>> now, a discussion on world war ii and the vietnam war with authors dale maharidge and nick turse. dale maharidge spoke, "bringing mulligan home" describes his father's experiences in world war ii in life after returning home. nick turse's book, "kill anything that moves" documents were crimes committed by u.s. soldiers during the vietnam war. this is a little over an hour. >> welcome to good war is bad worse. the dart center for journalism in trauma.

we're here for a conversation with dale maharidge and nick turse about their books respectively "bringing mulligan home" and "kill anything that moves." a couple of quick words about the dart center. both for those of you in the room who don't know us. our son or as a global resource center think tank, training program and web presence. those looking to improve the standard of reporting on everything from family violence and street crime that to warrant national human rights mask import question about the impact on journalists themselves.

there's more information about the dart center in the back here there's also dart center site, namely stress, which you are free to take and squeeze, throw argues her staffers. also, thank you to c-span which is here tonight for both tv, very exciting thing and which are two guests very much deserved. we are here to talk about two books that force us to look at new ways and wars that most of us have thought we understood and knew about. boats and a sense our books about cover-up, hard truths about america's wars, which were variably censored, buried in archives, self censored by the participating and forgotten

aspects of war that were difficult to look at. in the case of my colleague, dale maharidge, his work "bringing mulligan home" follows his father's life is a u.s. marine in world war ii. growing up when i did, i thought a kind of understood world war ii and what it's about, but the journey dale took in his father's footsteps in the footsteps of other soldiers in his unit and footsteps of japanese civilians in open now and all circuits is a very different picture of that word. jail is my colleague here at the graduate school since he's been teaching since 2001. before that was visiting professor for 10 years and spent 15 years in newspapers or several books are illustrated with photographer michael s. williamson. his first book, journey to

nowhere, saga of the underclassmen back to 1995 inspired to write two songs by springsteen. his second book won a pulitzer prize for nonfiction in 1990. step two is the author of the complex and most recently the war in vietnam is managing editor for tom dispatch.com, a news site that follows very much in the tradition of steps with people at a certain generation and a fellow at the nation institute, the nonprofit nation magazine. his work has appeared in the nation amongst other publications. his investigations of war crimes in vietnam have gained him the prize for reportorial distinction at the guggenheim fellowship and fellowship at harvard university's radcliffe institute for advanced study.

makes both, which i should have said the interim come at the beginning of yours begins with an accidental encounter and his graduate student here at columbia university with a trove of documents, which lead him to the kind of understanding of the tom and the word that forces all of us to reassess what we know. growing up when i get it that i understood vietnam as a series of political mistakes in what was wrong with the war. his book goes far deeper and exposes a systematic brutality that already has historians arguing about whether we understand the words we should. a quick word not. i'm going to stl and next to each other about their books a little bit. tell us a little how they put them together and showed the side, read from them, whatever they intend to do. then a little bit of

back-and-forth in a conversation with olivia. i hope all of you in the room will participate. when you do, i'll tell you about this later, come up to the microphone and tell us who you are and remember this is a videotape not only for c-span, but the dart center's website, said on there is too much. also do what i'm going to do now, which is put yourself on a silent so the conversation can go a long way. with that, let's begin with you since world war ii world war ii comes historically first. he is kind of a personal journey that brings us to the bigger story. >> i'll start off by showing a video of two guys to my dad and talking, one of the many discoveries of the war i started when i went on a journey. -- the japanese number surrendered for sure, but many

others try to surrender and they were killed at the americans. the memory of ricin has been killed some of the men is just one of the aftermath of world war ii that these men have to live with their entire lives with 12 years of research for this book. either that their members not being able to take prisoners at the battle of long. >> charro schussler said when he was on the ship, before he went into qualms, the last thing he said, don't be taken prisoner and i don't want any prisoners. does his exact words and they didn't take any. >> to have a prison are they captured as we were missing major ron a couple days am qualms and they brought him up

