Todays presenter, mark obmascik. Mark is a native of chicago southside. Hes a graduate from the Medill School of journalism at northwestern. He started his career working for the miami herald and after a year or so came to denver as a reporter for the denver post. He was the lead writer for the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the denver post for covering the tragic Columbine High School shooting in april of 2005. He had been covering the political scene for the post on candidates running for senate and other environmental stories and things get pretty ugly with some of those things. He was exhausted from working the graveyard shift when a colleague suggested he write a feature story for a notable retiring law professor at the university of denver, dr. Thompson marsh who was an enthusiastic, avid ornithologist. Mark himself had always been interested in birds, but it was the birders who fascinated him. Thus he wrote a book about the people who had the time and wherewithal to spend a year tracking down sightings of rare birds. This book titled the big year was turned into a movie starring steve martin, jack black, and owen wilson. [ laughter ] i think the idea of that kind of quest was something that many people try but few succeed was the inspiration for his second book, halfway to heaven, a personal determination to climb all of 54 of colorados 14ers. I heard mark being interviewed on pbs about that book and was impressed that he had promised his wife merrill that he would not go climbing alone and so he turned to the internet to get climbing partners. They had two little boys at the time and that soothed merrills feelings and he succeeded his quest and the adventure turned into a second book which won the National Outdoor book award for outdoor literature and winner of the National Press club for environmental journalism. If you were watching 60 minutes on sunday, last april 7th, you would have had a glimpse of mark obmasciks latest book, a storm on our shores, a tale of facetoface conflict in the midst of our countrys earliest and most horrific battles in world war ii. One last thing, i asked mark if theres anything else he would like me to tell you, he said, yeah, tell them im thinner than i look. [ laughter ] [ applause ] thank you. Thanks a million for coming, what a terrific crowd. I really appreciate it. We live not far from here, and ive driven by this building many, many times, but its the first time ive been inside. Turn this one off . Okay. [ laughter ] usually i rely on our teenage sons for electronics here. Im at a loss today. Thanks a lot for coming. I really appreciate it. So as joan mentioned about 15 years ago i was working on my first book which was about competitive bird watching, of all things. They made it into a movie starring jack black and steve martin and owen wilson and when i was researching that book, i learned about an island, attu, attu. Maybe if you do crossword puzzles, youve heard of it. Otherwise, most people really havent. Attu is the westernmost point of alaska, of the aleutian chain. It is out there. It is so far west, they curve the International Dateline around attu to keep north america on the same calendar page. Its farther west than fiji. About the same longitude as new zealand, and for a time, it was the greatest place in north america to see rare species of birds. And so when i was investigating the history of this island, i looked and saw that in world war ii the japanese had invaded and conquered it. The u. S. Lost part of alaska during world war ii. I didnt know that. The first soil, first u. S. Soil lost since the war of 1812, didnt know that either. The first the only ground battle of world war ii that was fought on north american soil. And i learned that the battle was especially brutal. It had a causality rate that was exceeded in the pacific war only at iwo jima. Now, i took history classes. How come i never knew about this . I didnt know. But still, you know, im not a military historian, im a journalist and im interested in stories of people. But when i found out there were two men who had fought each other on attu, one was an appalachian coal miner, an american war hero, and the other was a surgeon from japan who fought against his will and i learned that those two families had spent almost 40 years trying to find each other after the battle and had attempted reconciliation, and i was hooked. It took me a long time to try to piece together the story. I spent a lot of time in a windowless room at Elmendorf Air force base in anchorage at the national archives, college park, maryland, College Libraries in atlanta, oregon, denver. I talked to people in california, families in arizona, in new mexico, ohio, pennsylvania. But finally the story began to come together and ultimately for me, a big deal was that i actually got to camp on one of the most spectacular places on our planet, attu island itself, which is uninhabited. Ill tell you a little bit more about that and show you some pictures. But ultimately it all came together in my book the storm on our shores. Ill read you the beginning to give you some flavor. Laura davis was confused. In the living room of her house stood a fidgety old man, but she did not know what the visitor wanted. He talked about his grown children, he talked about his arizona retirement and he talked on and on and on about his beloved orchids and all of their beauty and frajility and their rewards. Davis had little patience for idle chitchat or exotic flowers. She was an intensive care nurse scrambling at home with 5yearold fraternal twins, her livein elderly mom, and an increasingly rocky marriage. She tried to be polite, but really, wasnt it time for this guy to go . Finally it was. As laura walked the man outside to his car, he paused and wheeled around, by the way, he told her, im the one who killed your father. Laura reeled. Was this some kind of a joke . By the way, what kind of talk was that . So causal, yet so devastating. With his blackframed glasses and shock of white hair, the visitor looked like a lanky grandfather, not some demented prankster. He seemed nervous too. His face was ashen and grim. Before laura could ask a question, the