 Well, good evening. A terrific crowd here tonight. Great to see y'all here. I'm Professor John Jackson, and it's my great pleasure to be the master of ceremonies for tonight's very unique program. As always, we begin with a few administrative announcements. Please make sure all your cell phones and other devices are turned off. Secondly, as you depart this evening, in addition to the south gate near the Naval War College Museum, the college's east gate between McCarty Little Hall and Sims Hall will also be available for outbound traffic and gate 17 at the north end of the base will be open. So we don't have to funnel everybody through gate one. You'll have a couple of choices. So you can see your options there on the slide. If you didn't get a chance to see the Nimitz exhibit in the lobby, you may want to do so after the formal program while we will all be sharing a piece of birthday cake. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge that this event is being streamed live around the world through the Navy Live blog and we welcome the members of this extended audience as well. I can safely say that no one at this college has been more enthusiastic or supportive of the launch of the digital gray book than our president, Mayor Admiral Ted Carter. Admiral Carter is an avid student of maritime history who has already distributed compact disc versions of the gray book to the Chief of Naval Operations and the Pacific Fleet. Here to share his thoughts about this project and to introduce some of our special guest is the 54th President of the Naval War College, Mayor Admiral Ted Carter. Well, good evening everyone. What an exciting night this is. And before I get started, I want to make a couple of special acknowledgments here in the audience. Ambassador Middendorf, sir, where are you? If you would please raise your hand so everyone can see you. Ambassador Middendorf, one of our secretaries of the Navy, we're so honored to have you here. A good friend of the Nimitz family as well as the Arleigh Burke family and pretty much everyone that's ever been in the Navy. So it's great to have you here, sir. I also want to acknowledge Admiral Jim Hogg, who is here, former head of our strategic studies group and a great friend of the War College. Admiral Guillermo Biura, who is a former Chief of Naval Operations for the Columbia Navy and on our staff here. I want to thank everyone here tonight. It's really great to have everyone here for this historic event that's been nearly 70 years in the making. As I mentioned, we have a number of special guests. I mentioned just a couple here up on the front, but I have a number of others I want to mention. We're happy to welcome Dr. Henry J. Hendricks, the second, the director of Naval History who commands the Navy History and Heritage Command, the official repository of the original Gray Book. Now a lot of you may or may not know this, but tonight is 129th birthday of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. He was born on this date in 1885 in a small limestone cottage just across from the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg, Texas. We're particularly pleased to have Fleet Admiral Nimitz's twin grandsons, Chester Nimitz-Lay and Richard Freeman-Lay with us this evening. Chet and Dick, could you please rise and be recognized? Now we're going to learn a great deal more about Fleet Admiral Nimitz from our guest speaker, Dr. Craig Simons, professor emeritus of the U.S. Naval Academy about whom I will have a few more words to say in a few minutes. Now as you might imagine, this project to create a digital facsimile of the Gray Book was begun by noted author and historian John Lundstrom who saw the value of the Gray Book as a unique record of the war in the Pacific. Health reasons kept him from pursuing the task and the effort was picked up by the Naval War College professor Dr. Doug Smith who was then head of the Strategy and Policy Division of the College of Distance Education. Doug was also commander of the Newport Commandery of the Naval Order of the United States and he encouraged the order to fund $5,000 to hire a contractor to scan the 4,000 plus pages of the Gray Book. These funds along with a similar contribution from the Naval War College Foundation enabled this project to be accomplished. Additionally tonight's contemporary civilian civilization lecture is sponsored by the Naval War College Foundation through the generosity of its members and we're very pleased to have Major General Steve Seider, the president of that organization here and we thank them for their continued support. Now many, yes many people, faculty, students and staff had a hand in creating this digital Gray Book and while I cannot recognize them all here tonight I would like to ask the following people to please come forward and join me in front of the stage as their names are called. And Professor Jackson is going to come up here and read your names. I had to get some more part of this event. First Dr. Alan Benson as a small token of his appreciation Dr. Carter is presenting his personal commemorative coin as Naval War College President. Dr. Evelyn Sherpack, Dr. John Hatendorf Mr. Michael McHenry and the previously mentioned Dr. Douglas Smith. The Admiral also thinks several team members who weren't able to join us tonight including Ms. Teresa Clements, Ms. Sue Cornacia, Jack Merinda and Leslie Varecia. Thank you very much folks for making this happen. Now we have a really complete program tonight so I ask everybody to do a relax and enjoy. We're going to have a couple speakers here so it's going to be a fun night. I'm going to turn the podium over to our own Dr. Alan Benson who led the team that brought the Nimitz Gray Book back into the light. Dr. Benson is a professor and library director at the Naval War College. He received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and continues postdoctoral research and artificial intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University. He's authored six books and numerous articles on topics relating to the internet, computer security archival theory and information science. Please give a warm, new port welcome to Dr. Alan Benson. Thank you Admiral Carter. It's a pleasure to join all of you today to speak about the Nimitz Gray Book, to extend thanks to the Naval War College Foundation and the Naval Order of the United States for their support of this project and to recognize Dr. Surepek our archivist along with many others here at the Naval War College and the Naval History and Heritage Command. There is quite a few of a dedicated significant time to make this project a success. The Naval War College has two distinctly notable properties that pin its claim to higher education. Knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. The college has a research arm generating new ideas. We might call this component the knowledge creation access. The college also has the ability to share this knowledge with others. Sometimes the entire world in books and journals and through the internet. Today we celebrate a unique opportunity that brings these two things together. Knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. It's a significant occasion where we take a very significant Naval cultural heritage object, the Nimitz Gray Book, and we reimagine it and we redeploy it as something new. The project itself presented us with two formidable challenges. How do you create and preserve a digital facsimile of a document this large, over 4,000 pages, a document buried deep within the archives at the Naval History and Heritage Command? And second, how do you make it available to everyone? First we tackle the problem of digitization and preservation. We decided early on that we would scan the entire document at the highest possible resolution and create an archival master copy. The resolution is so high that not only can you see the original text with clarity, but you can see these faint handwritten inscriptions penciled into the margins by the original creators and by the early readers of this document. You can even see the color and the texture and the fiber of the paper itself. Preservation will be an ongoing effort. Transferring information from one storage medium to another storage medium. One generation after another. So far we've done this. We've created this archival quality master copy and we're going to be storing it in three different locations. We've also printed two hard copies of the Nimitz Gray Book. One of them is here tonight. This is printed on acid-free paper and under good conditions it should last over two centuries. The second challenge how do you make this available to everyone I think is more of an intellectual challenge. We started by