maybe you aren't used to this. i'm going to cover a few basic things before we get started. copies of the book are available downstairs at the register. silence your phones and we can all appreciate that. you can take photographs and post them on social media and then after the author has finished speaking you could wait so we can all hear your questions and that would be great. he's a former book editor and this is "the new york times" bestsellers inferno the last chance. the historical accounts in the pacific during world war ii. he's given keynote lectures at the academ academy and is a fret guest speaker on fox news and the youth and civics groups. as a graduate he now lives in austin. it is the extraordinary story of the most consequential pacific war in the mariana islands. it could be the total victory over japan and established a new state-of-the-art warfare. to give you the details on this event is james fisher. [applause] it's a community center and the offense such as bring such a diversity of authors and gives a vibrancy to the community that i've been called home for 23 years now so i'm proud to be here for the third time i think for opportunities for the readers around the country so thank you for being here. much appreciated. i've had the great fortune to turn a lifelong interest in the navy and world war ii into an ongoing project. it was a battle narrative that didn't extend too far beyond the mission of telling the story of this victory over japan and in october of 84 it benefited a great deal was only a tiny handful that are left right now so over the course of projects i've seen it diminish from book to book. my second was about a single shift. the survivors taken prisoner and made slaves on the notorious project on the highway all through the war so that carried through three and a half years and was a step up in scope and ambition. the third book covered in close detail a six-month period in time and the flood tides raise the stakes even further to take on the endgame of the pacific war through the better part of 1944 and all the way through the end not just the surrender of japan but the occupation itself. i think that shows so much of whaaboutthe american war effortl about. so this covers a large portion of history on the air, land and sea. it involved the invasion of three important islands that were strategically vital in striking distance of the japanese home island that became home of the b-29 bombers and thanksgiving of 1944 the bombing of japan begins from these islands. the seizure of the islands moving to the next slide you will see at the center of the map on the top right provokes japan into the largest strike against the offensive of the world about all of the philippines seized the largest aircraft battle in world war ii and they sent a fleet to the invasion of the marianna and precipitate the battle of carriers more than three times the size the battle of midway. 15 aircraft carriers in that engagement, nine japanese and the question of whether they would have been settled to finish this. so that is a major story the founder of the striking force takes command of the composite group and the special mission is to deliver so they quickly precipitate more than an amphibious option. it becomes a battle to decide the pacific war and they become the fulcrum against which we yield strategic airpower against japan and finally force japan to surrender. these are my neighbors is, -- devices, we of the prominent and thoughtful and interesting characters at the center of the story, green men, the commander of the fleet. the world kind of device itself among the two types and they are so reserved and analytical and thoughtful and intellectual, policies so impulsive. both of them so tremendously effective. there was always a degree of risk. the japanese came to know him as the man was in possible to trap. the style really becomes pronounced and they like to speculate what might have happened if the roles had been flipped so that is an argument i can get rather heated in the polarizing figures in the story of the campaign pits one side of the navy against the other without a admiralty become task commanders committed to the proposition that the true power of the navy in the form of these ugly duckling ships sending aircraft to sync everything in sight. he was a battleship fan and the fact this was constantly held against him and the partisans from the admiralty present for the victory in the battle of midway and now for his audacity in conducting through so it takes place with his subordinates had come = becomes a theme of the blackberry character centerebook verycharad in the craft circa 1944 and 45 the rise of the aircraft carri carrier. in the center we have kelly turner the commander of the force and the navy is undergoing a transformation that only in terms of the type of ships that fight for control of the sea but project power in charge of the ugly ducklings course and amphibious ships to carry across the nation for the objectives of the island and support and turner is the modern master of this. it's the first large island he undertakes 46 square miles very deep to gain and it becomes a ground for warfare and hold surprises of the campaign to roll around in the summer of 1944. finally the task with ending the war in the islands. the title suggested we have a graphic indicating the production 1943 