 John I appreciate that kind introduction and I very much appreciate seeing this wonderful audience out here today while I talk about a very favorite subject of mine. James Jones the author of From Here to Eternity was a veteran of the War on the South Pacific. In the 1970s he wrote about those battlegrounds and he called them places that people in the United States mostly never heard of. Today I'm going to be talking about one of those forgotten battlegrounds Bougainville and I'll be showing how many important and stirring events occur there that are every bit as much worthy of being remembered just the way we remember Guadalcanal and it's particularly appropriate that I do talk about Bougainville because that is the subject matter on my book cover and we know who this Marine is. His name is Corporal William Coffrin of Flint Michigan and he appears here fighting on D-Day at Bougainville with the third Marine Raider Battalion. Now to understand how Bougainville fits in with the rest of the Pacific War we have to go back to the early days of the war when command in the Pacific is divided as between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. Nimitz will then subdivide his command and he appoints Admiral Robert Gormley to command in the South Pacific. However someone slater during a crisis at Guadalcanal he loses confidence that Gormley has the right fighting spirit to get through the crisis and he appoints instead someone who is certainly not deficient in that capacity and this of course is Admiral William F. Halsey known as Bull Halsey to the press. To his biographer the great professor Potter Halsey was a swashbuckler of the old tradition unlike many swashbucklers part little boy who never grew up. And now now we have this is the same area that we have in here. I'm going to point out just for orientation here down here at the lower left you've got a little bit of Australia that's peeking up just a little little smidgen right there. Here you have the lower half of the island of New Guinea. There's about as much of it that continues upward from there and if you continue a straight line you'd come to the Philippine islands in that direction. Out here across the Solomon Sea you have the chain of the Solomon Islands the island of Guadalcanal here at the southeast end. Extending up here is the island of New Georgia that figures in our story. Here is Bougainville the largest of the island chain. You get the island of New Britain here now what's very important about it is the great Japanese base of Rabaul sitting right here at the eastern end. Up here you'll have the Admiralty Islands which figure a little bit in our story later and if you go out to go do north you'd come to the Carolyn Islands and the great Japanese base of truck. Now here's how the situation stands in January of 1943. MacArthur's forces here at Papua have cleared this area of the Japanese after a very difficult six-month battle and pretty much at the same time and also after a difficult half-year battle Halsey's forces here on Guadalcanal have forced the Japanese to evacuate the island. And so after a year of retreats and holding actions the allies are now in a position to go on to the offensive. MacArthur's objective all along is going to be to get himself back to the Philippines but he can as long as Japanese power is extending here through the South Pacific with all the power radiating out of the central point of Rabaul. MacArthur conceives a plan that is called Cartwheel a very ambitious plan where in roughly over an eight-month period thirteen separate operations will be conducted some by his own forces and here I should say that his own forces are going to be principally Australians at this stage and some by Halsey's and they are going to obtain a string of air bases from which they can try to pound down Rabaul. It is thought of that stage of things that will be ultimately necessary to go into Rabaul and actually capture the place unfortunately that last step does not prove necessary. Now we're going to in this course this session talk about what's happening on Halsey's side. Halsey's first step is going to be here moving into New Georgia and his offensive as well as MacArthur's kicks off at exactly the same point the mid-year 1943 June 30th 1943 our dual offensive gets underway and while New Georgia is being fought over planning is already underway for that next leap up in the Salamis chain to Bougainville and that brings us to the situation right here. This is Halsey's headquarters on August 15th 1943. Incidentally this photo was unknown until I discovered it in the Marine Corps archives and what is happening here Halsey is holding an order appointing a new commander for the first Marine Amphibious Corps all abbreviated as IMAC. IMAC is the organization that is going to be conducting the invasion of Bougainville. The outgoing commander is at our left that is Archer van der Grifft who made a splendid name for himself as commander of the first Marine Division on Guadalcanal and in consequence has been slated to become the new Marine Commandant comes the first of the year between this point and then he is going to be going off on a tour of Pacific bases. The incoming commander is seated right here his name is Charles Barrett. Barrett comes from a distinguished Virginia family has a fine reputation in the Marine Corps though he has no combat experience but that's true of many a Marine at this point in the war. He is the man who had formulated amphibious co-doctrine for the Marines and most recently he is the man who trained the third Marine Division and they are the principal component of IMAC that is going to be going in there to invade Bougainville. Well as I said this is on August oh