I've been doing my best to fight the Shinjuan
attack alone.
I can't do this war unless I do the Shinjuan attack.
The main purpose of the attack on Shinjukan is
to occupy the southwestern resource area.
It will take about three to four months.
In the meantime, if the U.S. Pacific Fleet is
in power, it will be hindered and the
southwestern operation will not be possible.
That is why we are fighting for the Pacific.
Please go on.
Admiral Yamamoto took a major part of the
decision making of the Imperial Japanese Headquarters
to start fighting against the United States.
Supposedly, as we were informed and taught at
the time,
the purpose of this war was to secure the
natural resources
that Japan needed for survival at the time,
which only
can be provided at the time from the South
Pacific Islands,
Java, Borneo, Indonesia, Philippines, and so on.
That was the reason I was told at the time.
But Japan was aware of the power of the U.S. Navy,
U.S. naval force, which means the U.S. battleships.
The simple reason we attacked the Pearl Harbor
and so obsessively destroyed the battleships
and fleet,
Although we really wanted to destroy the larger
class fleet,
like carrier, much larger carriers
than the battleships we actually destroyed at
the Pearl Harbor,
but we couldn't find them.
That was the reason I was told at the time.
If the reason is true, as the questioner said,
Rather than sinking the battleship, we didn't
have the aircraft carrier that we were aiming
for in the first place.
If we had used fuel tanks, poison cells, and
such facilities,
But that was the true reason, now I think, that
it could have been even more effective
damage the America by destroying all the
facilities involving military factories, oil
tanks, dockyard.
In other words, I believe we could have - we
should have tried to damage those things rather
than to dramatically attack those battleships
to prevent the United States expansion and
and secure the resources we really needed to
obtain for our own country.
Only to succeed the mission to expand Japanese
power to the South Pacific to secure and obtain
those natural resources for our need at the time.
I personally believe attack of Pearl Harbor was
not necessary.
But on the other hand, I believe the result of
Pearl Harbor
at the time would have been effective to confuse
the state of mind of the U.S. military.
In that sense, the military was a success.
Mr. Yamamoto, the grave of the
Commander-in-Chief of Yamamoto is right next to
the Koyane Institute, where I live, but I
cannot hear it.
I was told that I was going to be in the grave,
but I wondered why I had to do the C-1 attack alone.
I didn't want to do it, but I thought that the
battleship was the common eye of the whole
world Navy.
Let's say that if the Parl GPC does the trial,
I think that they will be punished severely for
the big illegal attacks.
The other reason is that they are a country
that deals with the war against the pros and
cons of thevs in special courses.
Japan is a country that uses such weapons to do
ridiculous things.
We don't know what will happen if we use such weapons.
In other words, they are trying to suppress the
public opinion that rises in the American war.
That is their aim.
That is why they can't have a psychological
impact on fuel tanks or anywhere else.
I think they were aiming to destroy the
battleship and use special warfare to get rid
of the enemy and destroy the American people.
So, in conclusion, they were wrong.
The Admiral Yamamoto is not here with us today.
This is only my assumption and in my belief.
The reason Admiral Yamamoto wanted or believed
that Japan must start this war and attack
day, to plan to attack the carrier's battleship
or the
ship's fleet.
That was to lessen the morale of U.S.
military by this surprise attack,
much more than realistic, tangible, scientific reasons
in the terms of astrology.
Adhanyu Yamamoto is supposedly the one
who had known about your country very, very
well at the time.
But even he underestimated the power of your country,
the fighting spirit of your men.
The President President Obama Regrettably,
we've come to the end of our time for this session.
Let me give you a brief preview of this afternoon.
We will reconvene at 2 PM, at which time
the real Walter Cronkite will be here.
We will have a session featuring Walt Rostow on America
Prepares for War, Wasitaka Chihaya planning the Hawaii
operation, and communications intelligence
featuring Captain Roger Pinault and Captain
Raymond Schmidt.
If we have one more round of applause
for our distinguished veterans.
We'll see you this afternoon.
Mr. Frank Marino, please come to the coat check
office and contact the house manager.
Those of you with badges with stars will find
box lunches available in the lobby.