to 1944 that shows the growth of the fleet to command your attention and battleships and controlled navy is surging in to the large and medium-sized carriers are commissioned and quickly taken under the wing from pearl harbor to the pacific and it forges the media of long the lines of the aircraft carrier battle group. they protect them but that lower right you'll see huge numbers here we have single digits for the battleships and carriers and annual productions with the landing craft to see the transformation of the fleet. we have landing craft. we have the massive operations in the pacific. as always overshadowed. june 1519442 divisions of the marine corps go to shine at thee southwestern beach of saipan as well as a division of the army reserve 27th infantry. as i indicated in this sort of the rubicon. if on the line of the 140. it's particularly with regards to the islands of japan. what we have been saipan for the first time in the pacific is not only the large land mass 46 square miles, we have a 14-foot mountain at the center of the perfect cover for the artillery and mortars but it's something americans encounter with the first time and that is the presence of civilians. the japanese sugar farmers and plantation workers are there in great numbers, 25,000, and there's another large settlement. and othen of course there's the military garrison and the soldiers protecting saipan. so you have a mixed society to take by force and being reaction is the dynamic of the campaign for saipan changes the way americans look at the war. to give you a sense of what saipan looks like, the forest with the limestone, the caves, but while the beaches. one of the features of the campaign as the reefs surrounding saipan with a fairly large employment underwater demolition man, so-called demolition swimmers, to operate with terse force as the reconnaissance unit for the landing ships to approach but once they get on sure they are quickly swallowed up in the battle where the lines are in beta. they struggle in the fight for saipan to hold the lens type and prevent infiltrators and that's difficult with 13,000 americans to become casualties of the campaign about 4,000 dead. saipan also sees one of the most city fights anywhere in the pacific. the japanese capital, administrative capital is the site of some intense combat. they contest the american watchman. they bring the fleet and the americans beat him and what becomes the battle. it is the carrier forces that becomes controversial in the fact they never get commanders licensing rome west and the battle of the fleet. it's west of guam in covering the position because they realized the strategic objectives are the islands sounds. the admiralty can't wait to reckon and get the carriers to the bottom. they have a strategic mission in mind and it is the reason for the mission that indeed the consequences are holding the islands to become strategically vital and so he throws the nic leash. on june 19, 1944, the great marianna shoot takes place and it requires the nickname for the aircraft pilots to claim in battle 380 japanese planes were shot down on june 19. why, it has more to do with the mastery of the air search radar and the transition between the ships and squadron commander in the fighter direction teams. it's just the right altitude. the pilots have plenty to left to engage through the day. this takes care of any possibility that the japanese power could have identified as an effective force. the admirals see the mission accomplished in a different way. without aircraft with good are the aircraft carriers so one of the pieces that follows the next day but does authorize strikes of course we are still testing search planes and they manage to make sightings the sunken on the 19th but they are roaming out there to the west. the reason it is a problem is that his late on the afternoon. the recovery has the so-called d eternaso-calledturn on theso-cas takes off late in the afternoon to make the strikes around sunset and we have a desperate circumstance where the pilots are navigating some cases wounded were low on fuel. a cigarette can be seen for miles but the submarine skippers of the blackout strategy is put in place and they are navigating and have radio beacons to assist them but they are making their way in this desperate way of the evening when all of a sudden it's running tight and they have a sense they are close and to make radio contact and all of a sudden the nighttime air ducts in the light and life and evert and destroy your cruise or battleship is thrown skyward. this episode kind of cement the loyalty. it's shown by the pilots and they will talk about the night that's important for the history of it again it is an incredible piece and i pulled this into the story of how the navy is going to do its business in the age of the aircraft carrier. the stories acquiring gravity and the marines are confronting civilians for the first time as i said on the battlefield. it's taken into custody in to te internment camps to be given medical care and to be given water. it's about the nature of the fighting men they are told marines have their endless -- enlistment accepted. if you are taking prisoner your children will be eating, women will be raped and will be told in short order. this is a fairly persistent message delivered by the other japanese garrison islands. when the troops pushed