00:00:02:01 – 00:00:30:17
Dan LeFebvre
Hello and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. Today is December 7th, which means exactly 84 years ago is when the United States was violently rushed into World War Two with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Now, if you’re a long time fan of the show, you’ll know that we’ve covered numerous movies depicting this event over the years, from 1970s toward toward Tora, and 2001 Pearl Harbor to 2000 and nineteenths midway.

00:00:30:19 – 00:00:53:03
Dan LeFebvre
Today, we’re going beyond what the movies show us, because most movies talk about the surprise attack at the harbor itself. But in the true story, that was just one part of the Japanese offensive on December 7th. And to do that, we’ll be looking at a range of different movies to get a sense of when and where the numerous attacks took place on that day, not just in Hawaii, but around the world.

00:00:53:05 – 00:01:15:11
Dan LeFebvre
Returning to based on a true story to help us unravel the true story beyond Pearl Harbor in the movies is Joshua Donahue, the adjunct professor of history at two different colleges, Suffolk County Community College and Farmingdale State College. Before we get started, though, let’s set up our game for today’s episode. Now, if you’re new to the show since based on a true story, it’s all about separate fact from fiction in the movies.

00:01:15:13 – 00:01:34:11
Dan LeFebvre
You’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction in this podcast episode with a game of two truths and a lie. So I’m about to give you three things that we’ll talk about in this episode. Two of those are true, and one of them is just an all out lie. Are you ready? Okay, here they are.

00:01:34:14 – 00:02:04:29
Dan LeFebvre
Number one, Wake Island was attack just a few hours after receiving word of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Number two, Phil Rasmussen went up in his P30 six wearing pajamas and landed with about 500 bullet holes in his plane. Number three in addition to military targets, the Japanese attacked numerous civilian targets around Pearl Harbor. Got him. Okay, now, as you’re listening to our story today, see if you can figure out which one of those is the lie.

00:02:05:02 – 00:02:28:09
Dan LeFebvre
And if you’re watching the video version of this, you’ll see I’m holding up this envelope. This has the answer inside, and we’ll open it up at the end of the episode to see if you got it right. Okay. Now it’s time to connect with Joshua Donahue to go beyond Pearl Harbor in the movies.

00:02:28:11 – 00:02:51:11
Dan LeFebvre
Today’s episode is a little different than the typical episode of based on a true story, because we’re not talking about just one movie’s timeline. Instead, we’re flipping it around to focus on the timeline of events before, during, and after the attack at Pearl Harbor and then pulling from an array of movies about Pearl Harbor to get a deeper understanding of history beyond what we see in the movies.

00:02:51:13 – 00:03:16:03
Dan LeFebvre
So let’s start today with a classic film from the year 1953 starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Frank Sinatra called From Here to Eternity. Most of this movie depicts life before the surprise attack at Pearl and it shows what life was like for the US military in 1941. And if we’re to believe the movie’s version of events, things in Hawaii before the attack were calm.

00:03:16:06 – 00:03:41:28
Dan LeFebvre
The movie throws in some internal drama among the men stationed there, but it’s soldiers chasing promotions and women. There’s no mention of the conflicts going on around the world, so after watching that movie, I was left with the impression that basically the average person on Pearl before the attack lived in their own little bubble. Is that a fair assessment of what it was like for the military before the attack at Pearl?

00:03:42:00 – 00:04:11:08
Joshua Donohue
Yes, it absolutely was. And you just mentioned the movie really kind of focuses more so on the, the love story. And as it really it compares in a lot of ways to, the 2001, Michael Bay film, of course, starring, Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale. So, going into the film here, eternity, it’s a I really enjoy this movie and it has plenty of drama to it.

00:04:11:15 – 00:04:31:29
Joshua Donohue
And really with the backdrop and the climactic event, you know, I was thinking, you know, it’s the Pearl Harbor films are almost like in a lot of ways, it’s like the Titanic. All right. You know, you know what’s coming. But there’s all this buildup and all this drama that happens before it so gets to sort of, you know, pander to different audience, cater to different audiences, I should say.

00:04:32:04 – 00:04:54:18
Joshua Donohue
But from what I read, the novel is between 80 to 90% accurate. And it would take private James Jones’s. And it’s based on his memoirs, A Full Decade from the writing in the publication, from his first novel, From Here to Eternity, in the autumn of 1951. So the central narrative of the book draws upon Jones’s two years at Schofield Barracks.

00:04:54:25 – 00:05:23:15
Joshua Donohue
And this would, of course, culminate with the attack on Pearl Harbor. So he was a boxer or a bugler. Those things are touched upon in the film. And Ken played by his character, Robert Lee Prewitt. So there is definitely an air of confidence where I would say overconfidence that existed on Oahu. And what you notice in From Here to Eternity that you usually don’t see much in regard any way of concern, for a potential Japanese attack to occur.

00:05:23:18 – 00:06:00:18
Joshua Donohue
While the film largely centers on the two really separate romantic, themes between, Sergeant Milton Warren, played by Burt Lancaster, and Karen Holmes, played by actress Deborah Kerr, the other between Montgomery Clift character Robert E Lee Prewitt and the actress, binary, who plays Alma Lorene Burke. So what I did like about the film itself is this authenticity of especially the scenes that Schofield you see the military, mustering in the training and again, the marching that you see in the film, again, taking place on the parade ground and Schofield Barracks.

00:06:00:20 – 00:06:22:27
Joshua Donohue
So since the film was released in 1953, barely ten years after the actual attack, it really does. Well, as far as its authenticity of military light both on and off the off the base. So the men have the proper period gear. You see the World War One era, the Brody helmet, the 1903 Springfield rifle. That was period correct.

00:06:23:00 – 00:06:48:29
Joshua Donohue
The uniforms, the gear, etc.. Any sort of, you know, history nerd like myself is really going to appreciate those little details. And films. So Army life at Schofield was very regimented, as you see in the film. Revelry at 6 a.m.. Roll call at 630. Breakfast barracks detail, uniform inspection, calisthenics, Infantry drill, mail call, noontime lunch after work duties and 5 p.m. retreat.

00:06:49:06 – 00:07:11:06
Joshua Donohue
And then, the ceremonial lowering of the flag. Evenings were free, so Jones and his comrades would hang around the base or went into the neighboring village, of Louis. Wally, I should say, to drink and sort of view, you know, carouse and everything that they were doing in the film. So the, the men really made few trips to Honolulu since the bars.

00:07:11:06 – 00:07:38:26
Joshua Donohue
They’re really too expensive for the humble enlisted men. You know, maybe the officers went into town there. Schofield life there really emphasize also intramural sport, which is also a theme with each company fielding football, baseball, basketball, track, boxing, boxing. You see, as a theme as well. You can also reference that to the Pearl Harbor film of 2001, Doris Miller, the character played by Cuba Gooding Jr.

00:07:39:03 – 00:08:04:12
Joshua Donohue
And and all the heroics that, again, is also portrayed in Tora Bora. Tora miller was the, boxing champion heavyweight champion on this ship, the USS West Virginia, which was sunk, at Pearl Harbor. So during Jones’s time at Schofield Barracks, his company won three regimental championships, athletic mediocrity. You know, notwithstanding, they took part in boxing.

00:08:04:12 – 00:08:27:06
Joshua Donohue
Football. He would hurt his ankle in the latter. And this injury would continue to bother him for several months. So it also captures the typical nightlife in Oahu, in Honolulu with Oahu, the bars there, the, the brothels, etc.. Hawaii was far from home for the servicemen who were stationed there. So they wanted to make most of their time.

00:08:27:13 – 00:08:46:12
Joshua Donohue
It was a great obviously post during the there were a tropical, place. So the scene where the men were eating breakfast at the mess hall at Schofield Barracks, which was two miles, from Wheeler Army Airfield, which was again based on the accounts, Private James Jones, you see the great scene there where they’re having breakfast on the Sunday morning.

00:08:46:12 – 00:09:14:08
Joshua Donohue
They’re at Schofield, barracks, mess hall. And all of a sudden, you hear, the explosions, taking place, outside. And what I also really enjoyed about the film is that you see actual footage of the attack happening. Oh, the the Arizona exploding, which is obviously the most famous image, captured of the attack. So it’s, I think the the film does a good job really capturing what it was like.

00:09:14:08 – 00:09:22:07
Joshua Donohue
It really was not a whole lot of, you know, fear. And as it was after the attack, it was completely different climate altogether.

00:09:22:09 – 00:09:40:17
Dan LeFebvre
It puts a whole new spin on it. And we all know it as, you know, a surprise attack. But just the, the, the contrast of what we see in, you know, from here to eternity. And, and it’s like you’re saying a post to a tropical location. It’s, it almost seems like they’re on vacation and, you know, there’s really nothing to worry about.

00:09:40:17 – 00:09:45:11
Dan LeFebvre
And then all of a sudden they’ve got stuff to worry about. You know, a.

00:09:45:13 – 00:10:13:18
Joshua Donohue
Whole new ballgame. It’s it’s no longer a tropical, you know, I’ll get into a little bit later. But yeah, after the attack, the entire life on Oahu changes 180 degrees. And it goes from this, you know, great nightlife and great post and, and kind of getting into trouble and drinking women, all these sorts of things to blackouts, to drills to, you know, a martial law which will be declared, following the attack.

00:10:13:20 – 00:10:32:23
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned Tora, Tora tours. So let’s move on to that one. It’s a 1970 film, just probably one of the most common movies depicting the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first half of that movie is all about the events leading up to the attack, and we find the U.S. military trying to figure out where the Japanese are going to attack.

00:10:33:00 – 00:10:57:08
Dan LeFebvre
They think it might be the Philippines, or maybe Thailand or maybe Borneo. They don’t seem to think the attack will be at Pearl Harbor, which of course we know from history factored into why it was such a surprise attack like we were talking about, because the movie then focuses mostly on the surprise attack at Pearl. It seems to imply that perhaps those other locations that just mentioned weren’t targets.

00:10:57:09 – 00:11:09:20
Dan LeFebvre
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Japanese also launch attacks in other locations? Other than Hawaii, such as Wake Island? Can you give some more context around the scale of the Japanese offensive in December 1941?

00:11:09:22 – 00:11:42:11
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. And it at that point in time, the Japanese military between the ground, sea and air operations were seemingly everywhere in the Pacific, especially following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Keep in mind the midway, another film that depicts the attack, obviously, you know, fast forwarding into June of 1942, while that climactic battle will take place, actually, midway is struck also, during that that time period as well, that morning, by a pair of Japanese destroyers, you know, nominal damage.

00:11:42:11 – 00:12:09:03
Joshua Donohue
But again, it’s it’s again a multi-pronged attack. Wake Island, as you mentioned, located about 2000 miles, to the west of the Hawaiian Islands, was struck about four hours after receiving word by radio from Pearl Harbor that it was under attack. So all of these locations, really from, wake on over the Philippines, Hong Kong, obviously. Or it’s December 8th, 1941, since it’s lying on the other side of the International Date Line.

00:12:09:06 – 00:12:40:07
Joshua Donohue
So the story of wake itself is often forgotten amidst the attack on Pearl Harbor and bases on Oahu. The 1942 film starring Brian Dunne, Levy, Robert Preston and McDonnell Carey was the first time that Americans really had a visual sense of of somewhat what happened there. Although it was not accurate in many ways, especially the ending part, where the Japanese who says basically come and take, you know, come and get us and, you know, the island falls and the Americans fight to the last man.

00:12:40:09 – 00:13:13:06
Joshua Donohue
That’s obviously not what happened. Most of the wake veterans who later saw the film, after they returned home from Japanese P.O.W. camps, didn’t really think too much of it just due to the just the overload of inaccuracies in it. And, of course, wake would fall to the Japanese on the 23rd of December, 1941, after a fierce 16 day battle work in the American garrison, there was about 450 Marines, about 1200 civilians who are in charge of, you know, building, the government contract with the base facilities, road networks, these types of things.

00:13:13:06 – 00:13:42:26
Joshua Donohue
So, the island falls and the Japanese will capture and will be held, all the way through until the end of the war. So the, the Japanese forces also began landing, in the Philippines. And on December 8th, 1941, they would seize most of the island of Luzon by December, December 24th and more than 120,000 Japanese troops were committed during, the battle and against a force of about 150,000 American and Filipino defenders.

00:13:42:28 – 00:14:09:07
Joshua Donohue
So amphibious landings were there, were supported by air attacks, fighters and bombers, coming in from the island of Formosa, which is modern day Taiwan. So these air attacks devastated the Far East air Force, much of which was destroyed on the ground, as we see happened to Pearl Harbor. All of those aircraft just parked out in the open wingtip to wingtip, for fear, obviously, that was going on with Jack with, you know, fear of Japanese sabotage.

00:14:09:12 – 00:14:37:18
Joshua Donohue
So Japanese, you know, aviators were just looking at these targets out in the open. All they had to do is simply just press the trigger. So the invasion force that was sent to the Philippines consisted of, the Japanese 14th Army under the command of general Masaharu Homma. And at about 3:40 a.m. on December 8th, 1941, The Fallen Ring, Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur’s lavish apartment atop the Manila Hotel.

00:14:37:21 – 00:14:57:15
Joshua Donohue
It was MacArthur’s chief of staff telling him about the news about Pearl Harbor and that MacArthur, again as the commander of American forces in the Philippines, he had sort of wrestled what what to do next? Should he attack Formosa? Should he not? And there was bad weather in the area which actually prevented the Japanese from attacking.

00:14:57:20 – 00:15:23:24
Joshua Donohue
So MacArthur doesn’t really seize the initiative here before he authorizes the strike. It’s it’s far too late. So, the Japanese, you know, would again eventually take the Philippines and again, you would have the fall of Corregidor, soon after the fall of Bataan. They had again occupied Korea, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Formosa, and large portions of the Chinese mainland.

00:15:23:24 – 00:16:08:14
Joshua Donohue
And they would also occupy, the Solomons, the Gilberts, the Marianas, the Carolinas, the Marshall Islands. So there were literally, no bases between Hawaii and Japan. And the first Japanese landings also would take place in December 8th in northern Malaya, in southern Thailand. So, General Yamashita, on the 10th of December, had penetrated the Malayan frontier all the way, to the city of kata and eventually sinking the Japanese, to the two British battleships, I should say the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS repulse, which enabled the Japanese now to continue landing their troops, establishing bases in Malaya with really without any limit, really limited Allied interference.

00:16:08:21 – 00:16:46:01
Joshua Donohue
So they, had again advanced all over Southeast Asia and in places all around, they continued. Then by February the 15th, the defenders had driven back to the suburbs of Singapore. And again, food and water supplies were low and that evening, British general Arthur Percival would surrender to the Japanese. So again on 8:00 on this eighth, December 1941, eight hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, again, it had been a disaster, and it would continue to be one bad piece of news after another.

00:16:46:04 – 00:17:07:10
Joshua Donohue
Guam would also be attacked and it would fall. Hong Kong, it would also form what would be termed, Black Christmas. When Hong Kong was surrendered to the Japanese on December 25th, 1941. So pretty much from, you know, the beginning of December, right from the Pearl Harbor attack on the Japanese were were everywhere. And really, we were really, really on the ropes.

00:17:07:13 – 00:17:30:27
Dan LeFebvre
And it sounds like, from everything happening on December or December 8th across the International date line, like with Wake Island and the Philippines, one unique thing about Pearl Harbor, other than being, you know, part of the United States instead of, you know, a territory, is they didn’t have boots on the ground like they did in some of these other places.

00:17:30:27 – 00:17:49:15
Dan LeFebvre
And so it seems like almost I mean, I don’t want to make it seem like Pearl Harbor wasn’t a devastating attack, but, you know, they didn’t land boots on the ground and and actually capture it and take it over, like they did in Wake Island. So, I mean, just the logistics of that of of all of that at once.

00:17:49:15 – 00:17:56:12
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, the logistics of the attack at Pearl Harbor alone. But the logistics of, of all of that just had to be massive.

00:17:56:14 – 00:18:28:04
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. And that’s that’s really where America found itself when Pearl Harbor was attacked. And again, things could have been much worse. A lot of people don’t really think about it as much of a disaster as the attack really seemed. And again, there was you didn’t have the real time information that we have nowadays, and news sort of still traveled really slowly back and, you know, 1941, but once the smoke starts to clear, the, you know, the Japanese didn’t sick of the aircraft carriers.

00:18:28:04 – 00:18:50:24
Joshua Donohue
Luckily that day there were, you know, the USS Lexington was, bringing fighters to midway at the time, and the USS enterprise was coming back from Wake Island. It had delivered the, forward echelon of VMF to 11, under, a major Paul Putnam. Those 12 fighters were b the only Air force that Wake Island would have throughout the the entire siege.

00:18:50:26 – 00:19:10:03
Joshua Donohue
Seven of them were completely destroyed on the ground when the Japanese hit. They really only had four aircraft. Really that the most at a time. And little by little, those numbers were kind of whittled down as the attack went on. They were literally scavenge scavenged, salvaged parts from, you know, derelict planes to put them on usable ones and fly them.

00:19:10:03 – 00:19:31:10
Joshua Donohue
And just the, the engineering and the ingenuity, on the ground there at wake in the stories I’ve read about the accounts there, it’s just it’s almost like a heavyweight fight and just two boxers just going at it, you know, the Marines being, you know, the the unmanned underdog. But they just kept fighting and fighting and fighting until the Japanese, you know, just, you know, brought everything to bear.

00:19:31:11 – 00:19:52:28
Joshua Donohue
They actually thwarted an amphibious invasion three days after that, sunk a, a destroyer. Henry Elrod sunk another following, few hours later with small bombs from little Wildcat fighters. And that’s how the that how much the fighting spirit you would get the, you would receive the Medal of Honor for that. He would not actually survive the battle.

00:19:53:01 – 00:20:03:28
Joshua Donohue
He was killed on the very last day in the morning, and from Japanese fire. So in the wake story, you know, it’s it’s tied to Pearl Harbor in many ways. And, it’s it’s pretty remarkable.

00:20:04:05 – 00:20:24:10
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to Hawaii and back to to water to the first wave of Japanese planes that we see there, in the movie take off from their carriers as the sun is rising on December 7th, 1941. And we see them flying across Oahu’s farmland and right to Pearl Harbor, where they ultimately commence the first wave of attacks at Pearl.

00:20:24:12 – 00:20:43:00
Dan LeFebvre
And while the movie does show a few other things like USS firing on a Japanese sub just outside Pearl and the B-17s, it got mixed up in the raid on Pearl. Those are all tied to the attack at the base at Pearl Harbor. So I can see how someone watching that movie might think that Pearl Harbor was the only place surprised by the attack.

00:20:43:03 – 00:20:49:04
Dan LeFebvre
Were there any other military installations in Hawaii that were surprised by a Japanese attack on December 7th?

00:20:49:06 – 00:21:16:06
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, and the Japanese first attack, wave, was assigned many fighters and bombers, specifically, purpose for the air base, suppression of all the fighter bases around Oahu. So the fighters set the planes afire with the machine gun and cannon fire. As I mentioned, they’re all parked out in the open. And all of the, you know, all the installations across, you know, every one Wheeler, every field, Kaneohe Bay, all out in the open again.