There is also a cafeteria next door to the
building west of this building in the basement.
Thank you.
Good afternoon and hello again, everybody.
It is indeed an honor and pleasure to introduce
a gentleman who really needs no introduction.
Many of you know him as one of America's most
distinguished war correspondents.
He is also an accomplished narrator whose
familiar voice and commentary are a hallmark of
excellence for countless radio and television programs.
I am confident that all of you will recognize
today's emcee for his years of work as the
anchorman for CBS Evening News.
Please welcome the Dean of American Broadcast
Journalism, the real Walter Cronkite.
Thank you very much, and what an exciting
program has been put together for all of us here.
We're enjoying it very much.
I know you have enjoyed this morning's program.
I deeply regret that I missed the reminiscences
of those brave men who fought on both sides
at Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, I had an
engagement in Los Angeles just flew in a moment ago,
and I'm very honored that I was invited to
participate in this rather important symposium,
I think.
Before we go on with the scheduled program this
afternoon, we have a real scoop for all
of us. Last week, there was a startling find at
Pearl Harbor, which I'm sure many of you
Today we have the scoop, but I'll let the
gentleman who is in charge of that tell you
about it.
Daniel Martinez, who is the park historian at
the USS Arizona Memorial, has got our surprise
for us.
Mr. Martinez.
Well, good afternoon, everyone.
I look out to all of these faces, and it is an
interesting experience.
My name is Daniel Martinez.
I work with the National Park Service at the
USS Arizona Memorial.
I have been involved with the Park Service in
Hawaii for six years,
and prior to that at a little-known site called
Custer Battlefield National Monument.
It seems that my career will always be
surrounded by controversy,
either by me or by the participants that I study.
It is sure a pleasure to be introduced by
Walter Cronkite.
There was two men that kind of influenced my life
and certainly one of them was Walter Lord
and the other was Walter Cronkite.
My generation marks history by the words
that Walter Cronkite issued
in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I know where I was and what I was doing that day.
But on the morning of December 7th,
my family was at Pearl Harbor
and they mark time by that day.
One of the things often overlooked is that
Pearl Harbor,
besides its historical significance, is an
archaeological treasure.
In that sense, there is still evidence 50 years
after the event
that can change and shape history as we know it today.
In the next few moments, you will see some
slides that are evidence of that.
On May 2nd, 1991, at 9 a.m. in the morning,
Dutra Dredging Company gave us a call at the memorial.
They were working on a new area that was going
to be used for the mooring of the USS Missouri.
Dredging was taking place.
On this vessel you see here was part of the
evidence that they took up.
took from the water. The dredge had scooped up
in their 45-ton bucket, an amazing artifact.
Fifty years ago, 40 B-5N2 bombers were detailed
to attack ships with torpedoes.
Twenty-nine of them actually attacked
Battleship Row. It was said that some of these torpedoes
had failed, but how many, and under what circumstances,
and more importantly, if they did fail, where
were they?
My job as historian is to work with the facts
as we know it.
But my cohort, Mr. Bob Chenoweth,
is the curator of the museum.
And he'll take over at this point
to talk about the details of this torpedo.
As Daniel mentioned, we discovered the presence
of the torpedo on the 2nd as a result of a
phone call.
We immediately set about getting in contact
with the Navy to try to arrange a visit to take
a look at the torpedo.
We had to bear in mind, as the Navy did, that
this was possibly a live weapon that contained
about £450 of explosive.
We were able to go over on May 3rd and take a
look at the torpedo for about an hour and a half.
When we first came on the boat and took a look
at the torpedo,
we were able to determine from several features
that it was, in fact, a Japanese torpedo.
The explosive ordnance disposal people had
placed a screwdriver in the arming mechanism,
So that made us feel a little bit more
comfortable, but not much.
This was one of the features that we first
spotted that tipped us off to the fact
that it was probably a Japanese torpedo.
This was an anti-stabilizing fin.
There was one on each side of the torpedoes
that were used at Pearl Harbor.
And in addition, there were enlarged wooden fins
attached to these to keep the torpedo stable
when they were
released into the water.
