Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ian Toll Twilight Of The Gods 20240711

Q a box and the moderator will be reviewing those during the questionandanswer session which will conclude tonights program and now to introduce the moderator, it is my pleasure to pass this program over to doctor rob said tino. Thank you, jeremy. Im here, Senior Historian at the National World War Ii Museum in new orleans, louisiana. We have special guest tonight a friend of the museum and my friend and a wonderful writer and author, ian told brady ian, welcome. Thank you. Reporter and is probably one of those doesnt need an introduction and you all know the introduction could be long and and is an extremely accomplished scholar and he is the author of six the epic history of the founding of the u. S. Navy as well as a trilogy called the pacific war of the third volume of which has just been released called twilight of the gods. He has one the Samuel Elliott morrison award and one the William E Colby military writers award and has won the other Samuel Elliott morrison award given by the u. S. Constitution museum and if there are any Samuel Elliott morrison award other expect you to win want in the not so distant future. Thank you for talking with us about twilight of the gods. My pleasure in my honor. What im struck by the book and im always struck by how an author chooses to open the story and its a big story, war on western pacific 44, 45 biggest naval battles of all time and valor and heroism of every sort but you could give this book an interesting way in the realm of politics and i thought it was nicely done. Especially at the Douglas Macarthur so why open the book that way and ill expand on my question and its a bit of a risk and they want to get a [inaudible] its a survey of the u. S. Political team spirit military history in this case you really have to wait until the third hundred pages in the book and it is an unconventional way to begin military history and my thought was i had a little bit of latitude in this case because its the third volume of the trilogy and people are reading it and have read the first two and they are either committed to read it or not and basically my observation was at the pacific war was that there was a lot of literature fdr and a lot about macarthur and i like to say pickup truck full of fdr biographies and i dont think thats an exaggeration and there is a large wheelbarrow full of macarthur biographies and these are two of the most fascinating figures in the 20th century American History and biographers love them for obvious reasons so the story of the Pacific Command conference which took place in a while who in the island of oahu in hawaii in july 1944, that story has been told over and over and over again because of how frequently do biographies are coming out in both fdr and macarthur and of course thats a featured incident in any biography of those two because it was a dramatic meeting that took place in the first time they had met in seven years. As i said, two of the most colorful figures of that American History but for that reason and this actually started in the war we have tended to look at that meeting through the prison of american politics immediately before leaving on the trip that took him to hawaii and fdr had announced to nobodys surprise that he was going to run for unprecedented fourth term of office and it had visited the Democratic National convention to the west coast. The way the press observed essentially what the country saw this trip to hawaii was a Campaign Stop in a publicity event. In fact, it was much more than that in a very substantive command conference and fdr was doing something which i think we wouldve expected any communit community commanderinchief to do is visit the Pacific Theater and its the only time he did it. For the millions of men and women who are fighting under our flag in the pacific that visit told them they not been forgotten and what was important. So why begin it with that long account of that visit and i think it was important to try to unite what have become two very separate strands of literature of this biographical political kind of view of this meeting between macarthur and fdr and what was a very substantive and historically important military planning conference that involved fdr and macarthur admiral leahy who is almost always forgotten with a low profile figure that was immensely important in this history. Quote wrote some of the greatest memoirs during the pacific war. I agree. Must get to the strategic talk but before we move away from the politics tell us about macarthur in 1944 and how badly did he want to get into the oval office in 1944 . Macarthur flirted with the presidency many times throughout his career beginning in the 1920s and he had been floated in circles and he allowed his supporters and states and powerful members of congress in the Republican Party in certain conservative media owners and various other figures on the american right who sought macarthurs potentially their only chance to defeat fdr in a wartime election and so they essentially they started the Dark Horse Campaign with macarthurs implicit connivance and did not lead anywhere and for reasons for that we simply because the New York Times locked up the nomination early in the primary process. The question has been asked and theyve debated did macarthur want to run for president and would he have like to become president or was this just a way of exerting pressure on the president and on the joint chiefs to do what he wanted to do in the pacific which essentially involves sending more military to the command and it was divided as you