00:21:16:06 – 00:21:35:07
Joshua Donohue
There’s that fear of the Japanese sabotage. So they want to have visual, you know, a look at every single plane that’s out there. And it turns out to be an absolutely terrible decision. So literally all of the Japanese pilots have to do is just fly right in a straight line. And for the wing tanks and the planes are destroyed.

00:21:35:10 – 00:22:01:07
Joshua Donohue
The second attack wave also had airfield strikes among its tasks. So the subject of my latest article in World War two, history magazine, which is on newsstands now, I wrote about the attack on the Marine Corps Air Station at, Mooring Mast Field. It’s about seven miles to the west of Pearl Harbor, home to several squadrons of clothing, as I mentioned, a VMF 211, which was the, again, the same squadron sent to Wake Island.

00:22:01:07 – 00:22:20:29
Joshua Donohue
And lo, we fought the very last aircraft, after the initial seven were destroyed on the ground and the initial Japanese raid. So the base there was attacked that morning, a few minutes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, by the feared Mitsubishi A-6, m2 zero fighter, which at that time was the most dominant fighter in the skies.

00:22:20:29 – 00:22:51:11
Joshua Donohue
At that point, the Americans had no, real answer for it at the time. So any zero or, D3, a Val dive bomber, which and expended its ordnance at Pearl Harbor against the ships and the other the targets there would fly back and use whatever, ammunition or bombs that they had against every field ever field, unfortunately, had the luck, the bad luck of being located right near where the Japanese rendezvous point was when they were going to form up to fly back to the ship.

00:22:51:12 – 00:23:16:17
Joshua Donohue
So all of that activity flying out of Pearl Harbor, going in and coming out ever was really caught in the middle of that maelstrom. So you also had Wheeler Army Airfield in central Oahu, which was Hawaii’s main fighter base. It was also heavily attacked. Some 140 planes were on the ground there, merely P40 and P30 six pursuit planes, nearly two thirds were destroyed or put out of action.

00:23:16:19 – 00:23:41:18
Joshua Donohue
So a similar, proportion of B-17, B18 and A20 bombers at Hickam Army Airfield, which was located right next to, just looking to the east, or Pearl Harbor Navy in that Navy yard. It was also wrecked and damaged enough to keep all of them grounded. So many of the men, killed at Hickam when the Japanese bomber barracks, smaller Bellows Field was on eastern Oahu, was also hit.

00:23:41:24 – 00:24:22:23
Joshua Donohue
Just really mostly straight. I the a couple of Japanese, zeros. They destroyed a couple of P-40s trying to take off. Two pilots actually tried, into the teeth of that enemy onslaught. It was a, you know, again, an active it just, you know, courage and bravery. So the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air stations on Pearl Harbor, Fort Island, at and ever and the West Pearl at Kaneohe, Bay near Bellows Field, again received all sorts of concentrated attention from the Raiders and was aircraft complement mainly carrier bombers and fighters, was reduced to nearly 50 operational planes to less than 20.

00:24:22:23 – 00:24:45:23
Joshua Donohue
So nearly every plane was either damaged or destroyed. So Fort Island in Kaneohe were also home to several squadrons of long range PBY patrol. Sea planes also attacked heavily, with Fought Island losing about half its planes in Kaneohe, all but a few. So the Naval Air Station, at Kaneohe Bay was bombed very, you know, particularly hard.

00:24:45:26 – 00:25:08:17
Joshua Donohue
It’s to the on the east coast of Oahu. It’s a major Navy ship, sea patrol plane base. And one of the main reasons why the Japanese would target these bases is because they didn’t want to have the risks run the risk of having any long range planes. Follow them all the way back out to find where the carriers were, and then you know exactly where they’re at, and they can send war attack planes to out against them.

00:25:08:24 – 00:25:31:06
Joshua Donohue
So it was imperative to the Japanese that they were attacking every single plane on the ground. And you also touched upon, the USS Woodward and the B-17s depicted, in Tora, Tora, Tora, these events truly what makes that film so true to life? Because there are really otherwise other really overlooked and other films about Pearl Harbor.

00:25:31:14 – 00:26:03:09
Joshua Donohue
They’re important because of the sinking of the Japanese mini sub, by the ward’s gunners. Again, it was contrary to popular belief, but it was was the Americans who actually fired the very first shot at Pearl Harbor. And again, the the tour. Tora, Tora! You know, with the P-40s, you know, we talk about them with the, both the George Welch and, Kenneth Taylor, as we see in the film itself and loosely portrayed in the 2001 film as well, we loosely, loosely portrayed.

00:26:03:09 – 00:26:28:23
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, for a variety of reasons. Yes. Yeah. Michael Bay gets a little carried away with those scenes. But the one, the one scene in Tora, Tortuga, which always blows me away, is the one seen at Wheeler Field, where you have the P-40 that’s hit and it crashes in to the flight line of other P-40s. You actually see it from different scenes, shot from different angles, but it’s the same scene.

00:26:29:00 – 00:26:45:27
Joshua Donohue
That was actually an accident, that that scene was not supposed to happen the way it did. And you see the way that you see those guys running for their lives, they’re really running for their lives in that scene. So look at that scene again. That was not some not meant to happen the way it was supposed to.

00:26:46:01 – 00:27:06:21
Joshua Donohue
Total. Luckily, no one was injured. But yeah, that was that was an interesting one. Also to note, and just in addition to those other bases, Kaneohe Bay, Hickam Field, Wheeler Bellows, Ford Island and ever you also have a lot of smaller coastal defense, forts that are in and around the Pearl Harbor area.

00:27:06:27 – 00:27:29:02
Joshua Donohue
You have Fort Armstrong, you have Fort Barrett. A soldier there was killed by a strafing Japanese plane. Fort de Russie, you have Fort Kamehameha. Seven men were killed or four wounded there. A soldier was also killed at nearby Fort Shafter, by an errant U.S. Navy shell, which was meant for a Japanese plane, but would unfortunately not explode until it hit the ground there.

00:27:29:06 – 00:27:50:09
Joshua Donohue
So the Japanese didn’t really specifically target these in of these installations, but the men there were fighting back with everything they had. They really only had coastal defense guns, so they couldn’t aim them up in the sky and shoot them at the Japanese planes. But if there was a rifle or a machine gun to be had and loaded, you know, the men, they were going to be fighting back with everything they had.

00:27:50:12 – 00:27:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
And I have to go back and watch to our to our to Oregon now. Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s a war movie. So I guess if something like that happens and all your props are destroyed, you mind, you got to throw it in the family got it.

00:27:59:17 – 00:28:18:02
Joshua Donohue
And what’s great is they, they they had the wherewithal to shoot it from different camera perspectives. And if you look, they shoot that scene and, and put it in from different angles. So it looks like a different scene, but it’s actually taken from the same scene. I mean, you had to use that material because that you cannot capture that kind of drama.

00:28:18:02 – 00:28:22:10
Joshua Donohue
And, and in normal, normal, rehearsed kind of settings. So. Yeah.

00:28:22:13 – 00:28:44:16
Dan LeFebvre
Wait, we you talked a lot about the planes on the ground and something else that we see in some of the movies about Pearl Harbor are American planes that are already in the air when the attack happened, we talked about the B-17s. We touched on those, from Twitter, Tora! And 2019 midway. We see Clarence Dickenson casually flying his plane back to base when he notices explosions in the distance that he might be artillery training.

00:28:44:19 – 00:29:02:26
Dan LeFebvre
That changes a moment later when he shot it by the Japanese planes. In in towards moratoria again, there’s, actually a trainer. It’s that’s surrounded by the Japanese planes on their way to the attack. They don’t shoot at the trainer because it’s not a military plane. But then there’s movies like 1960s Storm Over the Pacific or 2001 Pearl Harbor.

00:29:02:27 – 00:29:18:06
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t really see any American planes in the air when the attack happens. So there seems to be a mixed message from the movies when it comes to planes already in the air at the time of the attack, can you unravel the historical side of things? Were there American planes already in the air when the attack took place?

00:29:18:09 – 00:29:38:19
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, there were and they were mainly civilian. That really, really ruined any military. The really the only military planes really in the air were the ones that were coming in. The B-17s were coming in from the West coast, from California, from the 38th and 80th Reconnaissance Wings, just a mixture of B-17 simply there were 12 of them.

00:29:38:21 – 00:30:09:06
Joshua Donohue
And recall that it was also on a Sunday before 8 a.m.. So really the only planes airborne that morning were were mainly civilians. So you mentioned the scene in Tora to our Tora. And that actually did did happen at John Rogers Airport, which is, current day Daniel K in a way, airport. This is just really, you know, right to right below where, Hickam Air, Army Airfield is just where the battleships were at the top of the target list.

00:30:09:09 – 00:30:34:28
Joshua Donohue
A Hawaiian Airlines DC3 had just boarded passengers as was preparing to depart. Local attorney, Roy V to second his son Martin, who was 17, were circling the airport about 800ft and ATC 65 and Aaron Cook, rented from what was was the Gambo Flying Service, one of three flight schools that had been established on the airfield to provide instruction under the civilian Flight training program.

00:30:35:01 – 00:31:00:18
Joshua Donohue
So the owner of that school, Marguerite Gambo, was teaching a student, in a myers OT biplane flying near another Japanese target, kind of yohe. So plumes of smoke rising now from Kaneohe made it clear to Gamboa at this point that the war planes were not American. Her and, her airplane was actually buffeted by the turbulence of the fighters pulling up from their strafing runs as they’re nearing her.

00:31:00:18 – 00:31:35:23
Joshua Donohue
So the fighters didn’t engage the biplane as accurately as you see in the film. However, Gambo, whose encounter was likely the one depicted in the film Tora, Tora, Tora, albeit the wrong aircraft. Again, there’s that history nerd stuff again. The it turned and raced towards John Rogers Airport. There were also a pair of Piper cubs that departed, John Rogers that morning at 740 and headed northeast, flying just off Waikiki Beach towards Diamondhead before turning west and then bound for, camp mahala Callaway on the other side of the island.

00:31:36:00 – 00:32:10:19
Joshua Donohue
And this was where the soldiers of the California National Coast Guard, 251st Coastal Artillery Regiment were based at that time. So the Cub pilots was a passenger of one of the aircraft. Were all members of that unit? So Sergeant Henry Blackwell, corporal Clyde Brown had both been taught to fly, in their off duty hours, by, Robert Tice, who was the, co-owner of the Katy Flying Service, one of three civilian schools and based at John Rogers Airport, and then Sergeant Warren D Rasmussen had come along for a sightseeing, excursion.

00:32:10:25 – 00:32:34:01
Joshua Donohue
So Tice and his wife and the had meanwhile arrived at the airport, not long after the Cubs departed and minutes before the fighters began to strafe the field. So Tice was standing next to his wife on the ramp and was hit in the head, in the first moments of the attack and killed instantly. And this would be one of the first of between estimates, I’ve heard between 47, 54 I’ve heard.

00:32:34:01 – 00:33:09:24
Joshua Donohue
And the number I see most is 68, civilians, struck down. So the soldiers had trained, and were flying about two miles offshore and at around 500ft, headed towards their base. And the V the sects were also circling overhead, having returned, from their flight. And they were, also again, another instructor, Cornelia Fort, was flying Interstate S1 a cadet with a local student, the defense worker and the cadet was approaching John Rogers Airport to practice touch and goes.

00:33:09:27 – 00:33:42:12
Joshua Donohue
So a sailor aboard a Navy tugboat whose account included in the Honolulu Star Bulletin story, which was published on December 20th, 1941. Had sworn in a deposition that they recalled seeing, two yellow cubs flying offshore about 500ft when the Japanese aircraft pounced on flight. There were about seven enemy warplanes, in that number, one Cub plummeted into the ocean, while the other circle for a moment also, before diving in the water, presumably hit, and the only really small fragments were ever found.

00:33:42:14 – 00:34:05:24
Joshua Donohue
So there were a number of, again, military aircraft around, Oahu’s airspace, as I mentioned, of course, the B-17s that were trying to land at Hickam Army Airfield, they’re low on gas. There are. Even when they see the smoke, there’s still not quite sure what they’re seeing until they start seeing Japanese planes flying all around them. It’s about as accurate as it gets when it when it’s shot.

00:34:05:24 – 00:34:30:07
Joshua Donohue
And Tora, Tora, Tora with major Truman landing and he’s trying to land. But he has got one real up, and the plane actually skids to a halt. That the plane they’re probably depicting is the one that’s actually, shot, a zero strafed as it’s landing, it’s splits in half and you see just the upright portion of it sticking up the the tail is completely you know, away from the plane.

00:34:30:09 – 00:34:52:24
Joshua Donohue
That photograph is quite, you know, you see that quite common. There’s also the story of the crew of the San Antonio Rose, B-17 e of the idiot Reconnaissance Squadron, who ended up landing on the seventh fairway of the Kahuku Golf Course on Oahu’s north eastern side. And I always think to myself, if I ever get a chance to play golf on Oahu, I’m going to play golf there.

00:34:52:27 – 00:35:12:24
Joshua Donohue
Or the one next to ever feel that might never come back. Yeah. So they’re that most of the many, you know, the planes were in the air were civilian that morning. And again, the among the first casualties, especially, as I mentioned, those military members who had lost their lives in that one civilian aircraft, were the first, to lose their lives that morning.

00:35:12:27 – 00:35:34:08
Dan LeFebvre
I think it was a I think it was in Tora, Tortuga when the B-17s, the pilots like, what a what a heck of a way to fly into a war or something like that as their, as they’re flying in. I mean, I can only imagine how terrifying and terrifying it would be. But also, like you look at it like there has to be moments of is is this real?

00:35:34:08 – 00:35:54:18
Dan LeFebvre
Like what is what is like just pure disbelief, especially for, you know, trainers and you know, that there’s, military. So you might not know if the military is doing exercises or like with Dickinson and in many ways, like, you know, maybe they’re doing artillery training and they’re I think one of the his, copilots like, oh, that’s, you know, it’s a weird time to do training, right?

00:35:54:18 – 00:36:00:03
Dan LeFebvre
And then they get shot at. So obviously it’s not training, but, can’t imagine what’s running through people’s heads.

00:36:00:05 – 00:36:23:14
Joshua Donohue
And there’s a, there’s a story even from wake Island, when the, when they first see the that flight of Japanese bombers approaching out of a low cloud bank only a few thousand feet off the ground, and they start dropping bombs. Some of the observers say, oh, look, they’re dropping their wheels. They’re, you know, they’re friendly planes. They’re dropping like, no, they’re they’re dropping bombs, open fires.

00:36:23:14 – 00:36:35:20
Joshua Donohue
So, yeah, I mean, right up until that, until the bombs literally started falling, people just couldn’t understand or comprehend that this was even possible. And here it here it was unfolding right before their eyes.

00:36:35:22 – 00:36:54:26
Dan LeFebvre
I’m reminded of you talking about, you know, dropping the wheels. I, I was it towards I think it was toward toward where, where, there is, a plane that’s flying over Pearl Harbor. Japanese plane. And the officer is like, I’ll get that guy’s name. We’re gonna write him up, right? And then they see the bomb start dropping and and it’s like, obviously, you know, so it’s like, yeah, that disbelief, that.

00:36:54:26 – 00:37:28:18
Joshua Donohue
Scene is actually very accurate to to that’s, that’s that’s actually based on, the very first bomb that’s dropped on Ford Island is what that scene is. And again, they’re they’re all in mourning, you know, the, the flag ceremonies, the other bands playing that was going on exactly at that moment. And when you see that first plane, a Val drop a bomb and explode, that bomb is actually on is dropped on hangar six, which is the very which is the seaplane base at the very, southeastern end of Fort Island.

00:37:28:24 – 00:37:32:09
Joshua Donohue
So that actual scene is based on reality.

00:37:32:12 – 00:37:55:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you might have already answered this question, but some of the movies about the attack show airfields away from the harbor itself. Toward toward. Toya shows an attack on what I believe is Wheeler Field. 2001 Pearl Harbor has a scene that I think might also be Wheeler Field, that it it doesn’t really mention it in the movie, because I think that part of the movie is mostly just an excuse to get Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett’s characters in a plane to take off and fight back.

00:37:55:09 – 00:38:07:27
Dan LeFebvre
So for those of us who haven’t been there, can you give us, a bit of geographical context and an overview of the American airfields on Oahu in 1941, and then which ones of those were attacked?

00:38:08:00 – 00:38:32:27
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. So as I mentioned, Wheeler, you mentioned Wheeler Field, and that was the route that is the main fighter base Wheeler is on. The airfield is located in central Oahu, about 12 miles to the north of Pearl Harbor. And Wheeler again was the site of several major historic, actually aviation events, including the first, nonstop mainland to Hawaii flight by Army Air Corps Lieutenant Lester J.

00:38:32:27 – 00:39:03:07
Joshua Donohue
Maitland and Albert Helgenberger in 1927. There was also the great Gold Derby air race from Hawaii, California to Hawaii. Also in 1927, the first trans Pacific flight in the United States to Australia, the Australian squadron leader, Charles Kingsford Smith in 1928 and the first Hawaii to mainland solo flight in 1935 by none other than Amelia Earhart, who flew from Wheeler Field to Oakland, California.

00:39:03:09 – 00:39:36:12
Joshua Donohue
Amelia Earhart also, had an accident on Ford Island’s airstrip, which was, formerly Luke Field. She ground looped, her aircraft there. And we just completely just flipped it over and, you know, it was was again, very obviously active, in that area and during many of her, her flights and this again, also brings us to, every field, in is often pronounced Iowa field, but it’s actually every field, it’s that is several miles as I mentioned, to the west from Pearl Harbor.

00:39:36:14 – 00:39:57:23
Joshua Donohue
You also again have Hickam Army Airfield, which is just situated to the east of Pearl Harbor. That was hit hard during the attacks and again possessed longer range aircraft. It could potentially locate the Japanese carriers and attack them. So this is where the B-17s arriving from California were landing. Most of them were. Again, they were all meant to land there.

00:39:57:23 – 00:40:19:05
Joshua Donohue
All but I believe four landed there. So Tour Territory does a great job depicting the scene. So since Hickam set really to chase into Pearl Harbor, it was hit severely and it had the highest number of losses in comparison to ever Wheeler, bellows, Kaneohe and the Escort Island. So nice. Pearl Harbor lies directly in the middle of Pearl Harbor.

00:40:19:12 – 00:40:41:17
Joshua Donohue
There’s a little tiny island there, if you look on a on Google Maps, and the airstrip is actually still there, but it hasn’t been used many years. The battleships were lined up all along side for four islands the eastern side, the Nevada, the Arizona, the Vestal, the West Virginia, the Tennessee, Oklahoma, Maryland and California. The USS Neosho as well.

00:40:41:20 – 00:41:10:11
Joshua Donohue
The on the western side of Fort Island, you have the light cruisers USS Detroit, USS Raleigh, the former battleship USS Utah, which was converted to a, a target ship. Utah is actually one of the first ships that’s torpedoed. They actually initiated the Japanese, torpedo planes that attack Utah. Some of their pods think it’s actually an a carrier is parked there, and they mistake the Utah for me care, because normally a carrier is parked on that side of the island.