I just before we leave here I shouldn't make mention of this gentleman who will pop up in our story just a little later this is General Harman not to be confused with the General Harman who is in Europe he is a commander of the Army and Army Air Forces in the South Pacific it's an administrative command not a tactical command. This is on August 15th 1943 the planning is going forward for Bougainville until October the 8th when something very dramatic occurs. Barrett falls from the window of his headquarters building at Noumea. He's killed there's a hired court of inquiry and they reached the conclusion that he died accidentally. I got intrigued in this case eight years ago I found letters in the Marine Corps archives that had never been seen before that conclusively proved that Halsey had decided to fire him had that it had not yet been announced he took his own life and it was decided that they would hold a phony baloney court of inquiry with everybody knowing what result that they wanted they did not want the truth to out. The facts are indeed remarkable I devote my entire 10 chapter 10 to this including substantial excerpts for the most amazing letters that you will ever see these are letters that being exchanged some are from Van de Griff himself writing to the Marine Corps commandant and I think it had been supposed all long that note these letters would never see the light of day so people are not talking in militaries they are being very off the cuff in their comments so if you do read my book and read chapter 10 do not miss the notes at the end because I packed in as much as I could between the text and the notes. Now Van de Griff is still out in the Pacific making his tour preparatory becoming the Marine commandant so he is hurriedly called back to stay around long enough to execute the invasion and here is our target this is the island of Bougainville and the area that we have selected to invade is where you see the little arrow here on the west coast. We picked that area for a few different reasons number one we know that there are very few Japanese there and indeed when we get there we'll only find that there's a single Japanese company the trails into that area are very primitive from both the top end and the bottom end of the of the island where most of the Japanese are concentrated therefore we know we're going to get a nice long respite before the Japanese can arrive in strength and attack the perimeter and of course we want to build an airstrip and the soil is found conducive to that sort of thing so these are the factors that make that particular area desirable and then we get certain refinements of the plant and here is the treasury islands treasury islands are very close by and what makes them attractive to us is that it can be served as a good forward supply base if we can get our foot in there even before we're going into Bougainville and get ourselves established there we can avert a supply crisis like we ran into our Guadalcanal when it seemed for a while as if we might not even be able to hold on to the place that would be very convenient now the downside of our doing that is the fact that the way it is aligned with the west coast of Bougainville we'd be tipping our hands to the Japanese that we have designs and moving against the west coast and therefore we get the idea for a raid here at the northern end of the island of Schwazil we're just going to go in there to try to just shoot things up a little try to convey the impression that we have a real invasion that's going on there to give the Japanese the idea that we're clearing a path to move against the east side of Bougainville here we have a scene at Halsey's headquarters and he's enjoying a cool brew with the New Zealand Brigadier who is going to be leading something like 3,500 New Zealanders against something like under 300 Japanese and needless to say we do take the treasuries quite easily I love photographs like this that don't get too much play elsewhere and to the greatest extent possible in my book you will find if there's any question I would go with rarity versus a picture that's better though in some cases they are very well known pictures some cases I couldn't avoid that and next we have here a very youthful looking lieutenant colonel who's going to grow up to be marine legend Victor Krulak he conducts a brilliant raid on Schwazil destroys the Japanese barge base destroys lots of their supplies and we leave the Japanese guessing as to where Oblo is going to fall and here we are on invasion day the aircraft is hovering over the principal invasion beaches as well as that island in the foreground that is Pururata Island and that specifically is where the marine who's on my book jacket is doing his fighting on invasion day here we have a lower level photograph of pretty much the same scene however we know that this picture must date from at least several weeks later because right here you can see the airstrip at Cape Tarakina that we construct once we are in there the incidentally this is the hotspot during invasion day because you can see cross you can have a crossfire Japanese being here and Japanese being here and our boats are are entering the area in between so that is where the fighting is happening principally on invasion day here the troops are going down the cargo nets into the Higgins boats the Higgins boat circling here we have the men hitting the beach and here they are on the beach getting ready to move inland it's a very successful invasion day just according to plan we plan to bring in two regiments of the third marine division and we succeed in doing that we get most of their supplies out we incur under 200 casualties including 88 killed now these are very