building and designing a new Naval Historical Collection website so this is where you go to view the Nimitz Gray Book. You can even download a copy if you like. And there are other interesting historical artifacts there that are part of a larger online exhibit. By virtue of the internet being ubiquitous the Nimitz Gray Book is now ubiquitous. If you have an internet connection you have access to it. But I think the real challenge here is how do you get 4,000 pages of text to loosen its grip. So hand in hand with scanning this document we built a full text searchable index. This captured 60% of every word in the Nimitz Gray Book. The other 40% will capture by hand transcribing the book over time. In the meantime we're building keyword indexes to help researchers grasp better meaning on some of the important subjects in the book. In closing I'd like to invite all of you to visit our new website, examine the Gray Book. Not necessarily looking for a key to unlock some hidden mystery but view it as an account of the events as they unfold it. Try to see it as Nimitz sought with all the absorption of a fleet admiral drawing out the truth, sharing what you find with others all in the hopes of enlarging our understanding and perspective of what the Gray Book means. Thank you. Now as Dr. Benson takes his seat I want to share some inside baseball with each and every one of you. From the day I got here I knew that this project was going to happen and we actually planned out when we would deliver this and how we would and we hoped at our very best that this would get up and out to the American public and in fact it has. Newspapers across the country have carried this story. The Associated Press has carried this story and in fact CBS News tonight carried a story that not only is this great presentation out there they've already crashed our website so it's both a great news story and one that we try to avoid but we've certainly had a spike of interest which is terrific to know. Those of us who study naval history come to know and respect the great naval leaders of the past through the eyes of their biographers and through the written words the leaders leave behind. It is unusual when you get a glimpse of a great man through the eyes of family members who knew him on the most personal level. I've been privileged to meet two men who knew Chester Nimitz not as an admiral but as a loving grandfather. The classic biography by noted Naval Academy historian E. B. Potter is filled with details about the life of the remarkable naval officer and also with priceless details about his personal life. On page 432 he writes about the months after Nimitz retired as chief of naval operations. He writes quote, Chester and Catherine began seriously hunting for their heart's desire a house of their own something that they had never had. Chester specified only two requirements of the house. They should have a long view preferably of the sea and must have three bathrooms because he didn't want to share a bathroom with his grandchildren who he hoped would be visiting them often. Well we certainly are privileged tonight. We have two of those grandchildren with us. Chester Nimitz lay and Richard Freeman lay, both of whom have become very close friends of this war college. Chet would you please join us up here on the stage and share a few of your thoughts about your grandfathers with us tonight. We actually did visit our grandparents when our father James lay was taking command of the USS Helena in Long Beach and it was the sixth longest month of my grandparents' life. They couldn't wait to get us out. The first thing we want to do is thank the war college for inviting us here to this event this evening. Dick and I were here a month ago and John Jackson gave us the gray book on CD and I can tell you that we've been lost for the last 30 days. Little is being done at home, little is being done at work. It's been better than Christmas for us. It's a day by day very granular record of the war in the Pacific. It also came at a very fortuitous time for us when we were out at Pearl Harbor last September for the unveiling of the statue of our grandfather off the fan tale of the Missouri. We met an intriguing fellow named Michael Lilly who is a lawyer in Oahu, former Attorney General of Hawaii and a retired naval captain. He spoke at the ceremony about a very special relationship that his grandparents, Sandy and Una Walker shared with our grandfather. Potter mentions this in his biography but devotes only about three paragraphs to it. The Walkers were an old and prominent family on the island and it first spent our grandfather when as a 35-year-old lieutenant commander he had been ordered out to Pearl Harbor to build a Du Novo submarine base back in the early 1920s. The Walker's house on the beach at Oahu was sink packs placed for R&R during the war and there was quite a bit of correspondence from our grandfather all of which was saved by the Walker family. Michael has just completed a book about all this and he's called it Nimes at Ease and it's going to be published this year possibly by the Naval Institute Press. That's not been decided yet. But one can see how nicely the events in these letters from our grandfather to the Walker's tie-in with the corresponding entries in the gray book. And I'll give you one example. In a letter dated 19 May 1945 our grandfather writes to the Walkers that he is quote, returned on the 17th from a two-day visit to an old friend O&F being capitalized an old friend. And relates that he brought along a present of midway peanut candy. I have no idea what that is. The old friend's son who proceeded deep the entire box and then spent the afternoon throwing it all up. When we read the gray book entries for May, for 15 May we see that quote, Fleet Admiral Nimitz accompanied by Rear Admiral Sherman and Commander Lamar, departed Guam for a conference with sink AFPAC at Manila. So we now know that the old friend was General McArthur and the child spewing his midway cookies peanut candy all afternoon was Arthur Big Arthur IV. So it's tying in very nicely together. I just want to, it's one intriguing entry in the gray book from 20 June 1942, what appears to me to be an editorial comment by the U.S. Navy. Quote, consideration is being given to take in the offensive in the Southwest Pacific. Because of the coral sea and midway battles, the time may be here to at least retake the enemy positions in the new Britain, New Guinea area. It is interesting to note that this question is aired over the radio and in the press today. Origin, General McArthur end of quote. And while we're on that subject, one question that was frequently asked of the four Nimitz children is what did your dad really think about General McArthur? And they would honestly reply that he never discussed him or any other officer unless it was to offer praise. Well, about ten years ago our mother was having a drink with her neighbor up in Wallfleet on Cape Cod noted his Civil War historian and Ulysses S. Grant biographer William McFeely. And he mentioned he was doing some research on Christopher Columbus and she said, oh, I think I have dad's biography of Christopher Columbus that dad had at the Naval Academy and you're welcome to it. And she got up and took the book down from the shelf and handed it to him. Two days later he's back and he's got a big grin covering his face and he said, Kate, have you ever read this book? And she said, no, why? And he opened it up to a page showing a steel engraving of Columbus having just gotten out of a small shellop, wading through the waters towards the beach and its caption, Columbus arrives in the new world and next to it in the margin written in pencil and clearly in her father's handwriting appeared these words in early McArthur. So now you know. Two days ago we celebrated mom's 100th birthday in Wallfleet. Her only living contemporary friend, Roberta McCain, Senator McCain's mother celebrated her 102nd birthday on the 7th of this month. Talk about all friends. Our father James Lay and John's father Jack became her classmates at Annapolis Class of 1931. Mom is the oldest of the four Nimitz children and the only one that's still alive. She lives at home, enjoys good health, knocks back a martini every evening, always preceded by her father's favorite toast from the old British Navy, which is here's to a bloody war or a sickly season, which were the only two paths for promotion back then. Every town on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has an item called the Boston Post Cane, which is given to the oldest resident, living resident in each town. Mom just received it from the town of Wallfleet, a company by a letter signed by the town administrator Harry