tonight we look back at the allied victories in both the european and pacific theaters, with author and historian rick at kinson. 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of world war ii. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy american history tv, this week, and every weekend on c-span3. with joe biden as president-elect, stay with c-span for live coverage of the election process, and transition of power. c-span, your unfiltered view, of politics. author john wukovits discusses his book "dogfight over tokyo, the final air battle of the pacific and the last four men to die in world war ii," telling the story of a group of american aviators who took off

from the carrier "uss yorktown," attacked over japan after receiving word the war ended. the national world war ii museum hosted this online event and provided the video. >> thank you all for joining us today for what's going to be a great conversation about a really engaging and book that maybe should have been written before john got to it in the last 75 years since the war. "dog fight over tokyo." it's a great book. he is the author of many books, john wukovits. he came to us about ten years ago, we were just talking about this, came and gave a presentation on his book about boyington book and we have not managed to get him back here. we tried and he was going to come in april of this year but of course things got a little out of hand and we had to postpone that event indefinitely to talk on one of his other books. but i'm sure most of our viewers today know many of john's books.

"hell from the heavens," "for crew and country," and then "tin can titans" which won the samuel elliott morrison naval literature award the year it came out, probably one of the most prestigious awards that's awarded regarding naval history. so congratulations on that, many years belated. as i mentioned john was supposed to come here in april. and thankfully we've been able to work with our colleagues in the distance learning team, chrissy and kate to bring these programs to you all. this one specifically has to do with our theme of the end of the war, the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. and we're going to get right to it so we can try to get as many of the audience's questions asked and answered by john. but i'm going to start off with a handful of my own questions first. john, let's give the audience a brief summary, for those who have not yet read the book, give

them a brief summary of "dogfight over tokyo," please. >> well, it's -- the dogfight over tokyo explains the story of the last four americans to die in combat in world war ii. now, the -- by that, i don't mean so say they were the last four men to die, ever. this is in combat. we had thousands, obviously, of veterans who through the decades have passed away from injuries and wounds they received during the war. but these are the last four to actually be in a combat action, and then die. so i tell this story of those four. i also interweave with that the story of the air group of which they were a part, air group 88, and you and i will explain that a little bit more later. their activities in the final two months of the war.

the book shows how a bunch of young aviators, you know hot stuff, arrogant, bragging, they're ready to go to war, eager to get over there and they really were because they wanted to match their flying skills against the japanese pilots. it shows the gradual transformation of that attitude towards a more of a, hey, i don't want to be here, kind of a feeling. so i take the reader from training in the united states, and then to hawaii and saipan. after that they join the carrier yorktown and operate off the coast of japan in the final couple months of the war. so basically that's what the book is about. >> great. what brought you to this book? why did you decide to write it? when you did. and what resources were out there? what did you use? >> okay, i first came across this idea, maybe ten, twelve

years ago when i was researching for a biography of admiral hallsie that came out, i think, in 2010 and in there hallsie mentions in his autobiography that on the final day of war some pilots were killed. he said they should never be forgotten. and that struck me. so i put that idea -- you know, i filed it away because i had other projects coming up. and then finally a few years back i turned to it and thought, well, it's an intriguing idea if i could find out enough material to flesh out these four aviators. i mean, they obviously did not survive the war. so what about family? fortunately, you know, i thought to myself, if i can find two of the four, and get enough information on that, it will work. and i did. i found plenty of information from two of the four families.

and so that enabled me to flesh out those two, flplus other material on the third and the fourth aviator as well. so i picked up from kokomo the hobbs family had billy hobbs' diary and flight log and photographs and letters and all kinds of things. i interviewed billy hobbs' sister nancy who just communicated with her a couple days ago. she's in mid-90s, and going strong. the manda burg family, we have a picture there of dwight billy hobbs. first name was dwight. everyone called him billy and he was a guy who just loved aviation. his sister nancy said billy was born to fly. as a kid he made those planes out of balsa wood, jeremy, that

may be before your time but i used to love playing with those things. he'd make aircraft out of anything. a nearby airfield, he would run out to watch the planes land or especially when barn stormers were coming through town in kokomo, indiana. he just always -- everything about him was, hey, i want to fly. i love the excitement, the thrill. and so that was what billy hobbs was all about. then i contacted the mandeberg family, and you have a photo there of eugene mandeberg and he was quite opposite from billy. billy was all excitement, action. you know, he had a good time, dating girls and things like that. eugene, he was someone who, you know, you called you yeeeugene, didn't say, hey, gene, come over here, it was eugene.

