They understood that cherished ideals of Human Dignity and individual freedom were literally at stake. Easily more than 500,000 missouri and kansas citizens served during the war, from rural teenagers who had not finished high school to omar bradley of missouri and Dwight Eisenhower of kansas. Three of those individuals are with us tonight to share and reflect on their experiences in this terrible yet galvanizing war that ended 70 years ago this year during the presidency of harry s truman. These men need no introduction to a kansas city audience, as your welcome indicated. But they are so humble, i do want to talk a little bit about each of the men you will hear from. Henry bloch was a student at the university of michigan when the u. S. Entered the war. Having learned in school the horrors of trench warfare in what was then known as the great war, world war i, he resolved to do his service above ground and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Trained as a navigator, he was assigned to the eighth air force 95th bomb group. , as it turned out, he had chosen the most perilous service of world war ii. The rough equivalent of serving as an infantryman in a world war i trench. The eminent historian of world war ii, rick atkinson, has written of the very period henry was flying. the losses were dreadful. Only one in four air force bomber crews could expect to complete the minimum quota of 25 missions. henry bloch completed 31 missions, including a raid on berlin for which the 95th was awarded a third president ial unit citation, making it the only unit of the air force to win three during the war. Restored to civilian life, mr. Bloch joined with his brother richard to build one of kansas citys great entrepreneurial triumphs, h r block. With his late wife marion, he forged a philanthropic career that will benefit kansas city for many generations to come. From the henry bloch school of management at umkc, to the architecturally acclaimed bloch building of the Nelson Atkins museum of art, to the priceless collection of paintings he and his wife donated to the museum to the marion bloch neuroscience institute, to the marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation in kansas city, it can literally be said of this man, as was once said of christopher wren, if you seek his monument, look around you. The same could be said of bill dunn, who built this building we are sitting in. [laughter] he was a student at Notre Dame University when he was not working at his fathers Construction Company as a laborer paid a dollar a day. He followed his older brother, ernie junior, into the service enlisting in the u. S. Navy as an aviator. In those days before satellite reconnaissance, mr. Dunn was trained to fly what very likely were suicide missions, lowaltitude scouting flights in slow, lightly armored, singleengine seaplanes. He was preparing to take part in the invasion of the japanese home islands when president trumans decision to deploy the atomic bomb brought an end to the war. Back home, mr. Dunn built his fathers firm into one of the largest and most admired contractors in the United States. Its crews can be seen on state of the art projects from coasttocoast and, as henry pointed out, right across the street. He has imbued his family and his colleagues at the company with a passion for giving and philanthropic leadership. A contribution of mr. Dunn that continues to this day, every year, more than 10 of pretax earnings from his company goes to charity. Edward matheny was captain of the Basketball Team of the university of missouri when the war found him. Graduating on an accelerated schedule, mr. Matheny entered the u. S. Navy, where his talents were spotted, and he was assigned to the staff of admiral chester nimitz. It fell to him and his colleagues to track the movement of every vessel in the ocean. On flights to pearl harbor and guam, mr. Matheny was among those that entered japan after the occupation. After the war, he attended Harvard Law School and joined the firm of caldwell downing. After 10 decades of growth as managing partner, that little outfit has become Husch Blackwell upstairs, employing more than 500 attorneys in 16 offices. In his retirement, mr. Matheny has become an important historian of kansas city. His seven books tell the story of his law firm, the hospitals in the west, and kansas citys experience in world war ii. These three men have been friends and partners for many years. And yet, characteristically of that generation that has justly been called the greatest, they never discussed there war experiences until ed began asking as research for his book, called the pursuit of a ruptured duck when kansas citians went to war. they are learning new details from one another. We are fortunate to learn some of them in their presence tonight. I will start with you, mr. Bloch. Tell us how you wound up in 1944 at the airfield in england and what that first raid on berlin was like. Mr. Bloch when dday not dday pearl harbor happened i was playing in a bridge tournament in michigan. Then we declared war on japan. Everybody wanted to help out. I knew i wanted to do something, enlist and so on. All i could think about was world war i and People Living in trenches. That was the last thing i wanted to do. So i saw an ad in a magazine that said if you enlist in the air force and are going to college, we will let you