know more than half with the commander and then in the southwest pacific you had macarthur and his division of the pacific autonomous theater commands was controversial and regarded as essentially a way of settling the rivalry between the army and navy satisfying macarthur and leaving the navy in charge of the naval war. And so this question of when macarthur eventually gained supreme command and the specific which was his goal and second could he ensure that our roots back to tokyo went through and that he would get the green light to liberate critically the Northern Island and so these were his goals and this kind of Dark Horse Campaign the president may civilly have been a way of exerting pressure in order to fulfill those goals. What about fdr . You write marvelously in the book that the war changed him and this was a happy war and it used to be one for the ages earlier in his presidency he would be joshing with the reporters and knew whose birthday it was and his children were having a birthday that day and they could joke back and forth but its not fdr by this point is it . No, of course this was long as president and in American History and i remember at the outset of the current president S Administration there was a story and the leaders of the Washington Post it was about fdr relationship with the press and about how clever he was that essentially using this charm tactic when he was famous for to get the press on his side and that is an accurate depiction of how fdr dealt with the press. In his first term in office by his third term 1941 he had essentially had it with the press and really was deeply offended, i think in general of the way the press is covering politics a number of his bitterest enemies were major media owners and his twiceweekly press conferences were pretty cantankerous and he really was actually out of the campaign trail attacking the press constantly. I thought that was an important part of the perspective and wanted to get in the weight of the Different Military Services Also developed policies and how the army and the navy had different approaches for this and i thought that was just an important way to introduce the larger dimension of what was happening in the pacific and the kinds of environments in which military leaders had to make their decisions and do their jobs during this bloodied war. You mentioned again the conference and big Strategic Decisions had to be made. I guess the way you write it as i am reading your chapter on it we come to a fork in the road, havent we . There was a big decision that had to be made and i guess you could break it down and say they simply lose on versus [inaudible] and could you break that down for the participants they are . To make a long straight short by june 1944 certainly july 1944 taken the islands and we had taken saipan and about to take an that was the islands we were with bombing in with the industrial heartland in the bomber and the Japanese Striking arm of the japanese fleet had been annihilated in the Company Naval battle that took place during the conveyance of essentially the japanese were finished. Any hopes they had of winning the war the last stage of the war was how do you force the japanese to capitulate and you know it would be Unconditional Surrender now is our policy and the right policy to say that we would occupy and disarm japan, supervise the reconstruction of a democratic japan and of course, the japanese regime was very far away from that. The question became in the last year how do you force them to surrender. Macarthur had the philippines at the centerpiece of his conception and many said he wanted to liberate the philippines even more than winning the war and the navy in many of those powerful internal planners of the joint chiefs of staff were Organization Washington so a major role for china was in the last stage of the campaign and they wanted to flip the coast of china and wanted that [inaudible] they wanted potential to drop on chinese infantry manpower and the invasion of japan if that were to take place in the destruction of japanese armies over the asian mainland. Byman 1944 i think its fair to say we were going to take one of those two islands first, either the Northern Island of the philippines or the island of the capital city manila or what we cultivate taiwan, one of these two islands. That was the immediate decision fdr and his military chiefs faced in mid 1944. Beyond that there was a question of can be forced japanese to surrender without invading their homeland and that played very much into the thinking they were confronting at this time as well . Let me try to pin him down to eight what if because we love what ifs, dont we . I think our listeners know interviewers know that of course [inaudible] was a choice. How might the pacific war or the asiapacific war, hmmm may have there been difference is if we landed on [inaudible] and turned it into a airbase or a base for b29s and may be in debt being in the fighting and the mainland and of course there is a civil war that is about to break out at the end of this war and im just wondering, any thoughts on that . I think if we had landed it would be or we would still have troops there today and so the nature of the conflict between today and the independent nation of taiwan and china would be that much more intense with the major American Military presence there and its a what if if you say and it was interesting and enormous questions for the world is had we taken formosa in 1944 we would then have led to a larger involvement in american troops on the asian mainland and my that have led to different results in the chinese civil w war. It so