[inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us any mail to booktv@c-span.org, tweet us booktv or post on our wall facebook.com/booktv. >> in germany you get two votes one for someone who represents your district, your community and one for some who represents your ideas. in that way you get a congress that's much more diverse that can create different kinds of connections depending on what

the issue is. people are not required to vote a particular because there are only two parties. it's just much it's much more engaging as a result i think if we dislike that in the trendy we would have higher levels of participation. that's another thing that we don't admit that we really should, that is we have at the most about 60%, 65% of the population voting. we go to other countries and they have 80%. you go to australia and you are required to vote. if you don't vote you are punished. in the united states somehow we want to make it difficult for some people to vote or it's not necessary, it's not necessarily we want to make difficult. it's that we are coachable and having made it difficult for people who don't have access to a car truck or ben, people who don't have a lot of money in order to take time off from work

to engage in a political activity or to even vote. and some of we blame the people as opposed to our electoral system and say, well the fact that, thinking of a case that i litigated with a professor at stanford in arkansas in which we were challenging on behalf of some of the people in arkansas the decision that you had to have, you had to get at least 51% of the vote even if you got let's say there were three people and you got more of vote, you had to get more than 50%, 50% plus one and what that meant in this part of arkansas is that for many of the

working-class and poor people, whether they were white or black, they didn't feel enough of an incentive to participate and it was too expensive because they had to have access to the car, truck or van because the voting places were so -- to me that's about it's not, we tend to put the burden on the individual and say well, they could vote. the fact they didn't walk 30 miles to get to vote that's their problem. or we could say i will go is to get as many as possible participate in the political process, number one because it will influence the outcome of the process in a way that is more fair. and number two it's a way of inviting everyone to reconsider our initial commitment and begin to think well, i may not agree with my quote direct opponent, but there's some measure of of

the future of the potential if i consider what this third person or fourth person is saying. so we are not locked into either democrat or republican. there's more diversity. and i think as a result better spent you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week.

>> look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv.org. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.

>> let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and we'll be happy to add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> he not only let me to interview him about once a month, but people he would give me other names or nicknames come sometimes i would ask him to make the entrée. for example talk to bush 41 or talk to henry kissinger or dick cheney and they would call of his office and say who is this sparrow? and he was a blah, blah, blah. no doubt people were checking with them first before agreeing to talk to me. having said that, for the most part he was quite forthcoming. they were things that he said he forgot. there were things that he didn't, he said he didn't remember. there were things on occasions where he would say i can't talk about that. and thinks he didn't want to

talk about, kind of his current business, for obvious reasons. as head of national security advisor, he was also overseeing the committee that plans commissions for covert actions. so these things he didn't talk about. other times i would come back to issues. he didn't want to talk of something and i would come back several things i asked him about repeatedly. said he was always very guarded, very protective, and that's consistent with him being very discreet, very behind the scenes. so he was the opposite. having said that i tried to get as much out of him as much out of him as a good, and when i came back to questions of what other people said or if there was a discrepancy my understanding of something from the record or my interviews and i would say look i don't understand this. what is going on here? so there's this kind of kind of this cumulative process with

trying to get more out of him. them. i think it's a hoosiers working on sensitive issues you show me what you know and then i will tell you how i can help you. so i kind of had to prove, no enough, and occasionally he would volunteer things and more of course about his childhood or early years and later but, so we had a friend relationship, a good relationship i think the fact that i was a generation younger than he is not in washington, in some ways that helped me but in some ways i think it wasn't as though -- i remember reading an interview he did with at west point for an oral history collection and i was furious because there were some things he told this guy but he hadn't told me. >> you can watch this online at booktv.org.

[inaudible] >> stop it. >> look at me. wait for it. wait for it. >> welcome to galveston on booktv. locator on the island all the gulf coast of texas it was the main port for the texas navy during the texas revolution and served as the provisional capital of the republic of texas. today it is visited by almost six mentors looking to experience its teachers and other attractions. with the help of our comcast cable partners we will learn about the history of this coastal city from local authors. we begin our special feature with casey greene on the 1900 storm that decimated galveston. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> the storm struck galveston

saturday september 8, 1900. the storm begin before noon and increased in intensity and then finally tapered off toward midnight that evening. this hurricane was and still is the deadliest recorded natural event in the history of the united states. the destruction totaled about 28-$30 million. certainly it was a destructive hurricane. many buildings did decide with major damage but the death toll is why we remember the storm more than anything. it can happen again. >> saturday september 1900 people thronged to the beach. and the rising tide the rising