inland to engage the troops in combat, they are peaking held up by their own nations military and they are seldom surrendering and if they push north in the fight for the island and have some horrible atrocities taking place. japanese troops are killing their own people and then in the northern tip of saipan they are so terrified that they are killing their own children. this is absolutely stunning to one and every american soul on this island but when americans see this dude is utterly disbelieving. in the company of general holland smith and admiral ernest king to visit site and they are given a tour of the island and they are showing the spectacle of bodies drifting and there's a widespread sense of utter disbelief on the part of the commanders and what is important about the campaign is shortly after this reconnaissance takes place from each of them in turn come to hawaii for a strategy meeting where he sits down to decide on the westward path across the pacific. the following month he joins president roosevelt in the so-called octagon conference of the combined chiefs of staff and where the larger question is handled so churchill is there with his top people and fdr is there with his top people and king is fresh from this jaw dropping experience in the marianas islands. what we see coming out of the meetings is very important. we crossed the line into this horrible resolve. i call it total war. it's not my formulation. the term that suggests no longer will we have either the self-imposed restrictions on the way we fight. all weapons will be used and the goal as before will be unconditional surrender of our enemy. but all options are now on the table. the army tactical aviation plant for the first time in the largest scale and we see the strategic bombing unfolding as well which are racing for the first time in the central pacific 1300 miles south of tokyo just within range and the willingness to use them against the civilian population centers is practiced here. we have the bombings that proceed from the cities and the signal. what i wanted to get to is the word is fdr himself following the revelation in the hawaii planning session and then following the meetings in the city at the conference. august 91944 and he did a magnificent job and september 161944, the communiqée following the conference this is a fairly staged allied press communiqué that says in part in a short space of time they reached the decisions with respect to the completion of the war in europe approaching its final stages and the distractions of the barbarians of the pacific. this language i find quite stunning. i made a bold face and put it in the red becausinto red because t struck me in the initial reading. these words are daggers if you will. with respect from the allied commandercommanders like his pre correspondence you might expect fdr to be a little salty with one of the principal army commanders, but certainly in the official press communiqué you wouldn't expect the barbarians of the pacific but it's my sense that the revelations of saipan triggered the willingness to see the enemy in this way. i don't believe that america fought this war as they race for. i think the reaction to the fighting led to the frontline to see the dehumanizing dynamic coming into play. i think japan did conceive of its war in part as a pushback against western colonialism. we can get into this later if you want. but there were no specific elements in the japanese notion and you see the way that this inflicted itself upon asia as having this element and then the wholesale enslavement of koreans and the expressly racist framing of the fight against the west. but in this language here you start to see the pushback and recognition we are up against something other than an enemy that we can reckon with. not to get too heavily into that but it's a point why the campaign was as i see this rubicon where you have an awareness on the part of fdr himself that there is an alien scene of utter to the enemy. and it activates a certain willingness to any and all means in the course of defeating the enemy. saipan and guam rolled up in august of 44 and almost immediately the army's aviation engineers and maybe have the bulldozer and they are transforming the island into the largest air complex anywhere in the world for strategic bombers. here we have a picture for takeoff as i said earlier thanksgiving, 1944 was the first strike against japan using conventional bombs, high explosives from high altitudes. the idea was the precincts could wage the same type of war against japan that we waged against germany, so-called precision bombing definitely in air quotes. these were strikes against cities that contain military factories were the co- mingling of civilian and military targets but the idea was we can bomb them from a high-altitude but the problem was japan was jet stream winds around the pacific and sure they drop high-altitude to the accurate and first strikes commended the failures. we had aircraft losses and negligible accuracies. so curtis relieves him in 1945 and it changes the way that strategic airpower fights. low altitude and using incendiaries. this isn't a japanese city in early 1945 these are not high explosive bombs you typically see on aircraft carriers. these are incendiary clusters. they are devilish little things. if you go to youtube, you can find the training