division as i said and i was in the ninth marines, which is a regiment of 3,000 men. and one of our regiments did not land on iwo jima. it was the third regiment. they took some of the replacements, but that time didn't need any more people on the islands. but i knew that because one of our regiments had not landed on -- had not landed on any islands recently that we were the first division to be going into the invasion of japan. and they estimated as i learned a friend said over 1,000, 10,000 men would die, 1 million men. and i wasn't the least bit unhappy that they dropped the

bomb because it meant that i'd be saved and all the other people that would be saved in the war area. and today, i have no -- i have better feelings. i'm not as young as i was then. and i saw the reasons for the bomb being dropped. but it's just war is war and they were the enemy. >> sir? >> as members of the greatest generation, what lessons regarding ethical leadership do you feel are lost on today's society? >> as a member of the greatest generation, what lessons regarding ethical leadership are lost on today's society?

>> i hadn't really thought about that too much. but thinking about now i think that -- leadership is something that -- is something you have the capability to lead or you don't. some people it's born in others and it has to be developed over time. and it takes courage to recognize as you're in a position of command or supervision for leadership is required and then recognize you

have the possibility of doing what you can to meet what's required of you in that role. you don't necessarily have their visibility or complete understanding. it has to kind of grow with you over time as you meet various challenges on a day-by-day basis. and i'm very, very conscious of the fact that my ability to lead improved over time. i got experience in a leadership role in one form or another, even as a -- depending on what you're doing you do have leadership requirement from time to time. and that's all part of the

development is developing -- to understand what it is to be a leader, what the responsibility is and how you over time keep improving that ability. and i'm just delighted my own granddaughter is here. in the class of 2013 -- and it was a competitive thing. thousands young americans. right now. so i -- i congratulate you about

the courage to keep working at it and recognizing that you will have a role in today's air force in which leadership is required. >> mr. yellin? >> i'd just like to share a story that happened on june 20th, 1945 when bombers, b-29 bombers took off from north field in guam to bomb a small city, night bombing, the daylight bombings stopped when general lemay became commander of the 20th air force. and 125 bombers took off from north field to bomb japan. and two of the bombers crashed together in mid-air collision and 23 young americans were killed. the japanese man was a councilman, and one of the

bombers landed on his farm. and he found the remains of the 23 americans and put them in a common box and then buried the americans in the same cemetery where 2,000 citizens of japan were killed. his purpose was as a buddhist and is his belief that all people are the same when they die. and his belief was that if you don't have a proper burial, you come back as you had died. and he didn't want these men to come back as warriors. so he conducted a memorial service and a funeral service for the 23 americans and he was arrested and put in a jail. he became a buddhist priest and erected a monument to the memory of those americans on top of a

mountain. and every single year since 1947, the japanese have celebrated and honored those dead 23 americans. they now rest in kentucky in a military cemetery. the purpose that he had was to do something for humanity. and he paid a price for it. that's ethical behavior. i spoke there in 2009 because the names of the americans were not on top of that mountain, and i arranged for a tablet to be placed on the top of the mountain with the names of the 23 americans. and the opening lines of the speech that i made i said those who perform acts of kindness without expectation of reward receive the greatest reward of all, immortality. so ethics in leadership depends

on the purpose, the purity of purpose of those who lead us, of those who are in business, for those who in politics, and sometimes it's very hard to discern what the purity of purpose really is. you who serve our country are the greatest generation because it's us who have children and grandchildren who look to you to keep the peace in this world. 5,000 years ago, the young man by the name of david killed a giant by the name of goliath with a slingshot and a pebble. and those 5,000 years we have developed much greater slingshots and much greater pebbles. and einstein said there may very well be a world war iii, but they will not be a world war iv.

and it's you in the military that i look to for the security of our country, my children, my grandchildren, and our world. thanks. >> mr. woods, a question for you. unlike the other two gentlemen who were schooled in leadership, you had leadership thrust upon you on the sands of iwo jima. those leadership lessons, where did they go afterwards? how did you carry those leadership lessons forward in your life? you spoke of it briefly yesterday when we discussed it on the phone. >> i've always managed to maintain the leadership that is shown, that showed on iwo jima. i made my life principal, my

word was my honor and i'd live up to it. and i didn't deviate from that too much. occasionally everybody slips a little. but by and large i kept that as things foremost in my mind the same as honor, courage, and commitment, which is the marine corps. leadership is an intangible thing. you don't have it until it's thrust upon you or somebody gives it to you. but you really can't give leadership to a person. they have to have it bred, and they have to show it when it's needed to be shown. leadership i think is fast disappearing in most of our american life the same as honor and look at the 11% of the people in this country who