Chicanion, whose son commander Michael Chicanion has just been transferred from the Nimitz Division of ONI here to the war college. So it's a small world. Welcome aboard, Commander, if you're here. Mom accepted the cane with grace, but told the family in private, you know, I really didn't want that damn thing. Everybody who receives it dies. And really, we can't fault this lot. She calls it the scepter of death. You know, why couldn't they get it to Edith? I said Edith was born in April. She's not doing it. She has some wonderful war stories herself. And one of our fragrances is as follows. She and her sister Nancy shared an apartment on Q Street in Washington. Their parents, as a matter of fact, had the apartment right across the hall. And that's where the family was gathered on the afternoon of December 7th, 1941, listening to a broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra when they heard the flash announcement that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. And then sometime shortly thereafter, their father was transferred to Oahu, and then their mother left to move out to San Francisco to be close to her husband when he flew in to meet with Admiral King. A resident and notorious gossip in the apartment from down below began to pester Mom and Nancy, insisting they were getting inside dope on the war from their father, which of course was not the case. But finally one day when they had enough, they told this woman that their father had sent them a POW from Europe, that he was cleaning their apartment, cooking their meals, running their errands, and his name was Umlaut. Now, this woman had some great information. Didn't seem to make any difference to this nitwit that their father had nothing whatsoever to do with the ETO. But after about several weeks when she hadn't seen Umlaut around, she buttonholed Mom and Nancy again and said say you two only have two bedrooms in your apartment, what does Umlaut sleep? In the broom closet, Nancy replied, well that's not possible, this woman said. Well Nancy said he's very thin and he can sleep standing up. Instantly, this neighbor realized that she'd been had. She turned on her heels and did not bother the girls ever again. Mom wanted us to say this to you this evening that her father told her that the year he spent studying here at the War College was the most important year of his education as it related to the war to be fought in the Pacific 18 years later and she also wanted to express her sincere thanks to the college for sponsoring this event and her father's birth date of boot. And to thank all of you who serve this country in uniform, out of uniform, active and retired for keeping us so strong and so safe. Thank you. Before I introduce our distinguished guest speaker, I wanted to thank the lay brothers for joining us tonight and I hope you'll extend our personal greetings to your mother, which I know everyone here enjoyed the stories. I just happened to have been sent a picture of her today and I was amazed at a hundred years old, she looked like she was still ready to go out and do some dancing. So I understand that every once in a while you make an M&M run to the house which I understand stands for male and martini, so somehow I think the celebrations will continue. This is an exciting night that gives us the opportunity to honor one of the college's most distinguished graduates in Chester Nimitz. He completed 11 months of study at the college in 1923 and in later years he wrote, I credit the Naval War College for such success as I achieved in strategy and tactics both in peace and war. We like to believe that we continue to contribute to the future success of our graduates as one token of respect to the memory of Chester Nimitz. Tonight I am pleased to announce that we will soon rename the course of study for our senior officers here at the War College. From today on forward that courseware will be known as the Chester W. Nimitz course and national security and strategic studies. I am hopeful that in years to come our alumni, whether they be U.S. officers, joint officers, civilian or international they will speak proudly of having completed the Nimitz course at the Naval War College. Now please let me turn my attention to introducing our guest of honor. I have to go back to my days at the U.S. Naval Academy. My classmates talked enthusiastically about a great course taught by our guest speaker Dr. Craig Simons. Now unfortunately I was never able to get into that class because it was always overbooked. So I'm pleased to be able to get a taste of his teaching here with all of you here tonight. Craig's full biography is in your program so let me just mention that he is the author of a dozen books and the editor of nine others. He has won numerous prizes and awards including sharing a $50,000 Lincoln Prize with James McPherson. Craig is making a return engagement at the Naval War College since he served as flag lieutenant to the 36th president of this college Vice Admiral B.J. Sims in 1971. Craig welcome back to the Naval War College. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the career and contributions of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Dr. Craig Simons. Thank you Admiral Carter. I appreciate the introduction very much. I'm sorry you couldn't get into my class. I'll try to make up a little bit for that tonight if I can. I want to express my gratitude to the Naval War College community for inviting me back to this splendid event and for the role that it played in bringing about the access that we will now be able to have to the Gray Book. This is a remarkable introduction that I used on a number of occasions but particularly when I was researching my history of the Battle of Midway. It includes the message traffic and other correspondence that took place between flag officers and flag officers and their subordinates in the Pacific Theater. The minutes of staff meetings and periodic running summaries of issues and events as perceived from the headquarters of Black Sink Poa in Pearl Harbor. It is quite literally a window into Admiral Nimitz's headquarters during the war and reading it pulls aside the curtain of history and allows us the opportunity to look inside what was happening in staff meetings and planning sessions when the decision makers about events were deciding what those events would be. We can trace the planning process a lot of which of course was pioneered here at the Naval War College for large scale operations and watch the war unfold almost as if we were in the room. Now despite the name and despite the binding we see on the hard copy here on the table I've always wondered where the name Gray Book came from because as you saw in the slides the original that I used at the Washington Navy Yard is actually bound in Navy Blue which always seemed appropriate to me. And I tried to seek out the origin of the name the Gray Book and went online to do so. This is of course the first place everyone looks these day. What I got were several score referrals to 50 Shades of Gray. I can only hope my search wasn't recorded to trigger targeted advertising for future products. For 30 years after the war this source remained classified. You saw the secret and top secret labels crossed out in the original pieces on the screen. Even after it was declassified in 1972 scholars had to travel great distances to the Washington Navy Yard what was at one time called the Naval Historical Division and the Naval Historical Center and Naval History and Heritage Command in the Washington Navy Yard and of course after 2001 in the new world in which we live now scholars had to leap yet one more barrier in the security barriers that kept them from this remarkable source. Those not associated with the Department of Defense as I was teaching at the Naval Academy had even more difficulty. As we heard in 2009 thanks to the generosity of the American Naval Records Society, the Naval Order of the United States and the Naval War College Foundation the contents were scanned so that a CD-ROM version became available. And that helped a lot but making copies of carbon paper copies on tissue paper proved imperfect and it was evident that a fully digitized version, the version we celebrate and welcome this evening was far more desirable and in fact essential. Now thanks to the generosity of the Naval War College Foundation and the hard work of many people, a number of whom are honored here tonight, we have that. After 70 years that curtain of history can be drawn aside and we can look into Admiral Nimitz's headquarters and on behalf of my fellow historians across the country including John Lundstrom who was one of the initial individuals who suggested this idea I want to thank all