Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV In Long Beach CA 20160402

The war changed the economy tremendously from long beach and the rest of the United States. Long beach was experiencing a depression but we were lucky we discovered oil in 1921. The town was booming from the oil industry at that point. What was happening was also we were seeing the development of aviation in long beach. In 1911, cal rogers flew the first flight from new york and stopp stopped in long beach and made history in 1911. When the u. S. Army was looking for a place to build a plant to produce aircraft, which they thought we would need in world war ii, they picked long beach because steps away we have a wonderful airport founded in 1923. It was one of the first airports with a take off and landing in Different Directions which the army loved. When the plant opened in 1941 in october they thought well, we will produce the a26 but on december 8th we had pearl harbor and a couple things happened in long beach. Most of the ships that were destroyed in pearl harbor had been anchored here in long beach. So the families left behind were long beach families. That is not a wellknown fact about how much long beach was connected to pearl harbor. Douglas went into full production mode and was turning out planes 24 7. It then needed a lot of people to work here. The men went off to war and the women, for the first time, were brought out of the house and into workforce. Douglas was employing 4500 people a day in the long beach area and about 48 of these people were women. The women were trained immediately on whatever kind of job they came in to take. The reason they had to is because a lot of these women never worked outside of the house. It is funny when you look at the training material from douglas they were doing explanations of what a screw driver and a wrench was and how to use a hammer properly and how to read a bl blueprint. The most important thing they had to be caught cause safety. We didnt have a lot of safety regulations but we had women coming in with long hair and they were told immediately to pull it up because it could get caught in machines and several women were scalped. So you see womens hair being smoothed out and put into a smood that would protect you from dirt and was a safety regulation. There was a lot of practical training that went on when women took their job. The most important learning lest n is having to stand and do repeative, dirty, exhausting work for 1012 hours. Douglas hired matrons who worked in the restrooms and had women counselors that could help women who had difficulties. A lot of women have menstrual problems because of having to stand 1012 hours. A lot of people developed what was called a slouch because of bending town and constantly riveting they hurt their shoulders. They put in the ad if you can iron clothes you can rivet. There is not a lot of connection other than saying the iron you use to iron clothes was heavier than the rivet gun which is true but women became back and blue because the rivet gun was constantly hitting them. This was a new experience for a lot of people and especially women. It was a kind of labor most women had not been allowed to and now they were expected to do everything a man would do on the job. Women at douglas aircraft were doing everything. Riveting lots. They would work on the outside. You would have someone who would drive the rivet. And they needed someone inside and particularly needed smaller women. Douglas hired men who were referred to as midgets unfortunately but they were small sizes and could be there to push back and flatten out the rivets. They did everything. They put engines together and made sure the sights for the bomb bombers were accurate. Anything you can think of that requires to be done to get an airplane done the women did it. There is no you cnot do it because you were woman. They were expected to do everything a man did. In that aspect, they learned things do to they never expected to have the skills. When they went home they were skilled in repair and handy work. It was a real change for these women. The other side of the women in long beach wasnt just rosie the riveter but the Women Air Service pilots. Those were the women once the planes were manufactured they were flown off to different locations by women pilots. And we had one of the largest groups here at the Long Beach Airport. That was another aspect women got to do. Soldiers and sailors did know what their wife was doing. It was political rhetoric like the women are helping us win the war but there was a negative side. There were people opposed to women welding the ship and there was propaganda saying these ships will sink because they were made by women. Women had to fight that prop propaganda. On the airplanes, one of the reasons the memphis bell was shown all around, it showed the resilience of the b17 but it was because the b17 was called the ladys airplane because women put it together here in long beach. Rhetoric was going around in congress and other places that women were producing it and this isnt a safe airplane and it should be put together by men. There was a tug and pull. They heard what their wives did in the factory. The movie swing shift is based on a douglas plant in santa monica which is almost identical to here. There were a lot of divorces in world war ii because they decided they could be single and independent and they formed other relationships in the workplace. It had an impact on the sail sa and soldiers. There were still young men working in the factories or maybe they had a deferment. Once the war was over, propaganda shifted in the magazines and movies. You were expected if you were a woman to go home and give the job to the gis returning. After the war just a handful of women remained at douglas. When the korean war broke out there was an uptick but it never got back to the levels of world war ii. There was some resistance from society and also employers who wanted to employ the veterans coming home. It is interesting to watch the movies and magazines and suddenly your place was back in the home not the factory. I think this period in history is important because i think people need to understand how war has changed in the society. When world war ii was happening every person in society was involved in some aspect. The women were working in the factories, the kids in the classroom were encouraged to do things to support the war efforts, the men were off to war. Everything was about the war. We dont have that anymore. We have a silent war going on and very few people even know we are loosing men and women still in the service of our country. That is a big difference. The other thing is it did change the role of women. It was the event that said we can do it. Women can do everything if they are given the opportunity to do it. Once they open the door, it was very difficult to close it. It is the women whose mothers in the 40s became the most feminist in the 70s because their mothers told them look, we