wave to them. they watched in amazement. oath of these coastal factors battered the structures but at the time we had wooden bathhouses out over the gulf of mexico, we also had pierced. we had a huge defined called olympia by the seat. as the storm increased in intensity, these beach structures letter late were turned into matchsticks by the hurricane. the problem is people didn't realize that the storm would increased so rapidly, so they took refuge in their homes. especially south of broadway our major these was for four, they thought it would offer them refuge from the storm. little did they know that the storm would increase in

velocity. estimated at one the wins were in the neighborhood of 101 miles or more with a maximum storm surge of almost 16 feet. and by the time they realize they had better leave their place of residence and move into the interior of galveston, it was too late. this is a panoramic map called a birds eye map of galveston in 1895. it was drawn to give us a pretty good idea of the physical layout of galveston at the time to give a notice that the port of galveston, the harbor at the bottom of the map and the gulf of mexico is at the top. you can also see the would bathhouses and a hotel here that lines the beachfront. really there wasn't much distance between the beachfront and the city itself.

broadway was and still is the major east-west thoroughfare through galveston. the city had stoutly built brick buildings and large wood structures north of broadway but south of broadway the houses were small and more flimsily built. the loss of massive flood occurred particularly in this area. now, you can see that a hurricane coming in from the gulf would have swept over the city in one massive blow. well typically after a major cataclysm, natural or man-made there's a period of silence. people got up that sunday morning, and it was just deathly still. they went outside, and we have

an account the referrers to the foul smelling slime that covered galveston. but literally at points of galveston south of broadway you to say nothing but an empty plain, just literally houses and other buildings smashed to matchsticks. this was a total -- the city's infrastructure was destroyed. that includes streets telegraph lines, trolley lines trolley cars, literally the whole infrastructure houses. literally the whole city was under water. much was destroyed and the rest suffered physical, heavy damage. they were massive casualties. most estimates put the loss of life in galveston at 6000. i should mention in the year

2000, galveston commemorated the centennial of the 1900 storm. "through a night of horrors" is a book that i and my coeditor, shell henley kelly put together with survivor accounts. we estimated the loss of life in galveston alone or galveston island at approximately 8000. many people were in town in galveston at that time. businessmen conducting their business that weekend, and you had vacationers who wanted to wait in the gulf of mexico see the beachfront and they are included among the several thousand people who we can't account for. there is no accurate or complete list.

we only have about 199 official death records. many of those bodies were not identified. most of the people who died in the hurricane were prepared from anecdotal sources, word of mouth. and then there were several thousand more casualties up on around galveston bay up towards houston. this was a storm that was rapidly evolving, rapidly acting, but did a heck of a lot of damage and destruction in its wake. the recovery with a homegrown effort, of course there were physical or i should say technological changes that happened as a consequence of the 1900 storm. thousands upon thousands of workers came to galveston to remove the debris, to burn the bodies, for the bodies pose the threat of disease.

at the same time they had to provide health for the survivors. if the people couldn't take refuge in their homes and then they also had to secure food, water, communications. literally, the city had to resurrect itself from the bottom up. every year about september, especially september 8 from the houston television stations will show footage taken from the aftermath of the 1900 storm. and newspapers make images but certainly the potential for destruction from future storms is always kept in mind. certainly the 1900 storm was one of the things that led galveston from the 19th century to the new century. but more than that it's a point come it's sort of a marker that

we can always turn to and say that it happened here, and the potential, however slight is that it could happen again. >> you were watching a booktv on c-span2. this week and were visiting galveston, texas, with the help of our legal cable partner comcast. up next week visit with author andrew hall whose book "civil war blockade running on the texas coast" explores galveston's role in the civil war. >> people don't think of texas as playing much of a role in the civil war because they're more for my with a lot of the battles and a lot of the struggles that took part in eastern united states, gettysburg of course, sharpsburg or anti-them. they think of the campaign in georgia and sherman's march to

land in late agencies for then up to the carolinas in 1865. sometimes they will think about the campaigns that took place in tennessee and mississippi. for example, the siege of vicksburg. there were not a lot of major military actions that took place in texas. so that texas sometimes doesn't get the attention that it probably should. galveston's role in the civil war was an important one. galveston at the time in 1860 was the largest city in texas. it has the largest population. it was one of two commercial centers of texas. and it was the primary seaport of texas. there were no rail connections between texas and the rest of the united states in 1860. you could not get on a train in texas and travel to other parts of the country. and so texas was texas primarily to the rest of the united states, or after 1861, the rest of the confederacy was