We immediately began measuring the torpedo and
trying to collect as much data as we could
because we weren't certain at that time whether
or not the EOD people would be able to disarm
the torpedo or make it safe without destroying it.
We were very much interested in the tail section.
We determined that the torpedo's overall length
was 17 feet, 11 inches, and it had a
circumference of 56 inches. inches.
We were interested in the drive mechanism, the propellers,
and the fin arrangement, the size of the fins,
because it was also a wooden assembly that
was attached to the tail fins.
We were able to determine some very interesting things
about the torpedo.
One was that the diameter of the propellers
on the rear end of the torpedo were different.
These propellers rotated in opposite directions
to neutralize the torque that the torpedo would have
traveling through the water.
You notice that it has eight fins,
and that was a characteristic of Japanese torpedoes,
unlike most American aerial torpedoes from the
time period
that had four fins.
We were very fortunate to be able to reveal the information
that the torpedo contained on its essentially a
data plate.
The information was actually stamped
into the body of the torpedo just
behind the arming mechanism.
And what the information says is that this
was a Type 91 Gyori, which is the Japanese word
for torpedo.
It's a combination of the characters for fish
and thunder
and that it was a modification number two.
The serial number, as you can see, there was 1446.
And the information below that line
indicates that it was manufactured in the year
Showa 16, which was 1941.
The rear section of the torpedo was in fairly
bad condition.
A lot of corrosion had taken place and a lot of
the metal had been damaged either in the
landing or from the fact that it sat for 50
years on the bottom of the harbor.
After an hour and a half, we had to leave the
scene, and we didn't realize it at the
time, but to the best of our knowledge, at this
point, that's the last look that any
of us had at the torpedo.
It was destroyed later that afternoon by the
Navy about a mile off the entrance to Pearl Harbor.
Thank you.
It is my great pleasure to introduce you to a
man with a quite distinguished history in
in our U.S. Navy, distinguished career.
He graduated from VMI and the Naval Academy.
And then he spent almost a year, nine months or more,
on the staff of the nuclear training
staff of Admiral Rickover.
Of course, after that experience under that
strong, irascible,
and Tough disciplinarian, I suppose
But the rest of his career must have just been
a ball.
But at any rate, he, after four years in destroyers,
spent the rest of his career in submarines,
including Polaris submarines.
He was at one time the commander of all U.S.
and NATO submarine
forces in the Mediterranean.
Upon retirement from that and service
on, as usual, such a career on the chiefs of staff
on the Secretary of Defense staff,
he took an assignment to develop a naval
academy for Iran.
I think, as brilliant as he is, it might be
just as well
that that whole project fell apart
before he ever was able to train the Iranians
to operate submarines.
At any rate, he retired from the Navy,
venture capitalist for several years,
successfully, I hope,
in San Antonio, and the Nimitz Foundation was
very lucky to get him as its executive director.
Please welcome back, I know you've met him
earlier today, Admiral Grothjean.
I tell you, that is really what you call being
Sneaky, having been out here first and then
and wanting Walter Cronkite to introduce you.
But after listening to it, I'm also
reminded of what Puba said in the Mikado, which was,
I believe it was merely corroborative detail intended
to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bold and unconvincing
But I do thank Mr. Cronkite for introducing me.
And my part in this program today is going to
be a little different from most of the others,
and that is what I really want to do is just to
introduce you a little bit to the Admiral
Nimitz Museum,
give you a couple of minutes upon who sponsored
this symposium,
and to tell you what's happening in Fredericksburg.
But first of all, for the sponsors, the Admiral
Nimitz Museum is a state park.
It's run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
and therefore has as a superintendent a park, a
state employee by the name of Mr. Bruce Smith,
who does a superb job of running the museum.
Supporting the museum in the same building and
in the same breath and hand-in-hand with him
is the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, for which I'm
the executive director.
Also sponsoring this symposium is the Arizona
Memorial Museum Association, located in Hawaii,
the United States Naval Institute, the LBJ
Library and Museum, USAA, and of course, Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department.
Now in telling you about the museum, I know
that many of you have been there, and yet
There are some who have not.