did all of this stuff, and a lot of people didnt believe women did all of this. We opened the mark in 2008 and invited anyone who had been a rosie and a woman came up with a scrap book and had many items a and she had tears in her eyes and said i didnt think anybody would remember what we did. There are many people that dont understand who these women were and the sacrifice these women did during world war ii. I think it is an important period in history. I think it is so important to the city of long beach. It boosted our population and put us on the map and we had a Naval Shipyard disability built as a result. It grew our economy and we need to be grateful for the men and women that gave their life and worked on the hom homefront to do that. This weekend, we are in long beach, company with the help of our cable partner, charter. Next, president ial speech writer for gerald ford, craig smith, shares his time in the house and the importance of speechwriters during president ial elections. How did you get started in spee speechwriting . I was a high school debater, and debatered in college and went to double my major from history to Communication Studies and went to graduate school for communication but i never thought speechwriting. When i was at the university of virginia i was asked to give a guest lecture at the university of North Carolina chapel hill. I went down to chapel hill and talked at 10 oclock and president ford was speaking at noon and all of us decided to go over and hear him because how often do you get to hear a president and the president gave a speech that wasnt very good. It was disorganized. Rambling. My colleagues kidded me how can you be a republican and support a man who cannot give out a speech. I went back and wrote a five page critique of the speech and mailed it to the white house. A week later i got a call and was asked to interview for a speech writing job that was open. They had checked me out with people that knew me in the debate world. I was a debate coach at the university of virginia. I came up, went through the interview and got the job. It was just amazing the first time i was writing a speech for anybody was was the president of the United States. Making match between the writer and the client happens after you are hired. Some of the best speechwriters in the world didnt get along with their clients. It is when you find a match and you only learn that through the process. John kennedy went through a number of speechwriters before the aid from nebraska became his and then it clicked. Kind of hazing for me, i think. The first speech was the peach for the Southern Baptist Convention Meeting in norfolk, virginia. You had a catholic writing for an episcopalian writing for the Southern Baptist. We were running against jimp jimmy carter who was a born again and loved by the Southern Baptist. We went down to norfolk. The president got up with my speech which are gone through ten drafts. The art of writing is rewriting. He was about a minute and 30 seconds into the speech and interbankrupt interrupted by applause. It didnt happen much. He was interupted 15 more times. The Washington Post wrote up the speeches as the best speech ford written. We went on successfully together from there. Why did that speech resonate with the crowd . I think it was because i understood audience analysis is critical to giving a good speech. The strategies used in the speech should come out of the audience so i did advance work on the audience. There were a lot of evangelical ministers there. I think adapting to the audience was the first step. The second step was the organization of the speech. He knew where he was going. Speeches are invisible and not like writing. People only retain a third of what they hear. You have to tell people here is where we are now, here is where we have going, now i am moving into the my conclusion. It makes the speaker and audience comfortable. After we lost the presidency, i lined up a job at the university of alabama birmingham. While teaching at birmingham, bill harris, the new head of the Alabama Republican Party came to me and said would you help me out i have to sell republicanism to alabama. Then we asked George Walker bush and come and we went to the civic center and i was sitting there and i said why dont you tell us what you think of george bushs speak. And when the speech was done, the young man turned to me and said what did you think . I said he is a nice man, sensitive and very bright but he Needs Organization and a sense of style. It is obvious that speech wasnt rehears rehearsed. The young man said my name is karl rove and i work for him. How would you like to meet him . I went upstairs and shook hands with mr. Bush and he invited me to houston to meet him and his wife in january of 1978. I flew to houston in a threepiece suit. Mr. Bush came to the door in a tshirt and he said if you get out of that silly vest i will make you breakfast. He is cooking eggs and hands me coffee. Barbara bush comes in and says that man is standing there a cup of coffee and no saucer. I said with all due respect, i came in a three piece suit and i will not spill a drop of the coffee and she laughed and george laughed and he hit it off and are friend. I became a consulting writer for bush. We won the iowa caucus and lost in new hampshire. The battle went all the way until june before bush pulled out and reagan became the nominee and put bush on the ticket with him. Then i continued to consult with mr. Bush, vise president bush, and into this next president ial run. The biggest challenge for writing speeches for bush senior was he didnt like rehearsinreh. I had to convince him Ronald Reagan rehearses and others i worked with did. He was terrific when he rehearsed. We republicans want a leader to win our party to the polls. The american people, regardless of party, want a winner in the white house after four years of jimmy carter fumbling . We have stuch such a winner and his name is Ronald Reagan. The best speech in the world delivered badly is a bad speech. And sometimes a bad speech delivered very well is good speech regardless of how bad it is written. Delivery is a bottom line when i work with clients. I deliver the speech to them before letting them look at it. So they can hear it first and then look at. They can see the rhythm and phrasing because that is really important. When do you know when a speech doesnt work . It is pretty obvious. I am lucky it rarely happened. My speeches generally went well because i monitored and rehearsed with the client. When i was working with president ford, the representatives of boys nation came to the rose garden to give him an award. I wrote a speech on cards, he delivered it beautifully, and everything went well. The next week the mormons came to give him a statue reminiscent of the mormon statue in salt lake city. He went out and kind of stumbled and i thought what happened . What was wrong . We were walking back from the rose garden to the oval office and i said mr. President , with all due