it was serious. studious. he loved reading books. he wanted to be a writer. and, in fact, was. he wrote some columns for the michigan daily newspaper, which was on the ann arbor university of michigan campus. he had a sharp wit, but not the kind that said, hey, i have a great story to tell you, did you hear the joke about -- blah, blah, blah, he would watch and comment on what people were doing or how they said something or things like that. his stories were all about social ills of the time. he wrote a short story about a lynching in georgia, the evils of that. another story about a young soldier who went off to training camp and came home with a sharp shooter medal and was bragging to his mom, and she was worried, and he said, mom, don't worry, we're only shooting at targets and she said, well, jeesh, my god, he doesn't even understand

what he's about to get into. so eugene was the serious one. whereas billy wanted to get into fighters, fighter aircraft specifically, to match his skills with the japanese pilot in aerial combat. eugene got into fighters because he did not want to fly a torpedo plane or a dive comer whebomber had two or three men. he said i don't want to be responsible for anyone else's death in the air so i'll fly a fighter. then you had the third one, was -- we're not sure which picture you have coming up here, joe saloff from new york. and joe was one of those cocky aviators, you know, you watch tom cruise in the the "top gun" kind of thing, how they act was pretty much how he was, always

had a cigar, it seemed. of course that picture i have a cigar. but he was known for that. at a party in the united states just before they were going to go over to the pacific joe saloff, he was the wing man for the squadron commander richard kromelin. he told kromelin's wife i will bring him back safely. their planes knocked slightly into each other and kromelin went spinning to his death. the fourth one, howdy harrison was a veteran aviator, had already seen some action in the pacific and he was a father of a couple children. one, howdy in that picture is in the middle, being held up in

celebratory fashion by husband buddies. he was the subject of a fascinating rescue at sea while they were off the coast of japan. he had to land his plane in the sea of japan and they had a dumbo, the nickname of the aircraft, flew across through thick overcast. it was horrible conditions. but they succeeded in rescuing him pretty much right from under the noses of the japanese defenses, the way the newspapers described it. he had two children. one he had never seen because the child was born after they went to the pacific. so those were the four aviators. the book focuses on the first two, billy hobbs and eugene mandeberg. it was interesting when they were in training eugene mandeberg met a gal in new york city, sonja la veen, and they fell in love and planned to be

married once he returned. and so that's a prominent feature in the book. they obviously did not get married. but it turned out that sonja, who was still alive, and is today in new york city, so i was able to interview sonja about her recollections of her love from 75 years ago. >> yeah, one of the things about the book that really drew me in is basically what we do here at the museum by sharing the personal stories, by using those personal accounts and the fact that we do have the fortune of being around those who were living during that time. john, you had mentioned they were operating off the coast of japan. when we think of the air war over japan, i think nine out of nine people would probably think of the b-29 raids that were launching from the marianis islands. tell us about these operations, what was the purpose, how close were they getting, just tell us

about the operations beyond the b-29 heavy bombers. >> yeah, these were quite different, obviously. the smaller aircraft, fighters, torpedo planes and dive bombers. they had, under admiral hallsie, the third fleet was stationed off the coast of japan, and since it was a fast carrier task force they could attack one installation factory and shipyard in japan and then a couple days later be 200 or 300 miles away and attack something else. their purpose, before the atom bombs were dropped was to hit these targets, the military installations, armaments, factories, et cetera to prepare the way for the scheduled november invasion of japan itself, which was supposed to be a massive operation, obviously. so their purpose was to eliminate as many of those

