>> here's a look at the current top 10 best selling nonfiction books according to "the new york times."

>> a look at this weeks list of nonfiction best sellers according to "the new york

times." >> from the 2014 southern festival of books in nashville, tennessee, a discussion about world war ii in the pacific with jack mccall, jr., editor of "pacific time on target" and a james scott, author of "the war below." this is about one hour. >> [inaudible conversations] >> will good afternoon. my name is nathan buttrey. i'm a board member of humanities tennessee and i want to welcome everyone in the room with us and those two are booktv to the southern festival of books. today we will have a session with two authors. the first author is jack mccall. he is an attorney from

knoxville, tennessee, and he received his ba from vanderbilt university and his jd with honors from the with honors from the university of tennessee. nick is a former activities regular army officer, serving as a second lieutenant to captain in the ordnance corps and last tour of duty with the ninth infantry division. after law school the clerk for the honorable gilbert merritt, chief judge the u.s. supreme court sixth circuit. he's an author of various articles on legal foreign policy and historical topics, his writings have been publishing fofor fears, m. h. q., quarterly of military history, the journal of military history and several long reviews. he is author of nonfiction book on his father service as a world war ii marine, help me with the pronunciation -- a sense quest for his father's wartime life. he served as the editor of

"pacific time on target: memoirs of a marine artillery officer, 1943-1945". currently is a member of the board of directors at the tennessee supreme court historical society and east tennessee veterans memorial association. he served periodically as an adjunct professo professor of le university of tennessee, and teaches this course is there. is also a fellow of both tennessee bar and the knoxville bar association. he is married to jennifer and they have one show. our second author is james scott. he is an award-winning author and former reporter and investigative journalist with the charleston, south carolina, "post and courier." he is a recipient of the mcclatchy company's president award and was named the 2003 journalist of the year by the south carolina press association. lawford college offered him as a 2005 young alumnus of the year.

from 2602007 he was a fellow for journalism at harvard university. in addition to target tokyo, his new book, he is author of attack on liberty which one the 2010 samuel eliot morrison award for excellence in medical literature. "the war below" with simon & schuster. he is at work on a fourth book due out february -- is that right? it's the battle for manila. so scott lives in charleston south carolina with his two children and his wife. so what we will do it is mr. scott will read a portion of his book and then we will move over to mr. mccall and have him discuss a brief section of this book. and we will open up to questions and discussion between the authors. if you do have a question, please step up to the microphone. we are recording it and it is

for television so we want to make sure your questions are audible and can be heard. so, james. >> good afternoon. how's everybody doing today? good. i'd like to start off and it's a pleasure and honor to be here with nick, a fellow writer whose work i admire greatly, and with our moderator, nathan, who we went to college together many years ago, he left out of his introduction. >> not that many really. >> more than we want to admit i would also like to say a special thanks to everyone for coming out today and also to the humanities tennessee council for hosting the southern festival of books which is a wonderful event. i'm going to reading and talk to the about my book, second located which is "the war below," the story of three submarines the battle japan. i'm going to do a brief reading to set the tone for what the book is about to give you quick

background on it, it's from the first chapter, fairly early on in the book and it focuses on the submarine's oversight and its first attack of the war. is lean of the skipper is the gym by the name of -- you here his name, but he's introduced early in the chapter but he was the skipper of the sober sides and actually lived in charleston, in mount pleasant in my neighborhood for a while. when the book came out a number of folks and my neighbor said they certainly remembered stories of them. but with that i will get started. one would you do, they're off the coast of japan when this starts. they're coming in for the first war patrol. they've encountered the first inning a target. that's where we pick up. the office of the deck summoned him, arrived on the bridge. the skipper stood one and 31-ton boat which tossed on anyway some

three miles away. the wooden boat proved a far cry from enemy aircraft your battleship for tenn care burlingame hoped he would find. are king new such both often double as patrol gathering far more than two, caught and salmon. these strollers and ocean intense bout hundreds of miles offshore and serve as a defensive perimeter radio sighting o of enemy ships are se news. burlington recognize the title didn't war and expensive $10,000 toward beta by the decider's oversight could sync it with its tech and. he ordered his men to battle stations. officers and crews company from a just finished breakfast, hustled to prepare for the first battle. submarines are best suited to attack from a distance with torpedoes firing either on the surface at night when protected by doctors or underwater during the day. daytime gun battles on the

surface where risky. sober sides lose the element of surprise. such an attack also expose the country to return fire and risk damaging blows to the sudden and then steel skin your burlingame judged it a worthy target, an opportunity to rob him of an and intelligence collector. the gun crew reported the tower strapping on steel homeless. other sales climb down into the magazine below the mess and 34-pound ground up the ladder. warm and ammunition train that ran from the mess deck to the control room of the letters and the tower. patty officer third class patrick seitz at a birthday, crouched in the tower. the skinny 18 yo south carolinians had it listed as a signalman. down the ladder from in the control room stood mike harbin, the loader for the deck and. five years older than his