small numbers compared to some of the numbers that we come accustomed to in other battles but this is a matter of fact is a little on the high side for landings in the south pacific we have large land masses we can pretty much pick our shots and most of the time we are going in even without with either no casualties or just a handful of casualties but before the end of the day all our ships clear out of the harbor because word has come down that the japanese atra ball have set down a force of four cruisers to attack our beachhead they're too light and too heavy cruisers opposing them is admiral tipp merrill tipp merrill has four cruises but all our cruisers are light cruisers so we're somewhat outgunned by the japanese however we do have one ace up our sleeve we have very good radar the japanese do have radar but it's so poor the japanese admiral said that he never even really made use of it well the battle is called the emperor battle of empress augusta bay and here we see what that action looked like from the flagship of admiral merrill uh the uh big task that he had was to was to try to stay out of the way of that heavier japanese gunfire and he executes a brilliant figure eight with his ships very difficult maneuver to to execute and that prevents our ships from taking any uh that much damage uh however our gunnery is not at all good that day it's been estimated by samarillet marison that out of the approximately 4600 shells that were fired off by our four cruisers that day they made something like 20 hits that's not a very good batting average however the main thing is that we do keep the japanese out of empress augusta bay the japanese just the same way as uh the americans had during a night action it's very easy to go astray you see a ship out there and there's a flash and suddenly you don't see the ship anymore and it's easy to jump to conclusions that you're sending ships down it's not really happening well it's happening on both sides but uh fortunately the japanese admiral decides that he's done a good enough day's work breaks off the action and to that extent alone we can consider this a american victory because the japanese are not pressing on to bombard our beach heads as happened to us at guadalcanal well comes to dawn and there's no rest for the weary because admiral merrill's ships are being beset by an enormous swarm of japanese planes like we haven't seen in the longest while and they managed to fight them off and there would have probably been a further onslaught except for what we see here and here's rebal rebal harbor and what you're seeing is these are planes that are coming in from magatha's side until this point magatha's air force under general kenny has been responsible for the regular raids over rebal and they're going in on this day and just the way merrill you know found himself in a wasp nest that is exactly what is happening to kenny's planes they take a very high number of casualties i think it was 16 or 18 planes kenny referred to it as the hardest fought battle of his fifth air force during the war and this is what has happened the japanese before they knew when booganville was going to be invaded had made a decision let's beef up our air forces around rebal we're not going to need our carrier planes for a while they send 173 of their carrier planes with some of their best pilots to rebal to buttress their air forces and this is the reason uh why we run into such heavy opposition this will turn out in the longer run to be a rotten rotten decision on the part of the japanese because those planes are sitting out on those airstrips day after day they're going to be suffering tremendous attrition and by the time the japanese realize the extent that they have shot themselves in the foot in the foot and they have pulled those planes back to their carriers the damage has been done and just three weeks after booganville invasion admiral nimitz in the central pacific inaugurates the central pacific offensive with the invasion of tarawa and the gilberts the japanese fleet is in no situation to contest the uh the situation they're going to need a long rebuilding period and by the time they do rebuild you get the battle of the philippine sea and what's known as the philip as the marianas turkey shoot when the this new generation of japanese planes and pilots is nothing at all like what they had before so they've done tremendous damage to themselves and this is a very interesting event you know the ramification up in the central pacific to what occurred down here the decimation of the japanese air aircraft down here when you read about the war in general it's very easy to lose sight of the fact that these are war fronts really interlock and you do have you know ramifications that are happening one place that from events that are happening elsewhere and we'll see a similar thing happening just a little later on in the discussion and now we will come to what halsey called his most desperate emergency in his entire 20 months in the south pacific the japanese at truck have sent down a force of seven heavy cruisers to attack our beachhead and any shipping that they might encounter halsey has no firepower that can match that what he does have however our two carriers saratoga and princeton commanded by the most aggressive of our carrier radinals animal ted chairman we know the japanese are going to have to put in at rebal to refuel and that will give us a window of opportunity now we can't expect to catch them completely flat-footed they do have radar they do have very formidable defenses around the harbor and they have all those those planes that are still there including the as i say including those carrier planes it's a very very desperate gamble