 I'm Marsha Joyner, and we are navigating the journey. Today is a very special day in the annals of Americana and of the world, I guess is what we want to say. And that is the commemoration of Midway, the Battle of Midway, as well as the fall of Rome and the 75th commemoration of D-Day. So we are going to take a look at the world war, or wars. And my guest is Donald Kelper, who is my favorite historian and the one that you know that I always go to when I want to talk war. And let me tell you one of the special things about Donald, other than being my friend, and you all know that I only talk to good friends. But Donald's father was the first Marine officer to be killed in the Vietnam War. And it was a date that the Americans kind of pretend like didn't happen, because he was lost before the date that the Americans... Yeah, he was killed prior to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. So anyway, let's talk about this world war, because the American history that we are taught begins on December 7th, which is a long way from the very beginning. And I did make notes of the beginning. Yeah, there was the war... What we commonly know today as the Second World War actually commenced in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China. That's the official day. Yeah, after the so-called Marco Polo Bridge incident, where what it was became a full-scale military invasion of China by the Japanese Empire, a war of conquest, a rather vicious war that was really... Most people don't realize when people have heard about the rape of Nanjing, or what they also called back then Nanjing, was actually took place in 1937. It did not happen. The so-called official date for the Second World War's commencement was September 1st, 1939, which was Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. However, this is a really Eurocentric view of that, because full-scale fighting was actually happening well over two years prior to the start of the war in Europe. Now, I found one really interesting. It says many historians believe Second World War began in September 18, 1931, that was the invasion of occupation of Manchuria, which they renamed, it was a puppet state called Manchukuo. Now, if anybody who's ever seen the movie Bernardo Bertolucci's movie, The Last Emperor, was based on Puyi, and Puyi was the last emperor of China, but he was also served as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo for the Japanese. That's why his name in Chinese history is somewhat big. Well, it's a mixed blessing. When he died, he was simply a civilian. The Chinese Communist government allowed him to live out his days in relative peace, but they actually preferred that people forget about him. Well, now if we really go back, and my first introduction to going that far back was during the study of Tanya Sen, and the intellectuals of Asia came together at a conference in Nagasaki, and the whole idea was to get the Europeans to go home, the Westerners. And it seemed to me that if we look at right then, from that point on, where you know all the horrors that the Europeans had done with this battle, but they wanted them to go home, and Korea, they wanted them to go home. Vietnam, just go a hundred years. But that was in Korea. Korea was actually part of the Japanese empire. It was. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, the Chinese kind of gave it up. It was a somewhat vassal. It was Korea that functioned as kind of a vassal state of the Chinese empire until the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. And then after China was defeated by Japan in that war, Japan took Formosa, which is now Taiwan, which we know today as Taiwan. And they basically got the Chinese to get out of Korea, and Korea kind of existed in this semi-autonomous existence for a better part of about a decade. But don't you just love that? The Japanese annexed it. But the Japanese and the Chinese over here have a war, so they go to your house to have the war. Well, the Japanese empire at that point was, if you go back even farther, to the Opium War of 1839, 1842, between Great Britain and China, in which China's status as a power was pretty much punctured because the British really beat their family. That's when they took Hong Kong, and the whole war was literally fought over opium because the Chinese didn't want the British empire selling opium to them, and the British were like, no, and they actually forced it on them. And this was the really beginning, while there was a European presence in Asia for some time, probably almost close to 150 years or so, this was the first time that Europeans actually actively moved into Asia and started annexing territory. But the French came in Vietnam. Yeah, the French came later in Indochina, and part of it was because that was an area that was considered part of Chinese sphere of influence, but with the defeat of China, the Europeans moved in. Britain had a huge interest in, well, they had a huge presence in India at the time, and they had, you know, the imperialist movement at that point in the 19th century just really just blossomed, and the Europeans annexed. I mean, you had the Dutch in what is present day Indonesia, you had the British in Singapore, which was their big base there in their big area, and Malaya. Hong Kong. And then you had Hong Kong, and you had the French in Indochina, you had the British in Burma, which is now Myanmar, and you had the Americans who replaced the Spanish in the Philippines. And now, ironically, in American history, while everybody was taught the Spanish-American War, nobody was really, I know, I was