military targets as possible. after the atom bombs were dropped, it changed. instead of hitting those targets to prepare for the eventual invasion they were to hit those targets to prod the japanese to the peace table. keep hitting them hard, hallsie kept saying that, we've got to keep hitting them, with everything we've got, even on the last day of the war, he said do you think we have enough left for one more strike to get it in? he was under orders to do that. hallsie had some ulterior motives. i don't know if you want me to get into that now or later. >> we'll get into admiral hallsie later as we talk about the decision to launch the mission. >> okay, do that later. now, the air group 88 off the coast of japan, their normal operation each strike was -- or

each mission day they would have a morning and an afternoon strike. it would entail three parts, there would be two sweeps by fighter aircraft of the target area to eliminate anti-aircraft batteries and clear the way for the dive bombers and torpedo planes to follow. they would have one of those in the morning. two sweeps followed by the strike of the dive bombers and torpedo planes. they would then have another one in the afternoon. they had 12 of those in the little more than a month that they were off the coast of japan. >> the missions that were running, just for our non-pacific historians, but the more european audience members that are watching today, reminded me a lot of the pre-d-day invasion in normandy and the missions that they were -- the 8th air force, the

9th air force to blow bridges and communication centers to basically soften up the landing ground. >> that's a great comparison. >> so they were on the cv-10, the yorktown. tell us d th-- they had a lot o time in between missions, a lot of time to ship out from the united states, tell us about life on board with the crew members of the yorktown. >> yeah, the -- as i said, they had the 12 strike days, mission days, and they were there, we'll say five weeks. so there was time while the carrier was moving into position for another attack. the air group, first of all, a boarded aircraft carrier you pretty much had two crews. you had the ship's company of about 2,700 officers and enlisted. the ship's company, their task was to take care of the carrier

and get it ready to launch aircraft. nothing more than that. they existed for the air group. the air group was a separate crew of about 300 aviators, divided into four squadrons, a fighter squadron, bombing squadron, torpedo planes and a bombing, fighting squadron, their aircraft. they were a separate section aboard the carrier. now, the yorktown's ship's company would stay with the yorktown. they would board a carrier for up to six months and then they were rotated out so that they could teach what they knew to training aviators, and be incorporated into other squadrons because they wanted some experience fighters in there. in their off time, i'll call it,

they were generally in the ready room, four ready rooms, one for each of the four squadrons. the ready rooms -- i was at the yorktown, it's floating, berthed off of -- that picture, it's point there in south carolina. they're not as large as we might think. they're cluttered. but they spent all their time there. that's where they would go to get the final information before a mission. and in the meantime they would be there playing cards or smoking ortizing one another, or whatever the case may be. so the aviators that i interviewed told me, yeah, that was pretty much our home base. the ready room, we had ours and then the dive bomber pilots had theirs, et cetera, et cetera. so that was pretty much it. there were -- off the coast of japan, a few hours of intense lethal activity, interspersed with many hours of, hey, let's

fill the time with whatever we can. >> the timeline, i think, is important, i think in most popular memory you have august 6th as the hiroshima bombing. that led to the japanese decision to surrender but there was a week plus lull in between the first bomb's drop and the actual emperor's message is broadcast. i think that gets us to the august 15th mission. can you give us a little bit of background on that mission? >> as you said, they were continuing to deliver their payloads on the japanese because they had not surrendered, but talk a little bit about that window and i'll ask a follow up question when you finish. >> sure. first of all, the missions --

there's a nice map of the final flight. their missions, excuse me, when day first arrived, were against general targets that they wanted to soften up for the invasion. after the atom bombs, tflyers, everybody, the ship's company as well, they wanted to get out of there. the war is practically over. let's not keep this up. why do we need to attack an airfield when an atom bomb has wiped out two cities? so they couldn't understand the necessity for keeping to go out and face these anti-aircraft batteries. you have to try and understand what it's like to fly into that, into that flak. they're shooting straight up at you and you're diving down and you can't weave to avoid the fire because the planes have to lock in on their targets. so you just -- as one aviator