halsey has written that he's thought that he might lose both of the air groups as well as the ships but he goes has little choice except to go ahead with the gamble and here we have the scene at the left is what it looks like from the aircraft of commander henry caldwell who is coordinating the entire attack from the aircraft high above the harbor he's got a couple of wingmen with him and he's getting on the mic and he's making sure that his fliers down below are going after those heavy cruisers because you see you see lots of shipping down there but we don't want to waste our shots against anything other than those heavy cruisers if we have a cruiser target to give you a sense of what it looks like from a dive bomber up at the right you have the scene from one of the dive bombers coming in on the heavy cruiser chikuma the raid will take something like 25 minutes we lose incredibly only about 10 aircraft the japanese take rather heavy hits four of the heavy cruisers are badly damaged to sustain lighter damage and only one of them comes through pretty much unscathed so it's a tremendous victory and we have thwarted the japanese there's no way that they can continue on their mission after that here we have the planes returning to saratoga and we'll sell with a picture on the right that is commander henry caldwell hopping out of his aircraft you see the plane is tilted over he's coming on one wheel plus no flaps no aileron no radio down below you see what they are doing they are removing the body of the photographer japanese uh saw those planes up there they knew that they were acting as to controlling the event and the japanese you know really went after him and after his wingmen miraculously they all made it back full holes but they all didn't make it back to the carriers in the picture at the left there is the chariot gunner from the same aircraft his name is kenneth bratton we know that bratton is going to make a full recovery from his wounds because later in the war there's a wonderful photograph that shows bratton back in uniform and looking at a blow-up of this now iconic photo at the at the upper left we have a very happy carrier admiral uh ted sherman and he is being a prize for the results of the raid by his very colorfully uh nicknamed fighter commander jumping joe clifton who as a matter of fact took down one of the japanese planes during that action uh halsey flies up to meet the carrier when it pulls out of the war zone and there again you have jumping joe with a very happy admiral halsey who's uh who's bet certainly paid off here and now we've been through two great naval actions and now we are going to have another one and it's going to involve someone who is not yet famous but certainly will be later and right here on the bridge of the destroyer charles osborne is arlie berke berke at this stage of the war is in command of destroyers uh they their nickname is a little beaver's this little beaver insignia and those who remember the old red rider comic strip will remember little beaver's little indian boy uh here's a nice painting showing oops didn't work yes here are some of the little beavers in action and their great day is very auspiciously going to occur on thanksgiving day of 1943 up till this point the japanese destroyer men have pretty much ruled the waves when it comes to clashes between their forces and our forces on a uh in most cases well that is going to end abruptly on this day all uh berke is going to be leading four destroyers against four japanese destroyers will send three of the enemy destroyers to the bottom without loss this is the battle of cape saint george and it's still a classic that i think is still taught about in the naval academy so now we have now had three great naval victories all during the same month of november 1943 well meanwhile what's been happening on shore and it's this mud and what's on it we discover that uh there is this uh vast swamp that lies just immediately beyond the beaches we did not know it until we got there and that you know it makes you makes you wonder but there's one reason why there weren't there many japanese there because i think they they said well who's going to want to land here well all in all it was not the most pleasant place i i quote one marine who was in all sorts of nasty places during the war but he said just for sheer living conditions there was nothing as bad as as uh boogenville boogenville was sheer hell and here we have beginning up at the upper left here is admiral halsey who's flown to boogenville uh about 10 days after the landings uh at the upper left you you can see uh i don't know how well you can see it he has the shirt off to show off that nice anchor tattoo that goes back to his days at the naval academy in uh the picture at the right here he is talking with the his commanders and here is the man who has now taken over iMac that is Roy geiger geiger is very unusual in that up to this point he has been an airman he was the one who commanded our air forces on guadalcanal uh and then afterwards he had been whisked off to washington he was sitting behind a desk but he's just a natural fighter and it was just intuited correctly that boy he could make a great ground commander too and he makes a truly great ground commander uh by the end of the war on okinawa he takes over the 10th army when the army general is killed and that is the highest command that a marine has ever had and probably ever will have wonderful wonderful commander who should be better known in our pantheon uh and then down here at the bottom here is geiger again with halsey and they're watching the this marching past of army troops we uh have uh the ohio national guard 37th division that has come to