respect, the boys nation speech went terrific and today not so much. What happened . He had they had a Motion Picture camera going and he said it makes me nervous seeing the Motion Picture camera. He was a man who gave 550 speeches and no determined he was camera shy. When he went to kansas city we rehearsed in front of five cameras and kept going through the speech and by the time he got up to deliver he was over his camera shyness and gave a great speech. Tonight i can tell you straight away this nation is sound. This nation is secure. This nation is on the march to full economic recovery and a better quality of life for all americans. The speech i wrote that received the most attention was when i was a consultant for governor pete wilson. He had a short campaign, he had lost his voice, we had trouble fundraising but his announcement of running was given in new york harbor in front of the statue of liberty. He talked about law and order, how much he supported police, we talked about illegal immigration which was one of things he was trying to shutdown. The speech made the front of the New York Times and that is the best reaction i have had to any speeches i have written. The bisentan ial speechest got a lot of press going into the the race we were 33 points behind jimmy carter and everyone had written off ford in the campaign. By the time we finished those speeches were we were only 10 points behind and at the end of the exceptance sheet ford was five points behind and after the debate ford was dead even. So if you can make a difference with the speeches you deliver. Debates are tricky and we have far too many in my opinion that it is difficult for speechwriters to do as difficult as they can. I felt so bad for senator marco rubio who they gave him a line and he kept repeating it. It was the beginning of the unraveling of his campaign. You also have someone who is ignoring his speechwriters. Somebody like donald trump making fun, as if he were in junior high, of people saying women dont look very good. Referring to Carly Fiorinas face. A speechwriter would never write that. You dont see the opportunity to write the good speech as much anymore. Marco rubio has given good acceptance speeches on Campaign Days so there are exceptions. Hillary clinton has gone from a wooden speaker in 1996, if you look at her victory speech after the South Carolina primary that speech is well written, well rehearsed and well delivered. It is the best speech i have seen her give. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers. Yeah we need to show by everything we do that we really are in this together. There is a place for the speechwriters. They are working and doing things. I know that jeb bush called in some people to get some help. On the second debate, we knew it was foreign policy, it was at the palace of the arts in San Francisco. Poland is not dominated by the soviet union. And they asked a followup did i understand you to say the russians are not using Eastern Europe and occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops it as a communist zone . On our side of the line the italians and french are still flirting i dont believe, mr. Franco, that the yug oh slavians consider themselves dominated by the soviet unions or the romanians or the polish consider themselves dominated by the soviet union. We went up to the advisor, drew spreencer, we said you misspoke yourself and you will have to hold a press conference und immediately. He said what did i say . And he said you said the soviet union doesnt dominate the soviet people and he said i said the soviet union doesnt dominate the people in their hearts and minds and we listened and he said oh my god. Kissenger said you cannot say that. It will insult the soviets. They debated it for five days. During those five days, the election slipped away. People remind the president had tripped and fallen and made fun of the president on surveillance Transparency Act night live. All of that came back and he became the mistake prone president. It was too late after he corrected the record. Debates are dangerous and scary. Speechwriters are important to current campaigns to start by saying that bottom line. Speechwriters are incredibly important in term of getting the phrasing down so it means something. Hillary clinton says we should not be building walls but breaking down barriers. That is a beautiful phrase. You have up, down, and the breaking down bearriebarriers a is a wellturned phrase and now a campaign slogan. I think those are the things speechwriters can do to give a campaign cohesiveness. You are watching booktv on cspan2. We are in long beach, california with the help our of local cable partner charter. Next we discuss the United States use of visual propaganda in germany after the second world war. In the age of television and the internet we cannot imagine advertisement or propaganda without visual images but they mattered before tv. They are often more important than text in transmitting a story. We are attracted to images. We often learn quickly and easily. We have emotional responses to images. And the nazis were master manipul manipulators and very effective in using propaganda to create and dissimnate their world view. They controlled art and the American Government during world war ii also used propaganda very effectively. What i show in the book is during the military occupation of germany, both the American Military and the soviet counterpart, were using every method of propaganda to transfer messages. The capture emotions of the germans and teach them lessons about the past and present and future. So much of the propaganda message applied by it americans and soviets is film, photography and even art. All messages of dissiminating information and telling the germans new narratives about their role in the world. Let me go into the some of these meth methodf of visual propaganda. I will tell you a little about the confrontation policy as it was called. American military commanders decide on the ground to bring them to camps and tour them. Men, women and children are brought into the camps. They are made to look at the bodies of the victims. We know that there were at least 24 such visits to concentration camps. This was a policy created on the spot. So it isnt predesigned. But it did fit the american policy agenda at the same. In 1944, the office of war information very clearly explained that one of the key things that the American Occupation had to do was convince the germans they were guilty for nazi crimes. And the visits were forced and they came with a rhetoric that emphasizeed emphasized and these crimes were a result of the germans. You made this possible. But concentration camp forced visits, atrocity propaganda for the public, didnt last long. After a fews the camps were closed, the bodies had to be buried to avoid disaster of sanitation, and it was more than that. By 1946, the United States government moved away from the notion of collective guilt and the notion all germans were responsible for