to kyl schussler. would she bring them to me for? i don't want him. and i know they don't run down the road. >> he told me he could never kill a prisoner, but frank thomas on the had no regrets what happened to japanese katana who surrender. >> he graduated from stanford university. he could speak better english than me. you're on a lucky strike now. i stuck the bayonet right in his snack and kill them. >> he didn't take any prisoners, did you? >> is no provision for prisoners

that comes out of john towers book, were without escaping about 5000 japanese prisoners were taken an entire war. 371,000 germans were housed in america prisoners from world war ii. so the pacific as a policy pretty much of no prisoners and is near as i can tell he did his research come you can't really find his record. the above vanished. the document officially. the numbers tell the story. -- this one discovery of many. i grew up with this picture in the basement. my father was a tool and cutter greener. he worked for cleveland twist grill, a tool cutting company in america at the time you do business in a spaceman at night where he grown tools. he worked 15, 16 hours a day, very blue-collar guy. this is right next to his workstation. never talked about it except

once when i was 12 years old on knives. each entrée for nearly killed him and he got as emotional as i've ever seen in. i did kill them, but they blamed me. he never talked about the picture again. this isn't about a shop that opened in 1880. i took his picture in the 1983. i have a lot of anger. but grew up in a house with one of us kids still a glass of water at the dinner table, forget to put the top on the cachet. he was just explode in amazing wages. at the same time most of the time he was a great guy. by the age of 10 or so, love and, when he talked about the war in the brief times, that's what i was the rachel burgin personality come out. it was only fragments i heard. he crept on the south side of cleveland. this is my grandma who never how

to speak english. but such a russian peasant. this is a fracture of the can down the street in cleveland towards toward santino shows. if you seen the movie the deer hunter, that's the church where the wedding scene takes place. that movie is more documentary than it is fiction. that's my people. so that's the back story where he was found. this is when he got out of boot camp. the midst of world war ii and i knew this for my dad himself is that everyone says are going to go fight. my dad ignored three draft notices. the police came looking to sell joined marines. they had to wear bell bottom pants and i did like them. my dad had a sense of humor. if he wasn't joking, he wasn't smart about that news. anyway, he could sense to guadalcanal taken in the jungles of guadalcanal. he was grievously injured.

some of those japanese shouldered is the only picture of the japanese company so it is very lucky one of those guys may have fired the mortar that nearly killed my dad. one of the guys i found told me all the men were dead around my father and he was almost bled out in the morning. they patched him up in perspective for opera now. he went back and musty lusty legs. she came home and i got this from him. he was drunk for four years. he remembers operation of the south, involved in a few minor crimes. they documented everything. this is my dad passed out on the lawn. now she's my mom, so i can't comment on how she looks, but i'm told she was an attractive woman. so he kind of cleaned up his act at that point and he buckled down and we came along.

they get my mom told me for about a year he was great and that these raging adapted. she had no sense of why. i later found out from my research that my father suffered two major bus concussion injuries and the last concussion forever alters your brain. whether that was football players now. there's things caught axons in your brain and the science homicide silly putty. if you pull a solider fine, but if you have a blast, they snap. they were there atrophy and dr. smith deadpan told me my father's behavior was typical. we didn't know that growing up. this is me and this is not an anti-car. this is that the cars looked like. when i go up although in my cane.

.. >> you did not -- cannot imagin how many robert harrelson's and

angus robertson said. hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. i spent hours on the phone trying to find someone, and i'm still looking. he had a blast concussion and okinawa. a lot of the guys did not like how the war was fought. they read later that they said don't invade eulogy mccourt okinawa. we pounded through the japanese. and it they were better, some o them, about how they were treated or mistreated. there were atrocities. i heard about from my father th psychopaths in the company who

raped their women and killed babies, point blank. sixty-five years. weeping like a baby is the tell me this story. still affected him. you don't get over something like that. there was jim locke rich who ar really like despite the fact that he confessed to meet the atrocities he committed. he ripped a gold teeth -- gold teeth from japanese cadaver's mouse. i wish the japanese in the stomachs of it would suffer longer. he was bitter about the experience. he was repentance because he realized, the man is dead. let him be. so his dying days he basically regretted everything he had done . his daughter i talked about a month ago told me, you helped him get the poison out of the

system. and then i went over to japan t see where things happened. my father had objects, passports , items with names on them with soldiers that i believe he had killed -- when t meet their families. a long story, but what i will say, one woman fled my father's company as she was going down the island. when she left the city there were 16 family members. two weeks later 13 of them were dead. none shot by my father's company . that did not want to kill civilians, except for the psychopath. barnes and shells. 150,000. japanese soldiers and american soldiers, a quarter of a millio people died in okinawa, more than both atomic bombs that hit japan. stunning casualties. for a battle that may not have happened. basically cut off by hiroshima.