speculative and very hard to make really persuasive arguments and im not an expert on what happened in the chinese civil war but 1949 for years after the end of the Second World War mao had taken control of china and the significance of that event for World History including today is just incalculable and so it is, you know, ernest who was the senior officer in the navy during the Second World War and in 1949 looking back he raised this question and if we had done what i had wanted to do, he said, take formosa and this might have led to a different result perhaps mao would not have gotten the upper hand in china and of course that would have diverted the course of asian in World History. That is one of the fascinating whatifs but the pacific war is so large and almost any change you make and it changes the course of our own historical timeline, you might say. It is true. In europe as well and that is one of the reasons the Second World War is so unique and so important and so fascinating. It really has shaped the post world war in both asia and europe and choices made by the generals and admirals in how to prosecute the war and those of major downstream implications to the postwar world and indications that we live in today. Let me shift gears, ian. So much of your book, describe your book as an expertly written and its my breadandbutter is to read Operational History and its as good as it gets. You know what you are talking about that when you say that so it i appreciate that. Thank you. Much of what you do with i think is necessary and operations but the personalities of the u. S. Commanders are some unforgettable folks here. Let me read you a quote from the book by vice admiral talking about carrier warfare in the pacific and i would like you to comment. There are so many japanese planes on any island and we will go in and take it on the tenant and swap punches and i know i will have losses but im stronger than they are and i dont give a damn if they do bomb because i can go anywhere and no one can stop me. I go into destroy their aircraft [inaudible] how does that stand up today and your idea and in the mountain of the pacific war in 1944, 9045 . It was certainly an accurate statement about the validity of our Carrier Task Force in 1944. In the first year of the war which i covered in the pacific you have these carrier duels where you had battles between small Carrier Task Forces involving maybe three, four carriers and most and in which really it was a question of hidden room, try to attack and get your planes over your enemy suites first and hide your ships and whether if you can and if youre checking in airbase on an island where you get in with complete surprise and attack and recover your planes aboard your carriers and get the hell out of there before the landbased air counterattack. By 1944 the size of our Carrier Task Force in the pacific so this was task force 58 with the task force 38 when halsey had it were talking about 1216 aircraft carriers [inaudible] these are fleet carriers and operating in semi autonomous task groups which are operating within shouting distance of each other and they are launching a thousand, 1200 planes in a single integrated strike that is descending on the japanese airbase on some island in the pacific lets call it the marianas and they are just wiping the skies clean of the japanese defending fighters and then going in there and bombing the living daylights out of their airbase is destroying their planes on the ground so what he saying there is that the carriers had gotten powerful enough by this stage of the war that the hitandrun approach was no longer necessary. You could simply bring your Carrier Task Force into range of a major japanese airbase and essentially just destroy it and overpower it it with airpower and communally fight off any counterstrike on the american fleet. That is how carrier warfare changed in the late stages of the war spirit lets move to the admiral and for some reason one of my favorite characters because hes colorful. Hes more the Organization Man so every commander he said must be a gambler. He wanted to be one of the professional variety and he wanted all the odds i could get stacked in my favor. Little different than [inaudible] . He was a black shoe in a navy parlor which means hes a circus Naval Warfare and not an aviator and a never skippered a carrier and he was this very sort of had this style and very much, as you say, Organization Man and the guy you could see being a ceo of a Major Company today and a cool character, cerebral and very, very smart on everyones account. But really didnt believe in the kind of blood and thunder sort of style of command so he was often contrasted to halsey for that reason. Sort of ascended to the top seagoing command in the u. S. Navy by a series of accidents and accidental event thrust into the position of commanding one of the task forces at the battle of midway and was president for any net immortal battle and then had been recalled to shore duty so he and nimitz became very close professionally and personally and essentially emmett said i trust this guy to take the fleet out and make the same decisions that i would if i was commanding at sea and nimitz never commanded at sea but was in a shore bound headquarters for the entire war. He had pat said take the fleet to see. By 1944 he was getting in and the quote is we have overwhelming naval superiority but we will win this war and lets not take any unnecessary chances and that may allow the enterprising japanese to get in and score a Lucky Victory against us and lets play by the numbers and i think that was the correct approach in that late stage