bougainville to operate along with the marines because the idea is we are only going to keep the marines in there long enough to do their business and then get out we're not going to keep them in too long the way we do at did at guadalcanal and really wore them down to the bone here is a typical japanese position and it's not that easy to see but here you can see the the bar of a of a machine gun peeking out of one of their positions and in the other picture you have one such position that is being taken out with flamethrower and we acquire some very valuable forefooted allies we have had war dogs before but never on such an organized basis as on bougainville these are mostly doberman pinchers some german shepherds one german shepherd appropriately named caesar acquitted himself very courageously in battle was wounded got a commendation from the marine commandant and a promotion from pfc which all the dogs were to start with to sergeant and i don't know i don't know how how he spent his extra pay but that was his business and here we have some very tired looking marines that came back from one of the many engagements in my book i go through all these individual battles that they are fighting what they're doing is they're carving out a secure perimeter to enclose both the tarakina airstrip that we saw earlier plus two additional airstrips that we have decided that we are going to construct there and one of our last battles there and this is here we are in the middle of december of forty three and one of the last battles was known as the battle of helse poppin ridge and coincidentally it was fought just around the time when we had to finish that that cape tarakina the first of the airstrips and we were actually able to land planes there and have them go off on one of the one of the shortest bombing missions of world war two to to attack japanese just almost the stones throw away and that did materially help to win the position well we have now reached the point where the marines have pretty much accomplished everything that they were interested in doing on boogenville so we pull them out and the army will take over and the air campaign can now begin here we have some pilots running out to their corsairs and we use the corsairs among other things they use that both as escorts but also we do fighter sweeps as well over the japanese airstrips we try to lure them up and our planes can usually knock down a heck of a lot more than they can knock down of ours so that's all part of their missions and the best known of our corsair pilots is of course this fellow pappy boington hopping in his aircraft and here he is with with some of his men boington is shot down in january in 1943 not 44 over a ball japanese submarine fishes him out of the harbor he's whisked off to japan we have no idea what's happened to him because the japanese don't disclose that he's a prisoner we award him the medal of honor during that time and then comes the end of the war and he is released from captivity and he reports truthfully or otherwise we have no way of knowing for sure that he downed two japanese planes during that last mission so the the air campaign is getting underway in earnest in december of 1944 it starts off very slowly at first we're just putting lots of holes in the japanese airstrips and they are filling them in as fairest as we can hold them uh well we get into january we are seeing some more substantial results and we get into february and we can really see the light at the end of the tunnel but we're still getting some very very you know strong opposition the last big air battle over a ball is fought on on february the 19th of 1944 and then abruptly the air war in the south pacific essentially ends because you get another one of these seismic effects such as what i had described earlier in this case it was happening up in the central pacific at truck in the carillon islands admiral mark mitcher has conducted on february 17th a devastating carrier attack on the japanese base he destroys lots of the japanese shipping and even more important than that he destroys a tremendous number of aircraft including many that had been destined to be brought down to the south pacific and they were just waiting for somebody to ferry them down and the japanese have now had to make a decision they cannot hold everywhere and they realize it they're going to have to give up the south pacific they've already decided certain areas are more more crucial for them than others so something has to give in the south pacific that's giving here they pull out their aircraft or almost all their aircraft from the south pacific and then on top of all that and for this i'll have to use the other map as i said the last big air battle was on february the 19th on the last day of the month and that we have leap year there so actually we're talking on february 29th on february 29th right here in the admiralty islands magatha's forces that have worked their way up here move here into the admiralty islands and magatha says that will put the cork in the bottle and you can kind of see what he meant by it his forces have come up here holsies have come up here we have been encircling them and now we have covered the the top part now is that the end of the war in the south pacific absolutely not there's another year and a half of the war still to go the war in the south pacific will go on for another year and a half that is usually the point where most riders will break off they lose interest in the south pacific but i find lots and lots of interesting things are happening from here out as i said the army has taken over and here we have the army high command there's harman behind the wheel of the jeep you may remember him in