division, as i said, and i was in the ninth marines which is a regiment of about 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 at that time they didn't need any more people on the island. 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 my learned 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, like you said, war is war, and they were the enemy. that's all i can say. >> thank you, sir. [ applause ] as members of the greatest generation, what lessons regarding ethical leadership do you feel are lost on today's society? start with general frankowsky. >> can you say the question again. 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. in some people it's born, and in others it has to be developed over time. and it takes courage to recognize that you're in a position of command or supervision where leadership is required and then recognize you

have the responsibility of actually doing what you can to meet the -- what's required of you in that role. and it isn't always -- you don't necessarily have clear 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. in other words, as i got experience in a leadership role in one form or another, even as a cadet, you know, as an area death, you -- it depended upon what you were doing. you do have a leadership requirement from time to time.

and that's all part of the development is developing an understanding of 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 as a member of the class of 2013, and i congratulate you all, because as cadets, it's a competitive thing. there's thousands of young americans that would just love to have your seat right now. so i -- i congratulate you about

having this achievement and encourage you 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, a night bombing. the daylight bombings stopped when general lemay became commander of the 20th air force. and on june 20th, 1945, 125 bombers took off from northfield to bomb shizuoka, japan, and two of the bombers crashed together in mid-air collision, and 23 young americans were killed. a japanese man by the name of

ito 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 chemistry 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, a young man by the name of david killed a giant by the name of goliath with a slingshot and a pebble. in those 5,000 years we have developed much greater slingshots and much greater pebbles. and albert einstein said there may very well be a world war iii, but there will be 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. [ applause ] >> 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. >> well, i've always managed to maintain the leadership that

i've shown -- that i showed on iwo jima. i made my life principle, 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 inbred, and they have it 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. that's 89% of the people do not like what the politicians are doing. 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. you about as my learned 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 the 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 up 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. >> i don't think 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 an important role in leadership 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 so i just decided one day that i would drop in, and on

that shop, and -- and so there's these enlisted people working on -- on these bombsights to get them in good working order and able to operate as they shot so what when the bombardier put the crosshairs on the target the systems would all 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 want you 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 to be successful in our 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 and parcel of the whole operation, and it's important that each and every individual feels that he or she is part of a team that's got a job to do working together. >> start out here, sir. >> hi, sir. i'm lieutenant peter toles, political science professor here at the air force academy. i'm just really interested in your view of the difference of today. you guys pointed out that leadership and maybe ethics aren't as solid as they were in 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 enable 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 cull tyre tour. 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 the 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 male, of 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. >> general frankosky, squadron 24, i'm also a military history major here. this past summer i had the chance to go see some of the bases there, and on the trip were five aviators, four of whom were taken as pows and three of whom were flying out of the r.e.f. bases and having heard their stories and seeing places where the bloody 100 bomb group, who 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 and the heads of the other pilots? >> i know that the guys over in europe had a good chance if they bailed out over enemy territory that there were people on the ground that they looked like that they could hide in the scenery or that they could get help. i had a p-51 freeze, automatic mixer control freeze at a higher altitude and i got down to a low altitude and i didn't have much power in my airplane and i rolled the canopy back and i was going to bail out over the bay over 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. the japanese, i had jack rightman 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 -- 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. that answer your question? >> general, we'll extend the same question to you. what fears did you have when you were flying? did you fear the prospect of going down and becoming a prisoner of war? >> well, when you fly mission after mission about every third or fourth day and you see other b-17s getting shot down, 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 though the airplane is going down, that the crew was able to jump out and parachute. they may end up as p.o.w.s, but at least they have survived that particular incident. and i can remember how all of us on the airplane when we saw somebody going down, first thing we'd look for to see if there were any chutes. because one of the responsibilities we had as squadron commanders was to see to it that the families of the downed airmen were notified of the fact that their husband or father was missing in action.

we always reported that but never reported it as being killed in action. we always reported it as being missing in action so hopefully that was the situation that the downed airman 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 a bombardier in our group who was a very good at his role. when he -- he had a chance to acquire the target in his bomb sight -- which of course you couldn't always do. sometimes there was cloud cover over the target so you then had to just release it, the bombs, on radar. but if your bombardier was able

to acquire the target visually, and then synchronize on the target, the chances are that you would be successful at hitting near the target. and i remember this one particular bombardier that he -- his airplane got shot down and whatnot, 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 and he landed in friendly territory and was able to work his way down through spain and whatnot. he was actually walking back on the base. it was a very delightful surprise to see that he had actually survived that particular mission. so you always had that hope that anybody else got shot down, that

somehow they would be able to survive. >> we've got time for one more question. >> 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 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 joint army or the navy. 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 pounds and were about 5'10". 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 even get considered. they're more intelligent. young people of today. and they are more dexterious with their fingers because of all the games.

i just think that the young people of today are much better educated and -- than the people they were in 1941 to '45. the same with the officers and the same with the senior officers. it is just a much better armed force that we have today and it is showing in 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 arian people, a 1,000-year reich. and in japan, the war was known as the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere, and japan wanted to dominate all of the pacific rim. that doesn't exist today. entir 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 in the 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 the 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 thanking our veterans for their service to this country.