video that shows how they work. they burst at high altitude and release 6-pound incendiary bombs when they hit the ground they have a devilish chemical. some chemical composition involving phosphorous and it starts a fire with whatever it touches and it is almost impossible to put out. army planners realize japan would be an ideal target for this type of weapon before the war started. we also use them against germany as well. it was not exclusively reserved for japan. but the florida panhandle the weapons had been tested and plan was if it ever came to back in the 20s army planners of the japanese citiejapanese cities wy susceptible to incendiary bombing. so the general commences the incendiary offensive against japan. we are talking three dozen major cities burned out. 50% of its square mileage in these urban areas, 50% or more in the urban area of 30 or more japanese cities entirely burned out. the losses in the strikes march 101944 and 45 the bombing in tokyo this is considerably more than either of the atomic strikes. and what is stunning and i think what is at the root of the necessity for this type of warfare had to do with the views of this man shown here. he was the japanese war minister who held additional duty on the otheupper supreme war direction council. this was a six man body that basically said of the war policy, two of the colleagues on that body were absolutely unreconstructed about the sense of how far are we willing to carry this war. their view was the penalty for defeat should be the death of every man, woman and child here and be argued this view at every meaning of the direction council for the summer of 1945 to tremendously tragic results. so my book looks not only at the operational side of the military from 44 to 45 but it looks closely also at the japanese war policy and the people of the so-called big six. their role was tragic. the dead-end philosophy ensured that the war that was being carried out would fall upon japan in the hardest possible way and it is utterly tragic for the japanese people, the people in asia veteran of the japanese occupation and for everybody involved in the pacific for that the willingness to surrender simply was not existent at the level that it could have mattered. you can find it would've japanese commanders knew it was over as soon as the strategic offensive begins. you'll see a lot of complaining and even political scheming. bannister of course was the head of the japanese army that took over the japanese foreign policy in the 30s and carry the war to this point. he is succeeded by a premonition anstrain really isn't a good thg at all that the successor is ineffectual because he seized control of the war council and the three out of six members told him the role of policy is ensured. this is a propaganda leaflet that was dropped by the tens of thousands and every island in the western pacific. the americans realize that we have to find a way to persuade japan to defeat is upon them and we have to give them an opportunity to surrender with their pride intact. this cultural dynamic is at the center of the propaganda effort that is detailed and very revealing documents i found in my research when it talks about how to communicate with japanese civilians and soldiers and how do we give them the space to allow them the opportunity to surrender with their dignity intact and so if i can simplify this, the line that we use essentially went and fought nobly for your country tragedy is upobuttragedy is upon all ofe war. lay down your weapon and come to us with your dignity intact. we will feed you" even give you medical aid and ensure that you are able to help your nation out of the tragedy of the war and into a brighter future. surrender to the shogun general smith and he will show not mercy that he will treat you with respect. this was the message. we also use the same imagery to suggest of the illegitimacy of this click on the war direction council, the predatory kind of military-industrial click that had japan under its boot in 1945 and so we are waging a propaganda campaign and its message very purposefully. budoesn't obviously bear a quick result or bring fruit until the final chapter is red. long story short, the strategic bombing rose through the summer of 45 towards the fall with terrible losses. the japanese are suffering terribly at the hands of the 21st bomber command and meanwhile, the campaigns on the western pacific are becoming increasingly costly. okinawa and finally the atomic bombings are the final tragedy in this epic story. it's simply a historical fact month before august 9, the bombing of nagasaki was japan ever ready to throw in the towel on the pacific for effort. it's only when he descends from the divine and remove and enfolds himself in a controversy that is raging in his own direction council to surrender the imperial script of august 15 in the announcement of the nation that this needs to be ended in the name of saving humanity he adopts a pretense that japan is doing a great favorite of the world which i guess it's sort of. it was only within japan's power, only japan had the ability to end this war. the great tragedy of the pacific war was that it required that means so harsh to force this result and i guess it is much to the credit that he had the courage to break with that tradition and to send from the removal to come talk to the big stick and