00:41:10:17 – 00:41:31:25
Joshua Donohue
So they, the Utah rolls over and capsizes, kills about 58 men inside of it. So in Tau Tau Tau, when the first wave arrives, you get to you just mentioned that great part about, you know, dropping the bomb and getting that guy’s number on the seaplane ramp. That, again, is depicted, at Ford Island on, the seaplane ramp there.

00:41:32:02 – 00:41:56:21
Joshua Donohue
And another lesser known base I mentioned it earlier was, Bellows Army Airfield. This is really a sub post for Wheeler Army Airfield until it became its own separate military post, in July of 1941. And it’s located on the southeastern side of Oahu. And it’s during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th. Again, there were, two military members killed and six wounded at bellows.

00:41:56:28 – 00:42:17:01
Joshua Donohue
They didn’t kill three, included three pilots of the 44th Pursuit Squadron, who were at bellows for gunnery training and attempted to take off in their P-40s. Again, one was killed climbing into his play, in the second was killed, shot down immediately after getting into the air. And the third, Samuel Bishop took off in his P-40, but actually got shot down.

00:42:17:02 – 00:42:42:18
Joshua Donohue
Actually had to swim back to shore after his plane was damaged and crashed into the ocean. So if you really look at a Wahoo from a defensive perspective, because I mentioned they have a lot of other, coastal artillery defense, positions that were built, they had positions built in the side of mountains. There were casements. There were, you know, fire control bunkers all over the island.

00:42:42:18 – 00:43:17:16
Joshua Donohue
So Oahu is in a, in essence, a floating, land based, battleship. And it was bristling with guns, especially concentrated very heavily around the mouth of Pearl Harbor, because obviously, you have, you know, ships coming in and out of there. You have aircraft for Kamehameha was really the buffer, and fought Fort Armstrong with being the other, being two of the major, you know, strategic, coastal artillery positions that were again assigned to protect anything that was coming in and out of the harbor, anything that was coming out from the sea.

00:43:17:19 – 00:43:29:05
Joshua Donohue
You know, if this Japanese had ships that they were going to invade, Oahu that morning, those, you know, those sides would have been, you know, firing away at those ships and trying to, as many as they possibly could.

00:43:29:07 – 00:43:47:07
Dan LeFebvre
But you might have already answered my my next question because you talked a little bit about the, collateral damage, I’ll say, for the you know, civilian getting shot, movies tend to focus on what’s happening in the harbor itself, of course, but some of them do cut away to show scenes from a distance. First comes to -2019.

00:43:47:07 – 00:44:09:24
Dan LeFebvre
Midway shows Patrick Wilson’s character at Layton as he pulls his car over on the side of the road. For a moment, just to end. He sees, you know, numerous ships ablaze as more Japanese planes continue their attack. 2000, which Pearl Harbor also shows civilians around the island watching the planes fly over as the attack unfolds. And the way that these sequences in the movies play out, it almost seems to imply that the attack is at Pearl Harbor.

00:44:09:24 – 00:44:31:18
Dan LeFebvre
And you talked about some of the other airfields and stuff, but, maybe anybody who is now in one of those areas that’s a target must be safe, because they’re watching these explosions go from what seems like to be a safe distance. Can you help explain what the morning of December 7th, 1941, was like for people who were on Oahu, but maybe not actually at Pearl Harbor, even one of the targets themselves?

00:44:31:20 – 00:44:55:19
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, the, the it was not only an absolutely terrifying few hours and especially in the days, weeks and and really years after there were the blackouts, there was martial law declared on the entire city of Honolulu, was basically on lockdown. There were air raid drills, gas attack drills. You couldn’t go out at night. So life on Oahu was never really the same after the attack.

00:44:55:22 – 00:45:16:02
Joshua Donohue
And most civilians who had heard or saw the Japanese planes coming over just assume that it was another drill by the US Navy or the US Army Air Force, you know, conducting practice sorties, you know, and even with the the when the bombs started dropping and the explosions in thinking from here to eternity even say, okay, they must be blasting the coral heads.

00:45:16:05 – 00:45:37:01
Joshua Donohue
And then all of a sudden the explosions were right outside the window. Okay. Maybe not. So, I can going back to that, that this scene also in from here to Eternity and where they see the planes themselves and assuming that they’re American. But yeah, it’s odd for a Sunday. What are they doing? And again, it’s that scene in Tora, Tortuga where the flying over to get that guy’s number.

00:45:37:07 – 00:45:55:27
Joshua Donohue
They just couldn’t really imagine, you know, the Japanese, you know, attacking like that in, in the 2001 Pearl Harbor movie. Josh Hartnett’s character, Danny, makes a similar comment when he and Ben Affleck’s character are walking on the ice of the attack with a sleeping on the back of their car and said, why is the Navy running?

00:45:55:29 – 00:46:19:27
Joshua Donohue
You know, running, you know, drills on Sunday? And I think about also Daniel Inoue’s quote from a Ken Burns series when he when he sees the anti-aircraft fire and smoke coming from Pearl Harbor, he calls his dad out at that moment, sees three planes fly over, presumably zeros over their house. And in a way, he said, at that moment, he knew exactly what was happening.

00:46:20:00 – 00:46:41:18
Joshua Donohue
He was a 17 year old, you know, volunteer for the Red cross and had just the grim duty of having to recover. A lot of the civilians were killed that morning. So during the attack, there were incredible acts of courage and bravery taking place. Civilians were working alongside military personnel at all of the military installations which were attacked that morning.

00:46:41:18 – 00:47:07:28
Joshua Donohue
So they were exposed to the same dangers as the soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. So really, the most the most civilians that were killed by Japanese bullets were against civilians who were working in and around military installations. One story was George Walters, who was, civilian dockworker. He was a crane operator at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard.

00:47:08:01 – 00:47:33:12
Joshua Donohue
The battleship USS Pennsylvania was in drydock directly in front of him with the two destroyers, the USS Carson and the USS Downes, ahead of the Pennsylvania drydock. So when the attack occurred, he positioned his crane directly over the Pennsylvania in an effort to shield the ship and its crew from the attacking planes. He would be injured by a bomb and struck, that struck the battleship, but only caused minor damage.

00:47:33:18 – 00:47:57:03
Joshua Donohue
So the cast and the downs were both hit by bombs that were seriously damaged. As a result, a lot of the, if you see a lot of them moving and, you know, the the the photographs of the attack, the biggest were some of the biggest columns of smoke, obviously coming from Battleship Row, but it as it goes over, further, you see the USS Shaw, which is on fire, and the castle and the downs and all of the, the planes, on the Hickam Field flight line.

00:47:57:10 – 00:48:34:00
Joshua Donohue
So again, you see a lot of this, take place, again, during the attacks. So smoke columns are coming up, everywhere. And more than anything else, there was this sort of unshakable belief amongst the civilian population that the Japanese were going to be back in some way, shape or form, whether that be another attack wave of planes and even rumors were flying at that night that Japanese soldiers are landing on Hawaii, that there are paratroopers that had been seen, though the rumors and the misinformation and the things that people don’t know and that that could be, you know, a dangerous thing, too.

00:48:34:02 – 00:48:56:15
Joshua Donohue
I especially felt for the Japanese Americans whose lives were really, again, completely upturned and again, and the events that occurred during Pearl Harbor and after you really notice it in Tora Bora tours, where the attack is going on, it’s almost over. And you see that one scene where there was an officer has that interaction. He was that male and with that young Japanese boy.

00:48:56:19 – 00:49:25:19
Joshua Donohue
And it gives him that real stern kind of like, you know, just, you know, just that his face is just all contorted. And the young boys just looking at him like just, you know, you can kind of paralyzed. But, you know, for civilians, it was, a scary situation and, a number that the majority of the civilians who were killed that morning are actually not killed by Japanese bombs were bullets, but by American shells that are being fired from Pearl Harbor.

00:49:25:23 – 00:49:57:11
Joshua Donohue
They’re not exploding in the air. They’re continuing to arc until they land. And many of those shells land in Honolulu and surrounding areas. So there’s about I would say, there was a one, person who did some research on and said it was about 57 or so impact sites in and around the city area. That again, you know, the stories of civilians who are, watching the attack, the planes or they’re standing outside and all of a sudden an explosion happens right down the street.

00:49:57:18 – 00:50:19:12
Joshua Donohue
And, you know, there was one where, there was a Packard that was driving was for, civilians inside of it. And a navy shell landed right next to it, and it just blew the car apart and killed all four of the civilians inside of it. Not only that, a piece of the shrapnel from that explosion kill the young girl who was standing on her front porch, watching it happen with her family.

00:50:19:15 – 00:50:44:16
Joshua Donohue
Her family doesn’t realize what happened to get her inside, and she just, you know, dies right there. So, Yeah, it’s for the civilians again. The Japanese aren’t targeting them. But there are instances. I mean, I even talk about, you know, look at, Ken Taylor and George Welch, the two P-40 pilots, as they’re driving from Wheeler to to Holly Eva field, which is on the North Shore where they get their planes, they’re strafed by Japanese planes.

00:50:44:19 – 00:51:08:04
Joshua Donohue
Colonel Claude Larkin, who’s the CEO. Whatever field he’s dragging from Honolulu to the base, he has the ditch his car twice because planes are strafing him all the way around. And the car still running. He’s lying in the ditch, waiting for the planes to pass away. Perhaps over, I should say so. The. You know, whether it be military, civilian, you know, if it was, you’re in a vehicle and you’re moving, you know, it was a dangerous place to be that morning.

00:51:08:06 – 00:51:26:21
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned something. They’re saying that that they weren’t targeting civilians. And, if we go to 1953 In harm’s Way, starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, when we see the first wave of Japanese planes attacking, part of the plot point finds Kirk Douglas, his wife, played by Barbara Bush, having an affair on the beach when the attack starts.

00:51:26:23 – 00:51:44:18
Dan LeFebvre
And then. But from the movie’s perspective, it’s obvious this was a key part of the plot. But as as I watched when I was watching, that is kind of like, well, from the Japanese pilot’s perspective, they’re just strafing it around a man and woman on the beach. So from their point of view, they’re just to civilians, but they’re clearly targeted because there’s nobody else around on the beach.

00:51:44:25 – 00:51:55:22
Dan LeFebvre
Otherwise it just be an empty beach and planes are shooting at them. So it’s not really a strategic military target. So would it be correct to say, yeah, the that there were no civilian targets that morning.

00:51:55:24 – 00:52:15:09
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. That’s correct. And there was you know, there were the civilians were really in the line of fire that morning, but they weren’t quote unquote targeted. But that didn’t stop a few of the pilots from attacking civilian areas. You know, out of 353 planes used that morning, you can expect every single one of them is just going to avoid civilians.

00:52:15:09 – 00:52:44:29
Joshua Donohue
It was the temptation to see a large kind of juicy target, whether it be, you know, a, you know, some of the plantations that were actually attacked ever being one of them right outside the base gates. So, some sources claim, that these were accidental. And ever feel, for example, just outside the base, one of the youngest victims of the attack, six year old, Yoko Lillian Oda was was the very last civilian to die from the attack.

00:52:44:29 – 00:53:23:11
Joshua Donohue
She passed away from a piece of shrapnel, which struck her in the head just outside of the ever field gate. She passed in February of 1942. So a few of the Japanese POWs likely saw, especially as I mentioned, the plantation, the sugar mills, which were located on these plantation villages, seeing those as targets of opportunity, one of the Marines outside the base, it ever was hit along with, I shouldn’t say that the, Marines, but one of the, civilians, killed on the town of Hawaii who it was, two sugar plantations was, the one there in the one it ever.

00:53:23:15 – 00:53:46:18
Joshua Donohue
So another thing to consider here is that there were also civilian workers in and around the epicenter of the attack. So there were civilians killed or wounded just due to them really being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. So the again, as I mentioned, the commanding officer ever, Lieutenant Colonel Claude Larkin, was driving his 1930 Plymouth, from his home to ever and again had to ditch his car on two occasions.

00:53:46:24 – 00:54:10:04
Joshua Donohue
And again, you mentioned that George Welch and Ken Taylor, pilot, the two three P-40 pilots were nearly killed as they make their way up to Oahu’s North Shore. So, as I mentioned earlier, there, between 49 and other estimates have 68 civilians who lost their lives during the attack. Most of the casualties, again, were caused by, falling anti-aircraft shells that were fired by the ships in the, the guns of Pearl Harbor.

00:54:10:06 – 00:54:45:25
Joshua Donohue
The fuzes on the shells were a time that properly so instead of exploding in the air at a predetermined altitude, they would simply continue to arc into the city of Oahu and other residential areas. And again, some of them would just explode on impact. So, as I mentioned, that one, where the, the the scene with the Packard, is, destroyed in, in Pearl Harbor, the 2001 will be again, one of those scenes that gets a little bit carried away where they’re just flying raw and just strafing people, just, you know, just in cold blood.

00:54:45:27 – 00:55:11:06
Joshua Donohue
That’s not really what’s going on. So, yeah, there’s there’s another instance where, and this is, this is quite, quite, striking, jutsu Ohara Saki, who is a 48 year old Japanese American who ran a restaurant in Honolulu on the morning of the attack. He was at his diner with his family when a five inch shell from a navy, ship explode, came to the window and exploded.

00:55:11:09 – 00:55:19:17
Joshua Donohue
Harris Sakai was killed instantly, as were his three children, 14 year old cousin and seven young men who just happened to be eating breakfast that morning.

00:55:19:19 – 00:55:41:03
Dan LeFebvre
Wow, wow. I mean, I, I would assume and correct me if I’m wrong, but I would assume that with the anti-aircraft, the fuze is not being set correctly. And then, of course, shooting towards a populated area. I imagine a lot of that was just from the confusion of everything that was going on and rushing to get to shoot it, whatever you could basically.

00:55:41:03 – 00:56:00:11
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, because a lot of their ammunition was locked up. They had to go through, you know, you know, bust open, you know, at every field and other places that I read stories where, you know, they’re basically trying to scramble to get these guns prepped and loaded. It’s a multi-person effort to get especially the larger caliber guns, that they have to fire it.

00:56:00:12 – 00:56:31:18
Joshua Donohue
It’s not just one person out there you’re doing this. All in all, it’s a it’s a time consuming process. And in that process, you’re probably not thinking, oh, yeah, let’s just try to maybe have the fuze explode and it would a preset altitude and the Japanese planes are going to be they’re just shooting blindly. And this would happen really throughout the attack, especially as we see with some of the military planes coming in, the planes from the enterprise and other P-40s and that are coming in and around, they’re taking you off trying to find the Japanese planes.

00:56:31:21 – 00:56:44:05
Joshua Donohue
They’re now being shot at by their own gunners on the ground because there’s stur, you know, there’s there’s such a frenzy of confusion and trigger happy gunners on the ground. They see something flying. They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later.

00:56:44:07 – 00:57:10:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. I mean, it goes from assuming that the planes that are flying over must be doing some drill, and then all of a sudden it becomes anything flying in the air is a target. It must be the enemy. It’s just that that flip, that the chaos of war, I mean, I can, I can thankfully, I’ve never been in that situation, but I can I can understand how that, confusion is just everywhere and rampant.

00:57:10:15 – 00:57:29:27
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. And it kind of was just, you know, the streets of Honolulu were, you know, there were there were fires. There were they were having the civilians there. Again. It must have been terrifying. And they’re not thinking, of course, at the time. Oh, these are probably shells coming from Pearl Harbor, they think, and this is the Japanese trapping and bombs and killing, you know, innocent civilians.

00:57:29:27 – 00:57:54:07
Joshua Donohue
So thinking about that and and what happens, as I mentioned, after, you know, the fallout, especially for Japanese Americans who are living in Hawaii and, of course, on the West Coast and everything that happens with, you know, later on in World War two with the Japanese internment camps. And there’s that overall anti-Japanese sentiment. It’s starting to really build, I think of, Grace to Kuno.

00:57:54:09 – 00:58:13:08
Joshua Donohue
I believe her name was she was a student at Berkeley, in California when the attack happened. And she was going to, to a school that I get off the bus that morning. And the radio was just given the all the information about Pearl Harbor. And she’s looking around her, and everyone’s looking right at her and staring here and giving that that look, I was telling you, all extraterritorial.

00:58:13:15 – 00:58:23:14
Joshua Donohue
It was just instant. Like, all of a sudden, you know, everyone’s. It’s just the whole climate changes, literally with those, those, you know, in a matter of a few hours.

00:58:23:16 – 00:58:44:11
Dan LeFebvre
Well, one of the common themes in movies about Pearl Harbor is how the attack rallied American morale in support of joining World War two. Perhaps the most famous movie quote is at the end of Tora tour Tora! When Admiral Yamamoto says, I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

00:58:44:13 – 00:59:02:18
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, as we’ve talked about a lot today, the movies mostly cover the attack at Pearl itself instead of the things going on elsewhere that we talked about. You know, like with Wake Island and such. But back in 1941, was there a lot of coverage for any of the other attacks that we’ve talked about today outside the base at Pearl itself?

00:59:02:21 – 00:59:24:28
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. And it’s it’s you think about, you know, the information, how quickly we get it nowadays. So we haven’t really the palm of our hand just was not the case back then. Americans in those days were getting their information via newspaper, radio or the newsreels that they would see being shown at local movie theaters. And newsreels would be shown before the film started.

00:59:24:28 – 00:59:49:19
Joshua Donohue
So American audiences were getting, you know, all the information that, you know, that was available to them at the time. So they’re getting an actual visual, not just, you know, hearing it and reading in the newspaper. So, as I mentioned, they were, you know, audiences were getting nothing but bad news from what was going on between Japan’s offensive, which we talked about earlier, all of their operations in the Pacific, but also what’s going on in Europe as well.

00:59:49:22 – 01:00:09:22
Joshua Donohue
And it unlike the professional armies of Germany and Japan, the US armed forces were completely unprepared to fight a major war. I think they said in 1940 the US Army was smaller than that of Romania and of about 174,000 men in uniform. I think they said there were more men in the NYPD than there were in the Marine Corps.

01:00:09:25 – 01:00:33:07
Joshua Donohue
So, the Army still own tens of thousands of cavalry horses. And so, you know, the war was so far away, it simply didn’t occur to most Americans that such an attack was even possible. And in the events of the outside world, which is seemingly impossibly far away, especially due to the fact that the country was still in the midst of a Great Depression and were now just trying to pull itself out of it.

01:00:33:09 – 01:00:50:21
Joshua Donohue
The country that really been hit hard, especially in the Midwest and a lot of the farming areas. So Americans would go to movie theaters where, again, they’d see these newsreels because you’d see what was going on with, you know, with Hitler coming to power. Then you can fast forward to, you know, the civil war in Spain in 1936.

