World war ii mess yes, maam. Every 2 weeks, i appreciate. Im also the Senior Historian at the museum which is my proudest boast. Welcome to another installment of meet the author series here at the museum where we bring the best world war ii literature and the men and women who write and create it. Before i introduce tonights author a man who truly needs no introduction, which means he will go ahead a real solid one. Let me carry out the tradition of the National WorldWar Ii Museum and public programming. Are there any chance world war ii veterans or home front workers in the audience tonight . Not. There we go. [cheers and applause] i knew there were two right up front. [applause] to say we thank for your service is understatement of the century. Thanks to all of you for your support and service. We have incredible good of friends. The good folks of cspan are here filling tonight. I want you all to be on your best behavior because c pan is forever. I would like to acknowledge those watching at home and live stream and again always the trusts in the audience. We have the chairman of the board paul and ask you to stand one more time, paul, if you would. Ted, friends from california. Robert pretty is here. And my dear friend and we dont have an adventure without him dr. Mike carey. Dr. Mike, good to see you as always. Finally friends, professors, alan millet and bobby dupont. Proud to call you colleagues. Id also like to thank the publisher www norton. So tonight we will be hearing about a book that deals with the pacific war. When you analyze the huge library of world war ii books and kind of what i do for a living, the first thing that you notice that the pacific war has not received the amount of attention that the war in europe has and has received far less than it deserves. Now, fortunately here at the museum, weve always had the services and the friendship of one of the leading scholars of the Pacific Theater and thats our dear friend rich frank. Rich works on Public Programs and advisers of any numbers of areas of expertise specifically related to pacific war. Hes author of downfall, end of immotherrial japan empire among other works. Richard asked me to keep it short but i will try. A list of accomplishments that i think is worth noting. Rich is a founding member, onetime convener of president ial counselors and guide and hes a man, favorite, for sure. When rich stands up to talk, people listen. He was the keynoter of recent guadalcanal symposium, wonderful road to tokyo permanent exhibit. Quick, bio, rich graduated from the university of missouri in 1969 and served tour of duty in platoon leader and in 1976 graduated from Georgetown University law center. I met rich in History Channel shoot and rich was pretty famous and i wasnt and i thought rich was nicer to me than he had to be. Thats what i learned about him. Hes an expert in his field and hes a compelling speaker, but hes also one of the nicest people anyone has ever met and i think maybe thats the best thing of all. Now, tonight, rich will be speaking about the first volume of intended trilogy on the asiaPacific Theater, tower of skulls, 1937 to 1942. Its my pleasure to call to the podium, richard frank. [applause] thank you, thank you very much. I want to thank the museum for having me here for this event for this kickoff event. This museum is a fabulous institution. Its perfect harmony of mission, of vision and execution and one of the traditions is to tell stories. Leon graduated from the the Naval Academy in 1941, he was a survivor of uss arizona and awarded the navy cross, just below medal of honor of guadalcanal in 1945. So tell us about the days in the academy and leon says i did very well in the academy, i was strong in math and science but my downfall was english. You see, my parents were jewish and i was born in france. In the first three years i spoke i spoke french and then we moved to the u. S. And the next 3 years i soak yedish and i move today new jersey but they dont speak english there. [laughter] in the way the tiein this is something that we wont speak about and thats the trilogy that i have been preparing on the what i call the asiapacific war. We had the greatest war in human history, 2. 3 human beings who have lived at the time and we have in historiography developed standard narrative and in the standard narrative we used in the u. S. , we say world war ii began in september 1939 when adolf hitler invaded poland and then we have the other half, the other part of world war ii which we conventionally refer to as the pacific war and that began in december 1941 which japan attacks on the u. S. At par harbor. What im doing with this trilogy basically is to rewrite what we call that second part of world war ii, to call it an asiapacific war, not simply the pacific war and that is specifically intend today write in into the history, what i call the arc of asia and in 1937 the ark ran east across china to japan and also ran southeast to what is now called indonesia demand the region there were over a billion people. Yet among the well population and region most of the people lived in colonialism and there were only four nation states that would claim and japan actually had sovereignty and mongolia which was the soviet satellite and had no real sovereignty and china which had highly compromised sovereignty. Everywhere else it was a colonial institution, the one, special case out of the philippines, they were effectively an american colony and they were promised independence in 1984 and managing domestic affairs. They all have sovereignty and the story of how they got to where they are today is fundamentally connected to what happened between 1937 and 1945 and that is a longterm arc of the trilogy, its not just what happened from 1937 to 45 and its how the events formulated what happened with all the other nations and this enormous area of asia which now is so instrumental in the world we live in today. The other thing about talking about this arc of asia is this, we dont know exactly how many human beings perished. We usually use 60 million as suitable figure. I attempted to put together a number of academic sources in the work of various scholars. I think the total death toll in the asiapacific is about 25 million and of that 25 million only 6 million were combatants, soldiers, airmen. Of that number, in fact, the number of americans combatants who perished was 110,000 or so counting merchant mariners. There are 19 million noncombatant deaths. The number of japanese, noncombatant, 813,000 but just for purpose of this discussion i just called totaled a million to 1. 