man dropped into his drivers seat, checked his Rearview Mirror and drove away. He left laura so stunned that she felt dizzy. She had been through a lot in her life, crushing childhood poverty, a lifechanging move from japan to the United States, the birth of her beloved children. But she had always had one deep whole in her life. She had never met her father. He died when laura was a baby before she had babbled even her first word. The little she knew about her father came almost entirely from her mother who wasnt saying much. Laura had been too busy raising her own family to spend time researching the past of a man who existed only as framed photographs on a family wall. With a few brief words uttered in front of a house in sherman oaks, california, the lives of laura davis and her visitor were changed forever. Laura would spend the next years scrambling to uncover her familys past. The visitor would struggle to overcome his own past. They would each learn about honor and encourage, anger and forgiveness, a duty of a man to serve his country even if the result was a pain that would not go away. It would become immeshed in a military battle long forgotten on a miserable island far from civilization, a place that claimed thousands of lives but ultimately yielded no prize for its conquerers. Davis and the visitor would discover the secrets that had ruined lives and the truths that helped to heal them. They would find fathers who soared with joy and others who shouldered burdens that grew unbearable. They would learn about scars that could heal only through atonement. And at the center of all of these revelations would be the diary. In his last 18 days on earth, when lauras father was doomed and knew it, he had written a diary, his final farewell to a family he had just started and a daughter he had never met. That diary had been recovered by the stranger at lauras door. It had been passed around to thousands of u. S. Servicemen. How the diary would change hands and change the hearts of so many who read it would be the greatest lesson of all to laura. So thats how it starts. It goes on [ applause ] so here he is, dirk laird, born and raised born, dirt poor in appalachia. By the time he was 6 years old, i think his family had moved ten times to different coal towns in pennsylvania, west virginia, ohio. Laird loved school but was forced to drop out at age 14 in the depths of the Great Depression to help support his family. By the age of 16, he was an explosives expert, underground in a coal mine in ohio. All around him, coal mining in the depression was really, really dangerous work. He was made to feel grateful to have it, but his friends were getting hurt, maimed, his neighbors were getting killed. Laird himself was in a number of really tough accidents and so he saw that his coal mining life saw that his coal mining life at appalachia, he wanted something better. And what was a safer alternative . U. S. Army. He signed up and on leave one day he met the love of his life, rose, who i think is probably fair to say, i think both would say that they fell in lust before they fell in love. They had a child before they were married, which was really something in those days. I am really so grateful to the laird and the tatsuguchi families who were so candid and opened up their family chest with just so many letters and diaries and photographs and were just so honest and sincere about their own lives. Heres the guy who kind of got me started on this story. Paul nobuo tatsuguchi, born and raised in hiroshima, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, who for college moved from his native japan to attend school in the napa valley of california. That was for undergrad. For medical school he went to Loma Linda University east of los angeles and was did his residency as a surgeon when he was a doctor at white Memorial Hospital in los angeles. Paul tatsuguchi loved america. He loved the freedom and the wanderlust, he loved ice cream and the big buildings and he loved the notion of a nation that rewarded risk instead of encouraged conformity. Paul loved america so much that his girlfriend came over from japan. He proposed to her at Yosemite National park. They married in los angeles and set off on one of the first Greyhound Bus tours from los angeles to on their honeymoon to niagra falls. What more american thing can you do in that generation but honeymoon in niagra falls. When they returned from their honeymoon, there was a telegram waiting for them saying that while you were off on your honeymoon, your parents died. Your brother panicked and nobody can really explain this, but his brother panicked and sold one of his sisters into a brothel in china. And so the newlyweds, paul and taeko, rushed back home to japan to buy his sister out of a brothel. While in japan, pearl harbor happens. So paul is drafted against his will to fight the country he loves. Hes a conflicted man. He is a devout Seventh Day Adventist who is morally opposed to war. He is a passivist and yet hes called to serve his home country. What does he do . Well, in his mind, he justifies this by saying that as a surgeon, hes here to heal and not to fight. But still his countrymen are really suspicious of him. Paul has fallen in love with america and it shows. He is fluent in english. He wears american style wristwatches, glasses, and he is also christian in a shinto buddhist country. And there are a lot of suspicions that he is a spy. Hes never actually fully trusted. Best i can tell, hes the only surgeon inducted into the imperil army who was never given the rank of officer who do you do with a guy you dont quite trust . Send him in the middle of nowhere, attu. There it is up at the top of the screen. Attu is a place that looks like a good military target maybe if you are a general sitting in a Comfortable Office in tokyo. Nobody whos ever been to attu thinks this is a good place to conduct military operations. The thinking by the japanese was that if you take attu, you could island hop, maybe get on the mainland, come down the west coast of the United States. Also if you invade attu, it might serve as a place for the real game, the big naval fight at midway. You can