never taught about it, I never learned about what they used to call the Philippine insurrection, which is now more known as the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902, in which, you know, the American casualties in the Spanish-American War were like 500 dead. The American death toll in the war in the Philippines was close to 10,000, and probably about 400,000 Filipinos died in that war. Oh, it was awful. And so this was the setup for what happened with World War II and the movement in Asia to, you know, they wanted to get rid of the Westerners, and the Japanese sought to capitalize on that because the Japanese Empire was, you know, becoming increasingly militarist. Sun Yat-sen's writings, which are vast, but they had this conference, and all of the people, including the Philippines, the intellectuals come together at conference in Nagasaki. And yes, this is what we want. We want Asia for the Asians. And Nagasaki, and that included Japan. And in his writings... See, the thing is that Japan wanted Asia for the Japanese. And in his writings, he says how crushed and disappointed he was because he felt betrayed by the Japanese, because he thought they were all together, and now they become the Imperials. They were an imperialist power by that point. They had already taken over, and they were considered... they were a growing military power. Now, the interesting thing for me was the fact that the Japanese had come together with the Germans to build a new Japan. This was... Well, that was an alliance. To become an industrial... That was an alliance of convenience, where that happened. That was well before we got into any war. Yeah, that was the alliance between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was... Well, this was before Nazi Germany. Well, the Germans had had... Now actually, in World War I, Japan fought on the side of the Allies. But again, it was an opportunistic war because the Japanese kicked the Germans out of it. Now, the Germans used to... what is present-day Micronesia... They used to be German. Yes. The Japanese kicked them out of Micronesia, kicked the Germans out of Micronesia and took Micronesia for itself. And they militarized it. Yeah, but the Versailles Treaty, which, quote, gave... This bothers me. The islands in the Pacific that had belonged to the Germans seated it to the Japanese. How can you see somebody else? Well, this was the common way that things were done back then. And it's best when discussing that. We run into the weeds a lot of times in history when we try to apply present-day sensibilities to past actions because people, for whatever their reason, a hundred years ago, didn't think that way. No, they didn't. And in fact... And you still had a concept of... I mean, white supremacy was still very much a big thing. Most of Africa, there were only two independent countries in Africa, Ethiopia and Liberia. The rest of Africa was under colonial rule. And this was the basis for heading into World War II. A good quarter of the map was under European rule. The British Empire was still a very powerful entity. Oh, yes. And they ruled close to one quarter of the globe. Now, one of the places here... I'll get it. Anyway, the Japanese and the Chinese and the Germans are working together. This was before December 7. And they wanted the Japanese to take Singapore and some of these other British so that the Americans would pay more attention to... Yeah, yeah. I mean, rather than fight with them in Germany. Yeah, there was a big thing that they had. Now, the thing that they didn't know is that in the Atlantic charter or the Atlantic meetings that were held well before Pearl Harbor in August of 1941 between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the decision was already made that in the event of war with Japan and Germany, that Germany would be given first priority. Right. Regardless of whatever. Now, the thing was is that once war commenced with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans, for obvious reasons, they were more concerned about... They were more concerned about the Japanese and the alarming gains that they were making in the Pacific and in Asia. They were... And that led up to the point where you had Midway. Prior to Midway was actually... What we look at that was really... It was more of a morale booster. For us was the Doolittle's raid on Tokyo and Japan from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, which sailed within 600 miles of Japan itself and then launched B-25 bombers. But the thing was the Japanese at that point saw the vulnerability of their home islands and that was the impetus for the attack on Midway, which was to be the first step of a prospective invasion of Hawaii. Yeah. And that's what led up to the Battle of Midway, which today is the 75th anniversary of the battle's end, actually. And... And it was brutal. Well, it was a brutal naval victory. The Japanese sent an overwhelming fleet of... They had... It was an invasion fleet and what they hoped to do was lure the Americans into an unequal battle because they were confident that they had naval superiority and the Japanese... But the thing was, the Americans had broken the Japanese code and so the Americans had kind of pretty much guessed that Midway was the target. And so they were waiting for the Japanese. So the Japanese thought, here they are, they're going to lure the Americans out of Pearl Harbor in Honolulu into an unequal naval battle. Instead they walked into an ambush. So, wow. So let's take a break. Okay. And then we'll come back to... Right that point. Yeah. Okay. Be right back. Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii non-profit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch. For our mission of empowerment, we aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhai, and aloha. Hi, I'm Marsha, and we are back. And I am talking with my dear friend and Donald Kelper, who has acted as my historian for years. And today we are talking about World War II, the Battle of Midway, and D-Day, the fall of Rome, and D-Day in Normandy. So we were talking about the Pacific, about the Japanese and the Pacific. And on December 7th, most of us have not talked this. We have talked about Pearl Harbor only. December 7th, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, Guam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Well, they invaded, they also invaded the Dutch East Indies, which was Indonesia. Yes. Now, their real target was Indonesia because Indonesia had a vast amount of resources. The whole point of what the Japanese did was to buy them, when they attacked Pearl Harbor, was to buy themselves time to embark on a swift war of conquest and then present basically the United States with a fait accompli. And then, but as I said, what happened was, is with Doolittle's raid on Japan in April of 1942, which coincidentally was the month in which the American Army in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese, and that today remains, that is the only American command to ever surrender to a foreign power in wartime. And it was... But that was brutal, that war was horrible. Well, the thing was, yes it was, but what this was, is this sets this up here to where America's on the defensive. Right. But the fleet is still, they're based at Pearl Harbor, and what the Japanese wanted to do was lure the fleet out from Honolulu to lure them into an unequal battle in which they could bring their superior resources, the bear, which was this overwhelming fleet that was approaching Midway, but the Americans were waiting for them. And the Japanese didn't realize that the Americans were actually at Midway. I mean, the fleet had actually moved out of Honolulu and was at Midway waiting for them. And when the battle began on June 2nd with air raids on the Japanese air raids on the Midway Islands, on the airfields at Midway, and then it broke out in earnest. And let's say, just for anyone that doesn't know, Midway's name is exactly that. It is Midway. Yeah, it is Midway. It's part of the Hawaiian Islands. It's the westernmost part of the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaiian Island chain. But in the vast Pacific, that's it. Yeah, it's about 1150 miles to the northwest of Honolulu. But it's the far west of the Hawaiian Islands. So it's actually in the Hawaiian Island chain. But what happened there was the Japanese, while their aircraft were out hammering Midway, especially with the four carriers, assault waves of assault, dive bombers were launched against the Japanese carriers from three American carriers that were there. The Americans were outnumbered. I mean, they were on the defensive, but yet Admiral Nimitz took a big gamble on there and he launched these waves against the carriers while the Japanese planes were off over Midway. And they caught the Japanese napping. And within 20 minutes, which was happened on this day in 1942, all three Japanese carriers were hit and sunk. Within 20 minutes, they were hit. The Japanese had four carriers. Three of them got hit. They were sunk. And then shortly thereafter, the fourth carrier got hit and sunk. And so they lost all four of their carriers in this attack group. And that's what forced the Japanese withdrawal. It was that one strike. It was a big gamble on Nimitz's part. And Nimitz lost one of his own carriers. He had three carriers. He lost the Yorktown at Midway. It was because the Japanese found that carrier and hit it. And it was sunk. Now, Midway was a decisive American victory. It was commonly considered the turning point in the Pacific War. I was going to say, for those of us that were... I think it was the energy, the thought that, hey, we're on to something. Most people didn't realize at the time we look at it in retrospect. We have the advantage of historic hindsight. But we realized that that was a crippling blow for the Japanese. I mean, Midway losing those carriers really hurt them. Because these were ships that they couldn't readily replace. No, you can't. And it was that 20-minute shot where they hit the carriers was really the turning point in the Pacific War. At that point, the Japanese in the Pacific thereafter were on the defensive. So that was on there. And then what we have here is now we're in the battle of... D-Day. Which leads now, tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. Commonly known as D-Day. First tell us, where is Normandy? Normandy is on the north coast of France. It is an area that was... The Germans at the time, the Americans had spent the better part of a few years amassing a huge invasion force. I mean, they were basically, they were going for the knockout blow against Germany. And the British didn't really want to do that. The British were actually, they were content to fight it out in the Mediterranean. The British have always had the hankering for going for the soft underbelly. But they had serious reservations about attacking across the channel directly. But once the United States committed to doing that, and they said, we're going to do this, and the British agreed, okay, well, if you're going to do that, then we're going to go with you. On June 5th, 1944, which is actually today, was the invasion actually commenced