the crimes of the nazis. Why . It aliented the germans. Nobody likes to be accused of genocide. It was dangerous because the soviets were not treating germans with this amount of harshness. As the cold war heats up, this is a competition between the americans and the soviets for the control of the people. As americans moved away from this they moved to the individual responsibility. The crimes of the third reich were horrible but we can collaborate with the german people and rebuild germany together with the german collaborat collaborators. I study 19441949 and what the allies did, particularly what the americans did and the soviets, really shaped how germans responded. The American Military government and soviet counterpart which given control of the situation are the moments of resistance and rebellion, there are, but there is no doubt that americans, and we are talking about propaganda, the americans had a Strong Campaign of eliminating all sorts of nazis images and nazi art. They had a Strong Campaign of censorship not allowing nazi propaganda to circulate or recirculate and they injected and controlled the propaganda message. So for instance, you could say didnt germans their own voice . Yes, they did. But that voice was within the limits allowed by the occupying powers. If a journal published things, commentary that americans government didnt like, maybe the American Government Information Control Division would let a couple issues go by to see what was going on and then there would be a paper cut and that journal would no longer have access to paper to print. As we look at american policy in occupied germany, we see it is molded by a lot of factors. The way germans reacted it american policy mattered, what the soviets did matter and american domestic politics affected how the office of military government, United States and germany could react and what policy could implement. Lets talk for a moment about film. The context, again, matters here. The United States fights world war ii, defeats the third reich, and japan but we fight world war ii with a segregated army we must remember there are racial tensions in the United States. This is the time of jim crow and we have institutionalized racism in this country. So let me tell you about a little film called a brotherhood of man. This is an 11minute cartoon film that was created in 1940. The aim of this little cartoon, its aim was basic. It was to tell a noncomplicated story of egalitarianism. The moral of the film was it doesnt matter what color of skin. All races, all colors of people, can learn if they are given the right education, if they are socialized in the process of learning. That was the message of the brotherhood of man. It was based on a pamphlet written a few year early by d n benedict and well fish. It was an antiracist manifesto. Members of the Labor Movement decide to commission the film based on the pamplet and why . Because there was a lot of ra racial tension in the factories. So the idea was lets show this and convince people we are all the same. In 1946, the film is done and made, and some officers decide lets buy a few hundred copies of the film but lets buy the film and translate it into german and lets show it to the german public. This is a great film showing egalitarianism and the importance of equality the nazis lost. This story gets complicated and the film is never shown in germany. Why . The War Department. The new director of Civil Affairs War Department here in the United States who is a seg segregationist said absolutely no. I could tell you people were involved making a film investigated the United States dprsz congress on charge they were communist. The film is just a little 1 11minute film but it shows how difficult it was to create rational policy and implement it in germany. No matter what, one of the most important elements is soviet antiamerican propaganda at the time was precisery american racism. The soviets pounded on this. This was the achilles heel of americans. Americans as hypocrits. Here they are trying to bring democracy but they are a racist segregated country. The War Department and the state department were not just there. They were trying to craft a positive message about the United States for german consumption. As brotherhood of man shows crafting that message was problematic. It wasnt obvious what that image of ourselves we wanted to project actually was. Things have changed so much. When people tell me what lessons can be derived from the American Occupation of germany and it is hard to know. But a very interesting topic and a topic i have been working on is can American Occupation in germany teach us lessons as we go into the other military occupations, you know . When i started working on this project in the 1990s at the university of chicago where iigate my phd in the department of Political Science the reaction i got is this is a great project but it seems historical. Military occupations. That is a thing of the past. Since then American Foreign policy has taken a change. We have been in iraq, and afghanistan, and the issue of American Occupation is pressing. There are certain issues that the American Occupation of germany can talk to. At the same time, it is a very distintive case. World two is different than these wars. Word war two ends with the resigning of the third reich. When we go into the germany we go into occupy. There is no notion we are liberating a society. The American Government was clear about the notion of occupation. And was comfortable using force, censorship, and propaganda in occupied germany. In terms of visual control, technology has changed things so greatly. There are so many more voices in the conversation and so many more voices matter. So many want to be involved in the conversation. It is harder to not only control information but have a solid propaganda message. To have one believable propag d propaganda line that doesnt get contradicted by other rois voices is difficult. Propaganda control exists and it is important but it has changed. There is no doubt about it. We talked with tim about his 40 years as a columnist with the Long Beach Press telegram. It used to be a lot bigger deal to be a columnist. You were chosen by the newspaper to be the personality of the newspaper. I think i still am but it has gotten so small. When you were the spokesman to the newspaper the city read it. I dont feel like the whole city reads me anymore. There are so many other ways to get exactly you can tailor your columnist to your own needs by going to the various websites that people like to read who they agree with. Back in the old days they read who they hated or loved. Now if they dont like me, they dont have to read me. I studied journalism in the mid70s and i was a columnist there. I was kind of famous in the quadarea. I said i must be pretty good so i came to the press telegram and said i would be happy to be your columnist here and they said not so fast and i started out as copy by filling glue pots and getting takeout food for the p