of those who were involved. And what do we see when we part that curtain? We learn a great deal about the day-to-day management of the war in the Pacific and a great deal as well about the leadership characteristics of the man whose 129th birthday we celebrate today, the man who orchestrated the Pacific War, Admiral Chester Nimitz. In addition to illuminating the success of the operational planning process, much of which as I suggested was developed here in Newport in the interwar years, it becomes evident that one essential key to Allied and American success in the Pacific was Nimitz's personal role as a theater commander and in particular as I intend to make clear tonight his calm and even temperament. His self-possessed demeanor allowed him to deal successfully not only with subordinates at every level of command but also with his superiors often an even more difficult job including both the cheerfully buoyant Franklin Roosevelt as well as the curmudgeonly and judgmental nationalist king. At the risk of oversimplifying an issue as complex and nuanced as leadership particularly here at the Naval War College, I think it is possible to construct two general leadership tropes in assessing the generation of World War II leaders. One includes those who exuded a stubborn ferocious bellicosity, the kind of challenging, unrepentant bulldog style we ascribe to men like Winston Churchill. Then in this group are assertive, stubborn, and they possess a conviction that their view is not only the right one it is the only one. In addition to Churchill it includes George Patton, William F. Halsey and the aforementioned Ernest J. King. These are good men to have on your side in a war. But in addition another category includes those men whose leadership style was characterized by thoughtful calculation and pragmatic realism. There is less chest pounding, more analysis, less bluster, more introspection. This group includes George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Raymond Spruance after whom this building is named, and of course Chester Nimitz. In fact in many ways Nimitz personifies this leadership style. He was adept at picking the right person for the job willing to listen to those he kept around him and focused on them enough to hear not only what was spoken but what was implied. This is a rare skill because it is often tempting especially for a leader high up in the chain of command to hear what he expects to hear or what he wants to hear. Nimitz could gently probe until he learned what he needed to hear. In addition Nimitz was realistic enough to appreciate that his military decision had a political component and that this political component was often one that mattered most. He could assess a problem coolly, see all or at least most aspects of the possible outcomes, reason his way through it make a decision and then manage the consequences of that decision without a lot of public agonizing guessing. He was in short a pretty cool customer though he never personally led a fleet into battle. He was nevertheless the essential person of the pacific war. Roosevelt saw this early. As president Roosevelt liked to exercise personal oversight over the appointment of flag officers especially in the navy that he always referred to as his navy. Most presidents of course simply rubber stamp the list that is presented to them by the various boards and service chiefs who compile those lists through a lengthy and detailed process. Well not FDR. On one occasion when a list of proposed promotions came to his desk from the navy department he ran his eye carefully down the list and then stopped at one name. What is this he said? I don't even know this man. He did however know Chester Nimitz. In fact Roosevelt had had his eye on Nimitz since the 1930s at least and had sought to appoint Nimitz to command the pacific battle fleet in 1940 before the war began. Nimitz declined believing that elevating him over so many men who were senior to him would be bad for the service. So instead Roosevelt nominated husband Kimmel. It's fascinating to speculate about how the pacific war might have been different if it had been Nimitz on duty at Pearl Harbor on that December 7th and not Kimmel. But in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack Roosevelt met that same afternoon with his advisors in the White House and this time he wasn't going to take no for an answer. According to one witness he said tell Nimitz to get the hell out to Pearl and don't come back till the war is over. And of course he did. So what was it that drew FDR's attention to Nimitz? One thing surely was his administrative competency. Even in those days the ability to manage a complicated bureaucracy was a key requirement for any senior officer. Nimitz served consecutive terms in Washington as head of what was then called the Bureau of Navigation which not only managed both the Hydrographic Office and the Naval Observatory but also Naval Personnel. In fact it was subsequently renamed the Bureau of Personnel in 1942. As chief of that Bureau Nimitz kept track of virtually the entire Naval Officer Corps and had a hand in the assignment of a generation of naval officers. Not incidentally he also got to know the principal string pullers in Washington like George Marshall in the Army with whom he shared a number of characteristics. Nimitz remembered those officers he could rely on and those who had disappointed him and this information proved invaluable after 1942. Some of Nimitz's friends and he had a lot of them worried about the fact that he served consecutive tours in Washington. Then as now old salts grumbled that to be a real Navy man you had to spend time at sea and that sitting behind a desk moving papers around was not the way to earn flag rank or at least that it shouldn't be. And to be sure Nimitz's experience in the bureaus did keep him away from some important peacetime activities in the Navy. He did not for example play a big role in Navy strategic planning in the 1930s nor did he participate in designing or executing the tactical fleet problems that were such an important component of peacetime service. On the other hand whatever Nimitz missed out on by devoting himself to the administration of Bunev it exposed him to the nation's leaders including Roosevelt and played an important role in his selection to the command of the Pacific fleet in the immediate wake of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Another aspect of Nimitz's character and personality that Roosevelt admired was his unflappable temperament. The normal reserve that Nimitz displayed in moments of crisis had earned him a reputation of being unemotional when officer described him incorrectly I believe as coldly impersonal. That was clearly not true. Roosevelt, Nimitz smiled often he liked to tell jokes especially puns a sense of humor was and is critical to the exercise of high responsibility and I think we learned something about his sense of humor already this evening in the stories from his family. More about this later. It is true though that Nimitz was undemonstrative and able to maintain an astonishing coolness under pressure. There are a number of observations from individuals who encountered him that recalled afterward only the steel blue of those cornflower blue eyes that looked at them over the table. Even as a midshipman he displayed a kind of quiet reserve that impressed his classmates who described him in the Naval Academy yearbook The Lucky Bag as one who possesses that calm steady going Dutch way that gets to the bottom of things. Origin of that reference to him as Dutch by the way comes from the 19th century tendency to refer to Germans as Dutch because of course they spoke Deutsch. To illustrate Nimitz's calm and steady going manner I like to tell the story of an event that occurred while Nimitz was in command of the flagship of the East Asian squad in the old USS Augusta in the 1930s. It's coming into port one day and Nimitz directed a young ensign on the bridge named Waters and therefore inevitably nicknamed Muddy to bring the ship to anchor. Well somewhat nervous as you can imagine with his captain's eye on him Waters brought the big cruiser into the harbor a little too fast overshot the mark and had to order the engines full and while paying out 90 fathoms of anchor chain until the ship finally came to a stop. By then of course Waters was sweating bullets as you can imagine and once the ship stopped he turned to face his CO expecting a thorough chewing out. Nimitz had stood by silently the whole time not saying a word and now he merely remarked Waters do you know what you did wrong? Waters responded yes sir I certainly do which Nimitz replied that's fine carry on. Now I told that story