told me, he said there's no skill to it, it's just luck, pure luck. we hated every minute of it. well, these guys didn't want to sacrifice their lives when the war was going to end anytime. but they followed orders, obviously. and they went out on a couple of missions after the atom bombs were dropped and a couple guys were killed. august 14th, one of the men recorded in his diary, god, i hope we don't have to go out on another mission tomorrow and then he added a little bit later in his diary, well, father moody, the catholic chaplain came out to say, no dice, we're going on a strike. and the next morning they had to do that. hobbs was with a team, hobbs mandeberg, harrison and saloff were with a team of 12 hellcat

fighters. hobbs was not supposed to be on this flight. he was scheduled for a later day, another team of four was supposed to go. but howdy harrison, the team leader, of which hobbs was a part, traded places with that other team because he said, hey, billy needs one more mission for promotion to lieutenant jg. he needs one more to get promoted to lieutenant jg, so will you switch with me? well, that other team was happy to switch. billy wasn't necessarily overwhelmed with joy at this. but it was arranged and off they went. excuse me. even though one of the pilots said, is this really necessary? well, they took off a little bit after 4:00 in the morning, the 12 hell cats did. it was a colloloudy day.

so as he got closer to japan two of the 12 hell cats were ordered to a higher altitude so that they could relay messages to and from the carrier yorktown. so now the hellcat number was down to ten that proceeded on to the target. after that a team of four, led by a guy named marvin odom became lost and the action report put it somewhat unusually. it said odom's team became lost, and these are the quotes, a finger of overcast. i was never sure what to make of that. it doesn't sound like a very cloudy area. he became lost and those four planes were now gone. the hellcat number was down to six that continued toward their target, which on the map that is showing was just south of tokyo. a little bit to the northeast of the dotted line there.

so they continued on toward tokyo. as they got near atsugi airfield, they were ready to attack, getting ready to attack when the commander contacted them and said, hey, stop, we just received word the japanese have agreed to cessation of hostilities. abort your mission and return to the carrier. of course that news elated all of them, all six of them, hey, we're going to get back, we survived the war, we're going to be going home, all those thoughts went screaming through their minds. they turn back and you can see on the map there, just north of atsugi airfield, and were on their way out to tokyo bay, when 15 to 20 japanese fighters jumped them. they became involved in a furious dogfight. joe saloff, one of men who

survived said he saw joe saloff's plane going down over tokyo bay, but saloff parachuted out. he saw that. that's all he knew. then that same pilot saw another hellcat explode in the air, but that guy got out by parachuting as well. the other two of the hellcats to be down that day were heldcats that smashed into farmland or terrain around the yokohama area there. that left two guys who got back to the carrier yorktown. four who did not. four who were shot down. the air group was crest fallen. one of the guys said, you know, this was supposed to be our happiest day, the war's over, but it wasn't. it was their saddest day. because not only do we lose four

good friends, but we lost them in the final moments. technically, you could say that these four were shot down after the war ended, if you want to, because they had been alerted that the japanese had agreed to cessation of hostilities. but they hadn't yet officially signed a surrender document, obviously, that was in september. so they were crestfallen. the -- one of the survivors, marvin odom, whose team was lost in the finger of overcast, said an interesting thing. he said he heard that howdy harrison said to the other guys, once they learned the war was over, hey, let's continue on and take a tour over tokyo. and then they got shot down. well, i spent some time in the book explaining why that was just not feasible. first of all, how would odom

know what he told those guys. odom was already going back to the carrier, that kind of thing. secondly, who's going to take a tour over anti-aircraft batteries that had been firing away at you all war, now manned by japanese who were angry about surrendering. i talked to a vietnam aviator who flew over a hundred missions over north vietnam and i asked him, if you got that message, you know, let's go on a tour, what would you do? i'd turn around on my own and go back. i'd never go on a tour. we would get out of there as fast as we can. well, while that was going on there were two japanese farmers tending their field, and they saw this dogfight occur, and one of the planes crashed not far from their field. they went over and inspected and it was -- you know, it was a plane in hundreds of pieces and things. so they contacted the japanese officials.

