, because i think it went down in 2002. And ironically, it was december 7th, 944, that same ship that sunk that japanese midget submarine was destroyed in a cam cause key a kamikaze attack near the philippine eye lancz. When i knew him, he was retired as a rear admiral, and hes buried in tipton not too far from henry meyers. I think he flew the plane for roosevelt. But anyhow, the guy was a walking history book, and i want to ask ms. Hotta, and ill let you go. I knew a Japanese Naval officer from the selfdefense academy e met in the 1980s, and he told me they didnt call it world war ii, they called it the Great Pacific war with and thats how they viewed history. He also mentioned theres an article in the japanese constitution that prohibits them from having any kind of military operations overseas. Thank you, ill hang up. Host one of you writes about thencaptain outerbridge, was it in tell the story. Guest well, his storys pretty well known in its broad outlines. I dont think people really understand or know what an extraordinary set of circumstances led to William Outerbridge being in the position he was in. He had been the cap sustain of captain of, the executive officer of another destroyer and truly hated his captain, just couldnt stand the man and had been seeking to get a transfer off his destroyer in any way he could, and he was hoping for a land assignment so he could be reunited with his family. In late november he was relieved and geive command of his and given command of his own ship, the uss ward. He took command of it on friday, december 59. He had never december 5th. He had never commanded a ship. The morning of december 6th he and the ward went out of the harbor on his first patrol ever. And they were tasked with patrolling back and forth in front of the harbor channel, and it was the next morning when hes asleep that he is awakened with a call to come to the bridge. And they spot an object in the water, and heres a man whos in his first job on his first day, and he didnt hesitate. He ordered his ship to hunt it down and open fire. And they did open fire. And they knew they hit it too. It wouldnt be confirmed until the submarine was found, as the gentleman referred to, decades later. But they warned, they sent a message saying they had attacked this submarine. Thats the object, i think i should have said that. He didnt know it, they didnt know it, but it was one of the midget submarine it is japanese were using as part of their attack. Urge, his unfortunately, his message kind of wound its way slowly up through peacetime, and the vice grip of peace was still in peoples mane until today mentality, and they didnt react swiftly enough to what he had just told them. And he sent a letter to his wife a few days later saying took command on friday, went to sea on saturday, started the war on sunday. [laughter] host eri hotta, what about that gentlemans call about the Great Pacific war . Guest the terminology. Theres a lot in a name and how one choose to call a certain war, i think, reveals a lot about your political affiliation. Pacific war or asiapacific war, as is generally used in japan by both right and left, i think its valueneutral, very sort of uncontestable term because, of course, war happened in that theater. They claim that japan liberated all the colonial parts of Southeast Asia. In china as well. I dont know how they extend the argument that way. Leftist, on the extreme left, i think some people prefer to call it 5 years war because 15 years war because they see the beginning of the war as 1931 when japanese field army invaded parts of northeast asia. Northeast china, excuse me. So i think theres a lot in the name, but i think many more just prefer to call it the v