that photo sitting next between holsy and barrett harman commanding both the army and the army air forces in the south pacific next to him is nathan twining who commanded the 13th air force until during the battle of bougainville he moves to europe takes over air forces there and some of you may remember twining as being a chief of staff in the years after world war two the gentleman in the middle of the photo in the helmet that is oscar griswald griswald commands the 14th army corps and it's his troops that are now manning the perimeter on bougainville and if you're interested in knowing who the fourth gentleman in the jeep is he is one of our great unsung heroes of world war two here he's a colonel later on he becomes general brine who has responsibility for coordinating all supply in the south pacific a horrendously difficult task which does not get the credit it should and here we have the two division commanders under griswald at the left this is general beatler commanding the 37th division a high on national guard beatler is very unusual he is the only army national god general who is allowed to retain command of his division throughout the entire course of the war and for that reason alone you know that he must be a very able individual the other is general hodge hodge is commanding the americal division that has now joined the 37th division on the perimeter uh he uh will rise to become a corps commander later on during the philipine campaign and in the later after war years he'll actually move up to become an army commander two very able men and they will be facing this gentleman this is general hyakotaki he was the commander on guadalcanal who was forced off forced to evacuate by admiral halsey and he would like nothing better to do than have the americans uh as a matter of fact he is so confident of success he has his maps marked to show where the americans are going to surrender to him uh what he manages to do is really quite remarkable given how primitive the jungle trails are and the fact that he has at the very end no air or naval support he manages the greatest concentration of japanese infantry and artillery that will fight at a single place in the south pacific and you can leave it to the japanese to never do something with ease if it can be done with difficulty they are very good at coming up with the most complex of plans and for their initial blow they have selected this point on our parameters known as hill 700 and you can see from the steepness of that hill that is one hell of a hill uh but the way the 37th division historian wrote about it uh it was hard to to hit an enemy that was hiding almost literally under the front lines you couldn't depress your guns enough to be able to hit them while they were gathering at the base of the hill while during one dark and stormy night they come up the hill on all fours which is about the only way you can you can do it with their rifles slung across their backs they by sheer weight of numbers they break into the front lines of the 37th division and then those ohioans have the fight of their lives on their hands now most of the battle is taking place on the 37th division front except here this is not actually on the perimeter this is a hill in advance of the perimeter it's called hill 260 and what makes it special is that's enormous banyan tree that you see at the left from which you can just about see everywhere the japanese sees it early on in the action sees the hill early in the action and they hold on to it and we we try every which way to try to win it back and we don't succeed some wheg refer to that tree referring to the blood that was expended for it as the most expensive tree in the world well that tree does not look like it's worth very much comes the end of the battle and you can see the bare remnants uh that are left there again that's on the americal front but all the other action is happening by the america on the okay here on the 37th division front here are the troops in action and here you see something that you'll not oh wait a second went too far something that you do not see very often here is a division commander john beatler with a rifle in hand who's gotten right into the battle and he wrote a letter to his wife saying all the fun that he had in a battle that he you know i shot people from uh some so many yards away and all and his commanders were not at all thrilled about having their division general acting like a second lieutenant and they they told them that they gave him a silver star anyway well we are we are now very late in the battle the japanese have been losing very many men in fruitless attacks because we are along most of our front very very well defended because we know sooner or later the japanese were going to be arriving uh and uh we rebuff them and then at the very end of the action we unloose a tremendous artillery barrage and they go limping away and they will never again be a serious offensive threat on booganville and now for the next many months here we were in march of 44 when you get right all the way down into december there's hardly anything happening there we own as much of booganville as we're interested in owning the japanese are certainly in not in any position to attack us anymore they are content to just cultivate their gardens and try to stay alive till the end of the war and during this period you get a experiment and these are african-american troops from the 93rd division now if the army was left to its own devices it probably would have not try this experiment to see if these troops might be used in combat pressure had come down from the white house it was an election year and uh it was what they decided to do is they would take the troops