who came out and when it cooled they gathered up the remains of a person. but there was no head, no limbs, just a trunk was all. so no identification could be made. the japanese did -- they wrapped it up, and carried that to the local buddhist shrine for the buddhist monk to take care of so they properly took care of the remains of whoever that particular pilot was. now, while everybody in the united states, everybody in the pacific was celebrating the end of the war, well, everybody in the pacific who was from the united states and great britain, et cetera, the people back home, like in kokomo, billy hobbs' hometown, they threw an all night celebration, cars after midnight were honking their horns, and booze freely flowed and everybody was having a good

time. the hobbs and mandeberg families couldn't celebrate. they were happy. they assumed their sons were safe. because, i mean, let's face it, what are the odds of my son is going to die in the final moments of war? no, that's not going to happen. but still, cautious. we don't have word. let's wait until we find out word. well, in the coming days other families received word from their loved ones that, hey, i'm okay, i'll be coming home sooner or later, they didn't. in fact, some of the letters written to billy hobbs for his birthday, which happened to be august 15th, the day he was shot down, that was his 22nd birthday, some of the letters and cards for that were returned to the hobbs family with that horrible stamp, return to sender. and they're going, what's going on? it wasn't until september that

the government officially informed them that those four pilots were missing in action. they couldn't be declared dead because there were no remains. so they had to keep them on the books for a year and one day as missing. then on august 16th, 1946 is when they officially declared them missing. since the families buried mementos and memories instead of the actual remains, open wounds persisted for a long time, both hatty hobbs, the mom of billy, and zelda mandeberg, eugene's mom, truly believed one day their sons would come walking through the front door. they never gave up hope, knew it wasn't realistic. but moms being moms, you know, nancy hobbs told me, mom was always out on the front porch.

she thought billy would come walking up the pathway there. every year on the anniversary of that death, august 15th, hatty hobbs had a poem printed in the kokomo newspaper to honor her son. now, 1946, an army graves registration team that covered the remains of that pilot, that crashed in the farmland, they took those remains, eventually, to the philippines and buried them along with the remains which couldn't be identified because dna was not in existence then. they did recover some pieces of the aircraft that indicated probably is how they said it the plane came from yorktown and that it was a hellcat. so it was one of the three. saloff parachuted into the tokyo bay and was gone, it was hobbs,

ha mandeberg or harrison. eventually the government's dna team caught up with everything and just two weeks ago i was informed that they have those remains in hawaii and are testing them. they've already taken dna samples from the hobbs, mandeberg, et cetera, families. and hopefully they'll come to a conclusion on who that person is. and one family, at least, will get that kind of closure. >> it's an important mission that the dod still carries on. actually, a quick side bar, the museum is in partnership with that agency, the defense p.o.w./mia accounting agency. we have a research historian here, a post-doc young man who is helping them research the last actions of those who were fallen and remain unidentified. >> outstanding. >> so hopefully we'll figure out which one of those three boys it

was and they'll -- the family will be able to have a proper burial. john, a couple follow ups on that, you had mentioned the celebrations, obviously, for the allied side. what was your experience with any japanese archives, or -- we had an interview a couple weeks ago on the anniversary of the sinking of the "uss indianapolis" and the co-authors mentioned that the subcommander came home, even though he had just sunk a big capital ship, he came home feeling dejected as a loser because they had lost the war. was there a japanese reaction, or were they happy that they got kills in the closing days of the war? closing hours. >> you know, the main reaction would have been the former, the first one you mentioned, the indignity of losing. sakai said all of us were willing to fight to the death and now we had to surrender.

it was hard for them to handle that and that's why you had some of the incidents of some japanese planes attacking different areas, possibly the 15 or 20 who attacked the hobbs group may have had that as a reason of vengeance for having to surrender but they certainly considered it a loss of face. and only hearing the emperor's words pretty much was -- sealed, okay, we've got to accept, as the emperor said, you know we have to endure the unendurable kind of a thing. >> the biggest name, the greatest man in your book, is one of the most venerated in american military history, admiral bull hallsie, he plays quite a role in your book, and a controversial one at that. how does it tie in? how does he tie in? >> it does. as i mentioned i did a biography

of halsey earlier. i have long loved reading about admiral halsey, he's as fact and aggressive. he almost invented the sound bite, years before that was even a phrase, he was quotable in the press. newspaper correspondents loved chatting with him because he would give them something to chew on, quite often laced with profanities. if we put an actual quote of halsey's up on the screen, there would have to be asterisks and question marks and exclamation marks all over the place to fill in for the cuss words. he -- in the early two years of the war he brought american morale back up after pearl harbor. he did a marvelous job and for that alone he deserves a place in the pantheon of naval heroes. he attacked some early island raids in early 1942.