see hawaii and attu on that map. But the reality on the ground of attu is rough. It has some of the worst weather on earth. There are only eight days of the year that are free of rain, snow, sleet, ice or fog. It is at the current it is at the confluence of the colder bering sea and the warmer currents from the pacific ocean. When they mix, it creates this crazy weather phenomenon. I experienced it myself firsthand called willow logs, a mix of the hot and the cold creates these spontaneous, unpredictable hurricaneforce winds, 80mileperhour winds, 100mileperhour winds that knock you off your feet. It is a really bad place to build an air base. [ laughter ] thats only if you can see. The fog on attu, i was there, there were times you would you could reach your hand out and not see it. Thats how dense it would be from this mix of hot and cold. But the japanese decided that this was where they were headed and almost six months to the day after the attack on pearl harbor, the japanese came and claimed this great military prize of attu island. You can see the church to the left, schoolhouse to the right. There were attu is a volcanic island. About 3,000 feet high. Volcanic mountains, 3,000 feet high. Ice up top. Incredible mud down at the bottom from snow melt and all of the precipitation that it gets. And here is their great prize. I think 48 native aleuts lived life on attu, along with a School Teacher and her husband. Japan sent a garrison of more than 2,000 men to invade and claim this island. They could have taken this island with a bullhorn. They did not need a gun. But they had it. There it is. First time flag is foreign power is raised over u. S. Soil since the war of 1812 and they were prepared for it. Japanese had trained on some of their islands that also have big snowfall. They were ready for the elements, as well see later, the u. S. Was not. The japanese were very smart, very strategic, very shrewd fighters, and so that was in june of 1942. The u. S. Looked at attu island to a and said, you want this island with some of the worst weather on earth, you can have it for the winter. [ laughter ] and they did. They let them have it for the winter. But then in may of 1943, they came back. They came back to claim it. And here are some photos some still photos from the battle itself. Attu itself in may when they fought reminded me a little bit of the high country in may during mud season. This volcanic muck really prevented u. S. Troops from moving equipment inland. They couldnt get much mechanized gear in and so they did have to do mantoman passthroughs of supplies. At one point. Dick laird, the u. S. Serviceman, he and the fellow soldiers had just run out of food. They had no food. They couldnt get inland. Theyre waging war with a ferocious enemy and so what laird did was he crawled on his belly to a creek and caught a trout by hand and lived on that. The terrain on attu was challenging to say the least. Maybe even worse by the fact that the u. S. Troops, all their training had been in the mohave desert of california. They were expecting and planning to fight rommel, the nazi in the desert sands of north africa when generals decided to redeploy them to alaska. They sent many u. S. Troops wearing desert gear. One of the biggest problems was boots. As you see, when you do these traverses across places like fish hook ridge, one misstep would cost you your life. Meanwhile, japanese are fortified in the highlands shooting down at them. And so u. S. Troops have been told this might take three days against the garrison of about 3,000 japanese men, almost three weeks later, theyre still fighting. The japanese were really smart. Although well, the japanese who remain on the island were really smart. An amazing thing was, they were a garrison of 3,000 men who were abandoned by their country. They never came for a rescue. The island was blockaded, surrounded by u. S. Troops, and the japanese government simply gave up on them. This turned into kind of the Japanese Version of the alamo. And so the japanese decided not to fight the americans on the beaches. They hold up in the highlands. And with fog and clouds lifting, you can see the clouds in this picture, they would go up and down the mountain based on where the fog was and be on the edge. And so u. S. Troops who were stuck in the mud below never knew who was shooting at them. They described it, they said it was like trying to shoot birds out of a cloud. With the elements, with the desert boots, dozens, hundreds, actually thousands of men ended up with weatherrelated casualties. Many, many people had amputated toes, amputated feet, hands from just standing around in the muck all day. And so they would try to massage each others feet back to life, but this was just terrain that they had no experience fighting on. It was, you know, awful. While all this happened, Paul Tatsuguchi was a surgeon and he started writing a diary that documented what its like to be on the receiving end of the most fearsome military in the history of our planet. He was holed up in a cave doing surgeries and getting shelled. He was suturing up a patient and the doctor next to him was hit by shrapnel and killed. He was performing amputations and having to duck because of u. S. Bombs. Tatsuguchi writes this and it is moving. It is its kind of in a doctors tone. Its just its factual. And what happens then after 18 days of fighting, well past the threeday stint that u. S. Troops thought they would be in for, the japanese are desperate. Theyre down to maybe only about 500 men. And the commander gathers the troops together and they realize that they are out of food. The japanese are out of bullets. Theyre out of hope. And so they decide to mount a last, final bonsai attack. A desperate attack, their last chance. And they do. They go out on the morning. Dick laird is in his tent on the side of a mountain and hears something outside, goes outside of his tent, and through the fog, sees above him that a squad of eight japanese soldiers has captured an american mortar. Theyre spinning that mortar around so that it doesnt point at the japanese. Theyre turning it back on the americans themselves. Laird realizes that this could chan