friend, they traded a life in rural oklahoma for the of a sailor in the fall of 1940. sober sides cut through the ways 15 knots. a gun and ammunition crews waited largely in silence the sudden close the distance to 1200 yards. carswell felt fear is insisted his first battle. the target was a small fishing boat, not an armed warship such as a disorder or cruiser. burlington o ordered the crew to man the deck and at 8:25 a.m. the door popped open in the country darted one after the other across the deck as waves crashed over the bow. bolted on a pedestal on the submarines after that, the gun back to punch the 13-pound projectiles a half-mile per second out of target eight miles away. the message and required a team to operate. they said the opposite side using hand wheels to move the barrel up and down to the sites

have stood on the platform and adjusted the scopes accuracy while a team of loaders fed round one after the other. carswell hopped up on the platform, sea spray drenched him and the other members of the gun crew. the lieutenant studied the boat with binoculars. a lotus lead a project out into the gun breach and rammed it into place. the trainer cited the enemy boat with a scope and appoint a second later matched the firing the gun roared. stench show claimed to the deck. water splashed off the bow. a loader ran in another round. the gun roared again and then again. projectiles peppered of the ways around the boat. executive officer and worthington boulevard changes to carswell to the site so struggled to does wasn't ways hammered the sudden soaking the gun crew making it difficult for them into sight the target.

suddenly the japanese boat returned fire. machine gun bullets whiz past assailed the one missed burlingame's head by a few centimeters in getting the hair on his right there. burlington's instincts were right. this was not just a fishing boat. what began as a simple task of sinking a an apparent drawer without involving two furious gunbattle. one of the loaders cut under there when the gun first fired felt blood running down his beer. he now tasted salty mist of sea spray and blood. sailors in a magazine to read up and ammunition box with bloody fingers and fed shells to the hungry ammo train which passed them up through the something. they struggle to escape as the gun roared almost every 20 seconds. with each shot the aim improve. men could see the projectiles now blasted the wooden boat. he noted the powerful projectiles message to shred the most in of an airplane or

warship seemed to go right through the boat. rollicking waves crashed over the side making it difficult to load and fire the gun. a way to carswell from behind and knocked them off the sites of platform. he landed on his back and slid towards the edge of the deck before he stopped himself. he struggled again to stop the slide as he plummeted to the side of the day. if he went overboard in a about a new sober sides would stop. he would drown in minutes without a life preserver in the cold and turbulent ocean. his heart pounded. he stopped himself as he slid onto the metal deck where his speehisspeed accelerator key bao patch over the torpedo room for delays snag a wider extension that ran along the edge of the deck and stopped him. it's crew peppered sober sides with machine-gun rounds. burlington watched from the

bridge. the wounded trawler plan to fight it up suddenly he realized his case was hopeless. the skipper later recovered he turned around and came towards us with suspicion guns going full blast. the sailors on to try to take cover as the bullets zipped past to the projectile struck the underside of the battle of three decades and sprained the pointers and go. machine gun fire knocked down with off up to loaders but did not injure them. the bullets went past shows to getting your loader dropped to the deck. it knocked me out, he later recovered it's like getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer. and additional to the next load in line just as a bullet hit him. his red blood splattered on the show which the ammunition crew loaded and fired.

they got ammunition crew stopped and stared. blood seeped out from underneath them. less than an hour into the first cipa, silversides has suffered a man and. no one had expected this. carswell and the others jumped down from the gun to pick them up even as the boat charged towards the worthington upholstered his pistol. get back on that damn gun or i will shoot everyone of you, each other. we will take care of mike. petty officer first class and another sailor grabbed harmon and struggle to point inside the tower. his head rested against someone's shoulder. his mouth was working. i got his helmet off and found it was in his helme wasn't his s costing. he'd been hit in the head. he looked at the world a new the loader was dead. it pretty much went through his head. and i will stop there. they ultimately have to bury him later that evening at sea, and the first casualty of the

silversides suffered during the war. >> nick, would you like to read a portion of your book, or to speak to? >> i would be like to. i want to also second chances thing, nathan and can seek amenities for having us here today. i'm pleased and honored to join james in talking about the pacific theater on land and sea. you have never been from james about what it was like to be in the middle of submarine action in early 1942. the book that was written and never intended to schmick by christian prudhomme for which i served as editor is about the land campaign as seen through the eyes of a marine corps officer. i think it is one common theme that you will find in both james and i discuss our respective books, that is there's no safe place in the pacific theater. if i'd write my own history of the pacific did i think i probably would not let with unrelenting savagery because if

