Transcripts For CSPAN2 Experiences Of Fighting The Pacific W

Lieutenant James Robinson was largely for godness is family new that he had a medal. But this is one of those Amazing Stories that that had been just kind of forgotten over time in the enormity of the war. And so our researchers had uncovered this i mean, you know, and i just want to kind of highlight it lieutenant James Robinson was a ford observer attached to an empty company in the 60 Third Infantry Division in the european theater of operations. On april 6 1945 during a fierce battle in southern germany lieutenant robinson rallied the troops. Led the counter attack with a 78 pound field radio on its back. So thats the thing in the in the program. Its Pretty Amazing and took command of the remnants of the empty company. The Company Commander had been killed the platoon leader was wounded. And he shouted the words that american soldiers continued to echo on battlefields today. Lets go. The company down to 19 soldiers were ordered to continue the attack against superior numbers. So ss panzergrenadier regiment he inspired them to go forward against strong and imposition. This is leadership. Seriously wounded he continued to call artillery strikes all the while refusing medical treatment until the enemy had been driven off. Sadly dotted a Field Hospital hospital a few hours later. He was possibly posthumously awarded the medal of honor. So this is one of those things that you know, how do we restore those recover those but also get inspiration from those . So in honor of lieutenant robinson lets go. So so in this session, were going to shift from the eto and laton robinson into the pacific, but were continuing to examine the experience of fighting in the war. Fighting in the pacific war focusing on the experience and land sea and air and fortunately weve got exceptional historians lead in this fascinating discussion. Our own doctor rob citino. Hes back. Hes the author of 10 books. I do want to give a shout out though. Hes another recipient of the Samuel Elliott morrison prize. I have to note our president ial counselors. It really is exceptional alan malette conn. Crane Gerhard Weinberg Rick Atkinson and and rob all have that distinction. Which is i mean, its all inspiring it just based on the body of their professional work. So rob has been our also our lead faculty with our Masters Degree Program in World War Two studies. Which we deliver in partnership with the Arizona State university. I understand. We have some of our recent graduates and current students from that program. I cant see you out there there. Hey, yeah, raise your hands. Theres your hey, wow, thats born we heard perfect. Hey, id really like to meet all you guys and get some feedback on how we can make that even better. So well done if you havent graduated let yet good luck in the program. And thats not going to mean the great any any softer there up. Good luck on the paper next year. The amazing experts on the war dr. John mcmanus and toll and james scott. So with that ill turn it over to rob now and lets go fantastic. Thank you mike. Thanks to everyone for being here again. We had great day yesterday talking about pearl harbor both reality and ultra potential alternates, and its a really great day of discussion you as a feel. Youre an expert on World War Two, but when you speak here at the national World War Two Museums International conference, you really got to bring your a game. I know when i was first invited here the the level of participation from the audience is always an amazing thing and i know were going to be having that again this morning. We have a great panel on the topic this morning is the pacific war and were going to be discussing it in in all of its domains as we say nowadays land sea and air i guess the way were going to structure this gents is that im going to ask a series of questions. I would like to sort of pass it down. Maybe well vary the order in which you you answer maybe thatll go for roughly half of the session and then have a really good, you know a long time at the end to do some q a because i have the audience is going to want to pepper you guys with various kinds of questions. So just up by way of an introductory comment and when we talk about see an air you know interservice rivalry is a thing in the United States and frankly. Ive studied the German Military and its it exists there and it exists everywhere. Its its its human nature to sort of bond with the organization of which youre a part and to think that somehow youre superior to the others. So, you know the an army and a navy guy are having an argument and and the the army says, you know, were boots on the ground in the navy says oh so what you know, were more important than that two thirds of the earths surface is water. And then an air force guy wanders in and says well who cares the entire surface of the earth is covered by air. And the army guy, you know, he thinks a bit and he says well i got you both 100 of the earths population lives on land. And so and and so it goes and and we can continue this. Its a circular argument in other words. I i think you know warfare is is conducted most effectively when the services arent bickering i suppose but when theyre singing in some kind of harmony we talk about combined arms or interservice. You really do need all the domains if youre going to be successful. I would say perhaps especially in a theater like the pacific so having said that my way of introduction, lets gents start with this and we speak of the pacific war. I like to start with that first word a pacific. I dont mean peaceful, but i mean the the pacific the descriptor pacific how did the geography and topography terrain of the weather of this theater affect both sides in this conflict . I think well start with how about land cn air . So can i hit you with that one first and well work our way over to ian and yeah, absolutely. I