so some of that was from my father's world. his expressions. >> they all began with the most intimate that lead you down the road of documents. it went the other way, sort of. committed about the documents. >> that's right. the lower tech. i began this project on the study of war crimes, but along the way it became a history of pain and suffering. so we do our introduction of a beginning the subject. how this book took shape and my journey. i stumbled upon the first clue

almost by accident in june 2001. a graduate student researching on one of the vietnam veterans. i was looking to documents at the u.s. national archives when i suddenly was asked, could war crimes caused posttraumatic stress. i had no idea at the time. the prospect never dawned on me. within an hour or so i held in my hands the vietnam war crimes working group, a secret pentago task force that have been assembled after to the to be a major war time scandals. veterans laid bare. the war that americans back hom did not see on television or read about over morning coffee, sergeants and investigators

putting a bullet at point-blank into the brain of an unarmed boy . major manufacturing and described. and they plan to continue. other finalists documented the fields. an army base. the incident. i began to get a sense of the ubiquity. the national archives under the freedom of relations act,

accessibility. war crimes investigators. i spoke with veterans of the country. inner-city neighborhoods. and the villages of ain helms ripped straight from the pages of national geographic . veterans told me about this. the confusions of orders about be in place and situation is so unreal and unnerving that even with their automatic rifles and grenades they felt scared walking through fields.

the context for the files that offered focus on single incidents. the sexual assault carried out by members of his unit which i found mentioned in one of the files. when he talks about and then soldiers that had never been investigated. overtime from the veterans i have spoken to and other sources , i discovered additional wrongs, investigation files on their way to documents. homes across the country. i found myself feeling from hal

a world away. a small u.s. army patrol had se up an ambush in the general in the province. almost immediately the soldiers herded mary's voice is coming toward them. next the man broke through. a uniform. as was an entire group followin behind him. the americans setting off to claymore mines, he is sending 700 small pilots fly more than 150 feet and firing them 60 machine guns. every one of the vietnamese in the leg was killed instantly. tilt in it -- ten enemy killed in action. later however something did not seem right at headquarters.

the americans had no records to show for it. with the trials coming, the commanding general, something unusual, offer divisions, offic of the inspector general, businesses to investigate. the next day in lieutenant colonel and his team arrived at the site of the ambush. the corpses of five men, three women, and two children scattered over the forest floor. members are uniforms. civilian identification cards were found on bodies. the closest thing to a weapon was a piece of paper with the small drying of a soldier and a airplane.

as the american investigators looked into it it was apparent they have been civilians. those were people simply trying to survive a war-ravaged nation. most of the time most combatant were herded into a ditch. the full range of the american arsenal, rifles and claymore mines, grenades, bombs, rockets dominate palm, and shelling. areas that were basically ordinary vietnamese. as an inspector general conceded , the vietnamese victims were innocent civilians any

member halifax that the the tan commanders stood and perform a sex with as expected to. the operations officer said tha there were in a free fire zone. one was everyone assumed to be the enemy. u.s. military directive and the use of lethal force. it made no difference that they happened to live there as they had for decades. the local province chief, the u.s. allies told the army this survey is in the area or poor and uneducated. the inspector general's report, no written documentation of any establishment of a free fire zone in the area. the bureaucratic understatement.

either it effective or fail, bu that made no difference. as a final investigation report put it, the platoons follow the orders which have been given an sanctioned. the rules of invasion or not violated. connecting such military record with experience of people who lived through these events and several trips to vietnam. went to remote world villages. the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not always seem to towline. i worked on an exceptionally detailed investigation. february 8th 1968. it was clear that the massacre there had orders to kill anything that moves.