of the war and that certainly has been the judgment of historians who have rated it as the best wartime commanders in the pacific. You reference bowl halsey and a lot of this volume is about bowl halsey. This time of the pacific war and how would you rate him . Let me ask you that in two ways. First, his ability as an operational commander and lets Say Something about his [inaudible] because the question is apt to sell for man [inaudible] first of all as an operational commander and you could say a word about some of the [inaudible] halsey made a series of significant errors in the last year of the pacific war and the two typhoons have often been mentioned and a number of influential subordinates in the Task Group Commanders and these were the general admirals and they were harshly critical of his major decisions and at the battle of [inaudible] he made what was perhaps one of the most infamous command errors in naval history which could have led to disaster but didnt because the japanese commander retreated at a critical moment. The list in the indictments against bowl halsey simply in terms of his management of the fleet the last year is pretty long and pretty damning and more broadly looking at holy he was the senior task carrier in the pacific when the japanese hit pearl harbor in 1941 and had the carriers that were unseen and fortunate because they werent important to the japanese attack in so halsey really was the carrier and he really was the commander at sea who had what was left of the navy striking capability in the first months of the war and that was a time in which essentially are forces not been ready for war and had to very quickly get up to speed and learn to fight by fighting essentially and halsey was the leader in the most critical early months of the war and i think it gets a lot of credit for that. Good colorful style in the blood and thunder style which i mentioned earlier that was halsey lees style and he had a very slow forward approach to publicity with the forces under his command and of course because hes talking through the media he also ends up talking to the market people and becomes famous and in some ways the face of the u. S. Navy during the war and he is often compared to general patton in europe and i think its an apt comparison on many counts. In the middle years of the war he is the south Pacific Theater Commander Shore bound at a headquarters he really loses touch with the daytoday kind of job of running the fleet and when hes brought back to take over the fleet in 1944 its a totally different animal that he is commanding and has not stepped up but insists on bringing his loyal officers who have all been in the shore bound South Pacific headquarters for two years with him and they werent up to speed. Not essentially a Large Organization coming in to take over the fifth fleet which became the third fleet and halsey had it and they were really ready to do that. It was like i think a mistake that you can attribute up the chain of command to admiral king and admiral nimitz and maybe that was not a good choice to bring halsey back and push him into that role in 1944. You write beautifully about one of the most complex military actions in Human History and i very much have read them all and its the battle of [inaudible] and there is so much going on and really requires a depth in a make up an account that the reader can follow and you do that marvelously. You refer to battle as virtually in naval bonsai charge on the part of the japanese. What were their chances of winning . In any real sense the battle . Well, you know, by that time the japanese were desperate really. They were losing the war on all fronts and essentially they realized the problem was that if the americans took the philippines they would be cut off from their fuel supply which tobacco they lost the war in the first place primarily because they wanted their own source of war the most productive loyalty in asia was that point was indonesia, borneo, sumatra and the east indies and they wanted those oilfields and they went and took them in the first month of the war and they then had to bring that oil back to japan in tankers which were vulnerable so essentially they foresaw the critical artery of the japanese empire was about to be cut and once it was cut their fleet, you know, it might not even get into position for battle but might be immobilized for lack of fuel. The decision to throw essentially their entire remaining fleet against us in the battle sprung from this awareness that they had that this might be their only chance to fight a naval battle at all, let alone win it. Driving motive there was to just be sure that the fleet did put up a fight and that it didnt end the war swinging an anchor or to be destroyed by carrier planes and ports. It had to go out with a bang rather than a whimper and the, given the significant disadvantages they had came up with a very good plan. The plan was to lure the main Striking Force of the american carriers away from the beachhead to allow to japanese surface fleets to get at this vulnerable amphibious fleet that lay off the beachhead. They very nearly succeeded in doing that and it was really an extra ordinary sort of series of deceptions that put them in position and the significant commander which we talked about earlier by animal halsey. Im struck by a fleet in a military establishment that was so outclassed in terms of numbers and power by october 1945 and yet still manages to come close to landing a major hurt on the u. S. Amphibious landing by that point in the war. There was a great German Military philosopher who says war is the domain of chance and the domain