and he took dolittle's raiders on a launch in a bombing raid over tokyo. he went down to the south pacific as the commander of the south pacific and turned around the situation there. so he contributed greatly. and home front made him a big hero. well, then after that he started making a few mistakes. he blundered at the battle of lady golf by leaving his post to chase after aircraft carriers. so he had missed out both at the battle of the coral sea and midway. he wanted a crack at japanese carriers before the war ended. so he went chasing off after that and that allowed admiral karita to storm through the san bernardino strait and only the courageous actions of taffy iii,

the ships, jim horn fisher nobly mentioned in the last stand of the tin can sailors, took out a complete disaster there. halsey was criticized for that. then in december of '44 and june of '45 he led his ships into two typhoons, which one of them caused considerable damage to ships and lives. he would have been sacked but he was such a home front hero that admiral king in washington said we've got to keep him on. we can't get rid of him. so for halsey this station off the coast of japan was a chance at redemption, my reputation is tarnished but now if i can finish off the japanese fleet, if i can pound them until the last day of the war, i'll redeem and salvage my reputation. therefore some of his judgments, you know, according to air group

88 and every man i talked to in air group 88 condemns halsey without blinking an eye. that's their instant reaction. i blame him for the deaths, that kind of thing. because the weapon that halsey was using to help regain a reputation were the aviators, billy hobbs, eugene mandeberg, et cetera. and so there's that controversy. was he correct in doing that? well, he was under orders. nimits and king told him to do to so you have to follow orders. were those orders even appropriate when there was so little left of anything to hit? so that's the controversy. it was hard for me to write that section. i was writing a book about air group 88 so i had to write it from their point of view, their anger at this admiral that i

think deserves a little bit of a break because of the first two years of the war, the contributions he made there. but still, he had talked to air group 88 and there's -- you talk to him today, you know, watch out for what he might say. lieutenant hennesy in virginia, the same thing. he did pound the japanese navy, the remnants of the japanese navy pretty much out of existence and so he did achieve a lot under the orders he was given. but some say he went too far. he could have cancelled -- at least that last strike when the japanese were literally hours from saying, all right, we give up. >> to your point, my second to last question here, and then i'll close with a final question after we get to some audience questions. sadly, there must be somebody who was the last person to die in the war. and these four men, as far as the combat hours are concerned, were the last four in the

pacific theater. was this a mistake? >> if it was a mistake, it was only -- it was a mistake made by superior command, yeah, senior command by either king, nimits or halsee. it w it was not a mistake by the aviators. it was a -- they went out, didn't want to but they did what they were supposed to do, they did their duty. that in itself is admirable. in talking about this, i think of band of brothers, and you probably know the episode about the river, sending men out to capture a german prisoner of war, why do we do this? that commander, captain winters, cancelled the mission. you know, the aviators of air group 88 would have loved to

have captain winters in command, i suppose. so what they did was not a mistake. they were doing their duty and their deaths certainly were not in vain, even though it should never have happened. gene mandeberg spelled j-e-a-n, eugene's niece today is an artist on the west coast. she said, john, as i was growing up, i just -- i knew about eugene, and i felt him within me. he was driving me to do something creative. he wanted to be a writer and never got the chance so i must be an artist to at least have someone doing something creative like that to honor his memory. natalie snyder was billy hobbs' grand-niece, and don't ask me to figure out who she is.