finish your education in college before we call you. I said, that sounds excellent. So i enlisted. Lo and behold, that was my junior year, my senior year, they called me into active duty. They went back on their word. [laughter] mr. Bloch when uncle sam says we want you, you go. So i went down to union station, got on the train, went to texas to san antonio aviation. I told my mother i would probably be a navigator. Her health was not too good. They did not complain about that. So you take a physical test. I took the test and ranked very high. They called me in and said, you have your choice. You can either be a pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier. Are you sure you want to be a navigator . I said, i guess i will change and be a pilot. So i called home. I was pretty excited. I told my mother i had changed from navigator to being a pilot. And she said, if you do, your father is going to go to washington and get you out of service. [laughter] as if he could. So i said, ok, mom. I will go back to being a navigator. What she was trying to say is, i do not have a lot of confidence in you. [laughter] sit in the plane and do not fly it. So i took my navigation training, aerial gunnery near mexico. I got an expert medal in flying in an open cockpit plane and shooting. Went all through my training and then went to england. We lived in a long, oval hut. They said, that is your bed up there. They were double beds. I was taking everything and throwing it in a bag. They said, what are you doing . I thought i was going to sleep there. They said, yeah, but the guy who had it got shot down today. That was my welcome. The 95th was a great group. It was the first one over berlin. My First Mission was over berlin, as you mentioned. What you do, you fly to an ip, initial point, generally 10 minutes from the target. You have an escort of fighter planes to keep the german planes away from you. P51s, p47s, p38s, they do a wonderful job. We were in b18s. They were slow, and we needed Fighter Pilots to keep the germans away from us. Once you go to the initial point, your people do not go with you because of the danger. When we got to over berlin to drop our bombs, and we are not allowed to take evasive action either, we see a lot of bombs exploding, we have to keep flying from the initial point to the center of the target. We got all shot up. We lost three engines. Fuel was leaking. So we could not stay with our group. We had to keep coming down. We were very lucky we did not see any german fighter planes as we headed back to england. When we landed in england, we were out of gas. So that was my welcome. Host and they made you do it 30 more times. [laughter] tell us your story. Mr. Matheny my naval career got started in midshipman school. I was a 90 day wonder. When i graduated, i was fortunate enough to be sent to the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet in pearl harbor. On my way west, i stopped at union station. My mother and father came down and told me goodbye. Then i rode the santa fe chief to san francisco, spent a couple of days there. So i wanted to go to the top of the mark hopkins hotel, which i did, but was not old enough to get in. [laughter] that changed a couple days later when i caught an lst for pearl harbor. That was a 10day trip. Those lsts were not real fast. Those initials stood for landing ship tank. more appropriately dubbed large, slow target. [laughter] when we arrived at pearl, that happened to be the same day president roosevelt arrived on a cruiser. And he was meeting with General Macarthur and admiral nimitz who helped solve the problem of whether they were going to attack the philippines or formosa. We sat in our humble manofwar while the president went ashore. Of course, he was greeted by a lot of gold braid. Quite a line of admirals lined up to meet him. The chief of staff for admiral nimitz ordered them eyes right and two of them turned left. I did not see them, but that was the story. It was apparently a delightful thing for sailors. It confirmed a lot of privately held views. [laughter] i was assigned to flag plot, a large fortress kind of building at pearl. And that is where i spent a lot of my time before i went with the admiral to guam. Mr. Dunn i had a similar situation in university. We were all shocked by pearl harbor. It was kind of amazing. I think it had been anticipated. The media painted it as a shock. My father was a small contractor at that time. And probably within a month or two after pearl harbor, they took bids on a quartermaster depot in kansas city. Everything was competitively bid. It started seeming like they only had 120 working days to turn it over. My brother, who was four years older, he was a superintendent on the program. I probably started to work after i finished my sophomore year at Rutgers College before going to notre dame. But i was a laborer. And i vividly remember working 77 straight days, 10 hours a day, and making up my mind i would never see another construction job as long as i lived. [laughter] my father always insisted his children and my mother stay very busy when they were not in school. So i was handed the assignment a year before that there was a threestory School Building the company was building. And i got a laborers card. Laborers made 0. 