you think about it even before the united states became directly involved via pearl harbor coming to look back at the history of the japanese aggression in china, all through the bitter end was not the kind of situation whereas in europe it like a mullet to -- momentary lulls in fighting, pretty much the war was one that was thought with extreme professionals about his military forces but it was a war of a great deal of savagery. there was a lot of fun inflicted on civilians, and that happened at the hands frankly not just of the japanese forces but also in some instances by american forces and that is part of the back story of christopher daughters them worse. i will take a little bit about the man who wrote his memoirs and how they came to be. christopher bond or had he lived to this november would be 102 years old. he passed with a couple years ago just missing his 100th birthday. chris was born in philadelphia. at the time of pearl harbor he

was close to getting his ph.d in history at stanford. his wife was also just a matter of days of giving birth to their child but nevertheless at the time of pearl harbor even though he was 29, a family man about to be a father and also so close to having a chance to get a ph.d, christie would have to do. he said to his film i've got to go into the service. i'm not going to wait to be drafted. i'm going to become a marine officer. his early service was with a unit called the ninth marine defense battalion which had already seen have the action but to be joined at in the spring of 1943. the first major campaign that chris joins is spent fighting what is now a little action in a place called the new georgia group. new georgia is a large island in the solomon islands chain, 200 miles somewhat north of guadalcanal.

this was critical to the allies in 1942-1943 because for those of you remember, guadalcanal was to be used by the japanese as a major linchpin to go down to australia. when the marines invaded guadalcanal and a 42, that was the first major check imposed in terms of stopping the japanese advance towards australia. the next step was deemed by the treatment to go to new georgia. once the japanese have lost guadalcanal there's a process of building a massive airbase on new georgia. the mission of the ninth marine defense battalion is equipped with vice weapons including antiaircraft guns but also long range guns to be positioned on the island roughly 10 miles below new georgia from which they would set up their artillery positions and begin bombarding the airfield so the japanese could no longer use it. that was all preparatory to an army division, the 43rd,

landing a new georgia. the camping is expected to take just a matter of weeks. it ended up taking much. at this point in time the first reading we will do is one of a day that live in infamy for the marines of the ninth of defense battalion but it was referred to, and they're somewhat like today but just a handful, but to this day to refer to it as like friday. it was july 2, 1943. the characters at this point i'm with chris is the netware and his best friend, lieutenant william boxster for two of the now, just landed with her in the position of having gotten there one and 55-millimeter guns into position to begin with the shelling of the point. with italy over the mud something to make it count the rows being fired. we pass one truckload of ammo driven by a pfc. at the beach we're at it and asked if you cannot stack them on the poker found were often uncharged over supplies in the

city then everything to get vehicles through the we can help them move things faster. i spotted a truck standing idle and walked over to it. just as a the driver if you don't live in load of ammo, a 40 nobody can begin to set the air throbbing with r&r the guns of a plane open up the there was an avalanche of seven automatic weapons on board the lsd to i caught sight of the truck driver out of the cab dive into the ground. other sal and i instinctively went along. the earth began to vibrate. above the firing came the sound of planes diving. of this great just 50 yards away from us. 11 to 12 were packed into that whole and everyone was scared. three performance later the firing died away. we climbed out. across the cove at the point in front of our position all hell had broken loose.

this was known as hells points or suicide point. working on the level corl beacham of gasoline in ammo. we didn't suspect the worst. we found a tractor and trailer loaded with food and am i headed back to the battery. go we met francisco driving another cat. his face was he a mess because he told us he had been badly hit by the bombing. when we reached the position, the truck was still burning brightly. large craters were spotted in the u.s.-india of the guns. smoke and the smell of cordite and burned powder hung all over. another trucker and for the vehicles had been shredded. on the trail in front of number three can was a demolished bulldozer. and here and there were silent figures sprawled against the bloody ground. at first i saw none of the battery personnel.

i picked my way amon among the d another to convince them of your flat on the deck yet a bit worse for bomb fragment ribs. i was alarmed a large dead at an address of the number one cut and i could see poles to the inch thick steel of the number two guns because the i tag along the trench. when it was completed darkness had come the eighth remains of k. rations. i spent most of them bailing out the rain that rushed into the trench. by morning i would've drowned if i stretched out. now, what he finds out the next one is that he also is loss supplement of his battery, men in the sections within the having to lead a funeral detail to bury these men. he is so moved and so torn up by this taken per se the lord's prayer. he has been said very softly because of this point in time are roughly 150-200 japanese personnel on the island and they may be snipers.