copy editors and bought a loot of booze for the copy editors. You are just a slave and do what you want. Then i got to write a little bit. They would throw me a little story. I started writing features, and then started writing bigger features, and then i kind of slid into being a columnist. My first assignment at the press telegram well there was a couple. One was to cover a guitar festival at cal state long beach. They had jimmy buffet and guy clark and jimmy lou harris. I said is it okay if i cover this . But i made myself feel sick with fear because i could not stand or do anything so i called in sick. I said this isnt a good way to start. So it was funny how scary it was for me to be doing this because the press telegram was a big deal back then. We had so many people and readers in 1976 when i started. It was a big thing and i was very nervous. I knew, just from being a student and growing up, i knew a lot of writers and they were like little gods to me. It was a big deal. News gathering back then involved a lot of people. We had rewrite people to spruce things up. If the writer was a good reporter but not a particularly good writer. We had copy editors who would find the mistakes, not just spelling and grammar like they do now, but the copy ay editor were in their 50s and 60s and had been reporters and knew the cities and background of the story so they had really good questions for you not just style questions. They would say how come you didnt ask about this . And so it was a real team effort. Editors were very handson. Reporters helped each other out a lot. We still do. It was pretty intense. Researching a story is tremendously easy. Ironically because of the internet which is destroying the newspaper. So there is that weird dynamic going on. Thanks for helping and thanks for killing my job. But, you know, before if you wanted to know the name of a Vice President of the company you would have to call the company and they would say why do uwant to ask and they would say we will have a pr person get back to you tomorrow with that name. It could take you forever to do stories. You would run into most trivial problems. We were running back and forth to the library to go through the encyclop encyclop encyclopedia and i am going through there periodically guides. It was torture compared today. You can do seven weeks of research in three and a half hours today. Reported were treated better back then. Now you hear everybody on either side of the aisle complaining about the media doing this and that and blowing everything out of proportion. I dont think we try to blow things out of proportion. We know what sells. If somebody gets murdered we will put it in. If somebody picks up somebodys bike not put it in. When i started writing it was on the heels of all the president s men and we were trusted implicitly back then. People were not worried about things. Now they all want to know you are not going to put my name on nis . I should not be talking to you. The police dont talk to us, city officials are low to talk to us unless we go through the right channels. Before it was easier to talk to people. I am not sure what started the change. I dont know if kind of the creepy side of media ruined it for the more noble other side. People are a lot more leery of the press in general. The future of print journalism . It is pretty dire. There are papers closing all of the time and thousands of newspaper workers are loosing their jobs. I mean our little microcosm we had i think 700 employees right across the street 1520 years ago. Now we just are 810. A lot of that is misconception. People that used to work at the newspaper, at our newspaper, are off site. Our sports guys are photographers are not here but we still have them. But craigslist killed newspapers. We ne used to make 50 of our money from classifieds ads and now i dont. I see a classified ad in the paper i say why are they paying for this . Selling a bike for 14 and it is like you spent 6 to buy the ad. There is a famous thing here at the paper where the bosses were kind of laughing about the idea of craigslist when it came out. And they were laughing saying why would you give away ads for free . And it turns out the better question is why would you pay for an ad . We will find out. It has gone away in a lot of places. I dont think it has been to good effect. Especially the small papers like us. We are relatively small. Those are the ones who find the corruption at the local level. If the clerk is swiping money. Then when they find so much that is not going to get covered on tv or the internet it is where a lot of the small news comes from. The little late games. Local heroes. Local issues. I mean we dont have a television station. I think we have the biggest city without a television station because we are in the market of los angeles. You know how local news does four stories and one is a cod that fell into a swimming pool. Nobody is going to find out about long beach if it isnt for there will be stories that show up and whether they are trustworthy or talented people behind them is unknown. It is a horse race between me and the paper which one guys first. That is part of the title of the book. It is going to be close. I am either going to retire or keel over. Those are my two choices. Hoping to keel over. You are watching booktv on cspan2. We are visiting long beach, california this weekend to talk to local authors and tour literary sites with the help of our local cable partner charter. Next we talk to about the citys getting ready in fears of an attack from japan in the wake of the bombing of pearl harbor. The book is called fight of fear because there was fear in the long beach area. The war of europe started in 1939 and Franklin Roosevelt looked to the Pacific Coast and realized there needed to be better facilities here. Beginning as early as 1939, additional shipyards were built in long beach and by 1940 there were 13 shipyards in the harbor area including five new ones that had been built. All of those people that came to long beach were seeking work there. Roosevelt also saw the need for more aero space industry. And again in 1940, Donald Douglas setup the douglas plant outside the Long Beach Airport which at one time employed 170,000 people and had a payroll of 113 million a year. We had people coming from all over the country seeking jobs in the shipyards and the naval industry and the aircraft facto factory. Basically all they needed were jobs. They didnt worry about where long beach was situated and the possibility of japanese attacks or anything like that. All they knew was this was where the jobs were and this is where they came. It was a tremendous row when people heard about pearl harbor because there was already a Navy Presence in long beach. So many people had relatives over in pearl harbor. It was tremendous the outpouring of emotion. And another thing you have to realize, too, is that at that period of time there wasnt any government aid for widows. I mean these women were getting nothing and their