01:00:50:21 – 01:01:20:11
Joshua Donohue
We see, you know, civilians being attacked and then the Nazis seizing Czechoslovakia in 1938, invading Poland in 1939 and officially starting the Second World War from that event, when both England and France would declare war on Germany. Then you, of course, would have the fall of France. You you you’d you’d see the news with Dunkirk, for example, with the massive retreat of the forces of the British and the French there, Denmark, Norway, Holland fell, Belgium was crushed.

01:01:20:13 – 01:01:46:11
Joshua Donohue
Fans of France would fall in 1940. Britain would fall under attack during the Blitz in 1840, British cities at Cannes being attacked relentlessly by the, the air, by German warplanes and other, you know, terror weapons like the V-1. And you’ll American we had reporters. Edward R Murrow was in London reporting on these attacks and giving Americans a real just an awful glimpse of what was going on.

01:01:46:18 – 01:02:08:22
Joshua Donohue
So the overall feeling in the country at that point was similar to that of the of the, you know, before the First World War, that was isolationism. You know, Americans were hoping that the country could stay out of the war. And from December 1941 until June, I would say, of 1942, Americans were getting nothing but bad news coverage, in all, in every way, shape or form.

01:02:08:24 – 01:02:27:02
Joshua Donohue
And once Pearl Harbor happens, you can. It really makes the news more and more urgent. It can. The Japanese were on the offensive in the Pacific. The Americans were starting to make some small gains in the interim. Again, you had the fight at wake that happens. And that kind of bolsters, America’s, you know, spirits a little bit.

01:02:27:08 – 01:02:54:16
Joshua Donohue
But once the island was surrendered, it was again, once, once again, back to a low point. But as you start to see, over time, you know, the Americans begin to turn the tide. The you, of course, have the, Doolittle raid on April of 1942, which again, is not a is depicted in, torture in, 2001 Michael Bay film, you know.

01:02:54:16 – 01:02:57:18
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, yeah.

01:02:57:20 – 01:03:00:04
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. It’s all you need to say on that one, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

01:03:00:06 – 01:03:05:27
Joshua Donohue
And I there’s there’s this there’s some liberties that were taken.

01:03:06:00 – 01:03:07:12
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a nice way to put it. Yeah.

01:03:07:15 – 01:03:32:16
Joshua Donohue
But, you know, but over time in really this, you have to sort of, you know, Americans start to see the gains that we’re making. You know, the Doolittle Raid as we the first major event that you have, the battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942, which is really a some people would say a draw, a tactical victory for the Japanese, but more of a, you know, a sense of America’s navy is beginning to catch up to the Japanese.

01:03:32:16 – 01:03:53:09
Joshua Donohue
We lose a carrier. The Japanese, would lose, a carrier as well. And once you get to the Battle of Midway, which takes place in June of 1942, as we see in that and that film, again, we we, we have picked ourselves back up again. We are again using intelligence, breaking the Japanese code. We know where they’re going to be.

01:03:53:15 – 01:04:11:22
Joshua Donohue
You know, we have the proper people in place, intelligence gathering. You have, you know, Admiral Nimitz out there, you have a Bull Halsey at you have some great admirals out there who are again, going to take what’s left of the US Navy after the attack and bring it to the Japanese. And of course, we see what happens at midway.

01:04:11:22 – 01:04:23:08
Joshua Donohue
And, again, it’s it’s the decisive battle of the Pacific, I believe in the Pacific theater from the at that point in time and from really from that point on, the Japanese would never really recover.

01:04:23:11 – 01:04:42:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of midway, the movie at least, a common theme that we see in a lot of movies about the attack at Pearl is how it ties into other battles after it, like in In Midway after the attack at Pearl is is at the beginning of that movie, then it obviously covers the Battle of Midway, the 1960 Japanese film storm of the Pacific does the same thing.

01:04:42:22 – 01:05:04:17
Dan LeFebvre
2001 Pearl Harbor you talked about, goes from the attack of Pearl to the Doolittle Raid. Interestingly, the main characters in those movies seem to also take part in the other battles. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett characters in Pearl Harbor are fictional. Yeah, we still see them as pilots during the attack at Pearl and then going on to take part in the Doolittle Raid in 2019.

01:05:04:17 – 01:05:23:24
Dan LeFebvre
Midway, we see pilots like Dick Bast and Clarence Dickinson taking part in the Battle of Midway after having lived through the attack at Pearl. So the impression that I get from the movies is that many of the American pilots who survived Pearl Harbor went on to some of America’s most decisive naval and air battles later on in the war.

01:05:23:26 – 01:05:27:21
Dan LeFebvre
Is there any truth to that concept? The movie seems to suggest so.

01:05:27:21 – 01:05:57:15
Joshua Donohue
To go back to the 2001 film, the characters played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, they’re really in that film. Are loosely based on George Welch and Ken Taylor, the pilots, you see that they’re actually portrayed as they are in Tora, our Torturer. And, you know, we’ll get into that in a moment. So those, the actions of those P-40 pilots, again, as I mentioned, that happened there, that that particular film, as I mentioned, offers the most accurate portrayal of their actions.

01:05:57:15 – 01:06:15:18
Joshua Donohue
So one thing to note is that neither pilot took part in the Doolittle Raid, as we see later on happening in the film with, you know, Affleck and, you know, Josh Hartnett piloting the B20 fives with, you know, Alec Baldwin and who was playing Jimmy Doolittle in the in the famous raid.

01:06:15:18 – 01:06:18:09
Dan LeFebvre
And they’re all planes are the same. You can just pilot. Yeah.

01:06:18:11 – 01:06:36:00
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, yeah, no big deal. Just we’re just going to go on to the carrier getting the planes and just here you go. But some of the, some of the, the story of that was in the film that you see is actually true. They had to lighten the load as much as possible, right down to, you know, having broom handles for aircraft.

01:06:36:04 – 01:06:56:11
Joshua Donohue
You know, any aircraft, you know, 50 caliber machine guns, I guess you could say. But as far as the the the real story of the pilots of George Welch, one of the, you know, the P-40 pilots who got up in the air and helps you down a number of Japanese planes that morning, he would actually go on to earn, the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on December 7th.

01:06:56:13 – 01:07:21:26
Joshua Donohue
He would later go on to claim 16 victories in 348 combat missions. Malaria would actually end his war. He would later be killed in 1953, after his, aircraft. I believe he was flying a F-100 Super Saber. Would disintegrate, during a test. So a lot of these abuses, said I, Chuck Yeager, was another good example.

01:07:21:28 – 01:07:44:16
Joshua Donohue
Would go on to fly, you know, test out some of, you know, America’s newest, jet fighter planes. So Welch’s wingman and friend, Kenneth Taylor, he would go on to fight in the skies over Guadalcanal. He was later wounded in a Japanese airstrike on Henderson Field in 1943. He was able to down two more aircraft while he was stationed there, which would bring him to ace status.

01:07:44:19 – 01:08:09:16
Joshua Donohue
Another aviator who gained fame after the Pearl Harbor attack was a guy named Phil Rasmussen. He earned the name the Pajama pilot. He was literally in his pajamas when the attack happened. He jumped into his P 36 fighter and fought Japanese aircraft over Kaneohe Bay, where the naval air station was under attack. I think when he landed, they counted like 500 holes in his airplane.

01:08:09:22 – 01:08:12:29
Joshua Donohue
The tail wheel was shot away. I mean, how he was able to get.

01:08:12:29 – 01:08:14:01
Dan LeFebvre
He still landed?

01:08:14:03 – 01:08:40:28
Joshua Donohue
Yes. He somehow landed, at Wheeler Field. So after shooting down one plane, he was attacked by two more zeros, more shells and, 20 millimeter cannons and go! Fire blew away the canopy, destroyed his radio, severed the hydraulic lines, the water cable. He would sort you seek refuge in the cloud bank and begin flying back towards Wheeler and again, counting more than 500 bullet holes.

01:08:41:04 – 01:09:04:24
Joshua Donohue
And he is actually in the Air Force Museum. There is a, a p 36. That is, the paint scheme is just like his, like a silver. And as the 86 on the side and, Yeah. The other pilots you mentioned, Dick best and Clarence Dickinson, in midway. That’s more of an actual, you know, accurate portrayal of what happens.

01:09:04:24 – 01:09:42:26
Joshua Donohue
Dickinson’s plane is shot down by a Japanese zero as he is flying his SBD Dauntless from the Enterprise to Oahu. So his wingman was shot down. His plane was taking fire. He bailed out his rear gunner, William Miller, who had already claimed one zero, was presumably killed by, a second one. And he went down, with the plane, actually at every field, and number, including Clark, and witnessed this, they start to see, planes, Japanese planes and American planes, you know, kind of, you know, going into the skies just low over the over the field, a, I believe Revelle and a Dauntless, one of the Dauntless from the

01:09:42:26 – 01:10:15:28
Joshua Donohue
enterprise collide and crash right outside of Ever field, and going on to, the midway battle. You have, Clarence Dickenson, landing a bomb on the deck of the Kaga during the Battle of Midway. He would later earn three Navy Crosses, the first to do so, along with fellow aviator Lieutenant Noel Gaylor. So, many of the pilots has, you know, we mentioned especially Welch and Taylor, not taking place in the Doolittle raid, but they would again go on and fly, you know, missions and serve with distinction.

01:10:16:00 – 01:10:23:09
Dan LeFebvre
I just assume the, the uniform for pilots after that would just be pajamas, right? I mean, because apparently that’s what it takes to.

01:10:23:11 – 01:10:43:13
Joshua Donohue
Well, Welch, Welch and Taylor when they were tuxedo. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, they were, they were, they were partying the night before, you know, that just that’s kind of how, when Affleck and, Josh Hartnett were waking up from that, you know, they were fighting each other, drinking the night before. So it is similar to the circumstances of what Welch and Taylor did, you know, had to deal with that morning.

01:10:43:17 – 01:10:49:22
Joshua Donohue
And they. Yes, they were in their, their tuxedo, pants and whatever they else they had on from the night before.

01:10:49:22 – 01:10:58:28
Dan LeFebvre
Wow, wow. I guess it just goes to show, I mean, it was such a surprise. And then again, at being so early in the morning on a Sunday, I mean, yeah, you’d expect to sleep in.

01:10:59:00 – 01:11:02:10
Joshua Donohue
Exactly. You know, you expect to be talking about the Japanese. That’s.

01:11:02:12 – 01:11:04:13
Dan LeFebvre
Which is probably why they did it then.

01:11:04:18 – 01:11:06:10
Joshua Donohue
Yes. But,

01:11:06:12 – 01:11:11:01
Dan LeFebvre
Are you open to doing, a hypothetical what if type of question from a movie we haven’t talked about yet?

01:11:11:02 – 01:11:12:03
Joshua Donohue
Yeah, let’s do it.

01:11:12:06 – 01:11:37:12
Dan LeFebvre
The storyline of 1980s The Final Countdown follows the nuclear powered USS Nimitz as it goes through a storm that takes them back in time to December 6th, 1941, and they have the option to stop the attack before it happens. Ultimately, the time traveling storm come back before they’re able to do that. But let’s say the US did have a nuclear powered carrier like USS Nimitz during the attack.

01:11:37:15 – 01:11:47:26
Dan LeFebvre
Would that have been enough firepower to stop the attack, and if so, how do you think stopping the attack would have changed the course of history?

01:11:47:29 – 01:12:20:03
Joshua Donohue
That’s a good question. And, it would be interesting to see in one of those sort of war game simulations, those scenarios that play out, that they put. What would the most likely outcome of this type of, you know, hypothetical, what if scenario B, so if hypothetically, we you know, we can we had all of the advanced tech say if it’s just a carrier minus the task force, because especially if it’s a carrier and it’s task force, you’re going to wipe out that that opposing force pretty much a no problem at all.

01:12:20:03 – 01:12:41:07
Joshua Donohue
Because just a just based on your reach alone. Just what missile technology, how far it had come. So you could theoretically wipe out, I would say an entire Japanese task force with a few pursues and strikes, especially with guided missiles, advanced and advanced radar systems by this time. So you could really, you know, reach out and touch the enemy without them even knowing you’re there.

01:12:41:07 – 01:13:11:15
Joshua Donohue
You to the miles away. And again, missiles are starting to hit your ships and your the your aviators can’t land. You know, you’re going to lose all your air, your air support again. You’re going to attack the support ships as well. So I believe especially the biggest difference from the end of the Second World War, if you think about it, were you really have until it going up to the 1980s and the advances and guidance systems, you know, targeting systems and ordnance and things like that, things we’ve done with trial and error.

01:13:11:15 – 01:13:33:05
Joshua Donohue
You even had, drones in World War Two. Most people don’t realize that there’s actually a famous picture of Marilyn Monroe building a drone, I think, in Burbank, in the 19, 1944, I believe. So they were already experimenting with, you know, unmanned planes, guided weapons systems were already being, you know, like the Germans. I know we were very active with that.

01:13:33:10 – 01:14:04:02
Joshua Donohue
So you would need hundreds, in some cases, thousands of bombers on a single mission using these sort of unguided bombs, which is simply falling out of your bomb bay. You’re not guiding this ordnance to Earth. They’re just falling and causing untold casualties, especially in civilian areas, which, you know, of course, we find out later on, you know, that, the bomb damage assessment is, again, it’s considerable because you really wanted to, you know, have a precision strike.

01:14:04:07 – 01:14:42:06
Joshua Donohue
But when you’re putting up this many bombers at once and trying to drop, you know, thousands and thousands of tons of, you know, ordnance on a target, you there were times where they wouldn’t even be successful. It’s bad weather if they’re using smoke screens on the ground. And this would this would happen throughout the war with advanced systems on the, you know, with the planes that we have especially it’s maybe say go to 1984, 85 around that time and say you what runs how the movie was out, you had the F-14 Tomcat, you had the A-6 intruder, you have the, the E2, C Hawkeye, which with its radar dome, could detect threats from hundreds and

01:14:42:06 – 01:15:14:17
Joshua Donohue
thousands of miles away. So you could again reach out and hit the enemy. They would never even know you were there. And if it was it for it to be decisive, weapon and changed the course of the war. Yeah, I got to believe, you know, and again, in a hypothetical sense, that with the advancements that had been made really from the beginning of, you know, World War II to all the way through to the mid 1980s, and again by that time also, it was, you know, the 1980s were still like those last Cold War years.

01:15:14:24 – 01:15:39:00
Joshua Donohue
You know, the US military’s undergoing, you know, just a complete, you know, overhaul from, you know, the, from the end of the Vietnam War with new planes, you know, new bombs, new, you know, new theories, all of these things were just, you know, are always constantly changing and being upgraded, improved. So, hypothetically. Yeah, I think it could have been a decisive, decisive, outcome.

01:15:39:02 – 01:15:41:21
Dan LeFebvre
It would switch the surprise to being on the other side.

01:15:41:25 – 01:15:47:14
Joshua Donohue
Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Flipping that, flipping the script and flipping the tables on that literally.

01:15:47:16 – 01:16:05:19
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to cover a lot of the things that we don’t see in the movies about the attack on Pearl Harbor. For anyone wanting to learn about another little known piece of history, you have a fantastic new article about the embattled Marines Air Station. Eva almost pronounced that you are, It takes a.

01:16:05:19 – 01:16:05:26
Joshua Donohue
Bit.

01:16:06:03 – 01:16:18:07
Dan LeFebvre
It takes a bit. I’ve got that linked in the show notes for everyone watching this to check that out. And while they do that, what’s something that you learned? One writing that article that might surprise someone who has only seen the movies about Pearl Harbor?

01:16:18:09 – 01:16:38:11
Joshua Donohue
There were, you know, once you start to get down to, you know, the individual stories. And when I was researching, I, I’d done quite a bit of research, as I do for all my written projects. I like to know that the little stories, the things you don’t normally hear about, you know, the things that were going on in Honolulu with the civilians were dealing with during the attack.

01:16:38:13 – 01:17:04:11
Joshua Donohue
One particular individual, and this took place at every field, was a marine who actually lost his life at the hands of his, his fellow Marines. His name is William Edward. Lou Sean. He was a marine, who was stationed at ever that morning. And there have been, many stories about and, about what really happened.

01:17:04:11 – 01:17:27:03
Joshua Donohue
There were, eyewitnesses who were there, you know, inside the base. Outside the base, from what, I found out, this particular marine that once the attack started to happen, the base starting to be hit. If he had maybe upset someone, if he had, you know, there would have been, you know, who knows what really happened.

01:17:27:06 – 01:17:54:22
Joshua Donohue
But from what, I read and researched, he was. They tried to apprehend him for whatever reason they thought he was helping the enemy. I’ve heard people say it was because of his German last name. His parents were German. That that had something to do with it. He was trying to help the Japanese. And this is kind of ridiculous, this story that he was running out into the cane fields, burning arrows into the cane field to help direct the Japanese planes towards ever.

01:17:54:25 – 01:18:23:22
Joshua Donohue
That’s probably not going to happen. But, what happens is he eventually, finds a weapon and the marine, his fellow Marines, and they go into a shootout towards the entrance of the base. Lushan is eventually killed as believe. What happens is they send a car, literally, like almost. This is something that kind of a Dick Tracy comic there in the back of the like a like a Packard with a Tommy gun, you know, out the window at them.

01:18:23:22 – 01:18:53:09
Joshua Donohue
And the one of the one of the, Marines who was there was Albert Caselli was one of the Marines who took part in the actual, the killing of Lucia and says he was filled with so many holes, we had no idea which one was the one that killed them. So that I looked into that and a solution was buried at a, a military cemetery, which in even, Claude Larkin Ebsco makes referenced in his report that there was one exception.

01:18:53:15 – 01:19:18:06
Joshua Donohue
Everybody else fought hard. And all this except with one exception, basically Lushan. And it’s not really known the circumstances of. So what happens is it was it it was he trying to collaborate that we did. We didn’t really get the full picture of what happened. I looked later on and it said that he was cleared of all wrongdoing and again, was, you know, it was, you know, buried in the military cemetery.

01:19:18:06 – 01:19:49:18
Joshua Donohue
So we don’t really we know, but we don’t know, kind of what happened in that in that case, another thing that people may not realize is that there was a second attack on Pearl Harbor. This takes place in March of 1942, and what’s known as operation K, the Japanese will send two, colonies a k Emily flying boats filled with bombs to try and hit Pearl Harbor at night, to try and disrupt the salvage and, the repairs going on there.

01:19:49:20 – 01:20:13:00
Joshua Donohue
They are unsuccessful. Oahu was under a total blackout, which proves effective. The bombs land either in the Pacific Ocean or on the side of a an extinct volcano. I think there was, I think Roosevelt High School. I think the windows were blown out or something like that, but they don’t get even close to their intended target. So kind of little stories that you find out as you’re doing your research, it’s it’s pretty interesting stuff.

01:20:13:03 – 01:20:15:28
Dan LeFebvre
Not so much a surprise anymore in 1942.

01:20:15:29 – 01:20:25:00
Joshua Donohue
Exactly. We were ready. We’re we’re ready this time. Or they actually had radar. They they believe the radar operators this time around, unlike the first time around.

01:20:25:02 – 01:20:30:22
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I’ll make sure to add a link to that in the show notes. And, before we started recording, you mentioned some things that you’re working on now.