company by company out into the jungle and acclimate them and from there they will it was somebody referred to as it was like a clean glided atmosphere they really had it under the microscope to see how they would perform well the experiment went on until what was called the company k-affair it was one company that just came up against a handful of japanese and they pretty much folded up shooting at each other and it was a great mess uh there were lots of reports full-scale investigation and consequence uh it was the experiment was closed down however there were other african-american troops on booganville who we see right here and these are been in the 25th infantry regiment and they acquitted themselves very nicely their situations were very different and what it really boils down to i think is that there was only one solution to the problem and that is an integrated army and that had a way till the end of the war uh the situation was very complex and you get too many simplistic books that are written about the situation during the war we're very lucky that a very able african-american historian named ulysses lee wrote one of the volumes in the official army history called the employment of negro troops and he went into the whole worldwide situation with tremendous objectivity and it makes wonderful readings still after these many years and if you own a computer you own the book because every one of our official histories the army official history the marine official history the air core official history not the navy but those are all have all been digitized and they're all available on your computers and now we will be going into what i consider most tragic phase of the entire war in the south pacific and i say this because warfare is bad enough but sometimes it's something you got to do this time we don't have to do it and as far as i'm concerned the villain of our story is right here this is australian general blamie very controversial figure for on many scores he is clearly a very able individual as far as military talents it's also a very brutal aspect to him and also some rather unsavory aspects he was the chief of the british general staff said about him that one morning he looks entirely drink sodden as if he spent the most debauched night is the way he he referred to it which is but in any event blamie makes the decision that this tacitrus that is set in between the americans and the japanese that has gone on for now many months he is going to stop it and the austrians are going to go after the japanese and he makes some very poor excuses that are in my book here we have the scene the second figure from the right is general britchford commander of the austrian third division and here he is taking over on boogenville from the americans american troops are wanted by macawther for his campaign in the philippines so he pretty much this is happening not just here on boogenville but it's happening elsewhere in the south pacific of the austrian is taking over from the americans and most of these battles uh... the situation is much as you see it uh... in the picture on the right these droves of you know whereas the austrians in most cases only take very few casualties the austrians the japanese they've been cut off from all supply uh... they're in a semi-stavation state and uh... their casualties tend to be very numerous however uh... sometimes the japanese can strike back very forcefully as we see in the picture at the left uh... this was an amphibious attack that was attempted by the austrians at a place called porten plantation uh... it went completely awry and in my book i refer to it as agallipoli in miniature well here you have very forceful looking austrian brigadier very very appropriately his name is hammer and brigadier hammer in this picture is explaining his plan of attack for the final battles to his higher echelon commanders uh... the idea is we're going to be pressing on to the japanese main japanese base at buin at the south of the island the japanese have nowhere to run nowhere to hide uh... so knowing what the japanese are like we would have had one heck of a battle in those last stages and we have pretty much the same thing going on on new guinea which i covered in my book i've just been able to just focus in on one little period area here the uh... rain set in fortunately fortunately and when things finally dry out and takes a while for the austrians to get organized for that last big push japan's surrenders the war is over and here is the scene at austrian headquarters the man at the left who is signing the the surrender is general kanda uh... because general hiakotaki is still on the island however he suffered a stroke and in his incapacitated state it was not possible to remove him because boomville has been completely cut out from the world uh... i found very interesting oops okay i'll point to it the second figure from the right uh... that is an american his name is john causey and i was curious who john causey was i did a little look up and i'm discovering that he was a marine who was aboard the the arizona on december 7th 1941 he was part of the minority that survived when i when i brought this to the attention of the historic office at quantico they thanked me for it and they were especially notating the records but that was an interesting little uh... a little something that occurred now in closing i don't think there's a danger why am i giving away the ending because i'd like to read from the last page of the book with the coming of peace in the south pacific each man needed to find peace on his own terms blamie left no question about his feelings when he presided over the capitulation of the japanese second army in the netherlands