that was christopher bond's introduction to battle. on that particular bit of are roughly 200 american casualties coming from the ninth marine defensive battalion, from navy sailors onboard the lead ship ship would also a significant component of cds, construction engineers who are in the process of unloading figure. one of the bombers hit a trunk full of dynamite and a substantial number of men were never seen again. the bulldozer was literally blown to bits. that's july 2, 1943. that would certainly not be his worst day. you thin think about the vectore now have a man who was about 31 at this point in time, a second lieutenant, he's older than most of the captains and majors who are his commanders. he's an educated man. is now put them into a war, unremitting savagery. he survived new georgia.

is battalion goes to the campaign end up having time to reserve, but later they go to guam and this urban liberation to guam from summer to december 1944. what happened to chris on the next is this. because he joined a difficult time after the saw there so for an guadalcanal when portion of unit to which was attached come his group are sent home and essentially immobilized as marines went on to other duty stations. chris did not have enough lead time yet or enough points to the but he was able to go home to america. so basically he was told in december 1944, stay here on hawaii. when the rest of you goes back to san francisco and is broken up, stay here in hawaii. you'll find something for you to do. you will get home soon enough. on december 27, 1944, he finds out he is not to go home. is not think i know why. is due to join the first marine division on guadalcanal who are

preparing for a new innovation. that was the invasion of okinawa. chris have been a basic marine battery officer. what that means is basically was an artillery officer. he worked with his troops into the guns were set up. he help them plan range coordinates, basically setting targets and finding out the best way to play i the artillery firs to these various targets. this new battalion commander, apparently size of chris in such a way that he didn't like the cut of his target. so when chris gets there, the colonel basic as i don't care of a great battlefield experience with you are now with the 11th marines. we are the artillery support for the first going to vision to we have in places you ever been been yet. i don't need a battery command commander. what i need is a forward observer team leader so you'll get several sergeants and go with the infantry and to be a

forward observer. here's what that means. the lifespan of four observers, i've never found a specific statistic to me exactly what that we can say the lifespan of a fourth observer most is the old expression nancy brutus short but these were men whose job is to take either radios or field telephones, get out with infantry and services as they were in front of the infantry. their mission is to take binoculars, maps, find enemy targets and for the infantry goes in on the attack of the enemy to attack you, start calling them to shut the enemy down. or if you will go on attack, support your troops, they going to make the strike. needless to say if you're stating in a foxhole with binoculars and a map and java radio or field telephones, if the in is going to see if you will be one the first targets they find. one of the things interesting is there's not a lot of people who survived to write their memoirs.

i would give you a couple more reasons to give you an idea of the fact i think it's the right dose he survived. he also saw a lot of things we to okinawa which ended up being the ultimate land campaign for the pacific war. this occurs on, began on april 1, 1945, easter sunday. he saw a lot of things given this was an island that was fairly populated that he had never seen and a lot of marines have not seen. one of the book you're working on will be about the battle of manila which is were up out were a lot of civilians were involved in caches. most of the items with the marines and army troops, there were some inhabitants and local natives but they were not large civilian populations. that was not true in okinawa. we now take you to afternoon of april 1, 1945, easter sunday. chris and his forward observer team have just landed and are near a village in okinawa on the western shore.

just beyond the principal runway in front of the village we took a briefing spill and broken to our rations for lunch. a little bit as we began to move in single file through the first oriole to doubt i've ever seen, some infantrymen drew forth from the roof of the house as a decrepit old man, many of the houses were still standing there was evidence the roofs and walls had opened the by steel fragments. each structure possessed front and record a fruit trees or shrubs. within these courts we saw a number of new japanese fighter planes carefully concealed from above by natural forms of camouflage the complaints have been hit, others were in excellent condition. we held up in a narrow valley covered by rice paddies as they fired into the cave on the hills of. one squad heard voices with an account and use military japanese to tell whoever was inside to come forth and surrender. when no one moved out, the squad

opened up with automatic rifles. two men, a woman and her three year old boy were found within. but only the child was love. covered with his mothers blood. they brought him back to his and wash the blood off the boy who ceased to cry. my team carried him all the rest of the afternoon until someone could be spared you to connect to to the seven control camp at the beach. so this was easter sunday warfare. it sickened me by its pitiful aspect. still no sign yet. once again, this is pretty grim. but this is again just the introduction for chris on okinawa. before talk about a few more things in a book i'm going to give you a couple of examples here of the things he saw. before i do that i will mention that chris and don are wrote this book for shortly after he returned home from the pacific and 93 pacific 9460 know he had not seen his wife or his little