explain to them that the war had two and. i look past the surrender ceremony and the u.s. missouri on september 2, 1945. i spend a lot of time looking at how the occupation itself kind of carried on this idea that japan would be rebuilt and continue and the nation of japan wouldn't be built in this way. here general douglas macarthur turns in his most important effort as a five-star commander. he was named the commander and was given to arthur to take the plan was to be two phased plan operation olympic and coronet and use it as a mission of mercy to occupy japan, demilitarize the nation, accept the surrender of its armed forces, but we are going to do so in a way that allows the traditions to survive and indeed affects the surrender by cow with and through the emperor and all of the different areas of the country. we are going to leave them in place so that this ordinary way of life and the services that the japanese citizens are used to receiving continue and there isn't this kind of punitive removal of all of the public officials. so this was the greatest moment as a leader in the way that we have a massive ego and be self progressing sense of his divine sense of mission and we need a man like macarthur to presume to command and member to his wishes and orders. but it was in preserving the political edifice of japan but i think the kind of foundation for the position of the cold war having japan as an ally for the postwar period it was effective through the surrender proceedings in the manner of occupation. so it is a capable and tragic story to unfold a lot of subject matter into one volume taking the last 18 months of the war from the invasion of the marianas to the strategic result of the highly important purposes to which those islands were put. i tried to use a narrative storytelling style to do justice to its complexity operationally and strategically but to spend a lot of time with people showing people in the moment wrestling with a possible circumstance and doing the best they could if we take the criticism for the previous books if the opportunity to do more with the japanese aside and so i side ans book i spend time developing not only military personnel that civilians and the experience of the war with the faithful in my work at the library i found in the paper's incredible diaries in particular and 18-year-old daughter of a sugar trader on saipan who wrote a detailed memoir of experiences confronting america's war power firsthand and confronting the japanese and military brainwashing effect and determination never to surrender first hand caught in this vice. how does she find her way through? the story is at the heart of this book and this one thread i didn't develop in the attempt to reckon with the human tragedy of the war. really the most understandable and relatable level. very challenged. if you have any questions, i would like to start taking those right about now, so thank you very much. [applause] >> after we dropped the second, did we have enough material for a third? >> los alamos would have had a third atomic bomb ready and going forward from there there would have been about three bombs a month. there would have been ten through the end of 1945. what's chilling is to see the plan about how they were to be used. starting in october, november. they were going to be used for tactical support for the invasion of japan which meant they would have been dropped on the japanese concentrations two or three days ahead of an american assault. at that time, there was no real understanding of the effect of the gammaray sickness of nuclear atomic fallout. it begs the imagination to envision what it would have looked like. something to get into in the book is the experience of the uss haven in august 1945 of nagasaki. yothey are occupying japan, demilitarizing the japanese military and society and we are also tending towards our own in great numbers. so, nagasaki, the pows have been through the bombing of mike sacchi. the navy medical teams have never seen with japanese are calling the disease. the effect of the exposure there's really no understanding. everyone understood that chain reaction released vast amounts of key energy but this next level of effect was a revelation. can you imagine american troops the experience of atomic weapons on the battlefield all around japan, three bombs through the end of 45 with the capacity of los alamos and they would have used them. >> you said you're interested in the pacific war and they came from your childhood. can you tell us about any books or movies or things you did as a child that gave some truth to this? this?guest >> it was a whole lot of model building because they got older by the time i left for college wasn't a square inch of my ceiling that didn't have a pushpin with some type in aircraft. my bookshelves full of books but also models of ships. we got into the wargaming and the black sheep squadron was on nbc thursday night. it was terrible history. the storylines they made up were ludicrous, but it was a gateway drug to all the hardware of the south pacific campaign. it was a childhood passion. i feel the opportunity to turn a childhood interest into something like this i've been very fortunate in that respect. i left it behind. go to college and yo off to colt study history in college. for a handful of institutions, the service academy, ohio state, this has