approve of congress as 89% of the people do not like what the politicians are doingme. look at the media. how can a reporter go up to someone who lost a loved one and say how did you feel when your daughter got killed? is that leadership? is that fair? there's nothing there. they don't have it. and how can we correct that? i have no idea. education, possibly. but as my friend on the end said, it's just there and i don't know what else to say. it's just a thing that you have or you don't have. and military are probably the only large group that still promotes and teaches and expects leadership from all of their people. >> we have a number of microphones in the audience if

there are questions, we'll open the floor to questions at this time. >> in the meantime, how do you gentlemen compare the military leadership of today to the leadership that you served under? start with you, general. >> if there's any difference in the leadership by generation, i think that the military is dedicated to always to do the right thing. as individuals, we are all responsible for our actions, collectively, country wise, we're responsible for our actions. there isn't one of us that can control the result of our actions. so if we take our actions and make them correct, we usually get correct responses from our actions. but we cannot control the results of our actions. all that we can do is take right

action. and i think the leadership of our country then in world war ii, we took the correct actions, and i think the leadership in the military today is doing exactly the same thing. there is no difference. it's their duty. >> anyone else? if not, we'll turn it over to the audience. >> it's important role in leadership is to let people in your organization know that each person in the organization has a role to serve. i can remember one time when i was a wing commander. we had a shop where they actually repaired the bombing equipment. and i decided one day i would drop in and on that shop -- and

these people working on these bomb sites to get them in good working order and what not and able to operate as they should so that when the systems would operate the way they were supposed to. so i dropped in on the sergeant unexpectedly, and he was quite surprised. and i told him i said i just wanted to understand that each of us has a role. and i said you have a very important role because these bombsights have to work well if we're going lead successful operations. and i just want you to know that if you ever have a need for anything in the way of better parts or better support for your

operation, i want you to be sure to let me know because i want to make certain you're able to do your job at 100%. and i feel very strongly about that in an organization. you have to -- you have to recognize the role the whole team -- the whole organization is part in parcel of the operation and it's important that each and every individual, you know, that he or she's part of a team that's got a job to do working together. >> start out here, sir. >> i'm lieutenant peter coles here at the air force academy. just really just in your view of the difference of today. you pointed out that leadership and maybe ethics aren't as solid as they were in your generation. and i agree with that point.

i guess i'm interested to know a few things. what are the differences in today's world? how is the medium the water that we swim through, if you will, different today that enables those things to have deteriorated? and what are the things we can do to change it? or are we on a collision course? with a negative outcome? thank you. >> we have as human beings the same operating system called the brain, and every human being has exactly the same operating system. and we have perceptions about other people. the perception in 1941 was that all the japanese who lived in america were enemies of our country. but there was a second generation of people born to japanese parents.

and they fought hard to get into the military to fight for their country because their software programs were not japanese programs, they were american programs. they learned the language, they learned the culture, they were educated in america. they saluted the flag. they ate the food. they were as american as anybody else was born. and when the 442nd was formed they went to europe and they fought for america and they were the most decorated unit in the entire war. we had a perception about people of color, black people, that they weren't good enough to serve in our country. they were citizens, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of slaves. and then tuskegee airmen came into being and they graduated from flying school and went to europe and they were ostracized by most of the southern

commanders until their reputation got out and they never lost one bomber on any mission that they flew. the only unit that could say that in the entire war. so perception of what other people are depends upon the software that goes into the operating system. and today we're a universe where everybody is connected, when president lincoln died it took 15 or 18 days for the europeans to find out about it, maybe more. today it's instantaneous. everything is instantaneous. we're connected to the world. we're all the same. we just have different software programs going on in our brain. and it's the software that controls us. because the any color of any race can fertilize the egg of any female in this world. we are all connected as human beings, and that connectivity

must be recognized or we won't have a world. >> next question. >> sir, squadron 24, i'm also military history major here. this past summer i had the chance to go see some of the stations there. and on the trip, aviators, four of whom were taken as p.o.w.s and three of whom flying out of the bases and having heard their stories and seen places where the bomb group had taken tremendous losses, was there any kind of atmosphere of fatalism? or were you guys worried about

if i get shot down, i'm going to be a p.o.w.? what was going through your heads? or the heads of the other pilots? >> i know that sir? >> i know that the guys over in europe had a good chance if they bailed out over minute territory that there were people on the ground that they looked like that they could hide in the scenery or they could get help. i had a p. 51 freeze automatic mixture control freeze at a high altitude and i got down to a low altitude. i didn't have much power in my airplane and i rolled the canopy back. i was going to bail out over the bay near tokyo. and i decided not to because i couldn't get lost in the crowd when i got down on the ground. i wouldn't have any chance of living. and the japanese, i had jack reitman was crash landed and