the soldiers had obeyed. what was less clear was exactly where their wives. the general location of their bodies was 15 miles west. a shoe leather search. a monument to a 1968 massacre. this particular massacre took place on january 9th 1968 rather than february and was carried out by south koreans verses allies rather than u.s. soldiers. it was not the place we're looking for. after we explain the situation one of the residents went to another village not very far away with another memorial, thi one commemorating 33 locals it died in two separate massacres between 1967 and 1970. after interviewing villagers of atrocities of beyond it.

the locals rapidly show them an arrived. spell out the basics. u.s. troops have killed dozens during 1968. conversations with the farmers medically that these americans were marines, not only soldiers. the massacre at taken place in august, such was the nature in which where the war crimes. i thought that i was looking fo a haystack. what i found was a veritable haystack of needles. >> both of you as you went abou research has incessantly both confronted u.s. military veterans with things that were

done a long time ago and also o vietnamese. how did that go? added each of you come? people often refer not to remember what about those? >> h in the difficult. i worked my way down the list that i showed you to the joseph p. was block who was age appropriate. i got hold of a widow. she was weeping. i called and said, is this the man who was in okinawa. he said, what do you want to import? angry and hostile.

ice blurted, i should do in the picture. he threw a grenade into a japanese tour of machine gunners . and it's just about kill them. he paused and said, i was there. he did not want to talk. it was a tenuous conversation. he agreed to my will send you a picture. i want to help you identify mr. mulligan. turns out that he carried his body. i call them. he went on for an hour about th difficulty of the blast concussion. in the hospital for six months. he said sometimes i wish i woul have died. i never came back. a very difficult life. on and on and on. he said, you're the first perso i've ever talked to the war about ever.

so it was that kind of -- i think the reason that these guy talk to me partly near the end of their lives, nearing their 80 's, people get confessional. i think they felt i at least understood issues that they wen through. >> how did you approach them? to find the stories. get them to talk about it. >> across the spectrum as well. generally a lot -- in most case i was up front. a lot of these guys knew what i had come to talk about before i told them. and found these records. war crime allegations in their unit. i tell them right off the bat, the -- and generally i found

veterans would talk as long as could get my foot in the door and get them talking. once i had knowledge of the mor -- want to show that had knowledge of the war and something of a semblance of wha they had been through, many times there were willing to ope up. i think that, too, marathon phone call that i had with a veteran. i from the records. we talked for four and a half t five hours. he told me, you know, this is often the case. vietnam was the high point of chaos. he told me about all these grea times, fantastic times, the closest friends he ever had. and he had a finesse. we talked for a long time of a

different man. he got quite. i need to tell you a story. he tell me about one of the times his unit ran into a village and there were sitting in on fire. this was standard operating procedure. this is how they tried to break trust from the vietnamese population in the village. so there but -- turning the village down. a woman came running out of one of the homes and so the grabbin a gi and shouting at him. and he just pushed her away. she came back again, and he too the butt of his rifle and had her squarely in the face. there was blood everywhere, she's screaming. this soldier from his unit just turned around and walked away laughing. and he paused and said, you know , the soldier i'm talking about is me.

had a real tough time. he told me he had the same problem, he cannot imagine how he had done that. he said of the system, but he could not stop thinking about it . he blocked out lots of what he did. he had done worse things in the war, but this was something tha had lodged in his mind and became up stranglehold on his memory but was glad to get out there. he had been carrying around these memories. it was essential to and to finally talk to someone who understood what is here have been through and what they did in vietnam. >> my wife, photojournalist the province along the south china

sea. he lost several family members to read. he was not at all to get there in time. an artillery shell landed directly on the boat and killed everyone in sight. what happened again, this village. this particular thing, he was from a village the dimensions it's in 1967 and 1970 hardhearted village.

the traumatic experience the yo can imagine the -- so many americans, their experience during the war. they cannot believe, to hear th most interesting part was then trying to tell it. it was always exceptionally handling for me. one of the most emotional and affecting experiences i've ever had. >> both of you, we were talking over lunch yesterday about the kind of riders and horses that these two different books didn'