husbands were dead. It was gerald folt from folt aircraft that came to the rescue and he offered and train those women for the jobs. It wasnt until the 1940s that war widows got as much money as war veterans. It wasnt something the government even considered or thought about. So here these women were with their husbands dead and no way to support the family other than savings and at least they had jobs. And it wasnt until later as the war developed a more equitable settlement was reached. Everybody welcomed the military here. There was still a lot of discrimination going on. You probably heard of the zoots riots in los angeles with the mexican americans. If they were good enough for the draft and serve their countries they could at least go to areas that used to be offlimits to anybody except the whites. So they had their chico type dress and big padded coats and hats. And they made their way to long beach in june of 1943, i believe. There were riots. The military basically taking after these zoot suitors. Even people that didnt look like zoot suitors were attacked. One was an africanamerican who happened to be by city hall. Another was a filipino worker pulled out of a theater on the pike and beaten up by the sailors. As a result, long beach passed an immediate ordinance saying there could be no gathering of large numbers of people that might develop into a mob. And probably the most interesting ordinance i found was that on victory europe and vjj all of the wars and Liquor Stores were ordered closed. After the war was over everything was esstatic. Rationing was no longer in effect. One thing they rationed were fabrics. This is something the sailors and the soldiers loved because it meant that womens skirt lines went up. Away went the pleaded skirts and guess what developed . The bikini the twopiece bathing suit. So that was one of the benefits of rationing. Windup of the other things that happened after world war ii was the beginning of the atomic age. It was so sad for the Shipyard Workers who had built so many ships during world war ii to see them taken off our shores and turned into reefs for fishes. I think the sadest was when a group of ships saddest was when they sailed off for the atomic bomb attacks. Some looked back saying we gave our all to build these ships and at least they are going to an end that will show the effects of atomic bombs. And sadly they put animals on board to see what would happen. It was sad. There was a long line of private boats that followed those ships as they sailed away from long beach to the atomic bomb attacks. Things gradually got back to normal but then came the korean war. They were going to close the facilities at Long Beach Airport and that was reinstituted. Things stayed in place pretty much in terms of what the military presence was doing in along peach at least through the korean war. One thing to understand what a city is like when it went through its darkest days. How a city was able to incorporate all of these additional people that came into the town to try to find them housing, find them jobs and to basically get through the war years and all of the fears that existed back then together. During booktvs recent visit to long beach we spoke with oliver wang whose book legions of boom looks at the influence of music on large minority populations in california. The way the book began was really in the 1990s i was living in the bay area, was a dj, and a music journalist and still am. Anyone in the dj scene knew about the world famous filipino djs. And when i had the opportunity to peek speak to them i wanted to know how they got started. And they all started with mobile dj crews. And those are crews that do church parties, weddings, school dances. And so the reason they are called mobile djs is because they move the equipment from one location to another and setup there with lights and speakers. In the 1980s, as i learned, it was this community of at least 100 different crews that came and went during the course of the decade that created this incredible party scene that very Little People knew about or had spoken about. There had been a lot discussed about the turn table ist and scratch djs. But these were the scratch djs but the generation that proceeded them were the mobile djs. And as much had been written about the scratch djs i could find nothing about the history of the mobile djs and that is where the first idea began to germinate. The oldest crew was a crew called sound explosion that formed in 1978 at a Public High School in San Francisco. It was between friends and family members all going to the high school at the time. I learned the San Francisco crews especially a lot of the djs got started and met one another in drill teams. They were performing on football fields during halftime doing flag routines. But because they got to know each other in these drill teams this is the same collective that would end up creating their own dj crew a few years later. This is how sound explosion begins. What you have in San Francisco and neighboring cities you have High Percentage of filipinoamerican students and their families have come to the United States in the previous 1015 years basically following the changes of the Immigration Law in 1965 and marshall law in the philippines in 1972 created a large fill of filipinos in the 70 and by the 80s you have a generation of Filipino Youth who group in the bay area and they are the people that begin to form these dj groups. To be filipino in the 1970s and 80s i think a lot of these young people grew up with encountering nonfilipinos who had little idea to quote one of the people i spoke to they would say are you an asian . Latino . I am confused by this. And i think this speaks to the way that filipinos has been marginal or invisible in the landscape. That said partly at ambiguity allowed them to move between communities. And they are throwing parties and people like parties and dancing and having a good time. Even though the scene was predominantly filipinoamerican it was never predominantly so. So even if the families were earning middle class imine in come a lot of them were under employed. They might have been doctors in the philippines but now they are nurses or staff. They were attorneys there and now they are paralegals here. This is a familiar under employment phenomena amongst immigrants because of language, because they are scene as different, they dont have the same kind of Job Opportunities as a result. I do think a lot of these young people even if they were growing up in families with middle class means they see their parents struggling against the kind of drop off in economic status that comes with the immigration process. These djs and crews they belong to were important within the social and culture life of filipino communities, groups and churches at the time. If you were going to have any social event you wanted to have music there. So in the 1970s before the djs you would have a communal stire st stereo system. When the dj came along you can hire someone