And everyone who has gone through that museum who
talks with me, and I'm sure that they are probably
spreading on the soup a little bit, but at any rate,
they tell me it's the best museum they've ever
seen in the world.
And I'm here to tell you I think it is too.
And if you haven't seen it, I would like for you
to try it out, and then let me know if you
don't agree.
It is a museum that is unique.
It's not like the Smithsonian.
You don't need a whole lifetime to go through it.
You can take about three hours.
It's a wonderful afternoon's excursion from
Austin or San
Antonio to go to Fredericksburg, see that
charming little town,
and then spend about three hours going through
the museum.
And I promise you, a delightful, enjoyable experience,
which will not only be titillating,
but will also be educational.
The museum got the idea of putting on the
symposia four years ago.
This is our fourth one.
The fourth one, which was held in 1988, had to
do with the Yamamoto shoot-down, and it
was successful.
It was highly successful.
We had books written about it and
videocassettes made about it, and we all liked
it so much
that we tried another one the next year,
which was, the subject of which was
submarine operations in the Pacific in World
War II.
And we doubled our attendance that year, in 1989,
and it was tremendously successful.
We had there all of the living Medals of Honor winners
that had won their medals in the submarine operations.
And then, last year, we had our third symposium,
which was the Cactus Air Force,
which was the - it dealt with the air
operations over Guadalcanal.
And I'll diverge here a minute.
The chairman of our board is a Marine, and Mr.
Bayne Kerr - and Mr. Bayne Kerr looked
at all these guys that were flying around and
decided, look, if we're going to talk
about operations, we've got to make sure that
we talk about the ground operations in Guadalcanal.
And so that brings us to what the symposium is
going to be about next year.
In 1992, in the springtime, we shall have our
fifth symposium, which will be about all
of the events that occurred in 1942.
That will include, of course, Guadalcanal, the
Battle of Midway, Saddle Island, the Jimmy
Doo Little Raid, and the Coral Sea.
And so that's a lot to put on our plate, but we
think that with the response that we've
had to this symposium, that we can
see that there is a great deal of interest in
the country.
And so we shall be conducting that in spring of
next year.
Now, it comes to the point of how are you
going to find out about it?
Well, the way to find out about it is to join
the foundation.
You all knew I had a good punch line in there someplace,
didn't you?
Well, that's it.
If you're not a member of the foundation,
I implore you today to consider becoming one.
It's only $20.
What it does is to support the museum
and to make this museum grow in the way that I
think it should,
in the way that I think that when you have seen
this museum,
you'll want it to grow.
By the way, out in the front on your right as
you walk out,
you will see a model, an architect's model, which
was just finished last night.
And that model shows you the present museum
and an expansion to the rear and to the right
of it,
which is a new building.
It was an HEB, I guess, until this weekend.
It was an HEB grocery store.
They are vacating it tomorrow.
And the foundation hopes to buy that building
and to make it into the Gallery of the Pacific War.
And in that building, we shall be housing.
I say we shall be housing.
I'll get in trouble with my board here if we're
not careful because I can't commit to anything.
The only thing I can commit to you is my
dedication to making that building something
that every veteran
and every citizen of this country will be proud of.
What we would like to do with it, if we can
raise the money, the necessary money to do it,
will be to make a museum, a housing for various
macro artifacts.
That is, the large airplanes that we have, the
big wreck.
We have a wrecked valve, which is the only
valve that's in existence,
the only real Japanese dive bomber that's at
stand today.
And we have a beautiful Japanese seaplane
that's there.
And we have Admiral Kimmel's, excuse me, we
have Admiral, what was the name of this museum?
Oh, yes, Admiral Nimitz's museum, Admiral
Nimitz's Admiral's Barge in that location.
We'll also be having other, we have dive
bombers and torpedo bombers.
And then the most exciting part of all about
this new building will be that we hope to make
mock-ups in there,
which will make you feel as you walk into the
room that you are on the bridge of a cruiser.
We will have the sea breezes blowing across
your face, the sea sounds.
We'll have the horizon moving, ships out in
front, and buckets available to those who have
a problem.
We'll also have a combat information center.