2 million. What that tells you then that for every japanese noncombatant who died in the asiapacific war between 17 and 18 other noncombatants tied. About 12 of them were chinese. In fact, if you take the number of chinese deaths and just do a linear projection along the 8 years of war, 4,000 chinese noncombatants are dying every single day of the war for 8 years. If you take the other part of asia that japan occupies mostly after december 1941, its about half as many about half of the time and works out 4,000 deaths per day so by the summer of 1945 approximately 8,000 nonjapanese noncombatants dying every day and who knows, 15, 16 million have already died when we get to that point in the war. So what im doing with this trilogy is attempting to write back in to our standard narrative a billion people, about 85 of the deaths or more in the asia pacific war which is 20 Million People which is total number of deaths and also tieing those events to where we are in the 21st century. Now i like to think i would be gracious in answering questions, queries, even challenges to my work, but the one thing to which i will not respond quietly is the charge that i lack ambition. There are four features of the trilogy that are also present in this book, the first of which is most essentially a work of synthesis, putting the best scholarship literally all over the world being guided to Wonderful Group of colleagues i met over the years who frequently are the top leaders in their particular field and guidance to other sources. Theyve also have vetted the manuscript. I also drove down where i can and certain areas of particular interest to me like radio intelligence, u. S. Japan diplomacy in 1941 and to present my own work and present my own work and the second feature as i indicated, this is an attempt to patch the in a single narrative with fair balance and the third thing that characterizes this work is wonderful quote from president Franklin Roosevelt that i use and he was asked by ambassador to japan in december 1940 for guidance as to how relationships in the u. S. And japan should be conducted and president roosevelt said the fundamental thing to remember is that events in europe and africa and in asia are all part of one global war and what ive tried to do throughout this narrative is to be looking back and forth to whats going on in europe and whats going on in the Asia Pacific Region to show where they do or do not affect one another. And the final thing about this is that the chronology and military events provide sort of the basic skeleton of this whole thing. This narrative branches well out from that into Political Economic and social effects of the war because those are so critical as to how we are going get to the story of how we ended up in the 21st century in this region. What id like to do tonight is simply take two instances and two examples out of tower of skulls to see how they are link together. First thing i will talk about is china in 1937 and 1938. You will see the chronology and military affairs and how this branches out. So the first thing is to bear in mind that china in 1937, i call it the fractured state, at that time japan had occupied manteria and provinces by great wall east of china and beyond that it was not simply as commonly given the notion that china has been divided between the nationalist under shanghai chek and its a much more complex picture. The rest of china is mosaic of regional and local power brokers and they occupy 7 provinces in the lower valley. Generally the most prosperous in china, they contain 170 Million People which is somewhat over a third of the total estimate which is 450 million chinese at the time, once you get beyond what the nationalists hold its just this incredible crazy quilt of various other power brokers both regional and local and at the time in july 1937 the Chinese Communist party is very nearly at its nadir. They came out of the long march, they settled up around yunan and at that point the area controlled by Chinese Communist party and main area there has about 1. 45 Million People which is not 3 of chinas population, its three tenths of 1 of chinas population. The chinese and forces are like wise fractured and the nationalist have about 300 men under arms, best trained and best equipped in china. Thats about 1 out of 7 of the total of 2. 1 million chinese under arms. The Chinese Communist at this point have 50,000 men on the rolls of the army with 31,000 of them have weapons or 1. 5 of all the chinese under arms, so youre looking at a china not only fragmented in all of the different leaders of the region al and local level but shang, sort of the preside e presider over loose confederation which is going to take us to japan, chang himself. His reputation has gone through roller coaster, what was particular valuable or invaluable to me in the last 15, 20 years has been outpouring of fresh new archivalbase history about china in this period and one of the most important aspects about that is the dairies were published in 2007 and difficult to understate how dramatic those were affecting peoples attitudes and understanding what chang was all about. One part of the older narrative was that chang was never interested in fighting the japanese but having ultimately battle with the Chinese Communist. What you get from the dairies and documents that have come out after japan seized in 1931, chang knew that in order for china to ultimately gain sovereignty there was going to have to be a showdown