01:20:30:26 – 01:20:55:15
Joshua Donohue
Yeah. So I am currently working on the sort of the last, phases of finishing my article about my uncle who fought in Vietnam. He was with the 17th Cav, 198th Light Infantry Brigade, the 23rd of Macao. He fought, from August 1968 to August 1969. So it’s it’s going to be focusing on his time there.

01:20:55:17 – 01:21:13:27
Joshua Donohue
And although I’ve interviewed a bunch of the veterans who knew him and they just, you know, they all rave about him. He actually passed away, about ten years ago. So it’s definitely a personal story. He was somebody I admired and looked up to my whole life, and he never spoke of the war. You know, I never once asked him about it.

01:21:14:00 – 01:21:42:15
Joshua Donohue
And, you know, now, hearing about what, you know, all of his exploits and how well-respected he was amongst his men in Vietnam was just saying, look, I have to write this story. It’s just it’s just too good not to. I am also in the early phases of writing my first book. That is going to be about a soldier, John Hollar, Lieutenant John Hummel, who fought, during the Battle of Bataan when the Japanese invaded the Philippines.

01:21:42:18 – 01:21:58:01
Joshua Donohue
So he was with the 194th Tank Battalion. And it’s about his story. And, it’s it’s remarkable. I was reading through his memoirs and the some of the stuff that I read, I was like, I have to tell this story. It’s just just too good not to.

01:21:58:04 – 01:22:07:26
Dan LeFebvre
Wow, I can’t wait for those. And for anybody watching this, check the show notes, because as soon as those are available, I will make sure to add those in there. But the Iva article is available right now. Thanks again so much for your time.

01:22:07:26 – 01:22:17:08
Joshua Donohue
Josh, thank you so much for having me on. Appreciate it.

01:22:17:11 – 01:22:35:23
Dan LeFebvre
This episode is based on a true story was produced by Dan the Fab. Thank you once again to Joshua Donohue for helping us learn the things we don’t get to see in the movies about Pearl Harbor happened in the show. Notes. To find a link to Josh’s latest work as of this recording, that is his article entitled Embattled Marines at Air Station Iva.

01:22:35:25 – 01:22:55:11
Dan LeFebvre
We talked about that throughout this episode, but if you’re catching this episode later, Josh talked about some of the things that he’s working on right now as of this recording. So as soon as those are available, I’ll be adding those to the show notes as well. As always, you can find the links to everything over at. Based on a True Story podcast.com/379.

01:22:55:14 – 01:23:20:10
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, now it’s time for the answer to our two tours and a live game from the beginning of the episode. And as a quick refresher, here are the two truths and one lie again. Number one, Wake Island was attacked just a few hours after receiving word of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Number two Phil Rasmussen went up in his 36 wearing pajamas and landed with about 500 bullet holes in his plane.

01:23:20:12 – 01:23:33:07
Dan LeFebvre
Number three. In addition to military targets, the Japanese attacked numerous civilian targets around Pearl Harbor. Did you figure out which one is a lie? I’ve got the answer in the envelope, so let’s open that up.

01:23:33:09 – 01:23:54:06
Dan LeFebvre
And the lie is number three. As we learned from Josh, there were not any civilian targets around Pearl Harbor. But that’s not to say that there weren’t civilian casualties. Josh told us stories of some of those civilians caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. And we also learned that many of the civilian deaths were actually caused by friendly fire and the chaos of the surprise attack.

01:23:54:06 – 01:24:15:21
Dan LeFebvre
Anti-Aircraft rounds shot by Americans in the harbor ended up landing in and around Honolulu. Thanks for sticking around to the end. If you’re watching the video version here, in a moment you’re going to see the credits roll, and if you want to get your name in the credits for the next video and on the website, you can learn how to become a base on a true story producer using the link in the description or over at based on a True Story podcast.

01:24:15:26 – 01:24:27:15
Dan LeFebvre
Combat support once again, that’s based on a true story podcast.com/support. Until next time. Thanks so much for spending your time with Josh and today, and I’ll chat with you again really soon.

 

00:03:39:07 – 00:03:49:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you for coming on to talk about Titanic, Mark. And before we get started as a screenwriter, can you share how you got interested in the Titanic?

00:03:49:23 – 00:04:15:29
Mark B. Perry
Yes. I am a self-professed ship geek. I am, it’s one of my most passionate hobbies. I’m not an expert, but I know, a little bit about a lot of things as a result of, a lot of research that I’ve done over the years. I love 20th century ocean liners. I love ocean travel. I love the Normandie, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the New Amsterdam of 1938.

00:04:16:01 – 00:04:41:08
Mark B. Perry
To the QM, to the contemporary ocean liner. I’m a big collector of memorabilia, furniture, artwork, China, silverware, that sort of thing. And I’m also on. I’m a founding board member of the SS United States Conservancy, which is a nonprofit that is working to preserve the legacy of my favorite ship, which is the 1950s era ocean liner, the SS United States.

00:04:41:11 – 00:05:04:24
Mark B. Perry
So as I say, I am a ship geek as a hobby, but I am a screenwriter, professional Lee. And to that end, in 1988, I got, before I got my first professional break on the Wonder Years in 1989, I wrote a screenplay with a writing partner, a wonderful writer named Dudley Sanders, and we wrote it.

00:05:04:24 – 00:05:25:29
Mark B. Perry
We sent it to the agent that was representing me at the time. She called on a Sunday and left a message on my answering machine. This was 1988, and she said she had just finished reading it. She was so excited that Monday morning they were going to send this script. Every studio and every producer in town, there was going to be a bidding war.

00:05:26:02 – 00:05:47:28
Mark B. Perry
This was going to be a huge success. Congratulations, kiddo. Monday came. They did. They sent the script everywhere. All over town. Everybody passed and everybody said the same thing. A version of the same thing. This is a great script, but it would be the most expensive movie ever made. And nobody cares about the Titanic.

00:05:48:00 – 00:05:50:00
Dan LeFebvre
Oh.

00:05:50:03 – 00:06:12:25
Mark B. Perry
So. Yeah. True story, true story. So that came about because when I was a kid, I saw a movie called The Last Voyage with Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone. It was from the early 60s, and in it they actually partially sank an old ocean liner, the Ille de France, which was one of the most famous liners of its era.

00:06:12:27 – 00:06:44:11
Mark B. Perry
And when I saw that as a kid, I was fascinated by the ship. And so I really got interested in the ships. And then, of course, I read Walter Lord’s book, A Night to Remember all about the Titanic disaster. And it wasn’t until the mid 80s when the National Geographic documentary came out about Bob Ballard finding the wreck and the story of the Titanic, that I got re-energized about the story, and I reread A Night to Remember, and there was one passage in there.

00:06:44:13 – 00:07:06:07
Mark B. Perry
It was, I think, about two sentences, and it was. A surviving crew member recounted the story of just after the ship struck the berg, that a passenger came up to him out of nowhere, holding ice in his hands, where he had scooped it up and shaved into the deck, threw it at the officer’s feet, and said as if it had been an ongoing debate.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:43:17
Mark B. Perry
Will you believe me now? And that’s all Lord wrote was that little exchange. And I thought, that’s really interesting. So the script that we wrote was not a Jack and Rose story. It was, it was a time travel action adventure film set aboard the Titanic. But because we didn’t want to come across as, you know, exploiting a real life tragedy where real people died, we decided that we were going to work really hard to make sure that our version of events was is accurate, as it could possibly be, out of respect for the people who died and the events of that night.

00:07:43:19 – 00:08:03:02
Mark B. Perry
So we scripted the ship breaking in half, which had never been confirmed before or portrayed in any of the films, because it wasn’t really known until Ballard find that found the wreck in two pieces, and you may see the Ravel model behind me. I built that while we were writing the script, and I’m not a model maker.

00:08:03:02 – 00:08:09:29
Mark B. Perry
That funnels are the wrong part, but the the point was we wanted a three dimensional reference as we were plotting out.

00:08:10:01 – 00:08:10:19
Dan LeFebvre
The.

00:08:10:19 – 00:08:37:28
Mark B. Perry
The, the action of our script while the ship was sinking and again, trying to stick as close as we could to the established history. And since we did that, you know, research back then, there was no internet. So we had, you know, we went to the bookstores, we bought everything we could get our hands on. And, so that’s why I, my, my interest has endured in the story of the Titanic.

00:08:38:01 – 00:08:58:04
Mark B. Perry
But when it comes to my love of ships, I’m actually more drawn to the ones that were, that that did what they were designed to do and not the ones that failed. But, so anyway, that’s that’s how I came to know I can hold my own in a cocktail party. If the subject of the Titanic comes out.

00:08:58:06 – 00:09:19:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the movie that we are talking about today is 1953. So even before, the timeline of when you were writing your version of the story as well, and here on the podcast, it being based on a true story. Most of the movies that we talk about start with some sort of variation of based on true Story, but the movie that we’re talking about today goes a little bit further than that.

00:09:19:14 – 00:09:43:19
Dan LeFebvre
I think I’m going to quote with the opening text is from the movie. It says all navigational details of this film. Conversations, incidents and general data are taken verbatim from the published reports of inquiries held in 1912 by the Congress of the United States and the British Board of Trade, and while it does only mention the navigation details, it also kind of generically says the general data is.

00:09:43:19 – 00:10:01:02
Dan LeFebvre
So the impression that I get, as I read that when I started watching this movie was that this is trying to be more than based on true story. It’s trying to be as accurate as possible. So as we start our discussion today about 1953, is Titanic. If you were to give it a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would again.

00:10:01:05 – 00:10:23:21
Mark B. Perry
First of all, I want to preface everything by quoting Walter Lord, who I think is the definitive. He said in his first book, A Night to Remember. It is a rash man indeed who would set himself as final arbiter on all that happened, the incredible night the Titanic went down. So, to be clear, I’m not a rash man, but, historical accuracy of Titanic 53.

00:10:23:23 – 00:10:54:08
Mark B. Perry
This movie was made before, Walter Lord’s book came out. This book was 53. His book came out in 55. And in Lord’s book is considered by many to be the Titanic Bible. And because he was able to interview dozens and dozens of people who survived the sinking who were still alive in the 1950s, though even he admits that it can’t be 100% accurate because of human memory.

00:10:54:15 – 00:11:17:28
Mark B. Perry
Memory eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible, and stories would change. People swore they saw Captain Smith saving a baby, you know, in the water, before he went down. Others swore they saw him on the on the bridge. So this is what I think about this film. I think that they really tried, I think with what they knew at the time, they really tried.

00:11:17:28 – 00:11:41:11
Mark B. Perry
And it wasn’t until five years later when when A Night to Remember the movie came out that was based on, Walter Lord’s book. That was that was much more of a documentary like dramatization of the sinking. But, in this one there, as for Titanic 53, I love this movie because it is. It’s a soap opera.

00:11:41:11 – 00:12:13:16
Mark B. Perry
First it and and it’s a good soap opera. The script won an Academy Award, and, it’s also a soap opera, a disaster movie hybrid. And I think more than based on a true story, we could say it’s inspired by a true event. The focus of this movie is the Sturges family. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb as Richard and Julia Sturges and it’s it’s how the disaster plays a role in their relationships and not the other way around.

00:12:13:16 – 00:12:39:16
Mark B. Perry
And on that level, I think the movie works really well. So the navigational details may indeed be correct and taken verbatim from the reports that were available. But remember that those hearings were held very quickly after, the the survivors arrived in New York and they didn’t ask all of the questions of the people who were available, and not everybody was testifying.

00:12:39:18 – 00:13:03:00
Mark B. Perry
So they didn’t know as much. In 1953 or 52, when the writers were working on the script. And they didn’t have a lot of photographs of interiors of the ship and things to go. And they did not have the absolute wealth of information that we have now. So in fairness to the film makers, I think that they were making do with what they had in terms of reference.

00:13:03:00 – 00:13:24:21
Mark B. Perry
So as for the general data, that may refer to the timeline of things like, you know, which boat left when, how many people. But this film is not really beholden to historical accuracy, despite its lofty claims at the top. And I think it’s trying to set the stage to say we want to be respectful to the true story.

00:13:24:23 – 00:13:51:07
Mark B. Perry
But and, you know, not unlike what Dudley and I were doing, I do think that they were trying to be respectful and, they just didn’t didn’t have the material research available. There’s also there’s a famous story about the night they were filming in the in the tank on the backlot when they were lowering the lifeboats. And Barbara Stanwyck was in one of the lifeboats, and she started sobbing uncontrollably, not as the character, but as the actress herself.

00:13:51:09 – 00:14:19:01
Mark B. Perry
And it was because she was suddenly overcome with the reality of what they were reenacting in this movie. And from what I’ve heard, that sentiment also, pervaded some of the crew as well. But in the end, they had to answer to Darryl Zanuck, you know, and the accountants at 20th Century Fox. So, you know, they couldn’t throw as much money, certainly as Cameron did to to make his film.

00:14:19:04 – 00:14:51:15
Mark B. Perry
But I think they get a fair amount. Right. The film is often disparaged in Titanic circles, but they don’t always take it in context of the fact they didn’t know as much as we we do now. And I think little things like there’s a there’s a brief moment once, Clifton Webb as, Richard Sturges gets aboard the ship and he’s this pompous, snob, wealthy guy, but he pauses to recognize a stewardess and he calls her by name, and he mentions the ship that he recognizes her from, and that was apparently a very real thing among the wealthy people of the time.

00:14:51:18 – 00:15:23:10
Mark B. Perry
That they they would make a point of knowing the people who waited on them on these ships. But in this movie, there’s no mention of Thomas Andrews being aboard. And of course, he was aboard. He was the ship’s designer. And he played an incredibly important role in, the events of that night. Also, there’s a version of that with Bruce Ismay in this, who was the White Star Line representative, who by all accounts, was pressuring Captain Smith to, you know, go faster, go faster, break the speed record.

00:15:23:12 – 00:15:49:15
Mark B. Perry
He died in the 1930s, so I’m not sure why they felt that they had to fictionalize him. There’s a there’s someone named, Mr. Sanderson who’s a fictional character who’s representing the White Star line at the beginning of the movie, but he disembarks in Cherbourg. Does not even take the maiden voyage. And I think that must have been the 20th Century Fox lawyers being worried about the estates coming after them because Ismay died in the 30s.

00:15:49:17 – 00:16:13:09
Mark B. Perry
Also, the maiden voyage was not sold out as it is depicted in this film, and it’s used as a device for, Clifton Webb to, you know, sort of buy a ticket from a third class passenger. He could have just bought a first class ticket. And, but in the movie, they’re going for drama. And so, you know, he the ship is sold out, but he’s got to get on that ship.

00:16:13:12 – 00:16:37:27
Mark B. Perry
And, you know, he buys a ticket from Mr. Oscar Doom, who’s who’s with his family. And that way, you know, like I said, there’s plenty of room in first class, but the film certainly goes for the more dramatic setup. And that gives the his character a chance to prove that he isn’t entirely a heartless snob when he makes an effort after this ship hits the bird to return to third class, find Mrs. Goodman or children and get them into a lifeboat.

00:16:37:29 – 00:17:01:06
Mark B. Perry
Marnie the character who’s played by Thelma Ritter, is clearly Molly Brown, but again, the lawyers at 20th must have been nervous. Even though Molly Brown died in the 30s and The Unsinkable Molly Brown was still a good seven years away, it wasn’t until the 60s that the play and then the movie was made. So one bit of trivia that I want to share, and I am I’m going to answer your question, by the way.

00:17:01:06 – 00:17:30:04
Mark B. Perry
I’m going to give you my, my rating. But one bit of trivia that I find fascinating is, is is more of a, it’s more of a continuity error, an error than, an historical inaccuracy. And that is the they depict the ship striking the iceberg on its starboard or right side, which is accurate. But then they cut to an underwater shot and they show the hull of the ship being ripped open by the iceberg, and it’s on the port or left side of the ship.

00:17:30:09 – 00:17:52:06
Mark B. Perry
Then they cut to the inside cargo hold where some men are fleeing as the terror is is in real time, going down the side and the water spilling in. And again, based on the the way the ship was moving, that’s also on the on the port or left side of the ship. Then it cuts back to the ship and the ship is again, you know, with the iceberg to starboard.

00:17:52:08 – 00:18:12:02
Mark B. Perry
And all they had to do was flip the negative on those two shots and my theory on that is, I think that the director, John Lesko, realized that by flipping the shots and keeping it accurate, suddenly the ship would be moving right to left when it hit the bird. But it would then be moving right, left to right when it hit the hull.

00:18:12:02 – 00:18:34:20
Mark B. Perry
I know this is a little confusing, but I think he left it that way because that way all of the action is consistent from right to left, both above water and underwater. And only a nerd like me would probably notice something like and then go into a dissertation about it. But anyway, the film depicts an alarm going off, when they’re loading the lifeboats.

00:18:34:20 – 00:18:59:15
Mark B. Perry
That did not happen. They did fire signal, flares. But there was no white siren wailing throughout the loading. The interiors of the ship, they’re more evocative. They’re certainly not reproductions. And again, there were only a handful of photographs available at the time. But I think on the scale of lavishness of of what they’re depicting, I think, you know, they got they get the general ambiance and the orchestra music in this.

00:18:59:15 – 00:19:23:26
Mark B. Perry
The ship’s orchestra is much more 1920s than it is 19 tens. And the dancing that people are doing is, is more 1920s. The Titanic Orchestra was all piano and string instruments. So in terms of historical accuracy, to answer your question, and for the very long winded answer, I give it whatever the razor thin line is between a B and a C minus.

00:19:23:29 – 00:19:48:29
Dan LeFebvre
I really like that you went that you were talking about the historical context of it, because that’s something that, you know, I hear a lot of, a lot of different stories that in history, it’s hard for us now to kind of put yourself, especially going back into ancient times or things like that. But even with this one in particular, too, because we you mentioning James Cameron’s movie 1997 is kind of that’s what everybody thinks of with Titanic.

00:19:49:01 – 00:20:18:01
Dan LeFebvre
And so even, you know, watching this, it’s really hard not to compare this to that movie and, and just assume that, okay, James Cameron’s movie showed it this way. So let’s compare it to that, even though, as you point out, like they didn’t even know a lot of that stuff. And that leads right into my next question, because in Cameron’s 97 movie, we see these lavish sets and obviously a lot more money put into that than the 1953 Titanic movie.

00:20:18:03 – 00:20:26:29
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the 53 movie did a good job transporting us back to being aboard the Titanic? From a visual perspective.

00:20:27:01 – 00:20:51:26
Mark B. Perry
Does the film visually transport us back to the ship? Does it do a good job? And I’m going to give them props, and that’s an intended pun for the 28ft model. And the exterior shots on deck, all of which were sets, and they’re pretty convincing for the time, especially when you consider this was before CGI. It was before AI and before whatever other eyes are coming down the pike toward us.

00:20:51:28 – 00:21:19:09
Mark B. Perry
But I think it was much easier for audiences in 1953 to suspend disbelief because they hadn’t yet been made completely immune by seeing, anything imaginable rendered on film in a reasonable facsimile of reality, like people flying in anything you might see in a marvel movie. As I said earlier, the interiors of the of the the ship are evocative, and they didn’t have the visual resources for the designs.