of fog in a never quite sure what will happen and i thank you bring this home really well and it may be a classic example. Thank you. If you dont mind, lets talk and go to the japanese home island. So its a matter of any time the air force wish they could destroy the industry and put it out of business in the course theres almost no redundancy. What test are they going through this incredible level of devastation. An interesting book yet to be written maybe you could write it yourself would be to take the propaganda techniques in terms of how they control the information and compare that and contrasted with the japanese did. I think you will find the nations like totalitarian throughout history have attempted to have total control over what their own public knows about whats happening beyond. No country has that been done as thoroughly as japan in the Second World War. The regime had total control and told the newspapers what to write and tell the japanese people about what was happening so the average japanese person had a limited understanding of what was happening. And as you say by this late stage we start to see them coming in. The japanese people were on the verge of starvation and famine was a danger. In the last year if the war had gone a few months longer i think famine would have hit the Major Regions of japan but the japanese people certainly didnt know how dire things were until the emperor came on the radio and said this is it we are throwing in the towel and so i tried to weave into these books and appreciation of what life was like on the street and to try to present through their eyes what they saw with the limited Information Available to them and this regime that took control of japan. You write about the philippines and i came away from it. There was a horrific battle and you describe the worst military culture and ideology. What did you mean by that . The Japanese Army in particular had inculcated this idea that you can Never Surrender under any circumstances. You have to fight to the death or take your own life rather than to be captured. I dont think that its been generally well understood but it is a new idea in the Japanese Military culture. This wasnt something that came down through the tradition in the samurai era of warfare in japan the japanese lawyer if he had done his duty and the battle turned against him he could lay down and surrender in tact so surrender wasnt anathema. This was something that in the period they decided this will make us invincible if we order the soldiers never to surrender. Again and again in the pacific and may be the single best example of it when you tell an army of 18, 19, 20yearold farm boys that they are going to die no matter what and fight to the death, take their own lives if necessary, that puts pressure on them and the results can be severe so i think it is an outgrowth of this distortion of what the Japanese Military traditions and cultures were and it was one of the darkest chapters. Hitler regularly claimed they were traditions dating back four, five, 600 years and it strikes me similar. I find all the portions of the book extremely enlightening. There is another issue of course any book on this period is it possible to fathom the phenomenon by which i mean are we able to understand whats going through the mind . We can certainly try. It helps the other writings and letters and a whole genre in the, because he for some reason they sell like crazy so we should have quite a bit even an english translation telling about the psychology the pilots were dedicated to get their lives in battle and of course we have the more recent suicide attacks across much of the world and the psychology is i think fascinating. Many of the kamikaze pilots and the later stages of the word during thwarduring the okinawa u had young men who had been recruited into Flight Training not told to give their lives and under pressure to, quote unquote, volunteer. Many of them were deeply reluctant and made that clear in their writings and indeed often they would take off and turn back saying they had engine problems. From the americans point of view of course there were literally hundreds of planes coming in essentially behaving like man guided missiles was something the forces never thought they would see and found it hard to understand. I think it contributed to the sense that many people on our side, the japanese were just fundamentally kind of different. They were fanatics in a way that made it difficult to understand. Contributing to the context. Did, because he hit and then move to the enterprise and that got hit by a, because the and then new mexico. Basically about three days, yes thats right. You asked about where the japanese were warned of prompt and utter destruction if they didnt agree to the surrender. I was kind of haunted by this passage to use the japanese words that can mean a lot of things. Im no expert but it could mean a lot of things. What is happening there is there was a circle of military leaders that essentially hold the nations fate in their hands. We are deeply divided at this point. Part of the regime was essentially ready to recognize the necessity of surrender. The germans had been defeated. They were on the verge of their homeland being destroyed and then you have the hardline faction of the army in particular determined to fight off before any discussion of a truce and so the Prime Minister in that case they received the declaration essentially demanding Unconditional Surrender wondering what would happen in general terms and the Prime Minister is trying to articulate a policy to satisfy both of these elements within the regime. We see this