for your party to supply that music for you. So they really became the key Music Professionals for the social life of filipinoamericans throughout the bay area during this era. The end of the mobile scene begins by the early 1990s and it happens for a variety of reasons. I think one is they become victims of their own success. A lot of nightclubs and Radio Stations that had largely ignored them for the course of the 1980s realized they should start hiring them. But the problem is what the logic behind a dj crew is your group helps you with the labor. They help you move the equipment, store it, and all of those things. When you dj at a Radio Station you dont need anybody to move the equipment. You just show up and do your things. So these Radio Stations and nightclubs begin to whether they are intentionally doing it or not they are rating the talent out of these crews and making the crews themselves irrelevant. I think the power of music is as intimate and personal as it is it is social and collective and part of how we find people we identify it. Our birds of a feather is having something in common. And having the same music is a way of bonding. It is a way of bringing people together. For more information on booktvs revent visit to long beach and many other destinations on the tour go to cspan. Org citiestour. Amy klobuchar, your book, the senator next door is a personal book, isnt it in it is. I wanted to show someone with a normal background who went from being a car hop at the a and w where they made her wear a tshirt saying take home a jug of fun could end up as the u. S. Senator. The second reason is i have good stories of getting things done in washington and walking across the aisle and the reason for the name is i wanted to make the point we are supposed to go to washington to represent our neighbors. You dont always like all of your neighbors but you find a way to get along with them. That is part of the story of the bock as well. How do you stay in touch . Is it possible to get out of the senate bubble . I think so. I visit all 87 counties every year. I have been to some counties ten times. I visit businesses, classrooms, go to cafes, and you really get a sense of that. Minnesota has one of the highest voter turnout rates. People show up and believe even if they are in a Different Party they believe you are supposed to represent them and get things done and that helps. Two stories from the book. Number one. The first time you wore pants. And secondly your fathers alcoholism. The story is i wore pants in fourth grade to a Public Elementary School to go through the snow and up into the woods with my multip colored pants an the principal kicked me out for wearing pants in fourth grade and i had to go home and change in tears. I would love to say i started a petition or lawsuit but that wasnt the case. And the second part that is funny is when i first put the book out i got a call from a guy and he said i read this book and i am really upset the way you treated my mom and i said ron, it was true, she kicked me out for wearing pants and she is no longer with us and i said i am sorry and he said i didnt like you as you described her hair as a bee hive and i heard laughing and he said this was al. This is al franken. The other senator from minnesota. You guessed it. My dad is a tremendous journalist. Now 87 years old and nominated for being the journalist in space and won a number of best columnist National Awards and literally devoted his life to journalism but that involved a lot of drinking with football coaches, with other journalists, and he developed an alcoholism problem which he really solved with redemption and his faith. I talk about that journey and his journey as well. Senator amy klobuchar, senator from minnesota. Thank you for being on booktv. Here is a look at books being pubilo p pubilo published this week we explore the history of women in science in rise of the rocket girl and buzz aldren talks about his lessons and life in no dream is too high look for the books in the bookstore this coming week and watch for the authors in the coming future on booktv. [applause] hello, everyone. We have a great crowd. Thank you all for coming out. I am susan call and on behalf of our owners and entire staff i would like to welcome you to politics and prose. Before we get started, just a few housekeeping things. This would be a good time to turn off or silence your cellphone. After the event if you dont mind folding your chairs we would be grateful. And we have microphones right here this evening if you could step up with your question that would be great because we are recording this event and you can watch it in a few days on our youtube channel. I am very pleased to welcome Richard Engle to talk about his new book and then all hell broke lose i am guessing you recognize him where he is reporting most of the time with things exploding in the background. We are happy to have him in this environment for at least an hour or so. This is a story of reporting two decades in the middle east starting with stent in cairo where he went after college with two suitcases and 2,000 and the romantic idea of being a corresponde correspondent. We learn how he chronicled the middle east and was once even kidnaped. He offers a Current Situation of the middle east in which i heard him say this morning i have never seen it worse this is called a deaf personal account, a lucid alarming overview of where the middle east has been and where if is heading. Before i ask you to help me welcome richard, i want to tell you not surprisingly he has a plane to catch at the end of the event so we will probably cut the q a a little short and try to move everyone through the signing line to get the bock signed. Please help me welcome richard angle. First of all, it a pleasure to be here. I cannot remember the last time seeing so many people in a bookstore and that is encouraging on so many levels. Buy this book, buy all of the booksism keep the industry going. I movered out to the middle east 20 years ago. I graduated stanford in 1996. The idea was that i had is i was going to a place where i thought there would be a lot of news. Middle east seemed like a good choice. And i was going to start on my way and become a great foreign corresponde correspondent. So i moved to cairo. I really looked at the map. I had the map of the middle east in front of me and thought where am i going to go . Iraq . Not too many options there. Syria, not much going on. Jerusalem . Lots going on but probably oversaturated market to cover the israelipalestinian conflict. I thought egypt. It is egypt. Even if it doesnt work out i am still in egypt which is grit. I packed up a couple suitcases and took a little money savings. I arrived and i had an apartment there. I had an incredibly rich experience. People were welcoming to me. They wanted me to convert the islam constantly. They would bring me to their homes and feed me things. I was never alone which could be tiresome after a while but it was a great way to become