00:21:19:11 – 00:21:43:28
Mark B. Perry
We have a context now from all the material at the endless documentaries, the, you know, everything. We have so much visual reference that they just didn’t have in 53. So I cut him some slack in this regard. The sets, I think they captured the lavishness and the scale and the ambiance of, of what a what a liner of that class would have been like back in the day.

00:21:44:01 – 00:22:06:21
Mark B. Perry
But they’re not exact replicas. And the iconic staircase is actually laid out more or less like the actual staircase aboard the ship. The one in, in Titanic 53. But again, the version to beat on that count is Cameron, who was obsessive about getting every rivet on the models of the hull in exactly the right place.

00:22:06:23 – 00:22:27:17
Mark B. Perry
And he had endless amounts of research, including having seen the wreck with his own eyes, diving down to the wreck of, the Titanic. So I, I think for the time period again, all in context, I think they did a pretty good job of putting us aboard a ship in 1912.

00:22:27:19 – 00:22:51:03
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. Again, it goes I mean, with Cameron’s not only having that extensive research, but also had a little bit of a bigger budget and better technology to work with. So, you know, being able to, to do that, and again, with the 53 movie is black and white too. So, you know, you’re capturing some of those lavish things.

00:22:51:05 – 00:22:55:06
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a little he’s going to suspend belief a little bit more.

00:22:55:08 – 00:23:15:17
Mark B. Perry
They were there was talk about making the film in color in 1953, but then they realized that the models would probably not look as realistic in color, which I think is a good point. And again, you know, for the special effects that were available at the time period, I think they do a serviceable job. I mean, it’s always funny when you cut to the ship sinking in there, clearly.

00:23:15:17 – 00:23:29:19
Mark B. Perry
No people on the deck, but, you know, they they had little motorized lifeboats with the oars moving in in one of the shots. And so, you know, they really tried, they really did try with what they had available at the time.

00:23:29:21 – 00:23:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
I think you mentioned his name. And early in the movie we meet Captain Edward Smith, and this movie seems to make a point of mentioning a flag that Captain Smith had when he was an apprentice on another ship called the Star of Madagascar.

00:23:40:25 – 00:23:42:22
Mark B. Perry
Star of Madagascar.

00:23:42:25 – 00:24:01:23
Dan LeFebvre
When I saw that, it made me curious about why the movie would mention that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression that I’ve always had is that even back in 1912, the maiden voyage of Titanic was a big deal. And the movie seems to allude to this. So as you talk about, you know, talks about the it was sold out since March, although you already mentioned that that’s not necessarily true.

00:24:01:25 – 00:24:25:12
Dan LeFebvre
But then the only experience that it mentions for Captain Smith is him being this apprentice. So that left me with the impression after watching the movie, that maybe Titanic’s maiden voyage was also Captain Smith’s first time being a ship’s captain, but then that just kind of seems to be a juxtaposition of this big deal. How experienced was Captain Smith prior to taking command of Titanic?

00:24:25:15 – 00:24:50:17
Mark B. Perry
Well, first, I can see how you would take that away from this particular film and the way Smith is depicted. But Smith was actually one of the most experienced captains of, vessels, on the North Atlantic. The star of Madagascar, as far as I can tell, existed only in the same universe where the Titanic’s maiden voyage was sold out.

00:24:50:20 – 00:24:52:18
Dan LeFebvre
So,

00:24:52:21 – 00:25:16:08
Mark B. Perry
I can find no reference to the Star of Madagascar. And I’ve always personally. I mean, I’ve seen this movie a hundred times, and I’ve always found that an odd bit of like, what were the writers trying to convey with. It’s delivered to him on the bridge and he says, run it up the main mast. And, you know, then there’s that moment at the end after the ship is sinking and he’s going down with the ship, and that’s what he looks up and sees.

00:25:16:08 – 00:25:45:09
Mark B. Perry
And I’m like, maybe they were trying to give us some sort of sentimental backstory to humanize him in some way. I mean, we’ll never know because the writers are all dead, and I don’t I don’t know, but it’s an odd beat, but it’s weirdly effective. But I and at the same time, I don’t know what it’s accomplishing. So and if it cast dispersion on Captain Smith’s experience, that’s an unfortunate, upshot of what I think they were trying to do.

00:25:45:11 – 00:26:23:13
Mark B. Perry
But Smith was very experienced. He had over 40 years at sea, as a as a commodore or captain for the White Star Line. And he was their go to whenever they would introduce new ships. And in fact, he had commanded the, he had commanded 17 White Star Line ships in his 40 years, including the maiden voyage of the Titanic’s bigger, older sister, the Olympic, about a year before the Titanic, maiden voyage, wealthy people at the time also very often chose their ship based on the captain, not on the vessel.

00:26:23:15 – 00:26:52:15
Mark B. Perry
And, Captain Smith had his own, groupies who followed him around from ship to ship, which I found to be a very interesting little factoid. But in truth, in some ways, Captain Smith’s abundant experience, I think, may have actually worked against him. On the night of April 14th. And to clarify, I want to read you a famous quote of his.

00:26:52:17 – 00:27:20:19
Mark B. Perry
He once said, I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that, and I wonder if that played a part in his apparent nonchalance about the ship’s speed, the ice warnings, if he felt that the ship was indeed impervious.

00:27:20:21 – 00:27:45:03
Mark B. Perry
But we don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point, but I do find that interesting that he did apparently say that, and that’s what he believed. And what’s even more poignant, I think, about the Titanic, is that opposed to it being the first time he commanded a ship, it was to be his last. He was going to retire after the maiden voyage once he got back to England.

00:27:45:06 – 00:27:54:01
Mark B. Perry
And to me, that’s a very tragic, bittersweet note to this man who had this long and storied career.

00:27:54:03 – 00:28:18:00
Dan LeFebvre
I wonder if maybe this is just my speculation, as you mentioned, that if this was going to be his last, if the writers of Titanic 53 knew that and then they because the the flag that you know from the Star of Madagascar, it mentions him being an apprentice. So maybe it’s kind of trying to do a bookend like this was, you know, the flag of his first command, his first ship.

00:28:18:08 – 00:28:28:21
Dan LeFebvre
And then this is going to be his last, you know, if he was going to retire after that, that that was maybe I’m just thinking out loud as, you know, as you mentioned, that that’s very interesting.

00:28:28:28 – 00:28:35:09
Mark B. Perry
That may have that I that had not occurred to me, but I think that’s a very, that’s a that’s a solid theory.

00:28:35:12 – 00:28:47:08
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned their names earlier and you know, the this May storyline throughout the movie follows, Richard Sturgis, his wife Julia, and their two kids, Annette Norman. Do we know if they’re based on real people on Titanic?

00:28:47:11 – 00:29:13:00
Mark B. Perry
Not that I know of, but they are certainly amalgams of, real people, real wealthy people of the time. And certainly real people who were aboard the ship. So I would say kind of yes and no. Now, in the film, Barbara Stanwyck is basically she’s kidnaped her children and she’s tried she wants to save them from, you know, the a life of insufferable snobbery growing up with Clifton Webb.

00:29:13:02 – 00:29:46:10
Mark B. Perry
And there was on the actual Titanic, there was a man aboard who had kidnaped his children in a custody dispute and was taking them to the United States, and the children survived, but the father perished in the the sinking. So it’s possible that, Charles Brackett and Richard Breen and Walter Rice had read about that particular passenger, and that may have been the the inspiration for the inciting incident of Julia kidnaping or taking the kids away from him.

00:29:46:13 – 00:29:49:28
Mark B. Perry
But again, of course, we’ll never know.

00:29:50:01 – 00:30:08:29
Dan LeFebvre
That leads into another tie. And speaking of, Annette, the the daughter in the 53 movie, that’s another tie into the James Cameron 97 one, which is that, you know, a young love story and that one, it’s Annette. And then a young guy named Gifford Rogers from the Purdue tennis team on his way home after playing Oxford during Easter.

00:30:09:01 – 00:30:25:25
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s not exact copy of, you know, the 97 movie with Jack and Rose. But then we it’s it’s hard watching the 53 movie now not to compare it to the 97 movie me like, oh on Titanic, there’s both these love stories. Do we know of any romances like that actually happening on Titanic?

00:30:25:27 – 00:30:54:10
Mark B. Perry
Well, first of all, let me just say this. If you look at Old Hollywood films, so many of them take place at least partly on, some glamorous ocean liner. Doris Day’s first movie wrote, romance on the high seas. Gentlemen prefer blonds. The Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell film, and The Lady Eve, which is one of my favorites, which is a Preston Sturges movie which coincidentally also stars Barbara Stanwyck.

00:30:54:12 – 00:31:17:25
Mark B. Perry
And in it she’s a con artist and she’s seducing Henry Fonda. And there’s a scene where they’re out on deck at night. It’s very romantic, and she says something like, A moonlit deck is a woman’s business office. And so there was a great romance associated with the old steamships and ocean voyages and the idea of shipboard romances has become a trope and a cliche.

00:31:17:28 – 00:31:36:14
Mark B. Perry
Did they happen on the Titanic? I think it’s very likely that they did, because people are people, and when you’re on a ship, there’s a there is a romantic aspect to it. I mean, I’ve crossed the Atlantic on the QE2 and the Queen Mary two and the old France as the Norway, and there is a romance to it.

00:31:36:14 – 00:32:05:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s, it’s it’s a very unique experience. There was a woman aboard the Titanic and her name was, Helen Candy. Candy. And she was traveling alone. And she had she had written a book, about how women can make a living. So I think she was a pioneer of women’s rights and, you know, good for her. She was traveling alone, and she caught the fancy and the attention of a handful of male passengers.

00:32:05:24 – 00:32:30:00
Mark B. Perry
And as Walter Lord describes it, they formed this little coterie of suitors with with miss Candy. And so who knows? You know, if I had to guess, I’d say yes. They’re probably more than one shipboard romance, but the chances are that many of them likely had very unhappy endings. Given what happened to the ship related to this in Cameron’s film.

00:32:30:02 – 00:32:38:17
Mark B. Perry
Leonardo DiCaprio. Jack, he dies because there isn’t room for him on that ginormous piece of wood.

00:32:38:20 – 00:32:42:04
Dan LeFebvre
I think we all saw the MythBusters on that. Yeah.

00:32:42:06 – 00:33:11:29
Mark B. Perry
That saves Kate Winslet. Yeah, there’s a debate about that. But that serves that story really well because that there’s a tragedy at the heart of the tragedy and a personal tragedy at the heart of the tragedy. And I find it interesting that, in 1953, which was closer in time to 1912, that the writers went out of their way to have Gifford, Robert Wagner be a hero.

00:33:12:01 – 00:33:36:16
Mark B. Perry
He’s the one who shimmies down when the lifeboat gets tangled. He’s the one who shimmies down, gets it free, gets it moving again, and then it’s when he’s trying to climb back up to rejoin the men that he loses. His grip, falls into the water. He’s pulled into a lifeboat, he’s unconscious, and that’s how he survives. And that way he’s not depicted as being dishonorable for not staying with the other man aboard the ship.

00:33:36:16 – 00:33:56:02
Mark B. Perry
And it. I think it’s an effective moment, but I also really thought that’s what they’re doing is they’re trying to justify him being able to survive. The Jack and Rose scenario, sadly, is probably closer to real life because so many of the third third class passengers perished.

00:33:56:04 – 00:34:16:19
Dan LeFebvre
That leads right into my next question that I have for you, because, we talked briefly about Richard Sturgis, and in the 53 movie, he buys a third class ticket to get in, and in the 97 movie, Jack wins a third class ticket. And it’s interesting because we don’t really see in both those movies, we see the first class and the third class.

00:34:16:19 – 00:34:34:19
Dan LeFebvre
They don’t really talk too much about a second class, but then both movies seem to imply that you can’t move around very much. In the 53 movie, after Richard gets his ticket, he deliberately moves a sign that says first class passengers, only to go from first. I’m sorry, from third class to first class and the top portion of the ship to where his family is.

00:34:34:22 – 00:34:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Can you unravel some of the different classes that were aboard Titanic and how their experiences differed?

00:34:40:20 – 00:35:06:18
Mark B. Perry
Yes. This was something we researched quite a bit because in our script, the female sort of love interest, it wasn’t really a love story, but, she was a, an Irish immigrant, single mom who was traveling in steerage or third class, and our protagonist, our time traveling hero. He ends up, finding himself first in first class, but he spends the movie divided between the two.

00:35:06:20 – 00:35:41:21
Mark B. Perry
And we didn’t really get into second class, although Titanic 53. There is a brief sequence where Barbara Stanwyck escorts the defrocked drunken priest, played by Richard based Hart, another fictional character, by the way, down to his state room. And that’s the only time I think we see a second class state room. Then in the there was a 1970s made for TV movie called S.O.S. Titanic with Cloris Leachman and David Warner, and David Warner played a real life character, Lawrence Beasley, who was a survivor of the Titanic who was traveling in second class.

00:35:41:21 – 00:36:15:09
Mark B. Perry
So that film did a little more in second class than other films have historically done. And coincidentally, David Warner, who played Lawrence Beesley, is also in Cameron’s movie, playing Lovejoy, who is, the henchman of, Billy Zane’s character. And so he’s an actor who has the dubious distinction of being on the Titanic twice. But in a historic in a contemporary context, the first class aboard the Titanic was probably more like Claridges Hotel in London, which is considered to be one of the finest, most luxurious in the world.

00:36:15:11 – 00:36:51:08
Mark B. Perry
Or maybe a Four Seasons or a Ritz Carlton. Whatever the passengers wanted was available. They were pampered, like, the patrons on the show, HBO show White Lotus, with one exception that really surprised me. Everyone always talks about how this ship was the pinnacle of luxury, and it may have been for 1912, but it’s only some of the first class suites had private bathroom facilities, and most of the first class had shared bath facilities with other first class passengers.

00:36:51:08 – 00:37:16:01
Mark B. Perry
And to take an actual bath, you had to make a reservation with your cabin steward or stewardess, which I thought that was interesting. I would have assumed that in first class they’re paying that much money. They would have their own bathrooms. But no, second class is more like a marriott or Holiday Inn. It’s still nice, but it’s not quite as opulent as or as luxurious as first.

00:37:16:04 – 00:37:44:05
Mark B. Perry
My late friend, who was a historian and a writer. Her name was Sylvia Stoddard, and she was a Titanic fanatic. And she said that from her research second class aboard the White Star Line’s Titanic was more like first class aboard other liners from other shipping lines of the day. So I that says that says a lot about what first class must have been like.

00:37:44:07 – 00:38:10:07
Mark B. Perry
But the second class cabins had bunk beds, not regular beds, and they too had shared bathroom facilities. All of the second class had shared bathroom facilities. Third class, we’re talking super eight, Best Western, motel six. They were also equipped there. They were equipped with bunk beds. Some of them, I think, had up to 12 or 14.

00:38:10:07 – 00:38:35:10
Mark B. Perry
And so you, you would buy actually space in a bunk. If you were traveling either with you or just your family, and you may have to share quarters. And all of the bathrooms, of course, were shared in third class. And according to two sources, there were only two bathtubs available for third class, one for men, one for women, which I found to be pretty interesting.

00:38:35:12 – 00:39:06:03
Mark B. Perry
That said, people back in the day said that the third class on the Titanic was the best third class accommodations on any vessel at the time. So from what I’ve read about the separations between the classes, it wasn’t as regimented as it’s usually depicted. Yes, there were some physical barriers. There were gates and there were, but there were also chains and signs like we see in Titanic 53, when Clifton Webb lets himself into first class.

00:39:06:05 – 00:39:24:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s hard to imagine, but I think back then they still paid attention to, the honor system. And I hate this expression, but I think people sort of knew their place. And so, you know, they they didn’t break the rules. Yes. As they said, there were gates and there were barriers, and some of them were in fact locked in sort of thing.

00:39:24:22 – 00:39:39:13
Mark B. Perry
But it was not impossible, according to our research. For someone to move from one class to another if they were determined enough and in some cases sneaky enough or rich and entitled.

00:39:39:16 – 00:40:09:19
Dan LeFebvre
Which then makes sense in the 53 movie, how it would be so easy for him to go from third class to first class and just fit in exactly. Well, if we go back to the 53 movie, there are a few different scenes where we see mentions of an iceberg report. The one it focuses on most is a telegraph sent to Captain Smith from the commander of SS Baltic, about an iceberg at latitude 41 degrees 51 North, longitude 49 degrees 52 West.

00:40:09:21 – 00:40:36:21
Dan LeFebvre
And despite this, Captain Smith orders Titanic to go 21 knots. And doing the math on that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s like 24mph. 39km/h. Going that fast seems to be something that one of the crew in the movie, Mr. Lightoller, is concerned with. So he asked Captain Smith about it, and Smith reassures Lightoller that they’ll be able to see any icebergs in the daylight, and so he’ll personally be on the bridge in the morning to watch out for those.

00:40:36:24 – 00:40:58:17
Dan LeFebvre
And just to help with some of the numbers, I looked up, Titanic’s top speed, and it’s about 23. Not so 26 miles an hour, 43km an hour. So our service speed was 21 knots that we see in the movie. And then, of course, looking at this with the historical context, it’s easy to see why, you know, with what happened, why the speed with the iceberg would have been such a big deal.

00:40:58:19 – 00:41:13:09
Dan LeFebvre
But then the movie seems to suggest that maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. So with that in mind for how the movie portrays things, how well do you think the movie does explaining the iceberg reports, and then Captain Smith’s orders to maintain titanic speed.

00:41:13:12 – 00:41:41:15
Mark B. Perry
Is a good question. According to Walter Lord, again, the Titanic received at least seven ice warnings from ships like the Baltic, the, the Corona, the America, the Masada. And there may have been more, but the radio operators were very busy sending personal messages for the passengers who were basically playing with this brand new toy, the high tech of its day, the wireless telegraph.

00:41:41:21 – 00:42:13:05
Mark B. Perry
And they were sending personal messages about, oh, we expect to arrive in New York at such and such a time. Please have such and such available. And the it was a source of revenue for the White Star Line. And so the operators were sending outgoing messages, which meant that not some incoming messages. And in fact, in some cases the the, the operators aboard the Titanic told the people sending them messages to shut up and get off the line because they were sending messages through the Cape Race relay to the, the, the United States.

00:42:13:07 – 00:42:35:10
Mark B. Perry
So some of them probably didn’t even get through. And but that said, I’m not sure I, I think in the movie, if I’m recalling right, it’s the Baltic message that the captain flips over and writes the coordinates of the ship. I don’t think that’s true. I think he did receive the Baltic message in real life. Would it have made any difference?