And to those of you who were in the Navy, you
know that this is where the battle operations
are conducted on board ship.
We hope to have things like maybe a fire room
so that the black gang guys can see, by Golly,
that's where I was, and their children can see
that's where Daddy was in World War II.
We even hope to go so far as to possibly build
some replicas of the Iwo Jima caves so the
children can play amongst our - in our new expansion.
So these are our hopes and dreams of the
Admiral Nimitz Foundation, and we need your support.
So if you're not a member, won't you please
join today when you walk out?
Look at that new building out there and see if
you don't want to become a part of it.
And now let me give you one more thing that I
think you will enjoy a great deal, and that
is that we have about a 15-minute movie which
was done on the museum, and you would never
guess who was narrating it.
right, our own Walter Cronkite. Let's have the
movie. Thank you.
It ended at Tokyo Bay in 1945.
The Pacific War is over.
Less than four years after Japanese bombs hit
Pearl Harbor,
America's Avengers are coming home with the man
who led them to victory,
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
It's October 1945, Nimitz Day in Washington.
Admiral Nimitz is home from the Pacific War, in
which he controlled more military power
power than all commanders in all previous wars
combined Americans honor the man who avenged the
japanese attack on pearl hunt next New York
city where four million more shout their thank you
but his favorite parade of all is in
Fredericksburg Texas Population 4 500
home in Fredericksburg it's not sir but Chester
as he walks with family and friends to the house
where he was born who is this admiral from the
Texas frontier a poor boy
raised by his grandfather. Charles Henry Nimitz
had been to sea, had built his 19th century hotel
to look like a ship, and promised to give the
sea one of his grandsons as an admiral, so he said.
Grandfather Nimitz tells the youth to learn all
you can, then do your best, and don't worry,
especially about things over which you have no
control. Being poor, he decides the best way to
learn all he can, is in a service academy. The
same year Theodore Roosevelt enters the White House,
young Nimitz enters Annapolis. Now Chester
Nimitz creates for himself the image of an
ideal Navy officer and sets out to fulfill it.
On January 30, 1905, he's graduated seventh in
a class
of 114. He becomes one of America's first
qualified submarine officers. He meets and
marries Catherine Freeman of New England, and
he broadens his career in the surface
fleet. Advancing to rear admiral, he becomes
the Navy's personnel chief, an expert on
the strengths of colleagues he will command in
the critical days ahead.
German and Japanese war machines are on the
move, biting off vast chunks of territory.
All around the new Admiral, America is caught
up in a great debate about the spreading warfare.
On one side, it's peace at any price.
we want no war we have no war on the other
President Franklin D Roosevelt says there
are four freedoms worth fighting for first is
freedom of speech and expression
everywhere in the world the second is freedom
of every person to worship God in his own way
everywhere in the world.
The third...
The third is freedom from what?
The fourth, freedom from fear.
With that high concept,
there can be no end.
Save victory.
To fight or not to fight.
On December 7, 1941,
Japan ends the debate.
Admiral Nimitz is at his radio that Sunday,
listening to his favorite symphony.
We interrupt this program to bring you a
special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.
In a state of shock, America unites as never before,
in need of miracles,
beginning with the shattered fleet at Pearl Harbor.
somebody has to fix things out there rebuild
the fleet restore morale avenge this day which will
live in infamy win the war the president of the
United States decides that somebody is
Admiral Chester W Nimitz and selects nimitz
over 28 admirals senior to him
the admiral decides to go as far as California
by train to unwind from sleepless nights his
flag lieutenant goes with him. Hal Lamar
recalls that even the Admiral was
unaware of the full extent of the Pearl Harbor
destruction. Admiral Starr gave me a
canvass bag and said open this after you leave
Chicago. The morning after we left
Chicago after breakfast I opened this thing and
we saw the battleships and the bodies.
The Admiral remarked that it could have
happened to anybody.
The anybody it happened to was Admiral Husband
E. Kimmel.
Nimitz relieves Kimmel, but he decides to keep
the Kimmel staff, although some are eager to
fix blame, to clean house.