by sea. galveston was the best natural harbor on the texas coast and galveston was the largest city. and so everything that involve trade and later blockade running went through galveston. of the most part. and other small ports along the texas coast. galveston was the primary one. even before the confederates fired on fort sumter in april 1861 in charleston the union was preparing and thinking about what happens if this becomes, if secession becomes a shooting war. and one of the things that they considered was establishing a blockade of southern ports. the idea of a blockade is to use, it's an old traditional technique that is used in warfare to blockade an enemy to keep ships and vessels from going out from keeping the

enemy from getting support from outside. the union forces declared a blockade on april 19, 1861. that was just two days after jefferson davis had declared that confederates would authorize privateers to go after union shipping, which is itself an act of war. but the union blockades was declared in april of 1861. the idea was that the federalists would position warships around the confederate coast, around southern ports and prevent vessels from coming in and out. running the blockade was illegal. it was illegal in the eyes of union forces. it was legal in the eyes of the confederacy because they didn't recognize federal authority in the seceded states. and blockade running was mostly done as a private venture. anyone could become a blockade runner if you have a capital or

a vassal or the business interests. and lots of people did. lots of folks who were involved in other aspects of the business he came involved in blockade running during the war because that was a way to maintain their businesses. how seriously did the federal government, they can take blockade running? they took it very seriously and they realize from the very beginning of the war that they would need to devote a lot of resources to the blockade. the union navy at the beginning of the war was i don't know 40, 50 vessels at most in active service, very small and it had to expend tremendous. and so for the first few months as the middle of 1861 through early 1862 federal may become the union navy was buying up every ship it could find not just building lots of new warships by purchasing every sibling ship that they could put a gun on. and using it on the blockade. i think he was well, we don't

need for blockade to go. we need lots of ships. we don't need lots of warships because they're not going to be going into combat a lot. that's probably right. so than union navy expanded during the course of the war from maybe 40 or 50 ships on active service to i think over 600. the vast majority of those were on the blockade around southern ports. the blockade became much more effective as the war went on because, simply because the union navy expanded so much at the very beginning of the war. the first ship appeared on the blockade off of galveston was the uss south carolina, appeared of galveston of july 1861 and it was just one should. not just galveston but the entire texas coast but, of course, more came after that and it expanded. by 1864 there were typically a dozen union warships just off

galveston. and so they took it very seriously. they devoted a tremendous amount of resources into enforcing the blockade. for the blockade runners they still, the odds were still in their favor even by the end of the war. they were getting through most of the time. the odds got a lot longer as the war went on to blockade running could be hazardous. blockade runners, they were almost all privately owned vessel to do were a few exceptions late in the war of ships actually owned by the federal government but most of them were privately owned civilian merchant ships. they were unarmed and generally they would not put up a fight if they were caught. they would run like crazy to a would throw the cotton overboard, throw cargo overboard. they would put everything that would burn into the furnaces to keep going and try and outrun blockade runner excuse me a blockade vessel that was after

them. but once the record they would usually surrender. so it was not physically dangerous in the same way that it would be serving on a confederate warship, but there were dangers nonetheless. there were lots of blockade runners were wrecked because they traveled at night they traveled in poor weather conditions. they travel in trying to get in and out of harbors were all the navigation buoys and lights had been removed. so is very common for blockade runners to direct, especially coming into a confederate port. and they were sometimes casually when that happen. sailors and crew members drowned or were lost. so there were dangers involved with it in that regard. the federals, they were in a little bit of a tight spot because they were out to stop the blockade runners.

to capture them. but most of the cruise a blockade runners either were citizens of neutral countries, british typically. they were either citizens of neutral countries or at least they have papers saying they were citizens of neutral countries. it was a very much the union to do to hold them for very long. what they would do with the ships is the captured a blockade runner would have a crew put aboard. they would take the vassal to the nearest federal court in which in this case would be new orleans or maybe key west, and the navy would file papers to have the captured vessel condemned as it was called. and then they would present the evidence that they had that this ship was, in fact, running a blockade in contradiction of u.s. law and they would present that evidence to the court. if the owners of the ship had a