east indies he told the japanese in receiving your surrender i do not recognize you as an honorable and gallant foe but others felt differently none of the austrian brigadiers was more fiercely anti-japanese than arnold patz who needed to be leashed in by blamie in the final months of the war placed in charge of bougainville and its prisoners patz ordered a full dress inspection that included seventeen japanese generals and fifteen admirals it was wondered how he would react to everyone's surprise at the conclusion of the proceedings patz exclaimed good show and he shook hands with the conquered he would explain quote many dreadful things have been done during the course of the war by both sides there should not be recriminations after the event once it was over it was over thank you all and any questions please sir those two uh makes it uh happy shut down did i get in 26 uh i think i've got i think i've got it in the book i can't somehow it feels right that sounds right yeah that's quite a accomplishment there was a quite an accomplishment though i i believe that that he added in the the uh the planes that he took out before he was with the americans when he was flying with the flying tigers in china and i think he he threw those in as well so it wasn't all with the american air forces uh any any other questions uh if not just to kind of move things along uh you know when you write a book like this you know it's very hard not to get invested to a certain extent uh with the uh with the characters uh halsey i have to admit that in terms of this period halsey is a great favorite of mine and he's great favorite only for this reason that he does not get enough credit for these 20 months in the south pacific for those of you who don't know the halsey's full story what happens after the south pacific is pretty much subjugated uh in june of 1944 he moves on to command ships again he starts out the war on command of ships and during the centrum period he's just sitting behind a desk at numea he goes back aboard ships and uh to bet actually may i should say three uh he uh allows uh uh the japanese to uh almost inflict to inflict tremendous losses on us at lady gulf that that could have been avoided uh he's lucky because net net at the end of the battle we still are coming out ahead so there's not too much of a fuss that is made during the war uh however our fleet gets caught later in two typhoons well it's been enough to get caught in one typhoon but by the time he's caught in the second typhoon uh there there's a quarter of inquiry uh it's presided over by a very hard known individual named uh geniel john hoover because he was anything except geniel and he wanted to sack uh halsey uh admiral nemesse appreciating his fine services earlier on in the war said no we can't have that and particularly since the war is winding down so that does save halsey but but these are dark clouds that hang over his head and hang over his head among historians who are too ready to not give full cognizance of this one period where he is just absolutely doing an amazingly good job i can't even hit hit on every aspect uh he was so uh it's very interesting that in the magazine that i write for naval history uh there was someone else richard frank very fine writer he had to assess our different navy commanders and he went right down the line in terms of what they were they uh superior average or inferior he had to chop halsey in half he had to take a take the the pre pre-mid 1944 halsey gets the highest marks and the low marks for the second half of halsey so uh you just can't uh you can't just look at somebody and just make a too much of a flat out judgment sir you had a question what were the casualty numbers for the entire moving bill for japanese and for the american uh i think that i i'm pretty sure that i do have the numbers including the australians that they're in my book if you if you come up here i think i can i can show them to you the japanese uh the point i make about the japanese casualties is that bougainville uh has some of the highest you know if you compare it against battles like saipan or others higher profile battles uh a lot of them are not dying battle a lot of them are dying just to malnutrition and and just because it's a very insolubrious environment there uh but the uh the japanese as i recall i think they're their casualties are roughly the same during the uh the austrian phase in the american phase and if you come up here i think i can lay my hands on it pretty quickly further questions yes sir the airstrips were they built by construction battalion maybe uh yes yes and they were there were three in total uh there was the one at cape turkina and then the the two additional strips that were built did a great job yes sir was interesting i was in japan in the early 50s and they had a train came through one of the stations and it was loaded with trucks that had been used in world war two taking them back into the words of japan and staring all around and they were kind of like no but it was the japanese who went back and got that but back and got that yes it's so much different we're just like france if you're throwing stones at us in france southern france we thought what's going to happen to us when we got to japan we got there that people were like the life yes the japanese tend to be very obedient and if the government says obey they will they will obey and uh one thing when i was in the army i put the taxi cab and my friend had made somebody like about generals on the country cab driver pulled right over the cab get out i hope it wasn't a really isolated place he's still out there okay are we there yet any other questions all right thank you very much thank you all