The Admiral himself has doubts. In one of his
daily letters to his wife, Catherine, he writes,
I will be lucky to last six months. The public
may demand action and results faster than I can produce.
Looking back, Admiral Arleigh, 31, not Burke,
says Nimitz's problems boil down to one word.
Decisions. To make decisions.
He has to make a decision fast.
He can't write a letter in a couple of weeks.
He perhaps has to make it within a day or so.
One of the first decisions he must make will
produce the turning point America longs for at
Midway Island.
The Admiral's codebreakers tell him Midway is
the next Japanese target.
Others aren't so sure.
Some think it's a Japanese trick.
One of Nimitz's strengths is to consider each
opinion carefully
and then make up his own mind.
How Lamar recalls.
And many times at staff conferences,
he would go around the table and get this,
that, and other opinion.
and I sometimes mentally would calculate maybe
we were 50-50 or there was 60-40
and then the admiral would come out with a
decision which was completely different from
both of them
and it was the one that worked.
This time the admiral decides to go with the
code breakers
and concentrates his forces on defending Midway.
As the codebreakers predicted, the Japanese
unleashed a powerful attack on Midway right
on schedule.
Also on schedule, Nimitz unveils his surprise.
planes find the enemy ships working far from
the island itself the Japanese
lose four aircraft carriers and one heavy
cruiser in a matter of minutes
enough to reverse the course of the Pacific the
first six months with the
darkest for Admiral Nimitz. The midway victory
is the brightest by far and always the man who gives
the orders reaches out personally to thank the
men who carry them out. His flag lieutenant
will never
forget their first trip to Guadalcanal. I would
read off the citation and the animal hand the
animal a medal and he would pin it on. We came
to a six-foot sergeant who had
captured a Japanese tank and blown up a couple
of machine gun nests, was getting
the Navy Cross, and the animal reached up to
pin on the Navy Cross and the sergeant
fainted. When the young man came to, he said, I
never saw an Admiral before. It
scared me but nobody seems scared of him at the
admiral's famous picnic Texas picnic was his idea
we nearly tore up the park
but there were thousands of them listed man if
you had any connection with Texas you were invited
everyone who knew Nimitz especially remembers
his eyes admiral Ernest Eller his gunnery officer
but his eyes would just sparkle like like a
deep fire in a volcano those steel blue eyes would
almost sparkle you know like shooting at you
normally he would crinkle up and he would be
very amused and relaxed and he thought things
out to the last degree but he didn't let you
know that
even knew what the answer was going to be he
wanted you to come up with the same answer he did
that's the way he worked the teamwork with people
one of the most massive team efforts in
military history is Nimitz's central Pacific campaign
he wants to bypass major japanese bases to the south
and push straight for Tokyo hopping from island
to island
An atoll on the fringe of the Japanese defenses
comes first, Tarawa.
5,000 Japanese defenders die and kill more than
1,000 Americans.
All in 76 hours, all in one marine division,
all in half a square mile of coral sand.
The Admiral and Lamar arrived while they're
still burying the dead.
And bodies were floating in the water,
and the Admiral reminded me again what he had
said on the train.
One of the difficulties of high command is that
you have to send people to die.
Bigger islands lie ahead.
The most heavily defended island in the world
is Iwo Jima. D-Day.
The beginning of the toughest 26 days in Marine
Corps history.
On D-Day plus four, the stars and stripes are
raised on Mount Suribachi, one of the
war's most memorable images.
But the battle rages on.
Before tiny Iwo Jima is declared secure, it
claims 50,000 casualties, half of them American,
and gives us an airstrip only four hours from
the foot to Fujiyama.
Next, Okinawa, so close to Tokyo that the
Japanese regard it as part of their home territory.
In April, President Roosevelt dies.
In May of 1945, 13,000 miles away in Europe,
the Nazis surrender.
Here, off Okinawa, the Japanese step up their
kamikaze suicide attacks.
On June 21st, Okinawa falls.
Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific campaign has
advanced to within only a few hundred
miles of Tokyo.
The Admiral is thinking ahead to the final
assault on the Japanese home islands as he
speaks to the crew of HMS Duke of York, raising
his voice above the noise of the ship's ventilating
And finally, you will undoubtedly be there when
we put ground troops ashore for the final kill.