representative, which they generally didn't, that person could go to court as well and present evidence that they were not, in fact, running the blockade because they never admitted that they were actually doing that. but almost always the ship was found to have been running the blockade can would be condemned by the court and then the ship and all its cargo would be sold at public auction. the are a number of cases the blockade running vessels that were caught and sent to a prize court, condemned, sold off sold again and then sold to someone who would write back into blockade running and within three to four months that same those would be running the blockade under a new name with new owners but it is the same ship. right up to the end of the war the last blockade runner, right up to the end of the war in texas, the last blockade runner entered confederate port, the port of galveston here, it was a blockade runner lark. it came into galveston at the

night of may 23-24 agencies to fight. that's more than a month after out the matter, more than a month after lincoln had been assessing. texas still had not surrendered. texas was still officially part of the confederacy, still officially part of the war. and the blockade was still active. so as late as the final last week of may 1865 we still a blockade runner trying to get in the port and leaving. the lark was actually the last blockade runner to enter and clear a confederate port. i talk about in the book it's sort of a rough ending to blockade running because the lark on the morning of the 24th tied up the central wharf which, in fact, was right here where we are now tied up at

central wharf and they were doing all the things you know we did to get the ship ready to be unloaded at night of the war been putting gameplaying standard stuff like that, and a confederate courier on horseback came bounding out along the peter yelling get your ship cast off get your ship out into the harbor away from the dock. and before they could do that again about 200 soldiers, confederate soldiers who were a way from their garrison, away from their post, they were fed up. they swarmed the ship and they began breaking open the cargo holds and looking for liquor looking for all. and when they found out they found that, started drinking. by this time a large group of citizens had arrived and were watching all this and pretty soon the looting became general

injured women and children and civilians and soldiers all going through the cargo of this blockade runner that had just arrived and taking anything, anything they could use anything fifth of they might be able to sell, taking everything they could get their hands on. and, finally the captain of the lark managed to get enough people off the ship that he could cast off. he got going again and picked up the crew of another blockade runner which had been wrecked the night before. he picked up the crew and on the night of may 24 headed back out into the gulf of mexico and back towards havana. that was the last blockade were to clear the confederate port. and it happened right here. this is not a part of civil issue that people ask me with, and they think they should be. it's easy to focus on the grand battles of the war, but this is

a part of people need to know about. this is a part that affected civilians. this is a part that affected the people back home. and in many ways what happened in galveston and indexes is typical of what happened across the south. particularly in seaports that were blockaded during the war. there was a continual union federal navy presence offshore. there were regular bombardments. there was excitement when the blockade runner would arrive, and, but there was lots of hardship. they did without a lot of great deal and it is something that can people did know but there is another aspect of what that is maybe not as heroic, not as dramatic. it's part of the will that is very hard to glorify but it's an important part of the war because it represents life as

lived by a lot of people 150 years ago. >> while in galveston we also talk with stephen curley author of "celluloid wars." the book exams the portrayal of war in american movies. >> america's and has had a profound affect on the way that people see war. even from the beginning we understand the vision of war for most of us is not having been to war but having heard about war having seen of the war having read about worker crippling images of war. i think sometimes of the myth with issue. percy is needed to defeat gore can pretty looked directly at gore can would turn to stone. he was able to look in the shield and see the reflection and then he could outwit and

defeat gorgan. movies are not really is a. in the beginning, most films can we talk about the beginning of cinema itself 1895 the first recorded films. they really rant about 60 seconds. this one was an american film and it was called tearing down the spanish fly 1898. the spanish-american war was in the news. people couldn't get enough of it, and imagine being able to see it, being able to be there. that wasn't exactly true. they were not there. the people who made the movie, they took a camera up to the rooftop in new york city and filmed a spanish flag being lowered and replaced by an american flag in the background was not really havana, but a billboard kind of picture of havana that made it look as if we were there.

so it was faked footage but it was at war nonetheless but it was extraordinary popular, the kind of thing people put their nickel in the nickelodeon to watch and watched it over and over and over again. american war films have always been a little bit of tease and lived up to its. i can remember mary poppins with the sugar bowl of medicine. there are movies that have a greater kind of propaganda. you can think of the green berets with john wayne about the vietnam war. was merely john wayne propaganda take of what the vietnam war was, not the war is a. and get movies like steven spielberg's saving private ryan, which you may say that it has some propaganda affects but it's long after the second world war and it's mostly a movie about war and about the experience

about the feel of war, the image of were. accuracy in film making is a style. it's an option. what you can do when you're making a film all of these the directors understood this, is that you can make a film that gets it right or you can make a film that is entertaining. entertaining always trumps getting it right. there was the sense which we talked about the vietnam war and it was in the news and people said you don't know exactly what it is. a recent more movie can we were soldiers, showed in a way another people said that got it right the that really is what heaven. on the other hand, you take a movie like a deer hunter would usually fantasy. that whole idea of russian roulette it's not that didn't happen. yet many people believe that the deer hunter got it right in another sense.