mean landwise, you know the weather in the geography the topography are everything to some extent. I see the pacific war as an inner species war from an American Perspective at least because you are dealing with you know, malariaborn mosquitoes that can basically cripple your armies in addition. You have no infrastructure of any kind many Pacific Theater battlefields. So this means especially from an Army Perspective that youre looking at some pretty major engineering problems. Youre looking at port construction, of course liaison with the other services is absolutely vital youre going nowhere without the navy and of course everythings affected by what happens with the weather, but i think in the case where most specific theater battles are fought, its mainly just heat and humidity versus like, you know, massive inclement weather that would prevent major operations exception being typhoons that come in theres three. Foods are in the battle of elite that dumps 35 inches of rain in the course of like two to three weeks, you know, you could just imagine trying to conduct land operations in that kind of environment. So from sort of ground soldiers perspective the geography the the weather of course affects practically everything, but fortunately doesnt necessarily cripple the momentum of the operations, but what percentage of the pacifica who even has this number is actually land, you know, im thinking so were talking about the land domain and its little speck sometimes little specks of land that are actually living coral yeah yeah, i dont know, you know strictly speaking what percentage but it is the minority. Yeah and and by a long shot too, but you know the other thing too in terms of the the pacific asian war is i the asian continent so youre talking about some level of continental littoral operations as well, you know, obviously in the Burma Campaign would be the most prominent example of that. So, of course, youve kind of got it all its about one third of the worlds surface of ocean island continent. Is is this theater of operations thank you, john in. Yeah, so of that one third the pacific accounts for about a fifth of the earths surface. Its a an area so large you could fit all of the worlds land masses into it youd have room to spare. And so you know, this was a naval war was a unique. It was the only naval war ever fought across the entire length and breadth of that ocean and theyre good reasons for that. It simply wasnt possible for fleets to operate across that ocean in a sustained way really until the middle part of the 20th century. And the logistics effort that it took to push these gigantic fleets across to the western pacific was just something that had never been seen before and really hasnt been seen since and we may never see it again may never see a fleet operating on that scale. So certainly from the perspective of the of the navy the us. A Japanese Navy that unique situation in the pacific really its the distances more than anything else, which absolutely determine, you know, everything really that i mean the japanese would not have struck at pearl harbor, they would not have declared war on us if they didnt feel that that the enormity of the Pacific Ocean was was essentially an gigantic moat and that we would not be capable of spring across that mode. And i dont want to go on for too too long. But in the pacific, we really had these two different routes that we took we took the southern route. That was macarthurs domain which was more of an Island Hopping campaign if you look at a map of the pacific most of the big land masses in the region are in the south. In fact, all of them are really in the middle part of the pacific what you have are. Chains of these islands particularly islands that were named after me actually theyre atolls and very were after a good starting and i appreciate it. Essentially, these are long spitz sand spits in many cases never rising more than say 15 feet above sea level. And and these atolls the navy was able to essentially convert several of them into major Forward Operating bases using forward. Logistics floating logistics, which essentially allowed the fleet the big blue fleet of 1944 and 1945 which was the third fleet or the fifth fleet depending on who the admiral was . For that fleet to operate for months at a time in the western pacific in really taking the fight home to the japanese. Thank you ian over to james on this. Yeah, i would echo both john and ian and that you know when it comes to the air logistics and distances are a huge part of it and so is the climate and the terrain and so when youre looking i mean aircraft are highly sensitive machines in that time period and so when youre dealing with heavy heat humidity coral dust and things like that, it makes the maintenance of these these planes incredibly important particularly when youre having to fly over vast distances like the Pacific Ocean. I mean if you look at the b29 campaign in the latter part of the war, its a little over 1500 miles one way just from the marriott islands to tokyo and so and all of that of course is over, you know hostile water, you know, theres if you have a if your engines go out or you have to put down, i mean, its really about one out of every four crews was lucky to be rescued unlike say in europe where you know, you could bail out or over occupied countries and hope that resistance fighters might be able to help you out. You really didnt have those options in the pacific . It wasnt just about maintaining those planes. I mean, it was really about getting those airfields. And you know, theres so much of the pacific was so primitive that literally as you know, Ground Forces are moving ashore you had aviation engineering battalions coming along with them and you know, they had to literally hack runways out of jungles out of coral. They you know, dynamite was one of their best friends, really they and if you