son in something three and half years to keep basically said i suspect parcel being he had to get something off his chest. he basically said to some of cum stuff to do and he apparently went into seclusion for a while and wrote this manuscript which he never intent to publish until a few years ago. he shared it with his family. he shared with friends, with elements of the ninth defense battalion and brings but he never intended to be published in the book. he is describing horrible things happen to men he knew and cared about these also as you saw america go describing terrible things happening discipline population of okinawa, oftentimes advance of japanese fighters, sometimes at the hands of american once. his war continued to get worse and i think it's ready to okinawa for him and for a lot of the other marines and soldiers serving there was a hell of birth. the next reading will talk about that. about 9 p.m. i was informed by far direction control over what

my company would assault or in the morning. they want to if i could observe. i replied looking over the edge of the tears i could see the ridgeline but not beyond what they wish to have the barrage. he told me out to be able to use any out an advisory on are the type of fire chief the i went over to the commanding officer who have not even heard he was scheduled to make this assault. at the same time there was a mortar duel going on between our men and japanese on the rich. early in the morning i was just awakening, sitting up after a month like under duress and on the other side of the figures over my head. here it was about 65 but i just grab a card when mainland only head and shoulders bringing down on the foreign and almost knocked me cold to i grabbed him and pulled over only to find it was a young smallish marine. i will never forget the surprise frightened look on his face. where are you headed, i asked? he asked me whether company headquarters was but i pointed to the left. in with an agitated oh, he

scuttled down to the record i believe i' i see my own marine deserter in combat. for those who know that is one e of them in court, to anyone think that deserting told you how bad the situation was, and it was absolutely horrible. as chris is helping support marine units and also army units as well, he comes across a few days later -- this is now early may something i think shocked into soul, and it turns a place where chris's book is than some of the stories, this is one to come back to. i think maybe being in -- history professor, his writing can be dispassionate. it's interesting because it's fashionably written in the afternoon i took a walk into the front of our position. i caught sight of a federal district like a gnome into a it gave some 400 yards away from our position. when i reached the point and the object met my view.

on the ground with the body of a young okinawan to a girl who have been 1516 and probably pretty. she was nude laying on her back with arms outstretched and these drawn up and spent corporate the portal have been shot to the left breast and had been violently raped. i returned to the guns. frankly, i think that chris wrote this memoir probably besides being a trained historian as he was, but there's a part of the i don't think i will be approved as that he did write this in which you can get out of his hole and out of his hole and that of his system some of these force you saw. it was by the best therapy could have done for himself. there are situations where chris and his forward observer team find themselves clamming over bodies day in and day out. some looks to realize is there's a marine steel boot that they

realized as a body they been in henley and traveling is actually an american but at that point in time chris s. at this point are concerned about following have been reduced pretty much to nationality and we're pretty much animals at that point. so the fact the person as kind and gentle as chris donner, a man who went on to become a college professor, a high school teacher, he helped found a school filled up and helped found a couple of community colleges in florida, it is amazing a person of this statistic and culture to get through the things he got through. i do think it's amazing given that he's ordering bombardments that he survived at the ripe avoid admitting that he barely made it to 100. his experience is not alone. without i think i will pass the buck over to james to have him share with you some of the stories and some of the horrors of the submarine campaign. >> what i wanted to know from you, james, is the subtitle is

the story of three siblings that battled japan. kenya first off tells how the story came about, how you found it, what led you to write this book? i know your first book, there's a family connection there. her father was on the liberty and was a damage control officer. but this store you've been on your own, and they know participating the book is what's going to be different, what these were i going to do. how did you come to this and what are one of the three siblings? >> yes, thank you. i was looking at the submarine war, what fancy me it's an economic war. it is about how can you wreck the economy of your enemy. the united states unfortunately during fashion every official use the time between the two wars, between world war i and woodward to to prepare for this

type of a war. the japanese, they have a saying if you live in glass houses don't throw stones. if you're an island nation, don't start a war to world war i was a perfect example of that if you look at the german blockade of great britain which they literally economic strangle the british. and so the united states as early as 1919 when the smoke was still settling from world war i already anticipate a conflict in the pacific with the next big war. they use that time period to design essentially the perfect weapon, which was the fleet submarine, which was the boat that was used atomically throughout world war ii. 288 submarines served in the pacific. they realized the types of submarines we just during world war i were simply inferior. in fact, we brought back captured german u-boat after world war i and engineers pulled in all parts of by the german

votes were so much better than ours. they had better engines, better periscope optics, thick rolls. sore engineers really begin to build that. and knowing that the way the war clouds were bring in japan, the rise of militarism in japan, we began to planet that is something we would need based on those logistics. we need is something that could travel 12,000 miles, that could carry up to 80 men and care in a twerp he does in food, coffee, fuel 490 days. there's no wal-mart at sea. there's a gas station that you could pull into. so you have to be completely self-sufficient. the distance that we ran the suffering were largely out of hawaii as well as australia. goes the distance to get from hawaii to japan was two weeks each way. your looking at almost one month in travel time just to get to the enemies sure but i had to design the perfect boat.