died in a prison camp in japan from a broken back. he didn't get any aid, any help. so i feel -- i never felt any fear about flying. i never felt any fear about dying. but i did fear being a prisoner of war in japan because of the treatment that we heard about. does that answer your question? >> general, what fears did you have when you were flying? did you fear the prospect of going down and becoming a prisoner of war? >> well r, when you fly mission after mission, about every third or fourth day, and you see other b 17s getting shot down, and the

first thing you look for when one of your companion aircraft goes down is to see whether or not there's any chutes. because you're hoping that even those airplane is going down that the crew is able to jump out and parachute. they may end up as p.o.w.s but at least they have survived that particular incident. i can remember how all of us on the airplane when we saw some of us going down, they'd look to see if there were any chutes. and because one of the responsibilities we had as squadron commanders was to see to it that the families of the down airmen were notified of the fact that their husband or father was missing in action.

and obviously reported that, never reported it as killed in action, we always reported it as missing in action so hopefully that was the situation that the downed airmen would actually be captured and be a p.o.w. until the end of the war. but you had no way of knowing until after the war was over. i can remember that we had bombadi rerkz in our group who was a very good -- had his role. when he had a chance to acquire the target in his bomb sight, which of course you couldn't always do. sometimes it was cloud cover over the targets, so you couldn't see the bombs on radar. but if your bombadier was able

to acquire the target visually and then synchronize on the target, the chances are that you'd be successful in hitting near the target. and i remember this one particular bombadier, his airplane got shot down and what not. and so like i say, we reported him as missing in action. and all of a sudden one day he came walking on the base. he was successful in actually parachuting out. he landed in friendly territory and was able to work his way down through spain and what not and eventually actually walking back on the base. and that was a very delightful surprise to see that he'd actually survived that particular mission. so you always had that hope that

anybody else got shot down, that's somewhat the airmen may be able to survive. >> we've got time for one more question. >> third class glazier. i'd like to ask the panelists to comment on the similarities and differences in war between world war ii and the conflicts we face today, and what similarities and differences in leadership that requires of today's military leaders. thank you. >> mr. woods? >> today's leadership is far greater than the leadership that we had in 1941 to '46. prior to world war ii, most of the service clubs, as they called them, were not as sharp and as well bred as they could have been.

one of the ways of recruiting was to take people who were in trouble with the law and say, well, it's two years or join the army or the navy. and that certainly doesn't make to a good soldier or sailor or marine. and the military at that time i can remember gunnery sergeants who weighed 230 pound and they were about 51'0". that's certainly not someone that you want when you're in desperate trouble. and today you don't have a high school education, at least in the marine corps, you don't get even considered. they're more intelligent. the young people of today. and they're more dexterious with their fingers from playing all these games [ laughter ] >> they make good people and what they're used to in non-combat and combat rules.

and i just think that young people of today are much better educated than the people they were in 1941 to '45. and the same with the offices and the same with the senior non-cosenior non-coms. showing what we're doing with just a handful of men, really. and they're doing the brunt of everything. i remember we used to have to wait two years or three campaigns before we got home. now they have to go through so many tours, flyers have to have certain requirements before they can have leaves. and it was a hardship. but it just made the people of

today much better than we were. thank you. >> the scope of the war, world war ii, and what a war would be today is entirely different. there was the war in europe was perpetrated by in 1939 by the invasion of poland and adolf hitler's goal was to build a nation of pure aryan people, 1,000-year reich. and in japan the war was known as the greater east asia coprosperity sphere. and japan wanted to dominate all of the pacific rim. that doesn't exist today. there's an entirely different dynamics of what world war ii was about. we got in the war by accident. we got in the war when japan decided that they wanted to knock out all the ships that

were going to embargo the oil that we were shipping and that they needed. and we got into war with germany by mistake because hitler made the biggest error that he made in world war ii. he declared war on america eight days after pearl harbor. i don't believe america would have ever declared war on germany. and england was a very last sphere of a democratic nation on the earth in 1941 when pearl harbor was bombed. and america didn't get in the war with europe until they declared war on us. so the scope and the dynamics of the world today are entirely different than what was going on then. >> unfortunately we've reached the end of our time with our distinguished panel this morning. if you'd please again join me in thank our veterans for their service to this country. [ applause ]