00:42:35:10 – 00:43:13:06
Mark B. Perry
I don’t know, because Captain Smith believed his that ship’s shipbuilding had gone past the, you know, kinds of accidents they had. But this was a night of what ifs. This was a night of if this hadn’t happened, if this hadn’t happened, if this had happened. You know, I heard a theory recently that said that the iceberg, which I had never heard this before and I haven’t researched it, so I may be talking out of turn, but they said that the, the, the iceberg that they hit was actually had broken off and flipped over and was a dark blue on the bottom, and which there was no moon that night, and it made it almost

00:43:13:06 – 00:43:48:21
Mark B. Perry
impossible to see until they were right up on it. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know. But Smith, by all accounts, was pretty nonchalant about the ice warnings. And again, I think it’s because of his overconfidence in shipbuilding. And being unable to envision any circumstance where a ship like this would actually flounder. So, again, not being the final arbiter of these things, my guess is the movie does a pretty good job in his attitude, if not the actual, facts as they played out aboard the aboard the ship.

00:43:48:23 – 00:43:58:08
Mark B. Perry
And, pretty much what he did, I think is, was supported by, contemporaneous accounts in those hearings and from survivors who were there.

00:43:58:10 – 00:44:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
I had never heard that theory about it, flipping over. But that brings up a good point of something kind of touching on what you were talking about before of, you know, if we don’t even it especially don’t, you know, during the 53 movie, they didn’t even have pictures or that much information there and then even even now, like how how old would you possibly be able to know about a specific iceberg in 1912, whether or not it had slipped over?

00:44:23:29 – 00:44:39:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not like there were footage or I mean, it’s that that kind of thing. I know there’s a lot of scientific stuff that people can do. It just blows my mind. But how we can jump to those sort of conclusions that we might know that, oh, there’s one particular iceberg might have flipped over. And that’s why they couldn’t see at that time.

00:44:39:10 – 00:44:48:02
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s like, okay, maybe. But also sometimes I think we just have to be okay never knowing what actually happened.

00:44:48:04 – 00:45:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Well, I think that’s true. And like I said, I preface that that’s I heard that recently and I have not substantiated it, but I thought it was interesting, but it still seems like that didn’t need to be part of the equation. I think if it had just been an iceberg, as it’s portrayed in the Cameron film and the the 53 film, and in a night to remember that just a big white iceberg, coming up out of nowhere.

00:45:10:25 – 00:45:32:14
Mark B. Perry
I mean, there was no moon that night, and it was it was difficult to discern those shapes at at the speed that they were moving and to maneuver properly in time. And, you know, again, you go back to eyewitness accounts. That’s all they had. And in 1953 that they only had what was on the record from people who were there.

00:45:32:16 – 00:46:01:19
Mark B. Perry
And those people weren’t carrying HD and 4K cameras in their pockets. The ship was not being charted by satellites. They weren’t in constant two way communication with other ships. It was a very different time. And so, you know, there’s so much speculations. There’s all the, you know, there’s the crazy conspiracy theory that that ship to to the Olympic and the Titanic were switched for some reason that I don’t think I’ve ever clearly understood.

00:46:01:22 – 00:46:10:03
Mark B. Perry
But, you know, it’s it’s fascinating to me that over 100 years after this happened, we’re still talking about it.

00:46:10:06 – 00:46:34:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, human memory is not great. But also to add to that, to everybody who survived had still gone through this extremely traumatic event. And so that’s going to affect memory as well. And just all these different. Yeah. We’re just never going to know all, all the facts.

00:46:34:20 – 00:46:53:27
Mark B. Perry
You know did clearly people can misremember. People can also make things up whether they mean to or not. I mean they might change their story because they didn’t run back to get the little boy who had fallen in the water and they just left them, you know, who knows? You know, we’re fallible.

00:46:54:00 – 00:47:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, very, very true. Well, if we go back to the movie, we do see we see a little bit, but there’s not a lot of dates and locations displayed out. Right? Like, you know, a lot of movies have had the text on screen, but we get some clues here and there, kind of what the path that the Titanic is taking.

00:47:11:03 – 00:47:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
At the beginning of the movie, for example, there are some signs that were in French. That’s when Richard Sturgis boards the ship, getting his his ticket. And after they start making their way to the open ocean, Richard is having dinner with his family, asks his daughter Annette what day it is, and she says it’s April 13th.

00:47:27:05 – 00:47:46:07
Dan LeFebvre
And then later in the movie, one of the sailors on the ship looks at the clock, making the movie make some notice that the clock is at 11:36 p.m. on April 14th, and that’s just before they see the iceberg in front of them. So based on these little clues that we have, do you think the movie does a pretty good job portraying the dates and places for Titanic’s timeline?

00:47:46:09 – 00:48:15:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they do an excellent job. In this case, the movie seems to be pretty accurate in the timeline. Maybe that’s what they meant by quote unquote general data in the, and, in the opening statement, the Titanic set sail on a Wednesday, which was April 10th, 1912, from Southampton, England. And there she was docked and the passengers boarded by gangway in the traditional fashion that we usually see in the movies.

00:48:15:22 – 00:48:37:00
Mark B. Perry
Interesting factoid. The the loading was done opposite of modern day air travel, and that they put the third class passengers aboard first before the first class and second class passengers boarded. I don’t know why, but apparently that was protocol of the day. Once she was fully loaded, she set sail. She arrived a few hours later in the French port of Cherbourg that you mentioned.

00:48:37:00 – 00:49:02:14
Mark B. Perry
And that’s where Titanic 53 picks her up, basically. Then they take on more passengers who come aboard by tender or those the smallish ferry boats that bring them out to the ship, because the harbor at Cherbourg did not have docking facilities that could accommodate a ship the size of the Titanic. So, incidentally, one of those tenders, the nomadic, survives to this day.

00:49:02:14 – 00:49:36:20
Mark B. Perry
It’s been restored. It’s on. You can visit it in Belfast, Ireland. And it was also designed by Thomas Andrews, who designed the much bigger sister ship, the Titanic. Only the nomadic is still afloat after all these years, unlike, the Titanic. There were while they were in Cherbourg. This is also where, this is where we see Julia and her children boarding, along with, Maud Young and other characters coming out on that tender.

00:49:36:22 – 00:50:10:07
Mark B. Perry
And that’s also where we see, Richard Sturgis, getting aboard by buying his ticket from the U.S. cruise and then sneaking up, and, let’s see. So then there were, passengers who disembarked in Cherbourg. There were about two dozen who left the ship because they had only booked passage to cross the channel. And I imagine they spent the rest of their lives with some pretty interesting cocktail party stories, about having, you know, just narrowly missed doom.

00:50:10:09 – 00:50:33:07
Mark B. Perry
And then from Cherbourg, the ship went to Queenstown, Ireland, which is they’ve changed the name and I’m blanking on what it’s called now, but, that isn’t even shown in Titanic 53. But it did stop in Ireland on Thursday the 11th midday, and then early afternoon it set sail for New York. And of course, infamy.

00:50:33:09 – 00:51:02:00
Mark B. Perry
April 13th would have been the Saturday. And that’s when when Annette says that the next day is when they’re in church on Sunday and they’re singing the hymn. And then by Monday morning, of course, the ship would be lost. And, you know, the story of the investigations and everything would begin. So in terms of accuracy, I think they got this, you know, with excluding things for time’s sake, I think more than anything else.

00:51:02:03 – 00:51:11:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they they did an excellent job. In fact, I’m going to upgrade my rating to a solid B at this point. Okay. Nice. That sizable.

00:51:11:22 – 00:51:30:13
Dan LeFebvre
Oh yes, of course, of course. Well we are at the point then if we go back to the movie, we’re at the point in the timeline where Titanic strikes the iceberg. It’s mere moments after it’s sited. According to the way the movie’s timeline is. And but Captain Smith is not on the bridge when the first actions are taken to avoid the iceberg.

00:51:30:13 – 00:51:46:26
Dan LeFebvre
But we can hear orders like Carter starboard and and full speed astern. Keep the helm hard over, and then movie cuts to the underwater shot that you’re talking about, where you see the, you know, the iceberg actually slicing the hull. And then at this point it cuts to, Captain Smith and he can feel the impact from where he’s on the ship.

00:51:46:26 – 00:52:12:15
Dan LeFebvre
And he rushes to the bridge, and he’s been informed that they picked up a spur. There’s no damage above the waterline, but the for pike is floated to the all top deck. There’s additional damage. After the the bulkhead be. And they’re taking water. And number one, two and three holds number five and six boiler rooms. And in the movie, Captain Smith seems surprised that there’s damage that far aft and asks if they can shore up.

00:52:12:18 – 00:52:29:26
Dan LeFebvre
No, is the reply, and they’ve been cut open like a tin can. And that’s basically a summary of the movie’s version of events. And there’s a lot of nautical terminology in there that, I would hope that you can help, kind of help explain what some of that is, but is that basically what happened?

00:52:29:29 – 00:52:33:00
Mark B. Perry
Well, no.

00:52:33:02 – 00:52:37:02
Dan LeFebvre
I’m sorry. Does that does that bring the grade back down to the B much? Yeah.

00:52:37:05 – 00:52:58:15
Mark B. Perry
No, no, I’m sticking with the B at this point. I, you know, I got a soft spot in my heart for this movie. So is that really what happened again? It’s a rash man indeed. Who knows. But from what we do know, the commands on the bridge. Hard to starboard. Full speed astern. All of that was pretty much exactly right.

00:52:58:15 – 00:53:22:04
Mark B. Perry
And it’s depicted as it’s depicted in the film. And I believe it’s the same thing in Cameron’s film. And that came from testimony at the hearings, because there were officers who survived, who were there, who knew what was going on. Captain Smith in Titanic 53 is sort of having a waxing, sentimental, poetic moment watching the kids sing their school anthem.

00:53:22:04 – 00:53:42:16
Mark B. Perry
And I think they’re in the I don’t know if they’re in the ballroom at the restaurant or where they are. But anyway, he was actually in his cabin, which was next to the wheelhouse on the bridge, and he did feel the impact. But it is very unlikely that the crew had that much information at their disposal, the way it’s portrayed in the film.

00:53:42:18 – 00:54:06:00
Mark B. Perry
In reality, Smith ordered inspections. He’s the one who ordered them to go down and do the inspections. And he also summoned Thomas Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, who again, isn’t in this movie conveniently, and I think the writers were taking license to just condense all the shoe leather so that they don’t have to play out every step because they want to get back to.

00:54:06:01 – 00:54:27:15
Mark B. Perry
They just want to set up the stakes that the ship is going to sink. What’s going to happen to the Sturges family? And it it seems unlikely that Smith, given his history, and again, that quote, it seems unlikely that he believed the ship was doomed from the get go and he sent an officer below to inspect the damage.

00:54:27:15 – 00:54:54:04
Mark B. Perry
And he then subsequently learned that the forward compartments were flooding. The mail room was flooding, taking on water fast, and he ordered the ship’s carpenter to go down and shore up the damage as best they could. And when, Smith was told that the ship foundering was a mathematical certainty by Thomas Andrews as the ship’s designer, he would know.

00:54:54:07 – 00:55:23:09
Mark B. Perry
That’s when Smith really knew that this was inevitable. So there were several steps in his process. I think some of it may have been denial, but some of it was also doing what he possibly could to try to buy as much time as he could. And, I just think the film for dramatic purposes condensed all of that because, again, that despite their claim at the beginning, that wasn’t really the focus of this particular film.

00:55:23:12 – 00:55:50:22
Dan LeFebvre
That makes perfect sense and that then these ships and my next question, because according to the movie, after hearing about this, this damage, it’s almost immediate. The Captain Smith just knows that the ship is going to go down. The very one of the very first things we see in the movie is he he orders the Ford pump start, and then he rushes to the wireless telegraph room, where he orders a Cicd to all vessels and then you know, the movie through dialog, very helpfully explains one of the officers or the telegraph operators.

00:55:50:22 – 00:56:14:23
Dan LeFebvre
Like that means a full distress. Yeah, yeah, we’re going down. Basically what Captain Smith says. So do we know I’m assuming then knew that we don’t know if Captain Smith immediately knew that they were going to sink. But then if that’s the case, would it be a fair assessment that that order that the movie points out, that he says, you know, starting the Ford pumps, that that’s basically just trying to delay the inevitable to try and buy time for the lifeboats.

00:56:14:25 – 00:56:36:03
Mark B. Perry
I think it was trying to buy time for the lifeboats. I, based on what I’ve read, what I know about it, you know, which again, it’s all speculation, but, I think, yes, they did have pumps and they could buy some time by pumping out the water, but at some point, you know, they get overwhelmed and the ship goes down.

00:56:36:05 – 00:57:00:10
Mark B. Perry
But I do think he was trying. He was he had so few options. And as soon as Andrews told him, it’s a mathematical certainty, which that’s apparently a direct quote from what he said. But he didn’t survive, of course, so who knows? But, I think once those words were said, then Captain Smith knew he had to do whatever he could possibly do to buy as much time as he could as the ship was going down.

00:57:00:10 – 00:57:06:24
Mark B. Perry
And he also simultaneously said, muster, the passengers, put them off boats, women and children.

00:57:06:27 – 00:57:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
I can only those are the kind of things I can’t wrap my head around. What that receiving that news must be, especially with that quote that you mentioned from Captain Smith. You know, just the assumption that this could never happen. And we all think of, you know, the Titanic is unsinkable and that whole aspect. And then to hear that it’s a mathematical, mathematical certainty that just has to be absolutely devastating.

00:57:30:24 – 00:57:39:11
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t I mean, I don’t know how you what sort of reaction to have to that. I mean, unfortunately we’ll never know. But that’s just it’s chilling.

00:57:39:11 – 00:58:04:08
Mark B. Perry
And I think, the actor who plays Captain Smith in Titanic 53, I think he plays that moment pretty well of the realization. And, you know, oh my God, what do we do? And the captain still today, the captain is responsible for the ship. They they are they are the last word. They are the they are the for good or bad, they’re they get the credit.

00:58:04:09 – 00:58:06:12
Mark B. Perry
They they get the blame.

00:58:06:15 – 00:58:08:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. The buck stops here as they say.

00:58:08:24 – 00:58:10:00
Mark B. Perry
Exactly.

00:58:10:02 – 00:58:27:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of the the lifeboats at this time in the movie is when we find out that they don’t have enough light plus for everybody, Captain Smith’s orders the women and children in lifeboats because there aren’t enough for the men. Can you share some more historical context about the lifeboats situation on Titanic?

00:58:27:11 – 00:58:40:16
Mark B. Perry
Well, I’m going to say something controversial, which is the Titanic actually had more than a sufficient number of lifeboats. Okay, to meet the outdated regulations of the time.

00:58:40:18 – 00:58:42:00
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

00:58:42:02 – 00:59:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Ships had grown in size so fast and mankind so arrogant, apparently, that they didn’t want to clutter the recreational space on the boat deck with, quote unquote, non-essential equipment that would block the view for the first class passengers out for a stroll on the boat deck. So there were, 16 boats, 16 wooden boats, and that’s eight on each side of the ship for forward and for aft.

00:59:10:27 – 00:59:32:13
Mark B. Perry
And there between the forward and aft boats, there was about 200ft of open deck, as you see in the film, where the passengers could enjoy the view as the ship was sinking. I don’t mean to make light, but it just so absurd to me that they didn’t take safety so as seriously as we do now.

00:59:32:13 – 00:59:35:04
Mark B. Perry
And one of the reasons we do now is because it happened.

00:59:35:06 – 00:59:40:02
Dan LeFebvre
They’re called lifeboats. I mean, that’s that’s pretty essential. Their life. It’s in the name of lifeboat, like.

00:59:40:06 – 01:00:10:07
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, all of those boats, those 16 boats, the the two in the front were smaller. There were slightly smaller, but they were still the wooden lifeboats. Those satisfied by the regulations of the day. But the Titanic was equipped with four additional collapsible lifeboats which were stowed up on one of the I don’t know what you call that. It’s one of the platforms on the boat deck, and they were lashed there and they had some trouble getting them down, but those exceeded the requirements.

01:00:10:07 – 01:00:35:23
Mark B. Perry
And that’s why I say that the Titanic actually had more than sufficient lifeboats to meet the regulations at the time, because they did have these other, these other collapsible boats that could once the other boats had been lowered from the davits, these collapsible boats could be fit into those davits and lowered away. The some of the passengers were made were aware of the disparity between the number of boats and the number of people aboard.

01:00:35:25 – 01:01:02:15
Mark B. Perry
Others were not. And it is true, according to testimony, that some of the first class gentlemen were let in on this dire news and so they could act accordingly. And as for the haphazard use of the boats, you know, going away with a handful of people, there had been no boat drill, for the ship. It wasn’t done, it wasn’t required.

01:01:02:17 – 01:01:31:11
Mark B. Perry
And even as the passengers were told to muster at their muster stations, which is where they’re supposed to gather to get on their lifeboat, the crew was still telling them that the ship was unsinkable. So imagine yourself. It’s freezing cold out. It’s like 28 degrees freezing cold. You’re standing on a solid ship. There’s there’s lights, there’s heat, there’s jaunty music playing from somewhere aft from the ship’s orchestra.

01:01:31:14 – 01:02:00:01
Mark B. Perry
And then there’s a little wooden boat hanging 70ft above the frigid water. And so a lot of people would not get in those boats. And so some of them went away with a handful of people. So, if I may, I’ll go into some, I’ll go into the weeds with the lifeboats. But, all told, there were, as I said, there were 14 largest boats could accommodate 65 passengers each.

01:02:00:03 – 01:02:16:15
Mark B. Perry
The two smaller cutters at the bow, they were called cutters. They were the wooden boats. They had a capacity of 40 people. And the four collapsible boats could handle 47 people each. And that’s a total capacity of 1180 souls. If all of them had been fully loaded.

01:02:16:17 – 01:02:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie said, I think there are 2200 overall on the Titanic, just a kind of.

01:02:21:04 – 01:02:53:03
Mark B. Perry
There are around 21, 20, 200. The the the number is still not has never really been certified because there were discrepancies in the passenger list and so forth. But there were, let’s say, 21, 20, 200 aboard the maiden voyage. So even fully loaded, the boats would still have been insufficient for some 900 people who died. And but had they been fully loaded, they would have been able to save close to 500 additional lives than what they were able to save.

01:02:53:05 – 01:02:57:03
Mark B. Perry
But hey, even God himself couldn’t think this ship, right?

01:02:57:06 – 01:03:19:07
Dan LeFebvre
What you mentioned there about how the, the crew was saying that, the ship is unsinkable. That reminds me of something that I saw in the movie where, you know, as as people are being told to line up for the lifeboats. This is movie’s version of events. Everyone’s, you know, donning the life jackets, and the crew is sending up distress flares, but then they’re still selling, telling the passenger there’s no cause for alarm.

01:03:19:12 – 01:03:47:02
Dan LeFebvre
Even as in the movie, we can hear alarms blaring across the ship, which seems pretty like a pretty stark contrast to that. And then there’s, it seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to keep everybody calm, but it doesn’t really take very long in the movie for people to start to realize what’s going on. That movie really focuses on Richard Sturgis in his family, and he tells a man they’re probably going to row out a few hundred yards where they repair the damage.