I hope to be somewhere with you.
Unfortunately, I am more or less tied to a desk.
I almost have to adopt spurs to keep my feet
from sliding off the desk.
But that does not mean that my heart isn't out
with you and that my spirit is not out there
with you.
In that same month of August, on the 6th,
Hiroshima is obliterated.
nine days later August 15 1945 bj day victory
over Japan
in Tokyo Bay the japanese surrender aboard the
battleship Missouri
Fleet Admiral Chester W Nimitz signs for the
United states and as he says in his victory
statement for all those who died in defense of
freedom their bravery is foremost in his
thoughts on Nimitz day in Washington as he
addresses the joint session that Congress
calls in his honor I am sensible of the fact
that I do not come here as an individual and I
I acknowledge at the outset that I am here only
as a representative of the brave men who fought
under my command in the Pacific.
I pray that no future war may ever again find
us unprepared.
After the celebrations, Admiral Nimitz serves
as Chief of Naval Operations.
He authorizes construction of the Nautilus, the
world's first atomic submarine.
He is showered with honorary degrees, and he
enjoys some lighter moments, too.
He also serves the United Nations, where he
welcomes a delegation of Japanese from the
Parliament to the nation his forces have defeated.
All this in that same spirit of his pledge to
his men, to make this a better and safer place
in which to live.
In that spirit, he responds when asked for
permission to name after him the Museum of
the Pacific War in his grandfather's hotel.
The Admiral gives his blessing on condition
that the museum is dedicated to all who serve
with him and that it will help Americans be
proud of their nation and what it means to
be an American.
Help us all appreciate the sacrifices made to
preserve the freedom we all enjoy.
Thank you.
It is my great privilege to introduce our next
speaker, who I've had the privilege of
knowing for a great number of years, Dr. Walt
Whitman Rostow.
at Yale and at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes
Scholar, and where later he was a professor
of American history. He also split his
loyalties a bit by becoming later a professor
of history
at Cambridge as well. In World War II, he was a
major in the OSS. I sincerely hope that
his career in the OSS was a little more
successful than that of my lawyer, who was in
the OSS
also. I don't know how we won the war with his
participation there. He's quite a good lawyer,
but he's one of those people, one of life's
bumblers who can't screw in a light bulb.
And he was in the OSS. He was sent to Greece on
a mission, a highly secret mission, of course. They
dressed him up as a Greek fisherman, taught him
enough to order an ouzo, and put him on a fishing
boat took him over from turkey dropped him on
the shore in Greece to go into a taverna
there in the little fishing village and there
sitting at a certain table
eventually one of the men at the bar would pass
by and drop a very important message
in a in a matchbox that he would crumple after
lighting a cigarette and drop it into the
ashtray and tuck was to at this proper moment
get away with this thing by slipping in his
pocket and
leaving the taverna where the fishermen would
be waiting to take him back to turkey
very simple mission it seemed somewhat
dangerous I suppose but he he got ashore all
right got into
the taverna in good shape ordered the uso
without too much suspicion apparently and was sitting
there looking at the five tough men at the barn
wondering which one of them was going to detach
himself from the group and come by and drop
that important message from the
matchbox in his ashtray. And one of them
finally did, lighted a cigarette,
trampled the matchbox, passed by, dropped it in
the ashtray, and went out the door.
And Tuck, of course, was trying to play it cool.
He couldn't just grab the box and
run right away. He slowly worked his hand out
toward the matchbox, fairly
unconcernedly, and was going to pick it up
absentmindedly and absentmindedly
slip it into his pocket as he ambled out.
Well, he got his hand just up to the ashtray
when a second chap left the bar and came back.
And just as he passed Tuck's table,
he took dead aim on the ashtray and, Patooey,
spit right in the ashtray all over the message,
the matchbox,
making Tuck's choice at that point a little bit difficult.
I never did find out how the story comes out.
All we know is Tuck got back with us,
and the war was won eventually, with or without
that message.