-- and in particular because you're describing what happened to soldiers and atrocities that soldiers commit, the real challenge is how you engage you reader in this process, sensationalizes. how did you, dale, you assemble all of this information, but your father, his comrades, the one psychopath and his group, the victims, how did you dissolve to put it together and in particular the question of the gruesome detail and trauma, how do you decide to present? >> you can put dozens of incidents in the book. becomes overwhelming. at some point you have to pick and choose. and so i did put in prison -- did not put in dozens of incidents on all levels, not just with the soldiers and what

these men went through. controlled millions, and each has their own story. each has their own work. nobody has the same war. a kind of emphasize with each person, but i cannot put an atrocity after atrocity or bad experience after bad experience because it is something the wil overwhelm. but i went very personal with m father. the memoir, partly a memoir, bu my father was a great guy. i still love my father. in fact, after during this research i salute him for being as normal as he was after what he went through, but i put a couple scenes of him showing hi range and one scene when he too me in my brother fishing. a magical weekend trip been ver special in my memory. it was a very hard thing for hi to do. to get over this and be my dad.

but i can't put in 15 scenes of my dad been great. i'll is look for hope and redemption the true word yet that had to be discovered. doing work all day. 2 kilometers to this tomb site. the last day went there i witnessed the japanese, former japanese soldiers during a ceremony or is buddy had died. i was going to imitate the ceremony. caretaking one of the tombs and he spoke a little bit of englis he said i pray with you. we had this ceremony marking th death. a culmination of all my research .

he hugs me and thanks me. he was old enough that he had been through the war and over and over and over people from okinawa and americans have talked to japanese people about the war for decades. i was treated so kindly when i was there. so there's a lot of uplift, eve though it was a lot of horror. >> you try to get it right. you try to get the record right. and yet you're also trying to write a book, not just a catalog . how did you approach this very difficult. ibook was focus on civilian tragedies. i did needs a marshall a lot.

a lot of people of very hard truth. the dominant male, the history of the vietnam war. i knew i had to marshal the evidence and had to be there. there is just one too much. it's a very difficult decision. i kept going from one to anothe and talking to these people about the most dramatic days of their life. i ask them again and again. trying to make sure i had every detail right. walking me through this. i rode it to them in a lot of ways. i owed it to them to tell their stories. eventually i came to the realization that certain storie

would have to stay. to tell the larger story of the war i would have to us until th many small. >> each of you also had encounters with a pretty wide range of soldiers who had gone about things. did those encounters, as you understand it, how a prostitute of approximately it happens and its consequences change as you work on these books? >> we put guys in situations where you don't have accommodations for prisoners. you have prisoners killed. and so i think about gym locker

told me, when you live like a damn animal, you're going to ac like a damn animal. how in the okinawa for almost three months, almost a third of the time. the airlines. >> did have an encounter at an academy. a child murderer you describe. >> the only guy hate.

i grew up. my dad taught me met this fellow . my dad of were booked their rape . he talked about kennedy's money. i tried a boarding it. i used our common name. the only name i changed in the book. i finally called. he said mr. kennedy was in the okinawa. he said, steve, my father's name . how are you, like it had been yesterday and then suddenly, wh are you. i went to see him. he lives on a tear road back in the woods on a shack. the fellow i should you the

picture of, you watch to kill the babies. he said, take a gun. stick a gun. he was so scared of this guy. i show up at his cabin. i walked up to the door. the year a voice say, get in here. i open the door. there is a white sheets bed of teddy bears all around the room and on the white sheets is a pesto. i've wind down the hall and the city in an overstuffed chair with a blanket over him and on the chair next them is a holste and a pistol with both hands underneath the blanket. i said, nice to meet you. i went to shake his hand and th left and never came out from under that blanket in three hours. he thought it was coming down. and i've been a journalist for

37 years, and to wars, this is one of this carrier interviews i've ever done, 87 and still scary. i confronted them. long story short, the delicate way above the rate, and he denied, denied it. the typesets bush and say, did, i know you did it come in now with that cold pipe there. >> w understand our start doing research? >> well, you know, it is something that i understand to festival with a lot. i had to understand. it was a soldier who had confessed to up one murder.