so that it. the fleet boat which was about making up with at the start of the war, it's about 312 feet long, about the length of a football field and it's only 27 feet wide. a good diet about 300 feet. it could go deeper but it carried approximately 80 men. they had to rely on incredible creativity for everything. if you're thinking about that you are getting that much food, you're not going to carry soft drinks, not going to carry two leaders of coca-cola. you're going to carry coca-cola syrup and take small cartridges and carbonated or so. they took boneless meat because of bones take up space. they desalinate their own water. the southern cook was for one of the most important people on board because he's the one who had to be as creative as possible with a lot of candidates. one of the guys i interviewed said in his cookbook, said by the biggest problems they had at

sea was that inevitably you will get we fools in your flower and they're so small you couldn't set them out to you couldn't snare them and he's what you do is you throw in care we seize and break ride bread and no one would ever know the difference. they had to rely on that amazing creativity. the living conditions were still incredibly austere, and when the big factors applicable and that is summit of the sailors had grown up during the great depression. they had incredibly austere childhood. even these tight, concise situations where you're literally in bunks are separated by 18 inches, hot bunking which means someone is on to become so is sleeping and you flip so that is always warm, was an upgrade, three meals a day. you could snack when you wanted to. that was an upgrade. not only did they design this boat but he also began to look at the strategy.

because up until that point they may be reluctant submarines that sort of almost a second class service if you will within the navy. they were used to protect the panama canal imports and whatnot but a veteran skipper said look, this boat is designed as a killer. what other vessels we have can go into an enemies harbor and destroy ships? so they reformulated the entire strategy. that time period between the two wars was a very pivotal one. all of this of course builds up to when the war starts, submarine warfare is all about destroying the japanese economy. world war ii ind in the pacific, think about it, a lot of attention was focused on battles like midway. battles that are over, decide in a matter of minutes. aircraft tears are destroyed and whatnot. the submarine war was one that was lovely conflict by convoy, ship by ship, over 1347 days.

to the point that by the end they had so distorted japan's economy, largely its ability to import oil from the netherlands, dutch east indies, that they literally had to park aircraft carriers. they used kamikaze fighters because they did have enough fuel to train people in navigation. it had a devastating effect on the civilian population, eating acorns and starving to death if you will. to me that's one of the things that most fascinating is if you look at what submarine warfare is, it's one about economics and that's the undercurrent of it all. to tell that story i was looking for three boats that had very different dramatic experiences. silversides, the silversides had all of them were the most successful both of the war. the silversides. in fact, those three boats, the aggregate of those three boats

would sink 62 japanese tankers, warships. very, very successful. but also very different experiences. japan was lost by a malfunctioning torpedo is and its crews ended up about nine of the survivors ended up in prison of war camps. the silversides had an appendectomy on board, deck gun battles and the drama had a number of expenses including the attack at one point on comfortable fact that attacked a hell ship which was filled with 1800 pows was lost off the philippines in 1944. trying to tell the bigger picture story of the war in the pacific, if it was i want to to be able to put you on that boat. i wanted you to be able to sense what it was like, be one of those sailors. in order to do that i need to pick those boats and into those crew, so i could take the readers and do that firsthand

experience as best as possible. >> we have about 20 minutes left iin the session and want to make sure with time for questions. so if anyone would like to ask either offer a question, please just go ahead and step up to the microphone. feel free to do that. as we get to those, as folks want to do that, we will call on you. another question that i had kind of for the both of you is, when you do research for these types of books, do you spend most of the time and archives, or is most of the work done from oral history already collected, or folks that you just have to find? >> i'll start off an impasse over to nick because we were talking about this earlier. i compare it to a historical scavenger hunt. the reality is that during world war ii the record-keeping was pretty amazing to every single something that would have been complete a patrol was rough and 30 page document for which they

tried to find a computer, the time until in fact, someone counted that off so they knew 47 seconds later a torpedo hit. they log it to the deck logs as well but recorded what was going on. i tracked down surviving sailors who were alive. i tracked down the family members of folks who have passed with the a lot of it is really, like i said, it's a historical scavenger hunt. give you an example from one of the officers on the silversides into the become a prominent figure. he died about the time i was born. i found an obituary for him and he served on board the silversides. it said he had a son who died in 1976 and yet the sun who lived in hawaii where he traveled out of order i tracked hi them down through google and call to set up and they said look, i know you thought has been deceased now for almost four decades but i'm doing a book and it's focusing in part on his

