President nixons opening of china. This was hosted by friends of the National World war ii memorial. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is josiah bunting. I am with the friends of the National World war ii memorial. It is a wonderful privilege and pleasure to welcome all of you here this morning, at a time in our National History which we commemorate with great feeling. My mission this morning is to introduce our introducer [laughter] josiah if you will give me just George Marshall had a friendship through the douglas freeman. Freeman was recognized then, and probably still is, as our foremost historian of the civil war. He wrote a great biography of general washington and general lees lieutenants. Atkinson, who it is my pleasure to injured deuce, is the foremost historian of the Second World War, and his stature among those who write or read history is approximately as douglas that freeman, for those of you who civil war students. He is a member of the friends board. It is an honor to introduce him and welcome him to this stage, rick atkinson, who will introduce tom brokaw. Rick . [applause] thanks. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Legacy lecture is sponsored by the friends of the National World war ii memorial. , committed toofit building on the National Mall a place of remembrance which honored the american spirit during the war. Friends is committed to preserving the legacy, lessons, the National Memory of world war ii, and one way to do that is through an annual lecture named for ambassador hayden williams, which commemorates the enduring significance of the war in our country and in the world. And that brings us to this morning speaker. 17 years ago, in 1998, tim , andw wrote his first book it became one of the most popular books published in the 20th century. Has greatest generation become part of our national vocabulary. Paybook and the phrase homage to our grandfathers, grandmothers, perhaps more effectively than any gesture by an american since world war ii ended 70 years ago. He has given us a vocabulary to help us understand our Great National narrative, and for that, last year, president obama gave him something the medal of freedom, the highest civilian award our country can this dough. Famously from south dakota, tom has spent his entire journalism century,lmost half a with nbc news. In the los angeles bureau, as White House Correspondent, on the today show, as anchor and managing editor of nbc nightly press, int the various incarnations, as correspondent on more than 30 documentaries. We were together in normandy for the anniversary of dday, and it was amazing to see this workhorse added from before dawn sun went after the down, remembering folks back home the first duty is to remember. Journalists has recognized tom as a pillar of integrity, intelligence, and authenticity. He may be not only the most trusted man in television, but the only public figure that all americans trust. He has written six more books since the greatest generation. Award his every major craft and bistro. The australian journalist also a white the australian said the living owe to the dead a trust. That trust itt than the man who is about to speak to you. It is my pleasure to introduce to you tom brokaw. Too generous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you all very much. If there is an oxymoron in American Life it is humble you,rman, but i must tell these occasions truly make me humble. One of the many, many dividends of writing this book and getting to know that generation so well is i then had a shared interest with my friend, our preeminent wentary historian, and it the on our professional interest. We have become deeply, deeply personal friends. And rick has never stopped. What is left . The revolutionary war. He is up in canada, with walking through the various steps of the revolutionary war, and frankly, i cant wait to see that as well. I do want to take a moment to say one of the first people that i thought i would write about was our guest here today, and that is my dear friend bob dole. I always look for an opportunity to give him one more round of applause. [applause] tom there are so many dimensions to my story and the greatest generation, and they keep on coming. , andf my very favorites man who lives not too far from here by the name of lefty cray you will know who he is. He is the greatest fly fishermen in the history of the sport, now about to be 91 years of age. He came out of very poor circumstances in maryland, went to the battle of the bulge, all the way to the elbow where they met the russians. , in we were fishing one day learned not to ask for detail about that. I said, do you want to talk about the bulge . He said, i really dont. I just tell you, i wake up every icicle onth a large my fanny because the foxhole had covered up with water. But ive been waiting to tell you a story. There were cousins from georgia. They were seventh grade dropouts. They could see through the night and run like a rabbit and shoot anything without even looking at it. They were two at our best warriors. But they were pretty unsophisticated, until we overheard this conversation between the two of them. The night we were moving out, we knew we were in for a tough time. One of them said to the other 1 of thatet yourself any Life Insurance we are to get. The guy said, i did. I got me 5,000 worth of Life Insurance. How much did you get . The other good old boy says, i got me 10,000 worth of Life Insurance. The 5,000 guy said, why would you do that . Youre not going to be around to enjoy it. Guy said, dummy, think about it. Who are they going to put on the front lines, the guy they have to pay 5,000 to or the guy they have to pay 10,000 do . [laughter] is implemented of that generation as well. I was born in 1940. Right before the war began. I was born to parents who had survived the depression, just barely. My dad was effectively put out on the street when he was 10 years of age, raised by a swedish immigrant, talk to drive a team of horses, and then he turned out to be kind of a mechanical genius, so he could always get a job operating a e, asult or a big lath they called them in those days, and he could put things