kill a lot more people. one of the men i talked to. he said, a stone cold killer. and i remember, i just went up to his door cold and knocked. and of course it was a 50 year-old man not very tall. nothing like well-respected. and talk to him. brought up the records and showed them to him. vested with them. follow along as he read. he got to the point where he confessed to shooting an old man , point blank. asked about that. asked about some other

allegations. who pushed him. the men selected try to break down and i said, look, michael lot of people over there. , supposed to remember this one guy from that long ago? so this is something we encountered. and i think actually the vietnamese to mothers of it is the drove from. i would get to be it on the stops. i get so village to ask about one particular atrocity, and th vietnamese would tell me about for ten years and the bombs and shells. that's what tommy it was a

history of that experience. >> let's go, questions from the audience. i'm sure you have some. go up to the microphone here in front of the room and do say wh you are for the record. if the a -- >> which would allow face? >> that way. >> okay. ari goldman. i am on the faculty here at the graduate school of journalism. i wonder, where were the journalists? but these wars are very well covered, well-documented and some of our very great journalists that we teach about covered world war ii, covered vietnam. out of vietnam we have the my lai massacre. we know how that story was told.

but we -- what you are telling us means there were many, many, many that we did not read about. what you're telling us is that there were many atrocities that american journalists and european journalists did not ge to. in your research, did you find any news reports that were valuable, or you -- or are you really uncovering things for th first time? >> mike case is world war two, and there's so much good war mythology. we did not do anything wrong. only one way to fight the war, and a lot of later writers i find -- at the time there was a post, actual government. you could not send your story without having a government person read it, so journalists at the time at some excuse there , by later writers i hold accountable to just raise questions about how the war was fought, it is not a monolithic

good versus evil in terms of every decision that was made bias was not right. and it was not good for my dad. it was not good for mr. mulliga had that the bylaws fault. so the letter writers i hold more accountable than i do the earlier guys. and a lot more with the current journalists. you know, there are a lot of fantastic journalists in vietna who do rework. i devote one chapter to what i thought was 1971. the reporter was something like the true nature of the war migh have broken out, especially due to a couple of newsweek reporters, kevin buckley who wa a fellow you never hear from.

we ran into problems with the magazine. a problem ride herd and talking to a journalist. you know, their stories. and also the work, reporters saying that they knew that, you know, if they brought these stories and it was not going to be published. mentioned that the un massacre, case in point because at the time massacres were carried out there were 52800 correspondents in vietnam. it took seymour hersh some brea the story. and of course in vietnam according to what went on the took the government press release and decided to put it i the paper. americans have killed 120 enemy

troops and had killed maybe three. maybe journalists should take a look at that and say, how is that even possible? of the you kill 128 enemies, lose no one's, and have nothing to show for it. another false press release. i remember seeing interviews with journalists that covered the war before saying, in essence of we saw stuff like this all the time but did not think it was a story. did not think it was war crimes. and there was a sense in which it was a shadow of nuremberg, the shadow of the idea that americans might commit war crimes after all has to creep u on folks. soldiers in vietnam. find out what perspective and

understanding. >> again, with world war two mythologies so dominant i canno say that i found anything like that. >> i heard what you were saying. this is something that had been written about. and here is another, actually. he said things that led a recognized war atrocities when he read about the laws of war but did not know at the time that their work. he just assumed that they were excepted parts of the war and did not report on them as such. and there were a group of scholars, many of them here at columbia who catalog to over 3,000 instances of violations o the laws of war that were published in mainstream u.s. publications prior.

newspapers and magazines. it was all there, but there was never any context. the journalists said not know i there were looking for. the japanese have been prosecuted after the war. they just did not put the two together. >> and a factor, the japanese were portrayed. the many books written about that. that is one of the reasons why fewer japanese prisoners were taken and that don't think the public really cared, the marine general, documents, over here a the library. he felt that the german soldier had more value than the japanes soldiers life. so there is racism being claime all along the country, not just the reporters are the army and the military. >> and other questions? , up.