once at the Navy Memorial at another event in Washington and afterward a fellow came up to me rather excited and informed me that Muddy Waters was his father-in-law. He told me that when his future wife first brought him home to meet the folks in the 1950s that at dinner that night Waters had told that story at the dinner table and that he told it again at least once a week for the rest of his life. Note what an impact that moment had on the career and the life of a young ensign much more useful much more instructive than the chewing out that he expected and that many captains would have delivered. Here's another example. When Nimitz arrived in Pearl Harbor on the day after Christmas in 1941 to assume his new duties as commander of the Pacific Fleet much of which was now lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor he met with the senior commanders and particularly the members of husband Kimmel staff who were all gathered together awaiting the arrival of the new commander somewhat apprehensively you can imagine when Nimitz came into the room we found them all downcast kind of looking at the floor and he took command of the situation immediately thanking them all for their hard service and asking them please to stay on and help him with the difficult job that he had ahead. Raymond Spruance was in the room that day and he said later that it felt like they'd all been in a dark and stuffy cave and somebody just threw open a window. Like muddy waters they never forgot it. Nimitz knew how to get the best out of people not by intimidation not by threats but by that calm and steady going dutch way of his. He was not cold but he did tend to keep his emotions under control rarely betraying them to others. When upset his most confrontational response was generally now see here. I don't know if he ever said that to his grand children or not but I'm guessing that he did yes. Finally Dwight Eisenhower's naval aide Harry Butcher claimed in his memoir that that was exactly the phrase that Eisenhower used when he was upset. Neither Ike nor Nimitz was a desk pounder or a yeller or a man who gave way to fits of temper. Each was calm, unflustered in almost any situation Nimitz was in short just the man FDR wanted in Pearl Harbor. When Nimitz arrived there as his command was significantly reduced from what it might have been. The battleship fleet long considered the striking arm of the United States Navy was virtually gone. He had five aircraft carriers almost immediately reduced to four when the Saratoga was torpedoed by a Japanese sub on January 11th. And he had the handful of destroyers and submarines his own old service had survived the Pearl Harbor strike. This now constituted the once vaunted American Pacific fleet. Moreover Nimitz was very much aware that the strategic plan for the war worked out in consultation with the British was to focus on the defeat of Germany first. That meant that he could not count on any significant reinforcements at least not in the short term. The vessels that had been authorized in the 1930s as the nation prepared for possible storm were still under construction in a dozen yards across the west coast. And in time they would provide Nimitz with overwhelming superiority over the Japanese foe. But not now. Not in 1942. For now he would have to make do with what he had. Theoretically at least the Europe first strategy meant that until the war was defeated the Americans would have to stand on the defensive in the Pacific. But the attack on Pearl Harbor posed a serious challenge to that pre-war assumption. Americans were eager to see Hitler defeated to be sure but they were desperate, frantic to strike back at the Japanese. In addition a defense does not mean relying completely on being passive and leaving the initiative to your enemy. Nimitz pushed hard for the conduct of extensive raids into Japanese held territory to keep them off balance and to inflict wounds that over time would minimize their materiel superiority so that when the United States did have the war with all to launch a full scale offensive it could drive to the shores of the Japanese home islands. He ordered raids against the Japanese held territory to the coastal and Gilbert Islands in January and February of 1942. The first American counterattack of the Pacific war. He decided against the advice of many, including those in Washington to send two of his four carriers to the Coral Sea in May of 1942 to confront a Japanese thrust at Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea in Port Moresby but cost him one of his four carriers when the Lexington went down. He was not, by the way, particularly enthusiastic about the idea of sending the only other two carriers in the Pacific to carry Jimmy Doolittle's squadron to the western Pacific for a raid in the Japanese homeland. That seemed to him to be little more than a public relation stunt. But as an example of his political sensitivity he was savvy enough to know that if Washington believed that this raid was essential for morale at home it was not a good idea to raise objections or stand in the way. On the other hand Nimitz did not simply go along to get along. Despite that apparently placid exterior he was perfectly willing to take risks even long risks. Once he convinced himself through careful consideration that the potential gains justified that risk. In May of 1942 Nimitz learned from his code breaking team that the Japanese were planning an assault on the tiny atoll of Midway, northwest of Hawaii. Without doubt the crypt analysts who labored long and hard to figure this out deserve great credit for which they have finally at last been recognized. So does the man who had to decide what to do about it. The timing could hardly have been worse. Of Nimitz's four carriers one went down in the Coral Sea and another the York Town was so badly crippled it could hardly operate at all. The only two that were left the Hornet and the Enterprise were still returning from the Doolittle raid and would not arrive for several more days. So while it was great to have advanced information about what the Japanese were likely to do in a few weeks it was not at all clear what Nimitz should or even could do about it. It's difficult now for us to appreciate just how bold a decision it was for Nimitz to accept battle for Midway. Because we know how it turned out it seems perfectly logical that Nimitz decided to trust his code breakers and lay a trap for the Japanese. Yet a more cautious man might have decided to preserve and protect the only two fully operational carriers he had left in the Pacific Ocean and either keep them in port or even send them eastward back toward the continental United States to keep them out of harm's way. Surely those two carriers were worth more to the United States in the war just beginning than they virtually abandoned at all of Midway occupied mostly by goony birds. If Nimitz had accepted that alternative he could have waited for the wounded Saratoga to be repaired and for the crippled Yorktown to be patched up from the battle in the Coral Sea and within a month or five weeks at the most he would have had four carriers again and a reasonable chance of standing up to the Japanese. Of course by then the Japanese might well have seized Midway but their grip on it would be pretty tenuous at the end of a 2,500 mile supply line from Tokyo and with four carriers in hand the Americans would very likely have been able to take it back with ease. That would have been the conservative thing to do. Many said it was the smart thing to do in those circumstances. After all if the United States lost its last two carriers in a battle for Midway at all there would be nothing left between the Imperial Japanese Navy and San Francisco. Was Midway that tiny outpost of Coral and sand worth risking the few carriers he had and more to the point did Nimitz want to bet his career on an unlikely victory? Yes he did. He believed that he could repair the Yorktown quickly which would give him three carriers plus the island of Midway which gave him a kind of fourth carrier which if it couldn't maneuver it also couldn't sink so that instead of being surprised by the Japanese as had happened at Pearl Harbor almost exactly six months before Nimitz could surprise them and send some of their carriers and as it turned out all of their carriers to the bottom. As I say it's hard today aware of how this battle turned out to appreciate what a bold decision that was. It seems like a gamble. But in Nimitz's mind it was not a gamble. He did not throw the dice carelessly or thoughtlessly. Behind those cool blue eyes was the calculating mind of a man who weighed the odds and made plans accordingly. Despite Walter Lord's famous line that