because it was three divisions of Allied paratroopers at Normandy to secure the backside for the invasion that came in. The first wave that happened on D-Day itself, the Allies, and this was Americans, British and Canadian troops. They managed to land about 156,000 men and secure a beachhead. And despite tremendous, I mean, most people who've seen the movie, I think a lot of people have seen the movie Saving Private Ryan, with the opening scene was Omaha Beach. And Omaha Beach is within military lore is one of those things where it was a horrific, a horrific battle. It was a, the Americans lost thousands of men just on that beach alone. They were, it was... The 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, 150,000 soldiers from the United States, Britain and Canada. Yeah, they landed at six different areas in Normandy. And the beach, and there were actually two of them were consolidated. There was Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, and then Gold Juno and Sword. Gold Juno and Sword were the British beach, the British and Canadian beaches. That those were the ones where the British and Canadian troops landed. The Americans landed at Omaha and Utah Beach. Omaha was the closest run thing. And the Americans just, the Americans got pounded. Oh yeah. The one thing that ultimately, and you have to say it is like, and this is what just shows how awful war is, is that Americans were able to land troops faster than the Germans could cut them down. And, but they mowed a lot down. I mean it was, it reached the point where there was a British battleship that they saw what was happening to the Americans and the British captain actually brought his battleship in close, almost in direct contravention to the orders from his own commander and shelled the back where the Germans were the line because the Americans were stuck literally on the beach and they were getting pounded. And it was that British, the British being able to bring their big guns onto the fortifications that were overlooking Omaha Beach that were able to get Americans the time necessary to land sufficient number of troops to break through and get, get by those initial German fortifications that were just, did hell on them. So it was... Well, let's real quick, we only have a little bit of time left. Now this was the turning point in the war in Europe. And so... This was, it's recognized as a turning point. It's a significant moment. It's a moment, but how much longer did the war last? The war lasted another 11 months and the main thing was that, the thing was, is that this gave the Allies a toehold in France. Now the Battle of Normandy lasted for six weeks and just so people realize what a slugfest this was is that the United States suffered 141,000 casualties at Normandy, including 65,000 dead. Okay, I mean, when you consider that, we lost 58,000 in the entire Vietnam War. We lost 33,000 in the entire Korean War. We lost 65,000 dead and 140,000 casualties in total in six weeks slugging it out with the Germans. And now the British and Canadians lost 93,000. You know, I mean, so this was a bloody battle. The Germans lost 400,000. This was, and I need to point out, because we always forget about, this was France and this was a fairly well populated area of France and 20,000 French civilians died in the crossfire. Yeah, now we're just about out of time. Of course, I was a child during World War II and I remember there were no men. There were no men in town because everybody was in the war and there were 16 million Americans in WWII. 16 million. So when I read that, I thought, well no wonder I didn't see any men when I was a child. Yeah, well what happened was that was our peak when we were able to mobilize a vast force. And that was really what overwhelmed Nazi Germany because Nazi Germany was very well armed. Nazi Germany had superior firepower to us. We overwhelmed them in France. We just, we were able to put in, but the losses we suffered in that final year of the war, especially in France and in the final 11 months, Germany surrendered in May 1945. But the losses that Americans occurred, people should remember that in the war, we fought in the war for about three and a half years. 80% of our losses happened in the final year of the war and it was because of this slugfest that we got into with the Germans on there. And we took some big losses, but we persevered and that's what makes what happened there and why Ambroka calls them the greatest generation and not without reason. The destruction of Nazi Germany was the moral imperative of your parents and my grandparents' time. Yes. And we need to remember that. My father and all of his brothers, as luck, I shouldn't say luck, but they were all in the Pacific, you know, but yes, it was brutal. But the destruction of the access powers, the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was the moral imperative of that generation's time and it was a close-run thing. I mean, we need to recognize that. We need to recognize the contribution of our allies to that effort because without our allies making the sacrifices they did, we probably would not have won that war. Well, it is, I think it's time, our time is up. But thank you always for being my resident historian I love it, I love it, I love it. And again, being a child through this, I have memories of all of this, that only children, because it was there, it was in front of us, everything was rationed and what news we got was always about what's going on in the front. So, again, thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me. And we'll see you soon. We'll do. Aloha.