>> to say who you are. >> i am a student here at the school. i wonder what the response to your books is ben. has there been any better chanc to have read the book, family members, and what they had to say about it. >> just last week was a loss angeles and salt tom price, one of them in a document. a wonderful reunion at lunch. he loves the book. as talk to several others. surprising to me and have every day i am getting e-mails and letters from the children of world war ii veterans saying at understand my father now. i still have not been able to keep up with answering each one. i am hearing from vietnam veterans. they really relate to the world war two as in the pacific theater. a radio show with to vietnam wa veterans in portland, oregon. the first world war ii but we

have had. the same kind of thing. and the other by am hearing from , i am hearing from some iraqi in afghanistan vets who are relating to the book very strongly, which is very gratifying to me because i thin the last concussion injury, is scene from age four. hopefully today, i don't feel a was politics. we're taking care of them. i hope it raises awareness that we need to take care of these soldiers today. in hearing from them and that they're relating to this story was reason enough for me to do the book. >> much the same experience. i heard from men who were in th book. i heard from some many more white did not know before. vietnam veterans who had gotten in touch to say that they felt there were finally, they had

come home and i felt that there were not able to tell what they had seen or when they did said that they were called liars, yo must be exaggerating this. you know, e-mail after e-mail a would just tell me, finally, an the evidence, finally i know it was not just my unit. finally i am able to point to this and say, look, this is wha i have been trying to tell you for the last four years. exceptionally gratifying. responses like that, and i also heard from the children of veterans. they said to me know, there is document. i never knew why he acted the way he did. asked about the war, and he said , if you were not there you can never know. and they said that, you know, i read a book can understand. i know what he went through. and it was, i think, a chance for them to heel and come to

grips with their childhoods and what they had been living with as the children of veterans. >> i got one of those you house today from someone this seemed to be struggling a little bit. on the one hand applauding the search for the truth about atrocity. clearly a very critical of american military policy, the choices that they criminal said made in the commission's had allowed the atrocities to happen . at the same time saying, this was not typical of my experienc and was not typical of most combat soldiers that i know. what do you say to those guys? >> you know, i tried to take things that are in the book to make it clear that i am certainly not saying that all o those chips or murderers are that they committed these micro

level atrocities, massacres, murders, that sort of thing. but i want to drive home is tha what killed most vietnamese was not a massacre. this was not what took most lives. there is only so much killing. most vietnamese and the best estimates we have, two men vietnamese civilians were killed , considered the estimate would be 5 million wounded. we killed these people with heavy firepower, saturation bombing in the countryside, artillery shelling across free fire zones which i mentioned, which included heavily populate villages, helicopter gunships that basically hunted people an it shot those who were taking evasive action is what it was called.

it is basically anyone who ran from a helicopter had a machine gun trade on them to -- trained on them. so this is what i try and make clear. some veterans take exception an feel that there being smeared i some way. you are living, working from th records, working through interviews and conversations with hundreds of vietnam veterans. this is the story of the wars that many thought. >> have you gotten any feedback from people who feel that you are knocking down -- you talk about it as a myth. up and down the imagery of worl war two solti's of soldiers. >> they do not like midsts shattered. does not fit their worldview wa paradigm, but i took great pains . the book quotes each man.

i did not ask. i know what the politics are. i did not ask this question. to a man everyone i talked with was against the war in afghanistan and the rock. every time i talked to them. i would bring this up. end mr. price to adjust all las week, he helped raise his grandson. then september 11th happened. i'm going to go joint. and he set him down and said, you don't want to go. don't go. my father, i found out after, i was in cleveland talking about the war. he looked at me and said, i am driving my sons to canada. my father never told me that. there were anti-war. some people are taking issue

with the fact that i have an anti-war agenda. one interviewer said what is your vision on war? i am not. it's not. they're anti-war, to one man. the -- beef with my book. >> a different kind of question. i was in the marine corps for three and a half years. the head of the korean war. we are training troops. the whole approach was discipline on the one hand and training on the other, repeated repeated, repeated until it would finally sinking in.