anyway the family told me she was a grand-niece. i think she's in college now. but when she wrote the paper she was a freshman in high school, it was for english honors class and they could write a paper about anything. she chose as her topic an imaginary scene where hattie hobbs, billy's mom, is telling billy's siblings, including nancy, that billy's dead and that he was killed and natalie, you know 60 years later, she's writing about something that obviously has meant so much to that family. because of these things sonja levine the girl who was supposed to marry eugene and the mandeberg's united. they've gotten together and shared all kinds of information. and they did it thinking, you know, eugene is reaching out

across all these decades to bring us together, even though we never got married, sonja said, he was the first great love of my life. and i have never forgotten him. she went on to be married to someone else, have a wonderful life, and still does in new york city. just yesterday after you and i talked a little bit, jeremy, i got an email from carrie hobbs from kokomo, saying, hey, august 15th is coming up, saturday, thanks for writing the book. a lot of people in town are coming up to us and telling us what a remarkable thing billy hobbs did, and just how much the family appreciates that after these decades billy is being recognized for what he did. so yeah, i don't think there's too much in vain for these pilots. it was certainly a tragedy. but as you said, someone has to be the final to die. and unfortunately these four were.

>> well, as you started this conversation, john, you had said that there was a goal to make sure that these four were not forgotten. with your wonderful book "dogfight over tokyo" i think you've ensured that for the next couple hundred years as long as there are books or kindles, those four will not be forgotten. so thank you very much for this presentation. we have a few questions. i'm going to start with one from mike who's watching on facebook. he's curious about the degree of information air combat information officers had about location of potential p.o.w. camps. and how the pilots processed this information. if you came across anything with the p.o.w. camps, did they -- did any of them, air group 88, write about or talk about the anxiety of hitting, striking near them, or striking on them? >> yeah. they knew the location of many. i don't want to say every single

one. and tried to avoid it. the interesting thing was that after august 15th the other aviators of air group 88, especially of the fighting squadron, they scoured japan, went to every prison camp they could. they checked every record they could, you know, can we find billy hobbs, eugene mandeberg, et cetera, et cetera. so they did know the location of many of these and did go out and check to see, maybe they were shot down and captured, and they're still alive. unfortunately that didn't pan out. >> did any of the men comment or leave journals about -- and not just the four who died, but any 88 about the potential of striking their own comrades who were in the -- >> no specific comment that i came across. i read a lot of diaries and letters. i did not see one. >> great. and i see that our wonderful

helpers chrissy and kate have just put the link to your book in our store. of course, all the purchases that our web store support the museum's educational mission. we hope you check that out. we have a question from anthony who's watching the zoom here, do we know whether the japanese pilots who attacked our planes knew that the emperor had surrendered before they took off? how much after the broadcast did the emperor's surrender message did the dogfight occur? >> yeah, the high likelihood is how i'll put it. i can't say 100% certainty, was yes, they knew about it, and they went out and hunting for something. i didn't find anything in any records of the -- that air group that indicated, all right, we're going out to seek vengeance. but it was likely that that was the case.

in my book that's how i put it, that it could have been for some other reason. maybe they didn't know about it. but probably they did. >> we have another question from mike here. he's interested in the research process for the strike reconstruction. i think he's referencing the map that you used in the book. was this all from after action reports, did you put it through the flight logs, just tell us about how you came up with that. >> yeah, it was the after action reports were fascinating. and in most of my information came from those. and after action report was filed by each squadron, by each aviator, after a particular action was carried out. and so you go to those. the flight logs didn't help a whole bunch. first of all, these four pilots never made it back, and they changed their path, their flight

route there. and so there was nothing much in the flight logs. so it was reliant strictly on what the survivors, odom, hanson, proctor, those men, what they wrote. and by that i could get a description. if an after action report said that the pilots were ten miles southwest of atsugi airfield then i knew how to plot that on the map. if odom said we were attacked five miles east of atsugi airfield i knew how to route that on that final map as well. so it was a combination of the official records, plus personal reminiscences. >> great. john, i know the answer to this, because we're in communication. but i think the audience would like to know what's next? and i understand there's two things in the works. >> there are two things.