suffering. isn't there by any chance he left behind a direct and intimate anything like that, please? it's funny you called, my mom died about a year ago, he said. right before she died she gave me a box and opened it up and get all my debts wartime letters wartime letters into. she told me, hang onto this. someday somebody's going to want peace. so about a month later, 311 pages of his wartime letters written on the silversides station he showed up at my house but there were so many of them i could put them all in order and that took them to kinko's to bind them. my kids were knocking them over messing them up. he was on board for nine patrols. he met his wife. they were engaged and committed, and he wrote her every single day. it was literally a direct of life on board but he talked about the mice they had. named romeo and juliet. they fired out of the torpedo tubes wanted to he talked about the pranks they played and the

music, the impromptu jam sessions and he talked about what it was like. that's the kind of stuff you're looking for. that's the kind of stuff that humanizes these stories. >> taking a segue from james, i have to agree, it is half the fun or maybe more than half the fun is kind of doing the sluicing and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. in the case of this book, the chris dodd ago, chris left with the manuscript but i find myself working with the national archives, with the marine corps historical section at quantico, virginia, both of which were infallible and providing the absolute fantastic progresses of the ones i got from chris and his family. in terms of my original research for the first book which was about my father's expense, and by the way, my father was an enlisted the come and chris dodd is one of the officers. that was really a jigsaw puzzle. that involved taking stories my father had shared with me over the years with me and my sister,

but also taking his battalion history at the time of researching that in late 1997, the knife defense and anti-aircraft but they had a reunion grew. they had 250 members and is able to make contact wit with a lot f them, should we trust the transcript and would supplement others. from the national archives i was able to find as jane, battalion records, duty logs from all sides were units, companies, battalions, batteries would have basically after action report and warlords virtually anything so you could still find lots of copies of those even though some of the personal records were lost in st. louis in 1976 in a major fun. being able to interview the veterans, you'd oral history was the thing that was the icing on the cake for me. frankly, had i not done the research about my father's life experience i never would've met christopher dollar. in the process of the research i think it was about 98 or 99,

several marine that has kept talking about a film in professor dyer and kids they needed make contact with them. he might share something with you. so any contact with chris i can ask by what was going to show diminished. he gave me some wonderful comments. he was one of people encouraged me to take his original idea which is something output in the tennessee state archives to memorialize my father is when people said is quite administered to the need need to keep working and turn into a boat. had i not gotten that manuscript, this would not exist today. so for all kinds of reasons i think i am eternally grateful for chris not grateful for chris not just helping me learn his life at helping to a lot more about what my father with his will. one quick thing i will say for anyone who wants to about history of their own family members, i've learned and sushi.com has become a remarkable resource tool in that have not had a lot of military documents as well.

my site work out for i served on the board of east tennessee veterans memorial association. we find is a surgical in more of the back stories of many of the war casualties of the portion of tennessee by using a couple of freelance resources and researchers and one of the resources we use is ancestry, and they've done a pretty good job. >> i believe we have a question from the audience. >> james, you mentioned hot dogging. in one part serve two or three sailors? >> it frequently wasn't too. he just didn't have the space to carry that many sailors on board, so it was frequently too. one of my favorites, a lot of p.m. and slept inside a torpedo. so they had cops literally were tucked between the 3200-pound weapons. they strung them from the over it and had to in the front of the put side by side that they called the bridal suite. two unfortunate guys that got

back. >> was there any significant difference in the studies of ptsd between being in the land forces where you are in a constant battle situation in the submarine where consumers are large amount of downtime when you're not actually under fire? >> i'll be honest with you, i did look at ptsd from the perspective of the southern portion. most of them will to you it's a lot of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror your because when they were attacked like that, it's an all or nothing. 52 submarines were lost and only of those, only a handful of sailors got off when the boat was hit. everyone went down. certainly a whole lot of fear on

the level for those men. and again, if you look at the submarine service, it truly was one of the most dangerous parts of the military. one out of every five sobering sailors was essentially lost the it was a very small service, about 50,000 folks who serve in the seventh service. of those only about 16,000 what to say, and of those 52 votes were lost. it had a really high casualty rate. spent we have another question. >> this is one of the best programs i've heard at this festival. you expect to be surprised by the goalie of the books that you encounter and learned about here, but to have the authors themselves as such recall and vividness and passion for the work is a great combination, and i congratulate you. question. it's one for each of you because

i was really impressed with both sets of stories, although i have to say, james, i'm a little discipline you didn't tell us about the call and what happened to. you're going to make a by the book, i know. >> absolutely. >> that's all right. this is a technical question for you and that you political one project at a technical question, and the more of this of other literature but we had, the training they've had a problem with its torpedoes. it was true for aerial torpedoes with the battle of midway. should have been won by sinking the japanese carriers with torpedoes but instead we had to dive bomb them and the like of the draw they were all feeling and what not on deck. so that was great fortuity. why do we have such trouble with making a torpedo that would work? >> you know, that's actually been the subject of entire dissertation to the torpedo problem was so rampant in world war ii with the navy.