the Americans at Midway had no right to win Nimitz fully expected to win and of course he did. Spectacularly much of the credit for that astonishing victory must go to the men and commanders on the scene. The pilots especially perhaps Wade McCluskey in particular, the task force commanders Frank Jack Fletcher and Raymond Spruance whose auditorium we occupy this evening but they would not have had their chance but for the decision made by Nimitz to send his three carriers to the aptly named Point Luck north of Midway and Lionweight for the Japanese force. Another aspect of Nimitz's effectiveness might be labeled his ability to play well with others. The very outset of the war the Americans and especially George C. Marshall had insisted on the principle of unified command in all theaters of war. Churchill was skeptical about this. What does a general know about commanding a ship? He asked Marshall. Well what does a sailor know about driving tanks? Marshall responded. That's not the point. Marshall insisted that the allies simply could not have American and British generals and admirals all trying to cooperate voluntarily with one another while the Japanese had one man in charge of all their forces. It was imperative to have central commander with Normandy over all allied forces in each theater. Churchill grumbled as Churchill often did but he gave in. And the result was a unified command structure first in what was called ABDA that is the American, British, Dutch and Australian forces in the Pacific right on up to the landings at Normandy under the centralized command of Dwight David Eisenhower. Today as we all know we call this jointness and accept it as a matter of course not then. And it is something of a minor miracle that the allies were able to create a unified command system at all. In the Pacific Ocean area Nimitz had joint command over all forces of whatever service in his theater but he did not have command authority over what was known as the Southwest Pacific Theater including Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines. That belonged to Douglas MacArthur. Nimitz and MacArthur were on the same side to be sure but they operated independently almost like a coalition and like a coalition rivalry and suspicion were never very far below the veneer of what looked like cheerful cooperation when they infrequently posed for the cameras. We got a little bit of insight about that tonight from family reminiscences. MacArthur thought this division of authority was, to use his word, stupid. And he didn't mind saying so. The principle of unified command he declared was fundamental to warfare. In his words it is the most fundamental tradition in the doctrine of command. He insisted, his words again the failure to apply this principle in the Pacific cannot be defended in logic, in theory or even in common sense. Other motives must be ascribed. Close quote. To MacArthur those other motives were obviously political and unlike Nimitz who understood the policy and strategy must work in tandem, MacArthur believed that politics should have nothing to do with war unless of course they were his politics. He believed that Roosevelt did it simply to keep a potential rival for the White House, that is MacArthur himself from exercising supreme command in the Pacific. After the war MacArthur insisted that the decision to require him to share command with Nimitz, quote, resulted in divided effort, waste and diffusion and duplication of force, undue extension of the war with added casualties and cost. Now he may in fact have believed that as a matter of principle but in addition there was the fact that if the command had been unified that he as senior man would have commanded it all. Nimitz too had doubts about the wisdom of dividing the Pacific into two operational theaters as much as either Marshall or MacArthur he knew the value of unity of command. In this case the Americans got away with it because by late 1943 when the Central Pacific Drive began with the invasion of Basio Island at Tarawa Atoll both MacArthur's forces in the Southwest Pacific and Nimitz's forces in the Central Pacific were each of them superior to what the Japanese could put to see. The Japanese were like a man in a boxing ring facing two fighters at the same time each larger and faster than he was. If he turned to confront one the other hit him from behind. The Japanese fought ferociously as we know they made Americans pay in blood for every yard of conquered soil but in the end they were simply overmatched and overwhelmed. And because of that Roosevelt's idea to cut the baby in half worked. He did not do it for strategic reasons but rather as MacArthur implied for political reasons but it was not to keep MacArthur from command but rather to ensure that MacArthur had a job at all. Roosevelt was not about to entrust the Pacific fleet of what he always considered his navy to an army general. But he knew that MacArthur was too important and too prominent a public figure not to have a major command so he gave MacArthur the Southwest Pacific and kept Nimitz where Roosevelt believed he belonged in command of the Pacific Ocean area the largest command theater of the war. The largest command theater on the planet stretching 7,000 miles from the west coast of the United States to the shores of Japan. More importantly for the purposes of our discussion here tonight is Nimitz's reaction to this decision. Nimitz knew the president had to accommodate the mercurial MacArthur and he appreciated the political pressures that made that accommodation necessary. He understood that politics in strategic planning is a tangible thing and unlike MacArthur he did not carp about it. He simply adjusted and adapted doing what he could in the area he was assigned to bring the war to a successful close. He remained a bold decision maker after the horrifying and unexpected losses at Tarawa in November of 1943 Nimitz's advisors to a man and you can read this in the gray book account of the staff meeting where they discussed this every single one of them urged that in the next assault to the Marshall Islands they should first target the outer islands the weaker ring of Japanese defenses rather than the heart at Kwajalein and Nimitz listened to them. You can see him read about him asking questions as the conversation continued. But after listening carefully to the input Nimitz thanked them and announced that the next assault would nevertheless be against Kwajalein and he was right. He calculated that the Americans had learned enough at Tarawa to make the next invasion successful and it was. Such boldness suggests that maybe Nimitz belongs to the Patton Halsey group after all but what characterized Nimitz's leadership was not a hell for leather aggressiveness as much as a combination of careful analysis open discussion attention to detail and trust in his subordinates. Once Nimitz vetted his frontline commanders he did not look over their shoulder he did not try to micromanage and he had their back. When for example Ernie King sought to shelve Frank Jack Fletcher after the failed relief mission to Wake Island and again after the drawn battle shall we call it at Coral Sea Nimitz went to bat for his task force commander and wrote to King that Fletcher was to quote Nimitz an excellent seagoing fighting naval officer and I wish to retain him as force commander. This after King had already said he wanted Fletcher relieved. So Fletcher stayed and the return on that was the victory at Midway. When in 1944 a board of inquiry recommended that Bill Halsey be reassigned Reed demoted after his fleet was caught a second time by a typhoon Nimitz intervened for his retention. One last note about Roosevelt and Nimitz serious as they were when they had to be neither of them ever lost his sense of humor and dealing with issues of life and death on a daily basis they found that if they could not laugh occasionally they could not maintain their humanity. Nimitz was often accused of lacking a sense of humor but that was not so we know that even more tonight. There are lots of examples but I'll cite one and I'll close with this early in 1945 with the war at last well in hand. Roosevelt had a chance to host all three of his most senior admirals in the White House. The President had met regularly throughout the war with both Leahy and King who were after all headquartered in Washington but Nimitz had spent the war in the Pacific and this was the President's first chance to talk to all three of them at once. Ever since February of 1942 Roosevelt had followed fleet maneuvers in the Pacific on a big wall map that he set up in a basement room of the White House where he followed the progress of American forces with pushpins as they moved across