45 an hour before the war they talk about a recession now, but it was depression. I had to transfer twice on a bus. They said, we cannot pay you laborers wages, you are listed as a water boy. I said, tell me what does a water boy get . That was a dollar a day. I did not make any money that summer, but i did play football for rutgers when they had a Football Team. They dont have one anymore. I was in pretty good shape. Today, they would not have let me be the water boy for a Football Team because i weighed 155 pounds. It is a wonder i did not get killed. I had already enrolled and been accepted after my sophomore year to the university of notre dame. My dad wanted me to get a degree in engineering because there were few people that had college degrees. The movement that the government had about anyone that had been in the military would be able to get tuition for free when they came back, if they came back. I was in the same program that ed was. They called us 90 day wonders. I went down during the christmas vacation to see my brother get his wings at pensacola, florida. I immediately thought to myself, i do not want to be sitting around one more year when i could switch. Well, they insisted i go into chicago. I took a lot of tests. A lot of subjects dealing with math and physics and issues like that. After these tests, they agreed you can go to the air corps. I was really kind of surprised though, when i finally got called, that they had lengthened the program. My brother went right to primary. That is where they flew the yellow perils. They were biplanes. While i was waiting around, i finished my junior year at notre dame. While i was waiting around, my dad said, you are going to have to stay busy. I was working as a laborer. They were putting another floor on a facility for handicapped young people. While i was waiting, i got a call from the math teacher, who was very bright. Had written several books at Rutgers College. He said, i need some help. I said, what do you mean . He said, we have the Army Air Corps boys and they have a threemonth Training Program. He said, i want you to teach celestial navigation to the Army Air Force cadets. I said, i never had science before. He said, i will teach you a week ahead of the students. [laughter] ironically, he did keep me ahead. They probably thought i was a slacker. I told them, i appreciate working with you Army Air Corps cadets. Maybe we will cross places somewhere. Because im going into the navy air corps. As i left the room, i got a loud boo. [laughter] they had lengthened the program by almost 10 months before i got the primary. Ironically, they sent me to Cornell College in mount vernon, iowa. I discovered that many of us had been juniors and seniors in college. We came to the end of the Training Program before our next assignment. They said, in my particular platoon, they said, we will give you a special course called celestial navigation. [laughter] we will also give you a very tough test at the end of the course to see how you absorbed what was going on. We took the test. I was called into the main office. They said, cadet, we have a problem. Where did you find the answers . [laughter] if you cheated, you are out of here. You are going to be a seaman. I explained i had taught the course for about two months. [laughter] so they forgave me. And i went on to Flight School where we flew light planes. As i remember, they were taylor crafts. They would stay afloat if the wind was more than 50 miles per hour, the plane was flying backwards. [laughter] that was three months. The next step was iowa preflight. When i went to iowa preflight, my last flight when i was in the taylor craft, it all of a sudden felt like there was a knife in my stomach. I told them, i cannot get out of the plane. They ran me over to the university of iowa hospital. They took a bunch of tests and said, you have an appendix about to burst. I said, do what you have to do. I have had a lot of things happen. I think i lost several weeks but i finally went to iowa preflight. That was all halfday physicals, handtohand, judo. The other half was school work. It was a threemonth program. The commander of the base played for notre dame but had been the football coach at saint benedicts. He knew i was there. But the day our group was supposed to move on, he called me. I had never met him. I met him when he was the coach at saint benedicts. But he had me over for sunday dinner. I got a lot of razzing from other cadets. They had a meeting and said, we have bad news for you people. We have discovered only half the pilots are getting killed that we thought were going to get killed. So they washed out half hour people and sent them to great lakes. You can either go home or be called again for stay in the navy as a seaman. I was pretty good in athletics. One battalion had to play another battalion. They did not have the big 12 but the big six. The man that drove me crazy, because most of our battalion had played college football, and i did most of the tackling, he came straight from the chicago bears. He was a starting fullback. My lieutenant said, im going to give you a 4. 