 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual book talk with David F. Winkler about tribute to a generation, Hayden Williams and the building of the World War II Memorial. Before we hear from today's author, I want to tell you about two online programs we will be presenting in commemoration of Veterans Day. On Thursday, November 12th at 5 p.m. we will show the recently restored version of William Weiler's World War II film, Memphis Bell. Following the screening, NARA Supervisory Motion Picture Preservation Specialist Chris Austin will moderate a discussion with Catherine Weiler, film producer and daughter of William Weiler, and filmmaker Eric Nelson, who collaborated on the restoration and used the outtake footage in his 2018 documentary, The Cold Blue. And on Tuesday, November 17th at 7 p.m. we will welcome Mary Beth Norton, who will talk about her new book, 1774, The Long Year of Revolution, which chronicles the revolutionary change that occurred in the American colonies between December 1773 and April 1775. Tom Putnam, director of the Concord Museum, will join Professor Norton in conversation. Tribute to a generation highlights the pivotal role played by F. Hayden-Williams in creating the National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The memorial was first proposed in Congress in 1987, but it took 17 years before the completed memorial was dedicated in 2004. F. Hayden-Williams, a World War II naval officer and official in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, believed that the fast-disappearing greatest generation should have a memorial in the nation's capital. Williams got himself appointed to the American Battle Monuments Commission, put together a hard-working team and overcame opposition to see the project through to completion. In the National Archives, you can find the official records of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which include design and architectural drawings, video and sound recordings, construction records, correspondence files, and more created for the National World War II Memorial. David F. Winkler, a retired Navy reserve commander, earned his PhD in 1998 from American University in Washington. His dissertation Cold War at Sea, High Seas Confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2000 and republished under the title Incidence at Sea, American Confrontation and Cooperation with Russia and China, 1945 to 2016. He was selected in early 2019 to be the class of 1957 Chair of Naval Heritage at the U.S. Naval Academy for the 2019-2020 academic year and the Charles Lindbergh Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for the following year. A historian with a non-profit naval historical foundation for over two decades, Winkler is the author of Amherst, Admiral's, and Desert Sailors, the U.S. Navy, Bahrain, and the Gulf. And ready then, ready now, ready always, the history of the U.S. Navy Reserve. In addition, he writes a monthly naval history column in the Navy League of the United States Sea Power Magazine. Now, let's hear from David F. Winkler. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much, David, for that introduction. And it's a privilege to be here on this eve of the 102nd anniversary of the first armistice in the end of World War I. Armistice Day, which we now know as Veterans Day, was made in 1954. I'm Dave Winkler, and I'm going to talk about a book that just came out from the Naval Institute, Tribute to a Generation. It's very appropriate. 25 years ago, tomorrow, this fellow Hayden Williams stood next to Bill Clinton, the president of the United States, and put a marker down at a site that we now know today as the World War II Memorial. So this is a story about World War II Memorial. And why this book? Well, it's a desire to capture a backstory. You know, there is a, the story behind the story of the building, tell the rest of the story, since the building of the World War II Memorial. Things happened since the first book on the subject came back out in 2004. And we also wanted to do something to recognize Ambassador F. Hayden Williams. We'll talk a little bit more about him later. There's some themes in this book. There's some ongoing friction, outsiders versus local residents. You kind of saw some of this this past summer with some of the demonstrations. Washington's an interesting city, unlike any other in the country where it's the nation's capital. We want, you know, representations of, you know, our achievements, you know, good people, heroes, epic events, represented statuaries and memorials in this city. Well, you know, the local folks, you know, basically, a lot of this is thrust down on them. And so this sometimes you get some resentment, and that's going to be an ongoing theme with this story about the building of the World War II Memorial. Challenges of consensus building. I don't think there's a memorial in this city that everybody agreed on from the get-go, going from always from the Washington Memorial to Lincoln to Jefferson, even the recent Eisenhower Memorial. And there are mind-boggling bureaucratic hurdles to accomplish anything in this city. One of the advantages I had over the previous book that was written back in 2004 by Nicholas Mills is he did interviews with a lot of folks who actually were involved in building the project. Since then, a lot of those folks have passed on. I had access to Hayden Williams's notes. 