the torpedo is a very complex weapon, and that's when i think i think a lot of folks assume this would like an underwater rocket but it's not. it's a submarine. it costs about $10,000 each, which in today's money would be about equal that of $280,000. they consisted of 1325 moving parts. so they're very sophisticated and they ran off come with alcohol was there fuel source. there's a little side, that the navy realize putting a whole bunch of alcohol on board submarines, that they had dashed it was a bad idea so they spiked it with oil to make it so you would want to drink it. but never underestimate an american centric they figured out if it took an old loaf of stale bread and poured alcohol through it, it would strain out the oil and would leave you with a drinkable alcohol. if you mixed it with pineapple

juice or whatnot, that you could take it to be called at torpedo juice. however, it was so potent that when you drink it out of a copyrighted drink it quickly because it would eat a? seal out of the bottom. but no, it is a very complex weapon. early in the war our stupid comeback and the rectum moralistic they would say i'm a good jobs off of the japanese ship, it shouldn't direct hit, nothing happened. at the time it was zero ordinance which they called the gun club and the kids went whole bunch of bad skippers, bad shots. this went back and forth for a long time, and, unfortunately, we missed an amazing window today significant amount of damage to the japanese navy because the japanese did not take our submarines seriously and so they would send an aircraft carriers and convoys of tankers without any escorts to protect them. so these early efforts for us to sink the ships failed because of a faulty weapon to be would be

like having an aircraft carrier without planes. it eventually took about 18 months to figure out a jerryrigged solution but it really took having a gentleman by the name of charles atwood of trusting his people over the navy's. of ordnance and running some tests in australia where they strung fishing nets to get him fired torpedoes to realize the weapon was running today. there was never any significant account for after the war. it has been left up to historians to sort of debate but there's no doubt about it it is one of the biggest scandals of the navy in world war ii. >> one thing i will add to that, the other thing that drove a lot of the navy skippers in saying is that here they are with a torpedo, effective magnetic system they keep shooting under ships on the going off yet the japanese had a torpedo called along lines which was a tear of the u.s. navy. the number of american ships that were destroyed or sought in the battles in which compare the two americans agreed with you

realize what a crime it was. but you have a geopolitical question. >> i did. this goes to the legendary attention between the navel approach to the pacific war and the army approach. personified by nimitz versus macarthur. generals made great land masses to lead armies. was the navy said no, no, no. , we just need a little islands. was okinawa a capitulation to macarthur? >> was that the battle we really needed to have? >> i think i would answer it, i think unlike some battles, the classic example is a battle that never should've kurt. you look at some of the other actions leading up to that, operation cartwheel, the days with his forces were trying to stand the japanese base. some of those were done by

island hopping for a couple battles people of questions about. i think my position, maybe i historians might take exception to, but i do think that okinawa was an absolute record out at that point in time. okinawa was essentially really piercing the first part of the japanese homeland and the japanese considered as such. bear in mind, even though we had between nine places in guam and also basis on iwo jima, if we're going to take the air wars, we find did to japan, we needed to be in range of not just to be 29, not just carrier borne planes but p. 51, of the types of fighter planes and fly the planes that had to be able to integrate with drop tanks and other things like that. the one thing of course that comes from okinawa is, and there have been books written about, one of the ones is a book has been out for about 15 years or so. the horrors of what chris donner

and his fellow marines and army troops, the navy of course, the height of the kamikaze attacks, thoughtful way to that fell on me that okinawa. take all that together with the casualty figures and, of course, there are people who will say that to the extent there were any lingering doubts, and he knows if it were, i've never seen anything to say that it really strung out, but in the eyes of the leadership, particularly harry s. truman, once he learns the general filing of leslie groves is what this device that will be tested in july 1945 in the place in new mexico and people telling its award-winning weapon, and he's already got planners telling him the casualties for the invasion, the next step after okinawa which occurred in the fall of 1945 is going to be easily in hundreds of thousands dead. you know, we can look back and

think about the horrors of the nuclear age in nuclear weaponry, but the one thing for what i can tell he's reading, including chris donner's, he felt, a lot of the veterans felt it was right thing to do. we all live under the shadow of that but that was a concomitant response to what happened at okinawa. the casualties, the horse. but to go back to your question i think was the first stage, if we didn't have okinawa there was no way leaving the atomic bomb out we couldn't have gone and then do what we're planning on doing in the fall of 1945. >> we have reached the end of our time industry but the office will be in the signing it in the next few minutes we can continue talking with them. hopefully get a copy of the books, please join me in thanking them. [applause]

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