with politicians today if you cant articulate a clear policy you try to use a vague language to satisfy both sides so what hes doing is talking to the hardliners in his own regime saying essentially we are going to simply ignore this and there will be no comment. We are not going to respond at all to the declaration. We are not going to reject it or accept it. We are just going to pretend it does not exist and when our translators get a hold of that we try to understand what it means and essentially the conclusion our government makes is the japanese have rejected the declaration so it was a case in which perhaps the language barrier may have contributed not necessarily to a misunderstanding but confusion to the last weeks of the civic war. It is shocking to me the need for precision in the diplomatic communication one has to be very careful about what one says. You said Something Interesting let me say to the folks out there, one or two more questions and then there are a lot of people that want to ask questions. You had a very interesting analysis at the end of the book. If it had been a game of chess, there would have been no endgame by which you mean when you play chess it is pretty clear one side has the upper hand, youve taken my queen lets just try again, play again tomorrow but of course war is not a chess game. Because of the japanese decision to fight, how many Japanese Military personnel and civilians as well, do you have a thought on that . I think the best estimates are there were some 1. 5 million japanese servicemen and civilians who died in the last year of the war, which represents close to one half of all who died in the asia and pacific beginning with the china incident of 1937 and so this was a ruinous year for the forces and with the Strategic Bombing of the japanese cities, the firebombing and atomic bombs. Youve got Something Like 800,000 japanese civilians giving their lives in the last year of the war as well and so it was so clear looking at the situation from the top levels beginning in mid 1944 vase saw the way this was going. They realized that they had lost this war and they were going to lose control of all of their overseas resources. They were going to have no source of oil and they would be cut off and be completely blockaded. There would be nothing coming in or going out. The economy would seize up and cities would be burned down. They forestall that and get the political conditions simply did not allow for any sort of bid for peace and it is a tragedy because the elements in the leadership thats all tha that s was going to happen were unable to establish the baseline consensus that was needed to say weve got to acknowledge we lost this war and try to cut the best deal that we can so we had this the last year of the pacific war. The violence came to a roaring climax. It burned itself out in both of the major theaters and on that note i have so many good questions from folks out there and as you can imagine if they read the book they are a highly informed audience, so lets see what we can take from our friends out there. There was a newly released diary from general richardson the highest ranking officer in his book. How did this affect the story and i would also ask to expand what are the interesting sources that perhaps havent been touched on before and if you address general richardsons. General richardson was the commanding north half of the Pacific Commanded by the armys top general and he left a very detailed and insightful diary which is a Central Source to Understanding Service rivalries and from someone who was in direct contact on a daytoday basis and knew what was happening so general richardson left his diary until the year 2015 but im sure everybody i know will be gone. I was fortunate enough to be contacted by the family that in 2015 said would you like the diary and i said what i. Thank you so much. So its a really Important News source and it provided a lot of insight in many different aspects but most importantly, returning to the first chapter when fdr visited, macarthur stayed with richardson in his house. They were old friends, and he debriefed general richardson after the confidences he told him exactly what he had told fdr. This was a vital new source because the conferences. No staff were permitted to stay in the room so they had to rely on the first and second hand accounts of those participants. Macarthur left a vivid account but many of the particulars i think had been called into question and so its something that gives a new anchor to understand exactly what was said. Nothing like having someone contact you and ask if you want a source no one has ever looked at before. Makes it all worthwhile. Once you publish a couple books and people read them, some of the stuff starts coming in. There were a number of others of the cases people would reach out to me and say my father or grandfather left a series of letters serving with this and that. Would you like to look at them and i said absolutely. Of course as you know theres no shortage of these sources available. The National Archive national ay more than we could read in our lifetime. When you get contacted by the family to save would you like to look at this thing no one else has seen you have that extra special experience looking at a in historical source that hasnt been used by someone else. Before i ask this question its about the leadership. Let me ask was it a mistake . To say that it was a mistake i think is bold because the decision was made without the hindsight we have today. I would say looking back with the perspective we have now, we should have bypassed it. Its an island that laid near