42 Hollinger boxes worth of handwritten pencil in legal pads, and they're all maintained at the National Defense University. How they got there, that's kind of an interesting story. I'm not enough time here to tell that, but it made for a very easy research project as far as, you know, getting an understanding of, you know, what was going through this fellow's mind. Of course, before there was Hayden Williams, there was this fellow, Roger Durbin. And Roger is the guy who in the 80s came to Washington, D.C., and he's touring around, and he notices up on the right-hand side there's Vietnam Memorial. And then he knows his construction on a Korean War Memorial. And Roger, he served in the Army during World War II. He was served in the Battle of the Bulge. And, you know, he was wondering, well, why isn't there a World War II memorial? And he had an opportunity at a fish fry up in Northwestern Ohio where he lives, and he was talking to his Congresswoman there. She is Marcy Captor. At that time, she was a relatively young Democratic legislature now. She's, I think, the second senior woman legislator in the House. And he asked her, hey, how come there isn't any World War II memorial? And her response was, well, yeah, there is one. You know, there's that over there in Arlington that you've got those Marines planting a flag on top of Mount Suribachi. And Roger, he said, no, no, that's the Marine Corps Memorial. So he, she does due diligence and realizes that there is no memorial to the World War II veterans. And she introduces legislation in 1987 to have a World War II memorial in Washington. And that doesn't go through the first time. This is where we talk about bureaucratic hurdles. She reintroduces it in 1989, 1991 and 1993. Finally, it does get passed through the House and sent in 1993. Now, think about this from 87 to 93. That's, you know, that's almost six years. That's longer than America's involvement in World War II. As I mentioned, it got passed and it assigned the American Battle Minimum Commission to establish a World War II memorial in the district and its environments. So what is the American Battle Minimum Commission? Well, this is an organization that was founded in 1923 after the First World War to tend to the graves of the soldiers who fell during that first conflict. General of the Army, Black Jack Pershing was the first chair, head commissioner, and he took this job on in 1923 and continued on in this role until 1948. The commission, besides being led typically by a four-star Army general, it was that way of shifting between the Army and the Marine Corps until the presidency of one Donald J. Trump who appointed a civilian. He oversees a commission and it's a group of distinguished American citizens whose job, it's a volunteer position. You go out and you go visit these cemeteries overseas in France, Italy, England, Holland, Belgium, places like the Philippines to make sure that the sacred soil is being taken care of and cared for. Come 1994, this general, F. X. Kelly, he is the former commandant of the Marine Corps who's in the role of the head of the commission and he was appointed by President George Herbert Walker Bush for the job. In 1994, the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Memorial is coming up and it's a big deal. Half century after this epic event in World War II, President Clinton is expected to go over to France for a big commemoration event and there's an article in the Washington Post saying that he'll be met by hostile forces to inform the fact that the American Battle of Naim is commissioned with all Republican appointees under George H. W. Bush. So, you know, there's a realization that he really ought to appoint his own commission. That's where F. Hayden-Lames comes in. F. Hayden-Lames, he's the president of the Asia Foundation out in San Francisco. He heard about the legislation to build this World War II memorial and he wanted it all in in the worst way. He wanted to get on the commission and fortunately he had some connections to do so. A little bit about Hayden-Lames. He was born in Spokane, Washington, moves to California. His father is a Presbyterian preacher so he's a very strict upbringing. Besides, he's working his way through college. He's going to go to Berkeley. He's working for Pan Am as a contractor with the Navy and he's placed on active duty. Well, first of all, he's actually on Midway Island on December the 7th, 1941. As Japanese planes are attacking our battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, he is working on this contract in Midway and two Japanese destroyers come along and bombard the island, killing four service members and paralyzing a good friend of his from the waist down. He wants to join the service but because he's under contract for Pan Am, doing important vital logistical support for the Navy, he said, you need to keep doing what you're doing. It's important for the nation's defense. However, the Navy, what they did with the contractors is they arranged for them to be placed in a reserve status. In case they got put into harm's way, then they could have protections, they can activate them and they could have protections under the Geneva Convention. He is placed on active duty in August 1944 and he's sent out as an air controller for the Naval Air Transportation Service out at Johnston Island, which is located in the middle of the Pacific and is the crossroads of airplanes going to and from the front. There he's seeing all the wounded coming in from the western Pacific being transferred on to Hawaiian and to the States. He goes out to establish air bases and places like Sipan and Palau and he sees the carnage that occurred. He's relatively sheltered in his position. Finally, he winds up landing in Tokyo. He arrives before the surrender and one of his jobs is to evacuate the prisoners of war from Japan. He gets off active duty and he goes on using his GI Bill to get a BA from Cal Berkeley. He gets his MA, PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts, serves in the defense departments in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and then as I mentioned, he gets selected as president of the Asia Foundation, which is an organization that promotes educational outreach to the western Pacific. Now, it