At any rate, getting back to Dr. Rostow,
for the full term of the eight years of the Kennedy-Johnson
administration, he served as a very important
security advisor
to both of those two presidents and accepted
various ambassadorial roles from time to time
in that important capacity. The
University of Texas was particularly fortunate,
I'm glad to say that we tea
sippers here, got got his services in 1969 when
he left the government service.
He came here as a professor of economics and
now holds the the Rex G Baker Jr.
chair as a professor emeritus of political
economy. He has written, believe
it or not, 31 books on various aspects of
politics, of world affairs, of history, of
economics and political economics,
particularly, of course. I hope you will
help me welcome Dr. Walt Whitman Rostow.
Walter Cronkite didn't mention one of the
closest ties that we have.
We are both tennis bums, and I think the last
time I saw him we were playing doubles out
here in our tennis court, and it's a very
important tie if you understand tennis players.
My talk of the 20 minutes I'm going to have
with you reflects a famous Chinese saying,
there are some orders of the emperor which must
be disobeyed.
I was instructed by the emperors who run this
excellent symposium
to talk about the run-up to Pearl Harbor on the
American side.
But I decided I'd be most useful if I did three things.
One, make some comments as an American
historian on the Japanese perspective and the perspective
out of Japanese history, which played a part in
the crisis that began with Pearl Harbor.
Second, I'll comment also as a historian on the
evolution of the American perspective
its part in the events that led to 1941,
December, and then I'm going to draw from this story
as I perceive it, three lessons for the
contemporary world.
I honestly believe you cannot fully understand
the Japanese, the mind of the Japanese that
led to Pearl Harbor, without going back to 1603,
in the early 17th century.
Then the Tokugawa clan seized power in Japan
and closed Japan off from contacts
with the external world.
That closing off was not 100%, but it
was an attempt to escape from a rather
threatening world.
And the threat came from Europe.
And it was the first probings into Asia,
notably the Dutch and the Portuguese,
to establish colonies.
And so Japan became what was called the hermit kingdom
for 2 and one half centuries to evolve its own life,
its own culture.
It was medieval in one sense, but extremely dynamic.
And Tokyo, Edo as it was called, was
in the 18th century, the largest city in the world.
So it was a feudal set of islands,
but also not at all static.
And within the limits of the technology,
it was a very vital place.
In 1860, 1850, three and four, Japan
was forced out from this futile, secluded society
by the Western world.
And one strand of that forcing out, I think,
is an essential part of the story
that leads to Pearl Harbor.
Because it was forced out at the point of a gun.
And the guns were American guns.
Commodore Perry, with his seven black ships,
came into Tokyo.
They, in a sense, ordered Japan to trade with
the world
and to become part of the world.
The world into which Japan came was not a very
friendly one.
The British, for example, imposed on the Japanese
rule that they could not have tariffs on
manufactured goods,
so the British could trade there.
And so the Japanese, with their usual skill,
became from the beginning experts
at non-tariff barriers, which they remain
expert at.
And by 1895, they had moved into takeoff in the 1880s
and had developed a capacity, a considerable
military capacity,
and they defeated China and began
creating a position on the mainland economically.
And then they had a war with the Russians in 1904.
Over that time, Russia had moved with the Trans-Siberian
railway and was contesting imperial positions
in the
Pacific and all the way to Vladivostok and in Manchuria.
And in this imperialist world, which was not of Japan's
making, it began to move towards an imperial goal.
And it acquired control over Korea and Formosa
about that time.
All of this was rooted, in a sense, in the
concept of a
Charter Oath, which for the Emperor Meiji, who
was brought
back from Kyoto, and when the Tokugawa were overthrown
by the samurai of the Western clans and modern
Japan began.
And that Charter Oath said, we shall
seek science and technology throughout the world
for the greater glory of the empire.
But that wasn't the only strand in Japan.
There was another strand out of its contacts
with the West, which was quite different.
From the top, Japan in the 1880s began
to install a democratic constitution,
modeled more on the German model than on the British,
the French, and the American.
But it nevertheless moved towards political parties
and parliaments.
And there was a great deal of commerce
and intellectual contact with Japan.
And the other storm in Japan really was not
imperial, but was