familiar with the culture and learn the language. In a matter of months i was having very incorrect but basic conversations in arabic because i had no choice. When you are living in an apartment where everything is broken and you need to communicate and there is no water and it a million degrees outside you have to learn to talk to people. I started reporting for locum newspapers and then for International Radio and stringing pieces for newspapers. I have been doing it everything since. It has been 20 years now. I still live in the region. I rarely back in the states. I here a couple times a year to see families and encourage you to buy this inexpensive, readable book. I am back in the states very infrequently. I have been living there now for 20 years. There is a thesis in this book having looked at the region for this long and it is a model. Like all theoretical models it is flawed, you could pick holes in it, you could find reasons why it doesnt work. But i like to think of it as a way to understand the middle east right now. The model i chose that the book is sort of based around is a, at least in my mind, is a row of houses. If you think of a row of houses on the coast somewhere and they look beautiful from the outside and they look like they have been there for forever but they are rotten inside. Nobody is taking care of them. Nobody is opening the windows. Nobody is putting in dehumidifying apparatus. It is crumbling. The middle east was like that when i arrived. 20 years ago, the big man ran the family. The assad family, Saddam Hussein, and it was established and locked in place. But like the row houses it was a lot of appearance. There was a lot of rot which was ignorance, corruption, religious tension kept at bay by strong activities like those carried out by Saddam Hussein, and liken in these old houses you contain the rot but if you dont open the windows or the doors or spend any money on it you make it worse. That was the situation. This very fragile pardom. You could put your finger through the wall but the United States put their shoulder through the wall of iraq and started a sequence of events we are still living and experiences to this day. So eight years of direct military action started to destroy this status quo. And unlease all of the rot and these demons unleash and the very soon to be eight years of the Obama Administration we saw inconsistent policies. They were supporting the revolution in egypt and then days later not supporting it next door. And supporting uprising in libya but not in syria. So zigzagging through the middle east. And the combined effect of eight years of military action and very soon to be eight years of this zigzag unleashed all of the rot and the old system, the one i arrived to in cairo is broken, and the middle east today i said i never have seen it worse is because it is a period of chaos. And isis is the physical embodyment of that chaos. If you continue this model, you can speculate on where it might go from here and i think what we will see next is the series of strong men reemerging themselves and i think egypt is probably the first example of that and i think there will be more to come. I think the people of the region are going to embrace this but they should be very careful what they wish for because after periods of chaos as europe as seen in the last century when following chaos, when people embrace strong men and duckitators and fascist really bad things can happen dictators. I think that is what is coming. I think our government and other governments will reach out and embrace these leaders. It doesnt have to be a binary choice. It doesnt have to be chaos or dictators. But after the chaos, i think we will reach back. I hope one day, if there is people in this room, who have influence, maybe they can find a third path and guide the region to cosome place where you have leadership but it doesnt have to be Saddam Hussein. That is the framework of the book. But i tell it through my eyes. I tell it through the people i know. I tell it through the places i have lived and characters i met along the way. And 236 passengeges of antidote. You get to follow along this junior journey of what has been a 20year journey of arriving in the middle east, trying to become a journalist, and moving along in the process of watching all hell break lose. It has broken loose. I would love to take questions. I was told to ask you to approach a microphone if you can. While you are doing that, i will take this opportunity to say thank you very much again for coming and reading books i wrote and other journalist and authors. Sir . [applause] having been literally part of that world for almost two decades those young men and women born in the early 90s. An entire generation for people in their 20s now. What hope do you see for people who have been part of this turmoil and what can be done globely to help them . Thank you. The reason we are worried we will see strong men arise is because the new generation has lived for the last 15 years or so in a period of terrible strive. They have been living this sunnishiite conflict. They have been living the arabp arabpersian conflict. Cities within conflict. They have an been living in conflict. It would be easy for someone to say you remember what it is like . Give me all of your rights and i will make all of that go away. There is another interesting thing is there is a belief that is spreading in the middle east that the United States is responsible for all of this. That the United States isnt responsible for the sunnishiite conflict. This was a thousand years before the declaration of independence. We didnt help create the divide. But if you live in baghdad and have been for the last 15 years the memories of what Saddam Hussein was like are receding. The reality of the sunnishiite divide is daily. You can pick a date to when you remember that beginning in 2003. So you can see how they could make that Mental Association that when the americans came they created the divide even though it wasnt chronologically make sense. Thank you for being here and responding. I wanted to ask you about one of the potential strong men to get your assessment of turkey. Okay. I got it. I see where you are going. The pyk, the reassessing of their influence got it. Just for the sake of time, the problem with turkey is we could do a whole week discussing turkey. It is one of the most interesting conflicts or dynamics. As the strong men are trying to reemerge, you are seeing the old empires trying to reemerge because when there is a break down of order lots of people try to make hay. Russia, i think is trying to reestablish a zar spear of influence and decided to keep an alliance with assad and making an alliance with some kurdish groups and iran and russia wants to spread its wings. The same way they say he wants to reestablish the ottoman experience. He has been trying to do that. But with mixed success i should say. He has been blamed for reigniting a war with the kurds when a Peace Process was going quite well