comes out in the 1960s that the Asia Foundation is really a front for the CIA and when that news gets out, it's Hayden Williams' job basically to wing the Asia Foundation off of CIA support and make it stand up as its own as an educational outreach organization. He's very successful. He's the longest sitting president of that organization. In the meantime, he was appointed ambassador to head the negotiation on the status of Micronesia. After World War II, we had captured all these, retaken them from the Japanese, and they were basically under military administration. We needed to change that. Williams is the guy who actually headed the negotiating team to change the status of Micronesian islands, and the Navy sent this fellow on the right-hand side at the time he was captain, William J. Crow. Crow was not happy at all getting these orders to do this because he was due to take command of a cruiser. He was on the fast track to become a flag officer, make Admiral and Navy, and to be sent out to the western Pacific to negotiate the status of these islands, he started as a dead end. Well, he worked very well with Hayden Williams. Williams wrote him raving reviews of what a brilliant officer he was, and Crow in his oral history credits Williams to help him to make flag officer. Of course, Crow is going to become the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration, but after he retires in the administration of George H. W. Bush, he's approached by this young Arkansas governor by the name of Bill Clinton, the president. Clinton needs some advice from the military. He's seen as this Vietnam draft archer, and he needed to get some good counsel, and Crow was willing to give it to him, and Crow was really impressed with young Governor Clinton. So Crow decides to join as an advisor for his campaign, and he recruits this fellow, General Fred Warner, who was the commander of Southern Command, while Crow was chairman of Joint Chiefs. Warner's also engaged with Clinton, and they both speak at the Democratic National Convention and support the Clinton-Gore campaign. After Clinton is elected, Crow is rewarded with the post of being the U.S. Ambassador to England, and they tell Warner, we have something else in mind for you. Well, June 6, 1994 comes around, and Bill Clinton is greeted at Normandy by a friendly slate of commissioners that he appointed. Fred Warner, General Warner, is the now new chair of the commission, and amongst the new commissioners is that Hayden Williams. Shortly thereafter, Hayden Williams calls a meeting with Warner, and Governor Kerry is also on the commission. Former Governor of New York served in the New Army in World War II, plus a Brigadier General Pat Foote, and Williams knows about the mandate for the commission to build this World War II Memorial, and he wants to establish a small subcommittee because the whole commission, it would be two honors attached to manage. So Warner agrees to set up this small subcommittee. There's just one small problem, is that the president also appointed a 12-member Memorial Advisory Board, because the law setting had to, and the purpose of that organization was to select and design, help select and design the Memorial, and promote donations in support of the Memorial construction. So the Advisory Board and the commission, they all hop on buses in January 1995, and they've taken around seven sites that the National Park Service has allocated for them to take a look at. Here's a quick overview of some of the sites. The one on the lower left-hand corner over in Arlington is Henderson Halls, the headquarters of the Marine Corps. That was eliminated quickly after the Marine Corps said, we're not moving. There's two sites along the tidal basin. They were judged to be too far away from public transportation. There is a site that you can take a look right in the middle. That's today where the National Museum for African American Smithsonian is now cited at. There is a very interesting site to the right over Interstate 395. On the Mall, there's a reflecting pool there with the grand statue. The problem with that site is it was right over 395. What I pointed out is as long as you don't dig down, you're okay. But then they realized that there would be some problems because if you have to plant a foundation, you can't build it on Interstate 395. There is another site. The highest site is Freedom Plaza that's on Pennsylvania Avenue. And then there's this site, Constitution Gardens, that's over by the Mall above where the Rainbow Pool is. Now Hayden Williams at the time, they're taking this tour and he takes a walk down when he's at that Constitution Garden site. And he looks at the Rainbow Pool and this fellow commissioner by name of Ronald Kidder recalls that Williams said, this is the place. This is where we need to site the memorial. And he starts a lobby and right then and there, the representative from the Park Service fellow named John Parsons. And Parsons says, this is what we're giving here for now. So with that, they're starting to talk about what site is going to be selected. Now there's kind of a turf war going on here because as I mentioned, the Museum Advisory Board has a mandate. And the Battle of Miami's commission has a mandate. Now I'm going to give a shout out to this fellow on the right-hand side. His name is Major General John Hurling and he's brought in as the secretary of the American Battle of Miami's commission. It's a full-time job to minister the care of the cemeteries overseas, the management of the infrastructure, the leadership of the staff, and also this World War II Memorial project. So he's going to work with Hayden Williams and the advisory board. During the tour, Hayden Williams sees this woman here on the left-hand side. Her name is Helen Fagan. She is a Holocaust survivor. What's remarkable about this