the Pacific. Navy man that he was it was the Pacific war that drew his attention in particular and he had often regretted that he didn't have a chance to talk with Admiral Nimitz about operations now he could. So at the dinner he asked Nimitz question after question after question and Nimitz willingly answered all of them but he could see that the President was getting tired. After all FDR was not a well man in March of 1945 within six weeks he would be dead. Though of course neither of them could know that at the time. Still Nimitz was looking for an opportunity somehow to bring the evening to a close without being impertinent. He saw his chance when Roosevelt asked him about a 1944 raid against the Japanese Citadel of Truck in the Carolines. Immediately after that strike Nimitz had used the same striking force without a recall sending them to continue onward to hit at the Marianas why the President asked had he decided to do that. Instead of answering him directly Nimitz said as Abraham Lincoln often did that reminds me of a story and he told it. It seems there was a medical patient Nimitz told him who needed to have his appendix removed but this patient was very particular about who operated on him and determined that only the very best doctor should be allowed to perform the surgery. So instead of relying on the local physician he sent for a famous doctor from a distant city when the famous surgeon arrived all the local doctors gathered around to watch him perform. The patient of course was rendered unconscious during the procedure and when he woke up he asked the doctor how did it go. Well splendidly of course surgeon told him but doctor there's something I don't understand I have a sore throat. Why would I have a sore throat if you've removed my appendix. Well the doctor said there was such a large group of spectators and the surgery went so well that they all gave me a big round of applause. So I gave them an encore and took out your tonsils too. And that Nimitz told the president is why I directed the strike on the Marianas as an encore. Nimitz threw back his head and laughed his big booming laugh while Nimitz grinned and that gave Nimitz the opportunity to excuse himself so the president could get some rest. They never met again after that meeting but I want to conclude by saying that for all of these reasons that I've cited Nimitz's temperament, his ability to listen to others, to focus, his careful planning, his attention to detail, his sensitivity to the politics of grand strategy the absence of personal ego in his decision making process and even his sense of humor it is appropriate that we honor him tonight on his birthday more than any other single individual. Chester Nimitz was the man who won the war in the Pacific for the allies and now thanks to the availability of the gray book we can see and understand how he did it. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm told we have some time for some questions. Certainly be happy to do it. I have answered all questions. No one. Well in that case we have I think a special surprise for you tonight and I'll turn it back over to Professor Jackson. Oh here's a question. Yes, sorry Admiral. I'll repeat the question if you'll just... Oh here's a mic right behind you. It's more than a comp. First of all I really enjoyed your talk tonight. Thank you sir. You have a fabulous snack yourself. Maybe you pick some of that up from Admiral Nimitz who knows. But the comment has to do with the gray book and I just suggest there's an avenue of research you might pursue to figure out why it's called the gray book. You probably know that at the start of the war Admiral King brought in the gray uniform. Yes. Admiral Nimitz, Spruance, Halsey refused to wear it. They went to their tailor and they ordered several bolts of khaki so that they could always have service khaki uniforms and this might be somebody's joke on Admiral King called it the gray book. That's a great story. I love it. Thank you very much. I hope it's true. Another example of his sense of humor. Very good. Thank you Admiral. Anyone else? Yes in the back question. We not only crashed the website, we crashed the microphones but there it is. I'll repeat it if you just want to ask. Yes sir. We have two questions from our online audience that was watching live and the first comes from Chad. What lessons might we, our leaders take away from the Nimitz gray book as our country implements the so called Pacific pivot today? Well what the gray book I think tells us is not so much which specific decisions were good ideas and which were bad ideas but the process through which those decisions emerged. And I think some of the things that I mentioned in my general talk about the process of decision making are critical in any strategic environment whether you're pivoting toward the Pacific or toward the Indian Ocean or whatever strategic decisions you may be considering. And that process is one that must be open. It must have interchange. You must be able to subordinate your own personal ego to the issues that are under consideration. So I think in general the way I summed up in the last paragraph of my talk, the characteristics that Nimitz brought to the decision making process. If all leaders in uniform and in civilian clothes can keep in mind Chester Nimitz as a model for decision making process I think we will all be better off. I know that's a rather general response but I hope it's helpful. Any others? Yes sir Mr. Ambassador. I mentioned that yes thank you. The comment referred to the fact that Admiral Nimitz always gave full credit to the education and training and experience that he received here at the Naval War College in the years between the wars and he's not alone in saying that. It is true that particularly in the war gaming scenario where it has been sometimes commented by critics that boy we spent an awful lot of time refighting the battle of Jutland in the 1920s and 1930s yet nevertheless the experience of the war gaming center here at the war college opened up potential possibilities that we did in fact encounter both in the Pacific and in the Atlantic theater. In fact Chester Nimitz once declared that he never encountered an event in the entire war that had not been anticipated at some level during the war gaming practices that they had here at the Naval War College except one. There was only one that they had not counted on had not foreseen and that was the kamikaze. But other than that the war gaming experience and the general education that he received here at the war college were central. He always said to his success in the Pacific War. One more to the online audience. Yes sir this comes from Vernon. What advice do you think Admiral Nimitz would give to today's young naval officers on developing their leadership abilities and preparing for a very unpredictable future world? I think the advice he would give them would be to work hard and know your profession. One of the things I did not emphasize as much as I might have in my talk about Nimitz is that not only did he think about broad strategic issues and planning issues and so forth. He knew how all the machines worked. I mean he knew his profession in terms of the nuts and the bolts. And if we're talking to junior officers in particular don't be in a hurry to be an Admiral. Is that right Admiral? Learn to be a great junior officer. Learn how the machines work and know your men. Get to know them. Learn how they do their jobs and time will take care of the rest of it. Okay I thank you very much for your attention all yours. Thank you. On October 5th 1945 a massive patriotic parade was held in Washington D.C. in tribute to Fleet Admiral Nimitz for his remarkable leadership in bringing the nation to victory in the Pacific. Naval Academy midshipmen led over 5,000 sailors and Marines who marched while a thousand Navy planes flew overhead some spelling out Nimitz in the sky. As many as a half a million citizens cheered along the route that ended at the foot of Mount the Washington Monument where a replica of the battleship USS Missouri on which the surrender was signed served as the reviewing stand. Before the parade Chester Nimitz addressed an unusual joint session of Congress. But rather than telling you about the speech it might be more appropriate to let you hear from the great man himself. Fleet Admiral Nimitz will you join us please? It is with all humility that I accept the great honor of appearing before you on this occasion. Yet I am sensible of the fact that I do not come here merely as an individual. I would like to acknowledge at the very outset that I am here only as representative of the brave men who fought under my command in the Pacific. Speaking in the name