to be a hobby so i reconnect it with this stuff when i started my career in book publishing and that's been powerful. >> with fewer veterans, did you have an opportunity to do any in person and use with combatants were participants? >> on this book i have to tip my camp to the oral history program that is why again deep and so expertly done. it allows us to tap into that flow of human experience forever more because of the foresight and collecting the testimony. the answer is no. on one of my trips, we found a fiddler in the country that actually drove. he was there at one of the history site and i remembered interviewing him on the side and she was quoted in the book and that may be the only living interview i did for the buck because again for the campaign like this, the focus is that the strategic level and so, you know, in all of the histories of individual marines in the second and fourth divisions i use those heavily but i did miss the experience of talking to them not only individually but in the company of their shipmates and fellow marines and soldiers. when i wrote the last of the sailors there were a large number of reunions and i got a sense of the social network and the bombs. that's not historical data as such but it is an energy and i a master tapping into it with this book. >> how do you use research assistants? >> these are as a friend of mine said, these books are handcrafted so every snapshot of a document, every photocopy, i do it all. this book was fairly ambitious in scope. the way i segregate my work tasks the first couple of years is stealing time from the outgoing literary agent to go to repositories and just collect material. i don't worry about writing until i feel like i've gotten a mass of evidence i can write, so i do it all myself. yes. >> i think we were very fortunate to have talent at the level. do you think that it was more so than normal in the institutions or was it a little bit of luck? they came out and produced a lot. >> i was struck when i was working on the story for the survivors of the ship what could have prepared them for that level of deprivation. what could have prepared them to be so tough to get through three years of japanese captivity on a cup of rice a day in burma? you've got to say that you thought the depression prepared them and being raised by an abusive father and paying an unexpected dividend, there's that level you can look at. there's the question of the higher-level. leadership through an appreciation of chester. president roosevelt picked him fogrin off menu choice if you wl or president roosevelt. the first people on that list were kind of consensus choices by the period of the fleet. there were several lists of the top guys but he wasn't there so he did something to impress president roosevelt along the way. the fact that he was from the bureau of navigation, they are a personnel office for the navy. so he did know the talent. it was one of the great strengths dealing with people managing diverse personalities, ferocious will to maintain his equity. he did have that separating and finding out files from everything else, the war itself took care of that and that is the theme of my book. but they were not all brilliant and they were not all were fighters. but by the end of the commander of submarine service reporting that took place over 43-44. you have some real fighters up there, the same thing with the pilots. the training systems we set up for the training management base and the pilots to the front. it's in terms of where our people cam can come and that was important. it's where people rise to the most reputation i don't. there's so many case studies. how do we pick the leaders and we need fighters and where should they be put in the hierarchy. >> [inaudible] >> i started by talking about what would have happened. a lot of people say we need the methodical discernment of the time when the japanese were trying to bait us into a mistake. i think it worked out just fine. the war was over by the time it was underway. they made a terrible mistake if they were under divided command. i think they shared some culpability for the flexibility to demand the negotiation of the carriers if and when they turned up. they never should have given that kind of discretion. i suppose you could have known the time. they are athere at the guadalcaa risk taker, the talents of the risk taker word that need to put this fascinating to look at this the choice comes down. they recommend a court-martial following the second experience with a type yet when the decision comes down gets the last promotion, and i think the rationale was when the war could have gone either way, they held that the theater command in the south pacific and he never had that. hhe made a share of mistakes whn the war could have gone either way this position was such that he turns the whole thing around but that shouldn't be forgotten. they gave the ultimate compliment he wa was demand thae could never trap. he was just too smart and cautious and reserved and discerning. he knew how to use intelligence and what the mission was. you could always say that but i don't think that takes a lot away from him because when the war was in the balance committee was the only man tha i could hae done what he did. thank you very much. i've appreciatei'd appreciate ys evening. 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