together. My mother was at the opposite end of the scale. She graduated from high school at 16. She was the prettiest girl in four counties. Came from this very nuclear irish family. Wanted to go to college and be a journalist. But because it was the depression and it cost 100 a year, there was no way. My father always had a great eye for the long haul and he knew my mother was going to be the perfect partner for one. O, they got married and to that kind of the depression. They saved their money. They thought about what they wanted when the depression was over. They went through the sacrifices of that time. They kept their eye on the world. The in 19 40 i was born and war came. My dad he was a little bit older at that point wanted to be a cb, but he wanted to arrange it for his family, so we moved to a base in southwestern south dakota that has been long gone. It was an ordinance decpot. They would ship up to the southwestern corner of the state. It was all rental snakes and sagebrush, andnd the homes were not really homes. They were 20 by 30, i think, at that point. So, we moved into one of them when i was three years old. My brothers were starting to come along. And the whole base was built around us. And everybody i knew was going to war or coming home from war. And the whole base was involved in it. My dad then went to enlist in ees, and the commander of the base called him back because they could not operate the base without him. He could fix everything that was broken. He could get everything done. We were in the fortunate position of having my father. Ome that is typical of that generation as well. Not everybody was on the front lines. Only a small fraction were, but everybody had a role. Farmers grew more food. I was very conscious of the fact we did not have candy in the house as a youngster and could not by choice, so my dad and his medies would make toys for and for my brothers as well and for everybody around us, and knowing to war, coming home from war. Every member the excitement of a High School Boy when he graduated, and he wanted to go right away and he did. Ive often wondered what happened to him. Helmet every day. I fought the germans in the ditches up and down the streets where i was. My grandfather was far too old to go to work, but was an avid subscriber to Time Magazine because they had really good maps. He would show me on the maps where we were and what we were up to. In the war came to a close and our family, and millions of others, who had gone through the depression and gone through the , at time of extraordinary circumstances and sacrifice in their lives, then had unveiled to them the greatest opportunity any society had ever had before. We were the victor, and not only we were the victor, but we have the g. I. Bill. People being trained to be teachers and engineers. And the pentup appetite for projects. We moved to the middle of south place, to the most barren you can possibly imagine, part of an indian reservation. There was not a stick of a building where we were moving to , and they were going to build the largest dam in the world for hydroelectric purposes. My dad was out there and he said, they are going to build a town here and it will house 3000 people. I thought, thats not possible. Within two years, they had done that. It was the cando spirit that came out of the war. He built this beautiful, state of the art town. Stateoftheart high school, the First Shopping Center in south dakota and a hospital, and a hotel, and good housing for everyone. Love going into a house that was a duplex and those of you who have been on an army base and know what it looked like. It was the greatest house my parents had ever been in. We had been living in lakeside cabins and tiny little cracker boxes everywhere. Everybody who came back from the war moved into that kind of housing. And they built this dam in record time, about eight years. It was an extraordinary development. I was the beneficiary of all of this, because all of the veterans who came back and we did not know who served in what branch. They were paying attention to the future. They were the american legion, the veterans of foreign wars. They sponsored boy scout troops, they built a ballpark for us. They were there for whatever the town needed. So i grew up in that culture of that generation and their cando spirit, without fully appreciating what it meant. Life turned out pretty well for me. Dam that to another big was going on. I had High School Coaches that turned out. One of them had been in the battle of the bulge. Whoorts writer in town wrote of the accomplishments on the field had done aerial reconnaissance on the beaches of normandy. We did not know that. I was telling rick, there is a series in the hometown newspaper about the National Guard that was activated early and a number of them died, or they were sent to japanese prisoner of war camps. Their names are familiar to me. I did not know that. I was too busy taking advantage of all of the new opportunities that the greatest generation were providing for me. First my family to go to college. That in my family to think maybe i can have a much better life than the working class life in south dakota, even though the. Alues were great i had a big appetite for other things. I wanted bright lights, big city. That was all going to be possible. And then of course, broadcast journalism was just coming of age. I caught the right wave. I had certain skills that matched with it. I made my way through the ranks of nbc. On the 40th anniversary of dday, i wanted to do a report on that, a documentary on the the beaches. From i was training for a marathon. I thought, i will run through the hills of normandy. I walked down to the beach the first day, omaha beach, and we arrangedge we had for two veterans who arrived with the first wave to be with us. One of them lost his legs later in the war. I looked at them. Oh, my god, these are the people that have raised me. These of the people i have known all my life. First of all, they were small. If you look back on the induction ceremonies of world war ii, so many of the inductees look malnourished. The ribs are sticking out. Bob about this in a couple of other people from kansas, and they also