so fantasy and realism our styles of approaching the experience of war. and the question is what's he trying to get that and how well it succeeds, whether it is fantasy or realistic. we always as a public when we have gone to see a war understood it's only a movie or on the other hand, movies have become much more visceral, much more spectacular the idea of going to see clint eastwood movie. you know when you go to see american sniper that you're not going to see a 1940s more movie where the only kind of wounds our upper arm wounds, clean wounds and people died in ballet ethics. what use is visceral exploding bone fragments and spurting blood, the kind of thing that's in there. take an example, mass., a great example of a movie. mashes about the korean war. but mash was made during the vietnam war. the question of what robert

altman was doing with that movie is actually more about the attitudes, the feeling of the vietnam era towards warfare is the gold of the people were watching the movie insurance enough when a movie turned into a tv show what we had was a womanizer became a feminist and attitudes changed in relation to the current culture in what was both accessible and also admirable about people who are in that kind of madness we call war. the issue of war films often as settled on such issues as is this an antiwar film for pro-war film? almost no director will say or admit to making a pro-war from. people just are not happy with wars. nonetheless, within any war there's something to be shown

under some kind of courage. ramble is an example of a movie that took the vietnam era and essentially made it tolerable and sellable for the american viewing public. what sylvester stallone taught us was that even though most people were not happy with the way the war was being waged the way the war worked out the outcome of the war there was something to be said for individual heroism. now, the individual heroism in a movie like rambo is not in itself the kind of heroism that youyou would have actually seen had you been there at that time. well, once again kids this is the movies. and we want to see it sometimes a larger-than-life hero. people said for example on wayne was really great at playing john wayne, and his

movies, the sands of iwo jima is not a realistic movie about iwo jima. it's a realistic movie about a john wayne kind of hero and what would've happened had he been at an iwo jima that was managed in a way that hollywood created. i will show casablanca to my film class. there are students who felt that have been taught to analyze fail. they see the movie in quite a different way than someone who was just watching it in 1944 would have seen it. or somebody was watching it in 1964 would have seen it. each of the audiences changes the movie itself. when patton came out, many people believed that patton showed an antiwar an antiwar field, and they use that as evidence against the waging war and against especially the vietnam war at the time.

there were also people, president nixon among them, who thought patton was a pro-war. they were getting with the same exact movie which became a kind of a litmus test for them. and you could see it and understand when george c. scott comes out in front of a huge american flag, how that makes us perceive what we're going to see on the screen. the book i wrote, the research guide, i was a co-author, i did with a historian, i teach film and so we had a really nice movement there. i want people who read the book to see how film influences war, how war influences film. and i think it works both ways. i think the image of war on film influences the feelies the attitudes of the people who fight the wars and perhaps even

the way that wars are waged. on the other hand, i think that the way that wars are actually waged influences the way that films are made and how it shows it and how each new generation of film maker brings his or her own special perception to the making of a movie. >> during booktv's recent visit to galveston, texas, we toured the galveston bookshop with owner sharan zwick to rebut those are after it was destroyed by hurricane ike in 2008. >> we are in store of alert as hurricane ike closes in. you can probably count the hours before landfall on one hand. >> the impacts have been evident for hours. take a look at these waves crashing over the seawall in galveston, texas. this seawall about 16 feet also imagine how high these waves are spent this is true and amazing

what hurricane ike is dishing out in a. this is the worst we've seen for the past two hours or so since we've been here. at least the past two days. the problem about this is my goodness, i mean, really this is mind blowing what we're witnessing right now being able to broadcast to your life. i have never witnessed anything like this in my career. >> when we came down here we tried to be prepared. we brought overalls, shovels first aid kits. and the extent of the damage you just can never imagine how bad it is. there's no way. the adjuster later determined that we have seven feet of water in here at the height of the storm. when we came in it was a debris that was taller than this table right here. so i guess about four feet, and

it was just, all the bookshelves had fallen over. we had a large desk like that it was made out of metal and it had turned over and twisted. and you couldn't even walk on top of the debris. it was i thought that, you know yeah the books would have water in them and the wooden shelves might swell and the books might swell but i didn't realize they would fall so easily. and just fall on top of each other. it's just hard to describe. but you literally could not walk in the store anywhere. and we tried to go through the

area where the class had broken up and start cleaning up, and my husband and paul randle, my employee were able after hours of work they had cleaned off one square foot. so at that point they turned to me and said, this is too big a job for us. we can do this ourselves. and later in the day before we went back to houston, we drove around as much as we could, and we saw a lot of different companies that specialize in fire water damage restoration. so we started writing down names of them, and later i called and interviewed four to five of them, and had to pick one.