they sort of happened coincidentally, you know, at the same time with the same publisher. the one i'm currently immersed in is a biography of a marine g chesty polar, who is considered the marine's marine. he's a legend in the marine corps. he was awarded five navy crosses for his actions in nicaragua and in the pacific. all kinds of other medals. the men loved him. he was someone who would rather hang around the privates and corporals than especially with the staff back at headquarters. they drove him nuts. but i'm doing a biography on that for dutton. they're doing a series on great war commanders to be out in paperback version next -- early next year some time.

the other one involves eddie rick rickenbocker. some will know eddie, famous car racer, indianapolis 500 participant, who then in world war i became the leading american ace, chasing after german pilots and things like that. in 1942, eddie rickenbocker went on a secret mission for the government. they asked him to fly over to the south pacific and deliver a message to general macarthur. on the way out the plane made a crash landing. they ran out of fuel. they couldn't locate one of the interim destinations. they overshot it because of navigation mistakes. they were lost at sea for three weeks. by they i mean a group of eight men that were on the plane.

newspapers in the united states -- actually, when i started researching this was just about the time kobe bryant died. and the reaction to eddie rickenbocker's death was even more so than that. all newspapers covered it and eventually they gave up hope and some even printed obituaries of eddie rickenbocker. they were found three weeks at sea and made it back. i explained this to the editor and he said, i've never even heard of this. it's a great tale. fortunately, there is all kinds of information. five of the eight men -- one did die during this time in the pacific. five of of the seven wrote books about it, small books. i've been in contact with four of the families to get other information. so, those are the next two books i'll be doing. >> great. we have -- well, we're looking

forward to both of them. hopefully by then we'll be hosting the public programs in person and bring you back for one or maybe get a two-fer out of you. >> i'm fine with that. >> michael has a question on zoom here. were you able to identify the japanese pilots in the attack? >> no, no. >> can you talk a little bit about the japanese records or lack thereof? >> i didn't find many. i couldn't find my effort to the after-action reports, the war diaries, ships' logs and personal reminisces. i like to interview the people who are there and their families as much as possible. >> understood. another question from david. you mentioned the pilot had parachuted into tokyo bay and did not survive, one of the four. >> that's correct. they think it was joe saloff, they're sure. parachuted out of his plane and

then lost sight of him and nothing ever turned up. >> was the survival rate poor for pilots bailing out over water and did they -- was that just par for the course that they would drown or was he possibly wounded when -- >> if they could somehow make it down with their plane, you know, crash land, the chances of rescue were very high. just parachuting in the ocean the odds plummeted. one chapter in the book is about air/sea rescues. it's fascinating how they did that. the u.s. navy would go right into tokyo bay if a pilot was downed and was on a raft and they would just pick him up right there. so the odds were okay that way. >> a quick question just for clarificati clarification. the dogfight was after the surrender of the broadcast of the emperor's surrender message?

>> correct. >> and was there -- is there any record of any japanese planes shot down? this is from amy. any japanese planes shot down during this august 15th dogfight? >> the air group records indicate eight japanese planes were shot down by the six hellcat fighters. who did what is up for debate, but they do indicate eight were shot down. >> i don't see any more coming in online. we're hitting that one-hour mark we would like to hit. richard says great for answering his question. i think that summarizes this conversation. john, you and i spoke yesterday of the house of world war ii history and there seems to be an infinite amount of doors to be opened. you and certainly found a new door. a wonderful story that i think

really honors these four men who perished and also air group 88, the yorktown and all of those who served in the pacific theater. so, thank you very much for coming to share this with us on the eve of the 75th of the wukovitz. thank you very much, sir. >> thank you, jeremy. it's been a pleasure. you had great questions. i know you're always prepared,

which is not always the case with some people elsewhere, but you, i know, you're top notch. thank you and thank everyone else there, the staff for the help today and every other time i've been there. >> great. we'll get you back soon and we'll see all of you back here next wednesday. have a great and safe weekend. c-span2 live this morning from the senate judiciary committee just waiting for a hearing with former deputy fbi director andrew mccabe to get started. he'll be testifying today about the fbi's russia investigation. the chair of the senate judiciary committee is lindsey graham. senator dianne feinstein of california is the lead democrat on the committee. you're watching live coverage on c-span3.