the respective command areas and it had been ordered as a way to protect as he returned to the philippines and then it became clear we could neutralize that other islands up and down the chain and it wouldnt be necessary to take them just make sure that tha the airfields were essentially visited routinely by the air force bombers and carrier bombers. So they could have canceled that battle many marines gave their lives fighting and looking back its clear we could have bypassed without a loss of momentum in the campaign. The result of course was of Epic Proportions for the americans and the japanese. Can you comment on the leadership or receive criticism for being over aggressive. Was he pushing hard or following superiors orders to finish quickly . It was both. It didnt have to be one or the other. Was he to progressive, perhaps, was he aggressive, yes. What had happened, for those that are not as familiar, the japanese decided they would essentially develop a subterranean network of bunkers and tunnels in the high ground and essentially a Network North of the airfield so rather than selling out the charges that had been common in the earlier battles of the South Pacific they were using subterranean fortifications to neutralize the naval power, firepower offshore. The marine tradition and doctrine had been rapid attack to take losses if necessary to try to force your opponent back quickly and against those they were the wrong tactics and they understood what was needed was more of a siege of tactics approach and essentially had to be morphed into trench warfare so it was a terrible battle and challenge that he was up again against. I lost the audio there for a minute. We have a good question for you would you agree or disagree he was directly involved in the planning of the war in the pacific and im referring to the information released next week. Thats accurate. It was much more involved in as the commander of military forces. He was against the war and certainly resisted the drift towards the war and the constitutional arrangements were somewhat ambiguous. Exactly how much authority did he have is a disputed point even today. He certainly had tremendous intangible authority over his military leaders. When they were unanimous in recommending a course of action he always accepted their advice and so it wasnt until the end of the war when they were hopelessly deadlocked and this is after the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki. His inner circle of leaders army, navy, civilian leaders came to him and said we need you to decide because we cannot form a consensus and it was then that he intervened to say this is over and we are surrendering. William shepard would like to know i have your book in hand and say you dedicated it to general short, both of whom must be. Of course as we all know they were Commanding Officers december 7th, 1941 when the japanese attacked. Both were relieved of command and essentially spend the rest of the war answering a series of investigations sorry and for the lack of readiness. To what extent was essentially just a feature of the peacetime nation. There was a lot of culpability to go around. In my view whatever you have to say about their command record it wasnt right to essentially make them bear a large share of the blame for something when it should have been more fairly distributed and so i thought this last year of the war is when we settled the score and this was a book that should have been dedicated to them and recognition that the fact the country did them wrong. What do you think about the soviet invasion of manchuria and the impact on the decision. Some historians argue they would rather surrender than the communist soviet union. Any thoughts on that . I would agree with the last part of that. We had hiroshima 1945 and nagasaki august 9th. The soviet union suddenly declared war on japan surprising japan also on august 9th and essentially the largest ground attacks in the history of the war and this was a tremendous blow to the japanese not only because of the immediate emergency that it created but also the remaining diplomatic exit was to bring stalin to a range of troop talks between the americans and japanese so the declaration of war extinguished that last hope so the question is what was the relative importance of the atomic bombs and the russian attack prompting the japanese surrender. Historians have debated this and i think it is difficult to say precisely what the relative importance were because the timetable was so compressed it was clear that they were both really important coming together in a short period of time. Its impossible to say which was more important. They both were important in combination but of course as americans we see it as two to mushroom clouds. The atomic bombs loomed so large and our understanding of how it ended we often forget i think an equally important factor the russians suddenly declared war on the japanese and extinguished that last hope of a sort of diplomatic exit to the war. I think we have come to the end of the hour together and it flew by. The book is twilight of the gods war in the western pacific 1944, 1945. Its the third book in the trilogy so if youve come this far you must read the third and final. Thank you for spending this hour with us. We have to get you back out when normal conditions return. I look forward to it. Thank you for having me. Good night to everyone from the museum in new orleans. Have a great night. 1942 that were carried out in response to japans bombing of pearl harbor. A discussion of the new book last mission to tokyo which i encourage you all to read. It is a page turner who is