they wore hazmat suits, because before the storm even hit water had collected and the sewers have backed up. and so they were hazmat suits. they had these huge wheel barrels a huge shovels and these impossibly strong black bag. i've never seen anything like it. they worked as a team. they had just left hurricane gustav in baton rouge which happened three or four weeks before hurricane ike and they worked together on a regular basis. so they just came in and started shoveling and putting it in bags and breaking up the wooden shelves, which took at least a week to get through the whole store. so there's a bench like a park

bench, on the opposite side of the street with no shade on it and that became my office. and i called about 20 bookstores in houston to see anybody have access showing that they could give me or i could purchase from them, and the first person i called, because i've been in his store and just loved the way it looked, was a man with book land up in spring texas a suburb of houston and he donated to us. all we had to do was rent the truck, hire some temporary employees, get it out of the warehouses yet and assembly. and he also sold as books at a very discounted and then later gave us a ton of books by kelso gave us a cash register and some cabinets that we had back in the courtroom. so he's very generous person.

i told all my contractors that he worked with that we're going to open thanksgiving. and if they weren't on board with us then that was my deadline. i didn't want to miss the thanksgiving traffic. so all the repairs were done with generators. we didn't, the event was on september 13, and we didn't get electricity returned until november 3. then we had to wait while an ac unit had to be ordered and sent here, and we were actually open before we had our air conditioning installed. and when we opened we had maybe one shelf for for each shelf one row of books.

but we are open and people came in and bought. there was very little to do when you got tired of working on your house, and so we were open. while we were waiting to come down here for a whole week, i think i cried in my bed for maybe an hour or two, and then they said, okay, that's it i just got to get to work. i might as well give it the old college try again. people are always going to want to come to the beach so there always has to be people to service them and entertain them that are the year rounders. and i just couldn't see galveston dining. i thought we would come back

stronger than ever and it's true. everything looks beautiful. it's got fresh paint on it and we've had the best six years ever, and every year it gets better and better. so we are very happy that we made that choice. >> this weekend booktv is in galveston, texas, with the help of our local cable partner comcast. up next week visit with the author of a ship that would not die about the construction of military service and eventual sinking of the usps texas clipper. >> the texas clipper, which is the name that echoes by now is now an artificial reef off the coast of texas right knew that texas new mexico border. we had it here for about 30 years and it sailed under generations of students that sailed over. it was the first training should.

it was texas clipper 2 and texas clipper 3 but it was the first training ship. it was not born as a texas clipper but it was born as the u.s. as come and attack transport during the second world war. in 1944 there was tremendous shipbuilding programs that came out of charles point maryland not far from baltimore and was one of those ships that was built in that tremendous shipbuilding program. it was not one of the 90 days wonder. this was a high-class ship it because it was intended to become a cargo transport passenger carrier at -- after the war was over. so it was built for specification of the american export line. the ship comes out in december

of 1944. it is launched. by this time the war is going the way of the allies, early on in the war. nobody knew who was going to when, in fact early on in the war and looked as if the axis powers had the upper hand. they were winning all the battles. but by 1944 the war had changed. the ship spent most of its time during the war taking wounded soldiers from iwo jima and bringing them to the hospital on board the ship and taking them back to hawaii where they were bigger hospital. after their stop at iwo jima the ship went on back and forth between the west coast of the united states to the islands in the pacific, and did that up until the war was over. and then was the first ship to go into the submarine headquarters in japan.

they came in there and some of the people the forerunners of which nowadays the navy seals they had gotten there early in the beach with safer landing. even in those days there were interesting relationships between sailors in the navy and marines, and so these navy people have big placards saying well, marines, when the marines came in afterwards. the marines were not happy with that. after the war was over the ship still had a job to do because there were so many people, nurses, doctors, soldiers, sailors, marines all over the world, and they were part of in the business now of transporting, and they transported them in ways back to places like seattle and los angeles. ..

but the superstructure changed remarkably and what was woodmen the superstructure now were civilian kinds of spaces. a ballroom, a tea room more staterooms for passengers. it had a different face