take a look at this and thats kind of one of the Unsung Heroes really i think of World War Two are those engineering battalions. I mean if you take an island like tinnion, which is, you know, a coral atoll and they literally were able to build in a matter of you know, less than a year the largest airport in the world there, but all of that of course takes massive amounts of logistics. I mean, its not just the bombardiers and the navigators. I mean youve got to have and the mechanics and the ground crews. Youve got to have all the spare parts to come over to be able to service these incredibly sensitive planes. And so you have to have your open seas to be able to maintain that and youre dependent upon the navy. To be bringing in those supplies as well. So its you know logistics again logistics terrain all of that factors in ill add to that the japanese also faced a lot of these same challenges when they were trying to hold these different paces in places. I mean they, you know, japan is a materially bankrupt nation. So they were, you know, a lot of their efforts to sort of seize other territories were in order to be able to get the Natural Resources they had so they also were had to face a lot of logistical challenges, too. All three of you i think in one way or another would referenced weather. I think john said to three times a three typhoons in the midst of the three types of the middle of the late day battle tell us if john if you will and we can move on if whats it like being in the fighting war in the middle of a pacific type typhoon . I mean, we live in new orleans we are no strangers to bad weather here, but this strikes me on a completely entire level completely different level because you know late they are ready didnt have very good infrastructure to support modern armies the airfields that are kind of a disappointment in terms of the the soil consistency and the kind of aircraft are going to be able to support the end Aviation Engineers are already having a tough time after the initial successful American Invasion of late to create the kind of airfields at Lieutenant General george. Kenney would have wanted so you already seeing that and then you dumped 35 inches of rain on top of it. So now youre talking about fighting in one massive swamp and and so you cant get supplies forward youre trying to use amphibious vehicles to do this. Youre using carabao. Youre using carrying parties. Youve got now youve got a shift to someiasis problem too, which i think comes from from the wetness as well. Youve got a situation in which its difficult to evacuate the wounded, you know, so a lot of the late fighting takes place in very remote areas in the central part of the island. So if youre a casualty, how are we going to get you out and this of course is tremendously burdensome too, and i think that the weather certainly impacts that you know, and obviously it makes the the mosquito and malaria problem that much worse as well. And you have a humanitarian issue too because youre having to feed and care for the local population. And so you can imagine this overburdened army just to sort of anecdotal example of how weather affects the just the late battle for one General Macarthurs headquarters. Of course, is that took lobon and you know as the battle develops, its probably 20 miles away from the front lines or something now, its under aerial attack, but he even if he wants to get to the front line, he almost has no possibility of getting there because its so muddy. The expedition is going to take him the better part of a day or two and its going to be physically taxing to get to the front general roscoe woodruff the 24th Division Commander, you know being the type we wanted to visit his frontline guys, like okay. Im Going Forward. Im doing this and hes already a Division Command post and hes trying to get to the front line and it takes in the better part of the day in a day to get back and he needs a couple days recover because hes i late to this. Hes in his 50s and he feels old and you know, its starting to build up. You know, we know thanks and pains and and all that and so i very much sympathized with them and he was like man, i didnt know what this is really going to take to get there and back and i think whether certainly is a major factor, you know, we i i really feel i have to go over to ian on this a fleet at sea in a typhoon blows up and it happens a few times to the americans, doesnt it . There were two big typhoons that hit the fleet wanted december 1944 and then again, june 1945. The first one in particular was disaster killed about a thousand americans. I think there were three ships lost destroyers. And that that typhoon could have been dodged bill halsey was the fleet commander at the time. He had promised a series of airstrikes on targets on luzon to macarthur. And was determined to keep his promises but the upshot was the fleet got mauled and this typhoon, there were no airstrikes anyway. And then six months later again. Halsey is in command off of okinawa that the fleet has hit again by a typhoon not nearly as destructive in this case, but does serious damage to a number of ships. And damage to ships is its not quite sinking them, but it does take them out of action for a prolonged period of time when they were needed. So, you know, i that the descriptions the oral histories the action reports describing what it was like to be at sea. In the heart of a typhoon near the eye of the storm is really something to behold i go into it in some detail and my most recent book. But the other thing that really comes to you is that a storm storm and its a storm in the 20th century. Its the same storm in the 19th century the 18th century the 17th century. Anybody whos gone further back in history and reads these descriptions of these storms. You really are hearing the sort of the same description. And and the last point ill make is that you know, we had