0 on all my reports. I said, where are you going to send the body . I was one of the ones that was fortunate enough to stay. But they announced, we do not have room for you people. You are going to have to wait a while to go into primary Flight Training. That is where my brother first started. They sent us to minneapolis, where we worked on the flight line for about two months. Finally, we got the call to go to primary Flight Training. It was a facility outside of memphis, tennessee. When we came in, i heard all these boos. I thought, what is going on . They said here come the damn yankees. We never talked about the civil war when i was growing up. In any event, we went through primary Flight Training and then had the opportunity to go to pensacola. But that was another situation unknown to me. When you got to your final squadron, i enjoyed flying a lot, when you got to final squadron, they made the decision whether you were navy, a marine, or coast guard. We all thought we were going to be Fighter Pilots. Instead, they let us know the military had planned on a long war. And the battleships and cruisers, they usually shot their shells from four or five miles away. They said, you will be trained to be single engine seaplane people. The only exciting thing about that, we were catapulted off of a cruiser or battleship. The reason i do not hear very well is because there was a tremendous explosion right underneath the plane. They told us to be sure that we were holding the stick like this. Do not do that. Put it back against there. It was such a jolt. In 70 feet you went from zero to 100 miles an hour so you could keep flying. Enough of us got our brains knocked out that they ended up going into the construction business. [laughter] i am really flattered to be with this group of people. Here are my best friends. Boy, were they mean on the tennis court. I met them by accident. I had a very good friend who was a navy pilot. I went to southwest high school, where they went to school. He called me one day and said, dont you get tired of working seven days a week, 10 hours a day . I said, i sure do, but what are you suggesting . He said, why dont you get some exercise . It does not hurt. You were a good athlete growing up. How about we play tennis . I have two friends from southwest, henry bloch and ed matheny. I had never met either one of these people. I learned they were fierce on the tennis court. Henry and i were right handers who played these other two, who were left handers. Ed said, this rivalry is so tough, we will not be friends very long. [laughter] i would have to get psyched up to play. Each one of us would maybe win every other time. But i really had the privilege of meeting two great guys. They are still my best friends i will probably ever have. [applause] mr. Matheny when i was on the battleship new jersey, i watched them launch those kingfisher scout planes bill was talking about he was on. It was like being shot out of a cannon. There would be this explosion and those things would go from zero to 100 miles an hour in 90 feet. It was like a circus act almost. [laughter] except they have a net in the circus. These guys did not have one. Host bill was talking about tennis, but i can hardly imagine how you in the air force managed to get psyched up for missions. You told me yesterday that you rarely came back without holes in your airplane. Mr. Bloch it was part of our job. They would wake us up. We flew during the day. Raf flew at night. That was a good break for the americans. I went to a meeting of navigators. Everyone went to a different meeting. I thought i was very lucky. We had a crew of 10. Four officers, six enlisted men. The other nine were catholic. [laughter] they got together before every mission, had a little mass, i felt like i was getting a free ride. [laughter] [applause] we would go to a room with all the navigators and say, today we are going to bomb schweinfurt. After we flew the mission, we met with intelligence. They wanted to know what we did, what we saw. What we could improve, so on. I thought it was run very well. We were very lucky. I was only maybe 21 years old. I can remember seeing cold sweat running down my back i did not know about. Host did you have any superstitions . Mr. Bloch our pilot got married before we left. His wife gave him a lipstick her lipstick. Before every mission, he rubbed it on his hand. I think that helped. [laughter] host tell the story about when you got up to look over the bombardiers. Mr. Bloch on one particular mission, we were bombing oilfields. I wanted to see where the bombs were falling, what was happening. I sat to the side of the bombardier. I look over his shoulder and i see the bombs falling. Smoke coming up and so on. Then i went back to my seat. It was gone. Just a big hole in the side of the plane. We were shot up on every mission. We were very fortunate. 71 of the 8th air force died. When i went, it was 25 missions. You mentioned 31. They raised it to 30 and finally raised it to 35. There were so many casualties. When they raised it to 35, i had 31. They said, you can either go home or have another tour of duty. [laughter] i think i will come home. We were very lucky. Host ed, you tell a story in your book about the day you heard president roosevelt had died. And all your fellow sailors figured you must know a lot about the new president because you are from kansas city. Mr. Matheny i was on guam at that point. They knew kansas city was a close neighbor of independence where harry truman came from. And like everybody else, they did not know much about harry truman. They said, what about this guy . I had grown up in kansas city. The local newspaper, the kansas city star, was a pretty rockribbed republican paper. As far