Helen Fagan is that she had her own experience building this memorial to the Holocaust down in Miami. And Williams, who had some experience with the memorial out in Saipan, it's a kindred spirit. This woman understands what it takes to design, select, and put together a project. And he is able to lobby to have her basically brought on as a liaison from the advisory board to basically the memorial advisory board is going to be the fundraiser. And this site and design committee is set up to actually go out and confirm the site with Helen Fagan representing the museum advisory board on board. Okay, a couple of key dates here is that, okay, without the rainbow pool, they recommend the Constitution Garden site as the most appropriate. And there's a hearing held by the National Capital Memorial Commission, and they prioritize the Constitution Garden site and the reflecting pool site of top Interstate 395 as their two favorites. There's that Constitution Garden site as talking about, not too far from the rainbow pool. But the problem with that site is that the commissioner of Fine Arts is a fellow by the name of J. Carter Brown, of the Brown family up in Rhode Island, and he had been the chair of the Museum of National Art. He is, he does not like that Constitution Garden site. Now, his preferred site, if he had his way, would have been Freedom Plaza. I think he envisioned to park the trial on Pennsylvania Avenue. But he shoots down the proposal for Constitution Gardens, which kind of puts everybody in a bind. Well, what Hayden Williams is able to do is he gets all the parties together on a conference call on August 6. And they agree, you know, 1995, they agree to put the rainbow pool site in play. Hallelujah says Hayden Williams, he is ecstatic. And the Commissioner of Fine Arts on September 19, 1995, agrees for that site. Now, that site is selected now. There's a dedication, which is just in time, because November 11, 25 years ago, as I mentioned, Bill Clinton puts a marker down at the rainbow pool. It's the last final act of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of World War II. So, the site is selected. Now they have to find a design. And there's a design competition. There are some, you know, instructions put out to the potential designers. You can't block them all this, okay? You're not going to put an octave triumph in the middle of them all. It's got to remain open. And they had a requirement for interior space. They wanted to have, okay, like a museum. So people could take a look at and kind of understand what World War II was about. So that made it very challenging. But, you know, there were some 400 and four entries submitted. And this room here, if you recognize it, it is the National Building Museum, the interior of it. This is, as they say, the room where it happened. They put up all these, you know, proposed designs and a judging committee went through. And I think there was one general on the committee. He said, boy, is there a lot of eagles in these designs. And then another judge said, yeah, and there's also a lot of turkeys, too. They nailed it down to six competition finalists. And then they gave these six competition finalists some spending money to draw out their designs. And the second stage of competition closed on October the 25th, 1996. And the design jury decided to select this fellow here, Friedrich St. Florian. He is actually an immigrant from Austria. He was actually liberated or freed by American troops at the end of World War II. His little boy came to America, studied at Columbia University, and he got involved with the Rhode Island School of Design. And he had a nice little architectural firm up in Providence. His design, and this is what you're looking at, really, you know, met what they were looking for. They kept that vista open. And his solution for that interior space was to have a berm built around with these columns, OK? Cut off at the top to represent sacrifice. His secret to hear was that he actually lowered the rainbow pool down about 15 feet so that it really prevented, you know, it really kept that vista open. Well, there was a ceremony at the White House on January the 17th, 1997 to unveil this design to before President Clinton. President Clinton had just one reelection in 1996. And there was a big surprise, kind of the unveiling of the design got upstage by the fact that President Clinton invited his opponent, Senator Bob Dole, in to present him with the Medal of Freedom, the service that he had given his country. You know, it was a very generous act of the president to recognize his opponent this way. And Senator Dole, you know, he was very appreciative, kind of a joke that he had planned to be in the White House, but in other circumstances. But, you know, he decided to take on two months later to roll as the national chairman of the World War II Memorial Campaign. So, you know, it was a big event that not only did they have a design, but they also had a head of the campaign. Unfortunately, this opposition is going to emerge to the St. Florian design. It's criticized in some of the architectural journals. Senator Bob Kerry is concerned that he kind of looks like a parking lot on the Mall. And Congresswoman Norton from the District of Columbia, she's kind of concerned that it's evading space that, you know, this is the space where, you know, you had the rally in 1964 with Martin Luther King and I have a dream speech. So, you know, there's some concerns about the design. And it gets to a point that on July 24, 1997, the Commissioner for Fine Arts approves a lot of the elements, but it just decides the design itself has got to go. So it's back to the drawing board. And this is where Hayden Williams decides to, okay, we'll keep the architect on board, and they start working on a new design, but here's the difference. The new design