the same thing. How did they train . What do you remember about basic training . My god, the meals we had. I could not believe it. I had a new era boots. I had never had a new of roots before. I did not have handmedown trousers. There was this feeling, i always thought, they did that the depression prepared them for the sacrifices they were about to encounter. As i looked at these two have from the two men first division, i look to their wives. They were wearing plastic just like my mother would. And they were clutching their purses. I thought, thats it we are. These are everybody in america in her own way. I was back to a smaller cafe to have lunch. There, an old man came over to me. I knew who he was immediately. He said, sam given, congressman from florida. I said, i know who you are, congressman. What are you doing . He pulled out a small grass clipper, clicked it a couple times. He said, i was here 40 years ago. I said, do you want to tell me what happened . And he started to tell me how he ,ot separated from his outfit for guys andother his lieutenant. He said, i spoke spanish, but that did not get me very far in the north of france. [laughter] the he said, without invasion failed. He jumped in with two cans of schlitz. They took a break and had their schlitz. When they came back, the cans were gone, they knew the german said probably come there, and then they got ambushed. The other lieutenant got killed. As he was telling me this story, tears were streaming down his face and his wife came over and said, i have never heard any of this. I had no idea. They had been married a long time. Well, i came back from that initial experience, and i thought, my god. Im supposed to be a journalist. What have i missed here. What have i missed here . I spent the next 20 years piecing together those kinds of stories. And i could quiet any audience and they would get together afterward and say, i remember my dad. He had his uniform way at the back of his closet. They went through the war on training wheels, first north wasca all the way, and he in the original mash unit. He moved with the troops constantly, operating all day, every day, dramatic surgery on people his age. Never a p e from him. Peep from him. Putting together the stories, thinking there is something we have missed in this country about this generation and what they mean to us. So i used, for the first time, the phrase the greatest generation. Came over to me and said, what are you going to do with that . He said, if you dont write a book, i will. So you better get on it right now. I went to random house. I was working on another project. They said, stop that. Do this. This is how publishing works. And even my family. People challenge me, i said look, that is my story and im sticking to it, i dont care what you think. There was a little resistance at random house and even meredith said to me, god, is that going too far, and i now say it is the one piece of bad advice she gave thatd 53 years of marriage was going too far. I had no idea it would take hold did, that would become part of the language, wouldhe New York Times not put it in quotes anymore. They just use it routinely and so does everyone else. Im flattered by that enormously. I will give you these three people and i will share with you what i think are the larger level the larger lessons. These three people represent the whole of america. One of them died recently. His name was john whitehead. He was the former head of goldman sachs. A quakerhad gone to college, testified on behalf of of some of his classmates who were pos even though he was not. They gave him a 30day course on how to be a quartermaster on a ship to rid they sent him off to the north of the British Isles where he was the lowest ranking officer they had. But they had this new little boat everybody was getting and he had been a sailor and he was really good at it, going around the harbor and trading. And then doing that kind of thing. Then one day he was called up by his ships captain, who he had never met. He said, youre pretty good with that. He said, i have been around the sea a lot. He said, we have an operation coming up. The guy who was going to be in charge of that has gone home. So you will be in charge. He did not tell him what the operation would be. Of course, it was dday. Five days later, john is getting briefed. He is told exactly where he is supposed to land on omaha beach. He is going to lead a convoy of and land there those are your orders. So, as they start to offload the they pulled the higgins ship so theyhe could lower them were safely, lower than with everybody in. He is watching with binoculars. Isstarts in, and there terrible chaos there on the first wave. And he looks at their landing spot through the binoculars, and its a terrible place. He sees the bad current. There is a rocky beach. He says, if we land there, we will be sitting fishes. But i was under strict orders. Only 20 years old. I was about to disobey my superiors. Said,thin 20 seconds, he hard starboard, we are going 300 yards down the beach. And we landed and we had a very successful landing. We got everybody off onto the beach, and that i backed off, went back up the ship, and the irony was, three hours after landing, i am being served a wonderful warm meal with women in the officers quarters by stewards who are all africanamerican. They knew much more about the navy than i did. I asked permission to take another boat in, and by the end of the day, i got that, and i stood there on that beach i would not want to be anywhere else than that day, making that decision. Being part of that change the rest of my life. He became extraordinary successful. And because we were working with the mujahedin in those days and the russians were afghanistan they said would you like to go on a raid with us tonight . We are going to raid a russian outpost. Would have done that if i had not landed on dday. [laughter] tom when he first became a he was there with his wife, and it was the time of the guerriero lucian. They said, john, you have to go back and get everything you can. John did a uturn. He went to morocco. He said, i need a plane and no questions. We need to fly a load of contraband into europe to get t