i was an officer in the marine corps and that was what we thought we were doing. so what you are talking about i a terrible indictment of the military. i accept exactly what you're saying. i know from my own experience this is what happens, but can you imagine dealing with young children, we're talking about i the second world war, some of these people lied about their ages. fifteen and 16 year olds. >> some of the guys in my dad's company were 16. >> so no world experience. nothing behind them. they were confronted with this. can you imagine the idea that i give about where we were, what

the marine approach to it, working with young kids is it just an impossibility? >> some of the guys told me. my father talked about boot cam and the discipline and . sixteen or 18, like my dad was familiar know, you are very malibu at that point. there were kids. he looked at the pictures of these guys. i mean, my father was a child, barely, just out of childhood and he is over there. he grew up in that horrible environment. it eight people lived in a two-room house that the european . a great depression. no food many times. he was thrown into that. as i say, i am surprised he is as normal as he was. i do not know how i would have handled it at that age. >> the training braces where it

fits in. >> basic training, boot camp is something that every veteran that i talked to came to on their own. they were taught about it. they would say again and again how this was -- as soon as they get to boot camp things were drilled into them, kill, kill, kill. the spirit of the bayonet. and i talked to numerous veterans to tell me that's, you know, they did not become a robot. it's that close to that level. so primed to kill that they wer ready when they got to vietnam. of course it serves you well in combat if you are facing off. a world war one tight battle where they're is a uniformed army across the line, but they

were sent to fight a guerrilla war in villages with women and children and given no training along these lines. in fact, what their training is in fused with racism. a short and in vietnam called the ncr. the idea was that the vietnames were not people. there were subhuman. real ones were -- to be killed. this was part of the process. he don't call them vietnamese. you call them groups, slants, anything to make it easier to kill them. it really worked. even though the minority of soldiers, they said that they knew that this was the same. there were steeped in this environment. it almost took over their perception.

>> one thing that i find fascinating. my father had a business. he'd sold japanese-made cutting tools. they come and talk about it. and i said, is in this kind of weird? these representatives will come. he said this many times. there will do with -- there wer doing what they were told and i was doing what i was told . he did not make it personal. not every guy, he said, i wish could have killed more, so some soldiers normally the same, personify the enemy where other just made it instant heat where we are all playing our roles. >> another question from me the room. anybody? great. i have a question for both of you. and maybe we will end here.

you have both in different ways taken as back to a version of the past and to the impact on soldiers and the generations. but you're working on these books in the shadow of a decade of war. as you work on these books as americans are winding down. perhaps trying to extricate themselves from afghanistan. how was your thinking about today's wars, and you look on these books, connecting, bound up? how the feel about a? >> well, you know, i hope that there would have resonance because of both of the wars tha are going and the participants

involved in cereal conflicts in the two wars and pakistan in somalia and yemen. you know, i felt that, you know if americans are called upon to send their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters to war then the american people should know what it is like for the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and people overseas civilians who live with for every day. i provide -- i tried to provide a glimpse of it and hope it can be of some service as we think about today's wars. >> and tied up here at home, th captain of my father's company. i found him. when i found him in southern california he had 2 acres of property. at one point he had a sherman tank and a japanese tank. thousands of items including th helmet of the sergeant of my

father's company with the bulle hole through it, obsessed with the war, but what he was also a obsessed with were the survivors . he writes of the family members. the letters that he shared me. and so he was not anti-war by any means, but he told me to my am not anti-war. he said, when you dive, as so many men die and my company, it is over for you. i have learned fact that it never ends for the survivors. and so the wars go on in their homes. it went on in my home in terms of my father's blast concussion injury. wars don't end when the shootin stops. so is misses to me, and i quote him in the book, if we thought about that before we went to wa we would go to or less often.

this is not an anti-war guy at all. >> let's leave it there. thank you. [applause] >> your book, research, and generosity. thank you. if any of you wants said know what we do. cosponsoring this. it his work. there is material about the center, and books, books to buy and assigned as the staff is frantically pointing. please biden and get them signed . please support great journalism and great writing. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. >> is there a nonfiction offer

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