as they were concerned, harry truman was a senator from pendergast. I did not give him a good bill. I told them thats what i thought our prospects were with the new president. Of course, i could not have been more mistaken. I transferred from nimitz, and i found out that had not been the smartest thing i had ever done. When i reported on the first day of august, 1945, at that point they were getting ready for the invasion of japan. I recall vividly what he said are you looking for excitement . Six days later, thanks to president truman, the atom bomb was dropped. A couple days after that, there was another one. That certainly saved my bacon as well as those guys who are going to be flying the kingfishers. Mr. Truman dropping the two bombs. I had been assigned to the battleship wisconsin which was going up to the big which was going out for the big push. My brother was on the west coast going out the second time. When he went out the first time, he landed at midway right after the battle of midway. He had been assigned to the marine pilots. He flew an sb2c and others. He was assigned to be a bomber pilot in the marianas. I guess they flew several missions every day. Before he came back the first time, he had 118 bombing missions. His plane got shot up a number of times. He told me, he said the japs are good pilots and gunners. But i appreciate what harry truman did. A lot of people criticized him for dropping the bombs, but i know everyone said later, we probably would have lost another million men if he had not dropped the two bombs. Wisconsin had five pilots. At the same time he dropped the bombs, he stopped the war, that is for sure. Host a friend of mine emailed me yesterday morning to ask a question about harry truman. He said, i know about the bomb and that he was a regular guy. But what else did he do . Off the top of my head, i jotted down a list. Postwar famine relief that saved tens of millions of european lives. Took over responsibility of the freedom of greece from the u. K. When they decided to surrender their responsibility over a weekend, which preserved turkey. Created nato, the creation of the united nations, the marshall plan, recognition of israel, creation of the department of defense, desegregated the armed forces, desegregated the federal civil service, which made him probably the greatest president up to that time other than lincoln on civil rights. Fired macarthur rather than invade china and bring on nuclear war. Bretton woods, the International Monetary system, and so on. A truly great president. Ed, actually, henry, i want you to tell the story before we run out of time. You saw the invasion of normandy. Mr. Bloch i flew three missions that day, dday. We did not know when we got up in the morning. They said today was the day. We knew it was close, but none of us knew when dday would happen. We took off. We do not take off like you do when you get in an airplane and go like that. We had to go like this. In england, there were american airplane bases all over the place. We do not want to run into another airplane. They were easy missions for flying. We dropped our bombs over the english channel. We were going like that, and the bomb would go forward and land on the land to soften it up. They were not very difficult. They were short missions. We were near the channel to begin with. Host what did it look like down below . Mr. Bloch literally thousands of boats ships. [laughter] pardon me. [laughter] host it occurs to me to ask you this did you think another one of these historical controversies should the president have targeted the rail lines to the concentration camps for bombing . Do you wish you could have dropped bombs . Mr. Bloch on the concentration camps . Host blowing up the train tracks. Mr. Bloch we were assigned targets. That was never a target. I am not sure how much we knew about those camps. They were obviously horrible places. I do not say i did or did not know. I just do not recall. We bombed what we were told to bomb. We bombed railroad tracks. We never bombed people. But we must have killed lots of people. When we flew, we had 1000 planes up there, all dropping bombs. When the lead plane dropped the bomb, we all dropped. We covered a huge area. 1000 airplanes, all dropping bombs at the same time. Of course, we could not aim them that well. Host bill, your dad became famous at home for one of his decisions during the war. Mr. Dunn he made up his mind he did not want to make a dime during the war. He was the first contractor that actually told the corps of engineers in charge of the quartermaster depot, i do not want to make a dime out of this. He had been the low bidder and they made 180,000. They did not know how to handle that. They agreed there would be a change, and he would turn back 180,000. President truman was still vice president. President roosevelt wrote a very nice letter saying, i hope other contractors will do that. When they finished that one, they were in need of housing where they were putting together the b25 bombers. He worked with the corps of engineers and did that for no fee. Then went out where they were making powder for bombs. That was done at no expense. The corps of engineers offered him a Brigadier General assignment if he would go to alaska, because the japanese had landed. My mother, who is a tough german lady, said, you are not going to be a Brigadier