of those brave men whether they wore the uniform of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard or Marine Corps, I wish to give you a brief report of the job we are just now bringing to an end. Five weeks ago today I was in a land of hunger and defeat and disillusionment. Five weeks ago today I was in Japan. Among the ships of the Pacific Fleet anchored in Tokyo Bay was a proud symbol of that humanity and mercy which can exist among a civilized people even in the midst of a bloody war. That symbol was a ship of the United States Navy the hospital ship benevolence. She had been sent to Tokyo Bay to take on board the starved, sick and heart sore American prisoners of war. I shall always remember that visit because it was my privilege that day to shake the hand of so many men who had fought and suffered that this nation might remain free. And to be once again impressed by the bright courage and unshaken confidence which had sustained them during their captivity. Those men, like those I have seen in so many hospitals and those to whom I have been privileged to make awards in the name of the President, were a great reminder that our victory has been purchased at a great price. In the hurt and hungry eyes of those rescued men you could see a kinship with their thousands of lost comrades. Men who will forever sleep beneath the lonely palms of uncounted Pacific Isles. Men who will stand their eternal watch at sea for as long as time goes on. Those men the rescued and their lost comrades are a greater price than any that can be reckoned in billions of dollars. It may come as a surprise to many Americans to learn that from the standpoint only of troops and aircraft Japan actually was better off on VJ Day than she was nearly four years ago when she initiated National Harry Carey with the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor. Why then did the enemy have no alternative but to surrender? And why did Japan sue for peace before the introduction of the atomic bomb and before the entry of Russia into the war? Because Japan's fighting fleet had ceased to exist. Of a once great navy, Japan had a float but one battleship damaged, four aircraft carriers all damaged, two heavy cruisers both damaged, and two light cruisers, one damaged. Not one of these ships had a crew aboard. Only 39 of Japan's once large force of destroyers remained. Six of these were damaged and ten were without crews. 51 enemy submarines survived and 95 small patrol craft along with a couple of mine layers, two old training cruisers, and a submarine tender. But by the middle of 1945 Japan might as well have scuttled this remnant of her navy for all the good it could do against our own powerful sea air forces. Our enemy was forced to surrender because Japan a maritime nation dependent on food and materials from overseas was stripped of her sea power. On the other hand we had a sea power which made it possible to capture and to hold the bases within Japan's system of enemy defenses from which our army's long range bombers and other aircraft operated. We had sea power which made it possible to cut the enemy's lines of overseas communications to points on the Asiatic continent and in the Southwest Pacific denying him access to needed resources. His industry was strangled and his people were at the point of starvation. He lacked oil for his ships and gasoline for his aircraft. We had sea power which made it possible to protect our own lines of communication and move vast quantities of men, materials, and munitions to our forward bases and also to the Russians. We had sea power to prevent an enemy effort to launch amphibious counterattacks on our flanks and in the rear. We had sea power to cover and support every amphibious landing in the Pacific War. We had powerful carrier forces which had struck strategic and tactical targets in the innermost recesses of the empire. We had seized forward bases and built the airfields which made possible the wonderfully successful B-29 bombing and mining missions and eventually the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With our sea power making possible the use of all our other resources we gave Japan the single choice of surrender or slow but certain death and for the final wise decision to surrender and spare us the terrific cost in lives of an invasion we can all breathe a fervent thank God. In stressing the importance of sea power in our Pacific victory I do not intend or desire to give the impression that in gaining this victory any one service deserves praise above another. It was my privilege and my honor to command officers and men in all of the services and never did I find that a man's uniform affected his willingness to respond when there was a job to be done. They were all brave men. There was no difference in the way they fought and when they fell whether they were dressed in army khaki, marine green or navy blue they all wore the same red badge of honor that is stained with the blood of free men who hold that liberty is dearer than life itself. Our victory was the product of integrated teamwork from the highest echelons of command to the lowest. I would indeed be remiss if I did not include in the appreciation the officials of the war department and the army officers and men in the field who were tireless in their efforts to meet our requirements and who fought shoulder to shoulder with us. We in the Pacific ocean areas are indebted also to our allies of the British Commonwealth. New Zealand and Australian forces fought with us and a powerful detachment of the British Pacific fleet at an important place on the team in the operations which resulted in the defeat of Japan. Your fighting men have done well, the job you sent them out to do the job you helped them to do by your complete mobilization of thought and energy on the home front your fighting men have handled well the tools and machines and weapons which you provided for them in such quantity and of such quality as has never before known in the history of warfare. Your fighting men have kept the faith and soon they will be coming home as a professional sailor and as a servant of my country. I should indicate to you what I think should be done to guarantee that the peace which we have bought so dearly be made permanent to guarantee that our men will not have to go forth to fight another war. I point out to you the sad fact that we have never yet entered a war for which we were fully prepared. The science of warfare is constantly changing but with the emphasis always on speed. In the name of all we Americans hold dear, I pray that no future war may ever again find us unprepared. Most of all I pray that such a war does not begin and end to our disadvantage before we can even begin to fight. This need not happen to us, it will not happen to us. If facing the facts without flinching we are willing now and in the future to exercise our intelligence our vigilance and our good plain common sense and keep our fighting forces ready for use if required. If we fail in this we will have betrayed those brave men who died to give us the privilege of living in friendship and decency with other enlightened nations for the present and the foreseeable future. To each mother to each father to each brother, to each sister, wife and sweetheart of those valiant men who will never return. I wish to express my personal and heartfelt sympathy. I do not believe, I cannot believe that your loved ones died in vain. As I said in the beginning, I stand here today merely as the representative of those soldiers, sailors and marines who have won this victory in the Pacific. We have carried out the duty imposed upon us by the events of December 7th, 1941. Thank you and good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, I certainly do not plan to try to follow that act. I have the pleasure of telling you that our evening is coming to the end. I want to first thank Tye Lemeronde, our very own here at the Naval War College who portrayed Fleet Admiral Nimitz here tonight. Let's give him another round of applause. This does conclude the formal portion of our program. I want to invite each and every one of you to join us in the lobby for Cake and Punch to honor the birthday of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Please take the time to inspect all of the exhibits out there and please have a chance to greet some of our distinguished guests and our speakers. I want to thank Dr. Craig Simons for a fantastic presentation, the Nimitz family for bringing the legend of your grandfather and all of the great stories, and to each and every one of you for taking the time to be with us tonight, and to our Internet family who's been watching this live all night. Thank you all very much.