battle with japan, but he understood the soldier with formidable task to take on Imperial Japan and he believed that china must seek unity before resistance which is part of the policy pursuit and secondly he launched a great number of initiatives, planning initiatives, prepared china for the moment when they would take on japan and we have documentary showing thats what he was doing. He gave a talk in 1934 in which he said there were only a thousand days left until war with japan and he was off by only 43 days with that statement. He also projected that basically when this war broke out china and japan, ultimately there would be a world war and china would gain allies in the world war which would be able to subdue japan which was beyond chinas basic capability. Thats a very different story on chiang. What happened in 1937 its the marco polo bridge incident which is a skirmish between chinese and Japanese Forces which through a chain of events is eventually going to lead to sustained combat for the next 8 years and when this initially breaks out chiang styeds that the hour has come where he must now strike and he can no longer ask for forbearance in policy of preparing for war. He look where is the fighting first broke out and thats northern china which has terrain that greatly disfavors the japanese and greatly disfavors the chinese. He believes that the correct place for the chinese to make the first stand is in fact, in shanghai where its crowded urban areas would maximize strength of small arms and minimize japanese strengths in fire power, mobility, air support and things like that. Theres going to be this tremendous bat until shanghai which goes from august to november 1937. Before its over, 3 quarters of a million chinese troops are going to fight in and around shanghai. A quarter of a million japanese troops are going to fight in shanghai. This is by far, by far the biggest battle in a city in 1932. What you have to understand when the battle breaks out that the chinese Central Government has for literally almost exactly a century been unable to sustain a war against power for more than a best a year, usually a lot less and most to have clashes have ended in a humiliating chinese defeat and so the fact that the fighting goes on in shanghai for dais and then weeks and then months, even as the chinese began to slip away, begin to slip away from them it still is establishing something about effective sustained resistance that had been wanting for china for almost a century. Now sort of a delicious moment in black humor. A New York Times reporter is talking to Japanese Imperial army spokesperson, we call now a spin doctor, and the New York Times reporter basically is saying, well, you know, this battle has been going on and off for a long time, why havent you routed the chinese by now, and the japanese spokesman said, well, the chinese know so little of tactics they dont know when to retreat. [laughter] well, the chinese eventually do have to retreat. They are defeated and pretty much shredded by the end of the battle and they lose from the chinese perspective, the fact that they have held out resistance against the japanese. Its sort of the American Battle of bunker hill. We eventually lose the hill and sustained with the notion that we are ready to stand up and fight toe to toe with the british and so did the chinese and the japanese. And so it is also that china is going to continue to go through one enormous period of pain and suffering for the next 8 years and that begans when the japanese armies leave from shanghai and march to what was in the nationalist capital which is the now called and the chinese, of course, still have not given in so they continue on up to yangze river. You heard about the wuhan cities recently. Thats where chang had evacuated and 800 miles inland and there begins a huge battle for wuha, in that takes most of 1938, and when this battle begins the chinese actually achieve a notable operational victory which is sort of like recharging their battery to continue the war, certainly Senior Leaders believe that if we hang on, we will prevail. The japanese, one of their fronts breaks through in june 1938 and for a moment it looks like the japanese might actually be able to deliver a knockout blow and get to wuhan and capture the city and military headquarters and one of the most difficult, most devastating decision that shanghai chek is going to make, hes convinced by subordinates that the only thing to stop japanese advanced to breach the yellow river dykes and he gives the order and in june 1938, these dikes are breached and unleashes incredible torrent and kills somewhere half million and almost 900,000 chinese by various counts. It is the greatest environmental disaster of world war ii by a large margin and the other thing about this, can you imagine an event of this magnitude of this nature occurring in europe and you would never heard of it in all the years that you have seen histories of world war ii. Its one of the most striking examples to me of how little weve come to know or recorded our history about the asia pacific war. Well, halts that particularly breakthrough and the fighting continues in the summer and the japanese who are superior in fire power and military craft, Naval Support but they also use poison gas. Theyre the only major combatant that uses poison gas in the battlefield as far as we know and they use that in their trump card whenever they are in a difficult situation. The chinese are recipients of poison gas in addition to everything else. Well, in october 1928 the japanese finally close and capture wuhan and strangely enough rather than regarded as natural disaster, it is from the chinese side a reinforcement of the notion that if we just tough it out and hang on eventually we can prevail and strangely enough we found out many, many years later that in tokyo, in him imperial headquarters and its impossible for japan to prevail against china by military means alone. They have purchaseed quagmire and not a victory or success. I talked about 37 an