General. [laughter] anyway, he was a very unusual patriot. He gave me a lot of good advice when he insisted i at least try the business side of construction. I have always tried to follow his advice. There are very few contractors. I will soon be there 69 years. Most employees think it is about 30 years too much. They think id better die first or Something Like that. I had a very interesting situation. When i finished pensacola, they were still concerned there might be some german subs lurking around. We would go from pensacola to check that. I had an instructor one day say, do not think you will ever find anybody. There was one situation that occurred, and it sold a lot of war bonds. He said, i was an instructor at that base, and we sold a lot of bonds, but the pilot that sank the sub, it was our own. [laughter] mr. Matheny you mentioned harry truman fired General Macarthur. This was during the korean war but i am sure the navy approved of that. [laughter] there was quite a power struggle, maybe an overstatement, between macarthur and nimitz in world war ii. Macarthur had pretty good pr systems. The navy felt the marine corps and navy ought to get some credit for what was going on in the pacific. Host since they were doing all the fighting . Mr. Matheny admiral nimitz was the kind of guy who would pat you on the back and say, lets go at it together. That was not macarthurs style. Mr. Bloch when we went over to england from the United States we went over on the Queen Elizabeth or queen mary and came back on the other one. Going over and coming back, we had to take evasive action all the way. Imagine going to europe this way, this way, so we would not get hit by submarines. Coming back, and maybe i should not tell this story host definitely tell it. [laughter] mr. Bloch coming back churchill was on the same boat. Not to america. He was going to go to canada. But they help the boat up for but they held the boat up for him. There were a lot of injured people on the boat. Some died. It took about a week to get the boat fixed up for him. When he came out on deck, we all had to be an our room. We could not be on deck. Our pilot was Walking Around the boat ship [laughter] [applause] mr. Bloch he saw an open door and went in it. There was churchill. He saluted him. It kind of left a bad taste in their mouth. A lot of people died because the ship was held up a week. We were in a state room. All double deck beds almost touching each other. It was not very luxurious. Host didnt your pilot, frank psota, psota. Host he said something. Mr. Bloch he did not know whose room he went in until churchill came out. He saluted him. Host i think i read in toms book that he said, sir, can you tell me how to get out of here without getting shot . [laughter] host ed, you i could go on all night, but we are near our published stopping time or maybe even a little past. But you said something so great yesterday morning, when we met about the way in which world war ii called on the entire society, not just as our wars do now, certain groups of people who serve and the rest of us, it is almost as if we are not at war. And you talked about that one of kansas citys most prominent families actually gave the ultimate sacrifice. Why dont you tell that story . Mr. Matheny we were all in it together. Rich or poor, famous, or infamous, is a good example of that was the kemper family. Jim kemper was the cavalry. He went ashore and he fought his way to manila and in the process, he got the purple heart. 10 days before veday, his older brother, david, was killed on a dangerous Reconnaissance Mission in italy. That fountain in Downtown Kansas City is a memorial to david. That is a good example of how everybody in the country, we were all in the war. And the people that stayed at home, we kind of felt sorry for 4fs. Because they were going to miss out on things. But it was a unanimous will to win. Host we will have to leave on that note. I do want to thank the Kansas City Public Library and the leadership there who make this one of the finest Library Systems in the country especially for public programming. [applause] host also, alice bergen and the Truman Library institute, which is committed to marking the end of world war ii and the beginning of the truman presidency throughout this 70th anniversary year. Indeed, i will reiterate the invitation to as many of you as possible to join us for the wild about harry dinner, where rick atkinson, the eminent historian i quoted at the beginning of the program, will be the featured speaker. These gentlemen will be honored along with senator robert dole who we all know gave a tremendous sacrifice and lost left part of himself on the battlefields of italy. My most profound thanks to bill and ed and henry for what you did then and for all you have done since then. It has been a singular honor for me to sit up with you this evening. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv all weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook. History bookshelf features popular authors every week at this time. Next, Amy Greenberg talks about how Public Opinion changed focusing on the Antiwar Movement that influenced president james polk. Greenberg also discusses why the mexicanamerican war is largely forgotten and its historical significance. The Abraham Lincoln president ial library and museum hosted this event in 2012. [applause] Amy Greenberg im