does not have to have interior spaces, and that really opens things up for St. Florian to come up with the design that you see today. Now, in 1998, as revised design is approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, there's a movie that comes out called Saving Private Ryan. It couldn't have been more timely. There's this, Tom Hanks is approached shortly after the movie was released and said, you know, could you be the spokesperson for the raising of funds for the World War II Memorial? And he says, I am your man. And he makes a series of public service announcements with that talk about, you know, this generation, you know, they came together, they fought to defend and save the world, and it was time to say thank you. Well, with Tom Hanks out there and a lot of other great fundraising initiatives, the money started coming in for the World War II Memorial, kept it on track to raise the funds in time. The Memorial gets additional approval. It's the devil is in the details. Every two weeks, Hayden Williams is getting his committee together and they're going over, they're meeting with the subcontractors, St. Florian, Leo Daly is the head architect. And this guy, Ray Kasky, is the, he is the guy who does all of the bronze reliefs He's a sculptor, one finest in the country. You can see he does these reefs along these pillars. There is a, inside each of these Atlantic and Pacific towers on the north and south end, you can see these four columns with the four eagles holding a bronze wreath. It's an inspired design. And perhaps the thing that was really inspirational was this freedom wall here with these stars. And when St. Florian unveiled this design to Hayden Williams, Williams just looked at it and held his hand and he just started weeping. He was just, he became emotional. Each one of those stars represents 100 service members killed during World War II. There's over 4,000 of them. So in a public hearing on the, in 2000, the Commission of Fine Arts approved the final design and on November 11, 2000, a groundbreaking ceremony attended by 15,000 people is held with President Clinton. For Hayden Williams, this is, I guess, you know, the high point of his time as a commissioner. He gets to talk and talk about, you know, the diligent effort that went into the design of this complex that's about to be built. There is a problem, though, is that the opposition group has filed lawsuits. They are, that has to be resolved. And Senator John Warner of Virginia really puts the legislation in place basically overriding any lawsuits basically direct that this project must go through. With now President George W. Bush as president, he signs that legislation into law and contracts are let and the construction begins. It's going to be a four-year construction progress. Now, as we all know, elections have consequences. And with the election of George W. Bush, that meant a new set of commissioners. So Hayden Williams and Rollin Kitter there and the other commissioners, Warner, goes away. General Kelly comes back as the head commissioner, but by this time, the designs have been put in place. The new commissioners, they make a couple of tweaks to the final design. But what you see today is what you have. The memorial itself was dedicated in late May 2004. And, you know, there's Senator Dole there at the podium. And afterwards, after all the celebration, Williams comes back to Washington and he kind of realizes that, okay, now the memorial has been handed over to the National Park Service for Maintenance. The Park Service doesn't keep the things as tidy as the American battle monuments. If you go over to like the D-Day Normandy, the cemetery there, it's immaculate. Park Service, you know, it has a limited budget. So Williams is concerned about the upkeep of the memorial. And he's also concerned that there's nothing happening there. Tourists come through, but there needs to be something put in place to make it into a live memorial. And in 2007, he leads the effort to form the Friends in the National World War II Memorial. It's an organization that's dedicated to, you know, having teacher education forms, an annual lecture. And they organize a lot of the, at least five in the past couple of years with the 75th anniversary of World War II, many, many commemorative events with reflames, musical displays. Basically, they keep the memorial alive and meaningful. And this is, Hayden Williams put this organization together. As I said, they have, you know, these historical World War II talks with leading scholars across the country. And at the 10th anniversary of the dedication, this was Hayden Williams's last time. There he is with the Senator Dahl, you know, the former chairman, actually co-chairman Fred Smith from FedEx, who also helped chair the effort. And Hayden Williams is going to fly back to San Francisco and eventually pass away a year or two later. Now, in your, there is an area there for you to ask questions and, I guess, a question function. Go ahead and pass those questions along and they'll be passed on to me via my chat function. So let me get out of this presentation. There's the book. You can get it at the Naval Institute Press. And I'll stop the slideshow and let's see. One of our viewers is wondering about the possible error of the World War II Memorial. It says U.S. Air Force when it was the Army Air Corps. It should say, well, during the beginning of the war, it was the U.S. Army Air Corps, but that quickly became U.S. Army Air Forces. So, you know, I'd have to, I think it should be saying U.S. Army Air Forces. It, of course, officially the U.S. Air Force doesn't come into existence into 1947. Hopefully that answers the question. Very much for this opportunity to talk to you today. Again, on behalf of the Archives, I appreciate your time in tuning in. Thank you very much. Take care.