01:03:47:04 – 01:04:03:16
Dan LeFebvre
His wife, Julia, then thanks him for lying to them, and they try to seem to make up their differences in the final moments that they have. And there are a lot of tears in the movie, with only one exception of a man pretending to be a woman to get on the lifeboats. Most of the men seem to be resigned to their fate.

01:04:03:18 – 01:04:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the movie did a pretty accurate job of portraying this tension? And then the realization among the passengers as they boarded the lifeboats?

01:04:12:16 – 01:04:33:05
Mark B. Perry
Again, I think it did capture the drama of the moment. I’m not sure if that captured the accuracy. You know, the the who was where and which person was in which boat. But there are cases that Walter Lord writes about of men reassuring their wives, as Richard does in the movie. And, you know, it’s just a precaution.

01:04:33:05 – 01:04:54:14
Mark B. Perry
And so forth. And while knowing that they themselves were doomed, as Richard Sturgis does in the film and, you know, but that gives him for the soap that and the drama that gives him that great moment with Norman when Norman sadly, tragically gets to, quote unquote, be a man, which is his whole thing in the movie. He wants to wear long pants.

01:04:54:14 – 01:05:18:07
Mark B. Perry
He’s grown up. And so he’s going to become a man, which means he’s going to perish with the other man, the other gentleman aboard the ship. And in terms of the drama and the tears and the fear and the terror, as the reality of it begins to dawn on these people, the goodbyes, the stoicism of the the men and the other people who stayed behind.

01:05:18:07 – 01:05:32:27
Mark B. Perry
I think the film captures the drama of that really well and is and is pretty powerful. But again, if you want to get into the weeds on the actual timeline, you got to look to Mr. Cameron’s opus.

01:05:33:00 – 01:05:57:20
Dan LeFebvre
That yeah, that’s fair. And it does still go back to especially especially in a moment like that, because that’s the moment when there is the most panic. Relying on the witness reports is going to be the most, for lack of a better way to say it, the most inaccurate. I mean, that’s when their most panic is. So that’s when the misremembering, you know, trying to piece together things after the fact.

01:05:57:20 – 01:06:03:24
Dan LeFebvre
I imagine that would be the most difficult element to remember, as things are flashing by so quickly.

01:06:03:27 – 01:06:14:29
Mark B. Perry
Rational thought goes out the window. It’s all about do I jump, do I stay? I mean, I cannot imagine the terror of that situation.

01:06:15:01 – 01:06:33:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we go back to the movie as as the lifeboats lowered and they row away, we the band plays nearer. My God, to the everyone left on board sings along, and the movie cuts to some shots of people in the lifeboats. They can hear the songs being sung as Titanic starts to pitch forward. All of a sudden things accelerate very quickly.

01:06:33:13 – 01:06:53:03
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, there seems to be some sort of an explosion. The movie doesn’t really mention what’s happening here, but there’s some dialog earlier talked about, the ship being finished once the water hits the boilers. So that’s what I was assuming. The movie’s trying to portray as water hits the boilers is explosion of steam, perhaps, but in the movie we see the ball fully engulfed in the water.

01:06:53:03 – 01:07:10:03
Dan LeFebvre
The water just kind of starts bubbling at the surface. And then there’s this rumbling that knocks everybody off their feet, stops them from singing Near my God to thee. And then within a few seconds, she slips beneath the waters entirely. Do you think the movie did a pretty good job recounting what we know of Titanic’s final moments.

01:07:10:06 – 01:07:41:13
Mark B. Perry
For the time? Once again, I’m going to put everything in this film in context of what they knew at the time. So I think they tried to do a, I, they tried to do a good job, a respectful job of depicting the final moments based on what they knew and with the technology they had available at the time, which was basically models, miniatures and, you know, air canisters so they could blow, you know, the water could bubble as the ship goes down and that sort of thing.

01:07:41:15 – 01:08:01:19
Mark B. Perry
There’s always been lively debate about the whole nearer, my God to thee thing, or whether it was nearer, my God to thee or a popular tune of the time called Autumn, which was a waltz. But the nearer, my God, to thee thing is such a. I don’t know if romantic is the right word to use, but it’s so evocative.

01:08:01:19 – 01:08:22:16
Mark B. Perry
I think it’s kind of become Titanic gospel, if you will. But Walter Lord writes about it in his sequel to A Night to Remember that came out in the 80s, called The Night Lives On. And, in this film, they start playing in Titanic 53. The captain asks them to start playing, and it’s much later in the process.

01:08:22:16 – 01:08:45:10
Mark B. Perry
And in truth, the captain didn’t ask them a while. Wallace Hartley, the band leader. He was the one who instigated it, which is portrayed pretty accurately in the Cameron film. And they were playing light music of the day. They were playing ragtime. They were playing, you know, waltzes. They’re playing popular songs because the whole idea was to take people, take people’s minds off of, you know, what was going on.

01:08:45:10 – 01:09:13:22
Mark B. Perry
And keep everybody calm. Interestingly enough, Nearer My God to Thee was the original title of Titanic 53, until somebody wisely suggested that they change it. But witnesses at the time, again, with the testimony that they had, they basically said they saw the bow going under, and then that accelerated as the water rose, the decks began to slope precariously, making it impossible for people to stand.

01:09:13:22 – 01:09:37:02
Mark B. Perry
And we see all of this in the film. The musicians eventually fell, you know, and the music stopped. The lights went out. Then there was a steady roar. And in the the real witness accounts, there was a steady roar, which was apparently the sound of all the heavy machinery, the dishes, the glassware, the furniture, the pianos, everything breaking loose and hurtling toward the submerged bow.

01:09:37:05 – 01:10:05:04
Mark B. Perry
We only see some of this and 53 it is shown in horrifying, vivid detail in Cameron’s film, the dishes and everything else. As the stern rose in the air and the real, incident, the, the forward funnel detached, fell into the water. It’s depicted in Cameron’s film. They do not show that happening here. It may have been beyond their capable to make that, look realistic.

01:10:05:06 – 01:10:27:06
Mark B. Perry
Then in real life, the ship did go perpendicular, for up to two minutes, according to witnesses. And the noises stopped. And the stern then settled back slightly, then slowly began to slip. It’s picking up speed as it went. Now in Titanic 53, we don’t see it do this, but we see it stay at the angle and.

01:10:27:06 – 01:10:28:28
Dan LeFebvre
Then.

01:10:29:01 – 01:11:03:20
Mark B. Perry
Hang there for a moment and then begin to sink and pick up speed. And that settling back might well have been as the witnesses who saw it. That may well have been the ship actually breaking in two at the time. But we didn’t know that for sure until the wreck was found by Ballard in the 80s. And I find it interesting that of all the people who testified were interviewed, only three swore they saw the ship break in half and all the others said that that did not happen.

01:11:03:22 – 01:11:29:05
Mark B. Perry
And so that goes back to speaking to the reliability of eyewitness testimony. So I think it puts a big caveat on all of this. As for the explosion that’s portrayed in 1953, they were basing that on testimony of one seaman who said that he survived, and he said that he heard an explosion before the ship went down.

01:11:29:07 – 01:11:52:03
Mark B. Perry
But when Ballard found the wreck, there was no evidence of a boiler explosion. There was no evidence of an explosion. There was evidence of the ship having been strained to the point of breaking in half. And but it is possible that the bulkhead, when they were going down the bulkheads finally giving way with all of that pressure, could have made explosive sounds.

01:11:52:06 – 01:12:19:06
Mark B. Perry
And who knows what a huge ship actually sounds like when it literally breaks into. So I think they opted to rely on that one person’s testimony because it makes for drama. It it accelerates the sinking. In the movie it says this happened and that’s why this happened. And that’s how Richard Sturgis dies with his son without ever having shared his true parentage.

01:12:19:06 – 01:12:21:18
Mark B. Perry
Because, again, it’s a soap opera.

01:12:21:20 – 01:12:41:26
Dan LeFebvre
I you make a great point two, of how would we know what that would, what it actually would have sounded like. That goes back to, you know, relying on on witness reports. But even they wouldn’t they you hear this big noise, you wouldn’t be able to identify exactly what that is because there’s all these there’s a lot of noises, I’m sure, that were happening.

01:12:42:03 – 01:12:46:12
Dan LeFebvre
And being able to identify what they were not easy to do.

01:12:46:19 – 01:13:10:12
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, I, I and I give Cameron big props for and his crew and the sound mixers because if you have to imagine that and try to create that, I think they did an exceptional job because that’s a horrifying moment in the Cameron film, which I recently rewatched. And as a research before you, we have our talk today.

01:13:10:15 – 01:13:34:16
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we started our discussion today with the text at the beginning of the movie, so it seems fitting to end in a similar fashion because the movie ends with voiceover. It gives us a few details about the tragedy, and I’m going to quote the voiceover from the end of the movie. Thus, on April 15th, 1912, at oh two 20 hours, as the passengers and crew sang a Welsh hymn, RMS Titanic passed from the British registry.

01:13:34:18 – 01:13:57:28
Dan LeFebvre
712 people in 19 lifeboats survived. I found it interesting that the movie mentioned the number of survivors in lifeboats, but didn’t mention how many souls were lost. So I have a two part question. As we start to wrap up our discussion today. First is the part the movie included in the final voice over accurate. And secondly, can you fill in some of the historical details that the movie doesn’t mention?

01:13:58:00 – 01:14:24:29
Mark B. Perry
By all accounts, there were 712 survivors, and most estimates put the loss of souls at around 1500, which is an interesting omission in this film, because to me. That’s the more horrifying statistic, actually. But again, this number isn’t really known because we don’t actually know how many people were aboard the ship because they weren’t all scanned by computers.

01:14:25:01 – 01:14:44:26
Mark B. Perry
You know, they didn’t have wristbands like they do today. And there were discrepancies in the passenger list. There were people who were on the printed passenger list who did not make the voyage. And same for the crew. So I want to go back to the singing of the hymn, the because you mentioned the Welsh hymn and the movie says Welsh hymn.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:19:14
Mark B. Perry
Well, as many, many people insist that, you know, the band didn’t play the hymn, because their goal was to calm the passengers and not, you know, serenade the arrival of death or whatever. But if they had actually played or sung nearer, my God, to thee. As Walter Lord points out, the British version has a completely different melody than the American version, and not everybody would have known the song by the same melody, so it would have been a cacophony as opposed to the way it’s depicted in Titanic.

01:15:19:14 – 01:15:43:11
Mark B. Perry
53 years ago, I bought an excellent CD called Titanic. Music is heard on The Fateful Voyage, and it’s by, Ian Whitcomb and his orchestra, and they do authentic recreations of the music from the ship, and they do a performance of this waltz called Autumn. And for me, I like to think that that’s the last tune that the band played.

01:15:43:14 – 01:16:14:09
Mark B. Perry
People may have said prayers, they may have sung hymns. But that’s what I prefer to think, because it’s a very haunting, beautiful melody. Another interesting thing is that two of those four collapsible boats that could have carried however many people I said earlier, they apparently floated away with nobody in them. And, so of the total of 18 boats, the 16 wooden, the two collapsible, that’s all that survived.

01:16:14:12 – 01:16:33:28
Mark B. Perry
But if those other boats floated off and there was a sea full of people flailing, it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t have done. One of the collapsible, as we’ve seen, was upside down, and the they managed to get aboard it and keep it afloat all night until they were rescued. So it’s hard to imagine why that happened.

01:16:33:28 – 01:17:06:12
Mark B. Perry
And I wonder, actually, if those boats were still lashed to the ship and went down with it. And that’s why there’s no account of those two. Two missing, collapsible boats. And then finally, the Titanic was never advertised as being unsinkable, but was generally referred to that way. And that was repeated enough that people believed that even apparently Captain Smith.

01:17:06:15 – 01:17:40:20
Mark B. Perry
But when you look at the persist, a fascination with this ship, all the TV shows, the documentaries, the coverage of that tragic submersible implosion that happened two years ago, going down to the dive, the wreck, the movies, the operas, the musicals, the books, nonfiction and fiction and on and on. As I said earlier, this was a hundred years ago, but it’s still this tragic confluence of events that happened that night and resulted in everything that it did.

01:17:40:23 – 01:17:58:21
Mark B. Perry
It it still resonates. It’s still it’s still relatable for people and it still fascinates. So it’s and and in that way, as Walter Lord points out, the Titanic herself may not have been unsinkable, but the legacy of the Titanic is certainly unsinkable.

01:17:58:24 – 01:18:17:27
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned at the very beginning that you had written your own version before Cameron’s version came out. If, let’s say that you were in charge of a new adaptation of Titanic story, is there anything you would change or anything based on the new information that’s come out since you wrote that originally?

01:18:18:00 – 01:18:22:10
Mark B. Perry
I probably wouldn’t do it.

01:18:22:13 – 01:18:28:25
Dan LeFebvre
Because it would be compared to Cameron’s. And that I mean, that’s that’s because that just seems to be the one that everybody’s like, this is what happened.

01:18:29:02 – 01:19:00:11
Mark B. Perry
Of course. I mean, Cameron, whatever we think of all the Jack and Rose stuff in the film, it made it a blockbuster hit. It’s a movie that I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody who hasn’t seen it, which is rare. And I think he has set the standard for generations to come. And it’s also known as the studio execs prophetically said to us, this will be the most expensive movie ever made, which at the time it was.

01:19:00:11 – 01:19:30:24
Mark B. Perry
And so they were right. Even ten years before. But, you know, especially a movie where everybody already knows the ending. That said, I do think that the script that Dudley and I wrote at and again, trying to be respectful but still tell an action adventure, time travel movie, I think that it removes one of those obstacles, because in our script, you don’t know what’s going to happen to the ship, because the hero has the moral dilemma of, do I try to save these people?

01:19:30:27 – 01:19:58:06
Mark B. Perry
Or do I let it? Do I let history take its course? And the ship founder and all of the positive, developments that came from the tragedy, like lifeboats for all, and, you know, 24 hour, wireless communications and people receiving wireless as well as sending them on the ships and the safety of life at sea regulations that are constantly being updated.

01:19:58:08 – 01:20:11:19
Mark B. Perry
So a lot of positive things resulted from this horrible tragedy. But, you know, in our movie, you don’t you don’t know what’s going to happen. So, you know, if somebody from Netflix is a fan of your show, maybe they’ll give me a call. I don’t know.

01:20:11:21 – 01:20:33:26
Dan LeFebvre
When you’re talking about the time travel. When I was, have you ever seen, Final Countdown? I think it’s called where they go back in time to, and they have that same sort of discretion, like, do we stop the attack on Pearl Harbor? Do we, do we stop this from happening? I mean, that was the first thing that came to mind when you talk about not even really knowing, are they going to let history play out?

01:20:33:26 – 01:20:41:16
Dan LeFebvre
Is this going to be that same sort of dilemma in the movie that takes an event that we all know what happened, but is it really going to happen this way in this movie?

01:20:41:19 – 01:20:45:01
Mark B. Perry
Right. Well, we wrote our script first.

01:20:45:03 – 01:20:46:00
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, yeah, I.

01:20:46:03 – 01:20:49:27
Mark B. Perry
We didn’t need it made.

01:20:49:29 – 01:20:51:16
Mark B. Perry
But we wrote.

01:20:51:18 – 01:21:08:09
Dan LeFebvre
Fair. Well, I’d love to switch away from the 53 Titanic movie to another story of yours, the your debut novel called and introducing Dexter Gaines. And I’ve got a link to that in some notes for everyone to pick up their own copy. And while they do that, can you share a sneak peek of your book?

01:21:08:12 – 01:21:34:23
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you asking. In addition to my love for ships, I love old movies. I love old Hollywood, and I. I love historical fiction. And, as a side note, I also love time travel stories, obviously. But, and when I, when I decided to try my hand at fiction, I wanted to myself, time travel back to the twilight of Hollywood’s golden age.

01:21:34:23 – 01:22:00:19
Mark B. Perry
And I’m. This is not a time travel novel. I’m just saying, me as a writer, I wanted to experience it, to put my head in the heads of those characters and that time period. And I wanted specifically to set it in the early 1950s, when TV was a threat to the movie business and when the studio system was beginning to change and be phased out.

01:22:00:21 – 01:22:27:28
Mark B. Perry
And I wanted to tell an unconventional story that starts with one of the most well-known tropes, which is a young person coming to Hollywood to become a star. And, in my case, he’s a young man from Texas with matinee idol good looks and the unfortunate name of Dan Root, and he’s escaping a, troubled past. He arrives in town, he falls in with one of the most powerful couples in Hollywood.

01:22:28:00 – 01:22:52:01
Mark B. Perry
And it’s a hotshot producer at 20th Century Fox who produced Titanic 53. His name is Milford Langdon and his wife, Lillian Sinclair, who’s a glamorous movie star, who’s kind of on the cusp between fame and fade out, as happens to women in this cruel industry. And together, Millie and Lily, they mentor, Dan and transform him into a promising young actor.

01:22:52:01 – 01:23:20:24
Mark B. Perry
And they rechristened him Dexter Gaines. That’s going to be his big movie name. And it becomes an unconventional love story about heartbreak and redemption and sexual awakening. And it’s told as a kind of emotional mystery that set in, two time periods. It’s set in 1994, when he when Dan returns to Hollywood to confront his demons, and the early 1950s, when he, first gets his, first bitter taste of stardom.

01:23:20:26 – 01:23:47:01
Mark B. Perry
And we know from the very beginning of the book these are there are no spoilers here. We know from the very beginning of the book that his time in Hollywood ended up being a spectacular failure that ended in violence and attempted murder. But the story is about this man finding self absolution in the in the ultimate truth that he uncovers from the literal and figurative, ruins of his past.

01:23:47:01 – 01:24:21:15
Mark B. Perry
And I’m happy to say it’s been on one of Amazon’s, bestseller lists since it came out May 6th. And and I, I and the, the critical acclaim, the reviews I’ve gotten so far have been overwhelmingly positive. And I chose the early 50s for a couple of reasons. I wanted a real scene and a real movie that my character, my fictional character Dexter, could have been in when the film was shot and then could have been cut out of before it was released.

01:24:21:18 – 01:24:48:04
Mark B. Perry
And I was watching Titanic 53 for the 800th time, and the scene presented itself to me and I thought, oh, and then I worked backwards from that. And that’s how I, I originally I was going to start the book in 1950, but I shifted it to 1952. So that it could accommodate the maiden voyage of the United States, which is also featured in the book, and some behind the scenes stuff and the making of Titanic.

01:24:48:04 – 01:24:57:06
Mark B. Perry
So if you want to know more about that, I would encourage you to pick up a copy or listen to the wonderful audiobook that was performed by Daniel Henning.

01:24:57:09 – 01:25:01:08
Dan LeFebvre
Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add link that in the show notes. Thanks again so much for your time, Mark.

01:25:01:10 – 01:25:06:19
Mark B. Perry
Thank you. I as you can tell, I’m always happy to shoot the ship as we say.

01:25:07:20 – 01:25:13:04
Mark B. Perry
And this was really fun. Thanks for having me, Dan.

00:04:08:10 – 00:04:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
We have a few movies to talk about today, but before we do that, let’s start by flipping things around a little bit. Normally here on the podcast, we talk about things that filmmakers change from the true story. But I know you’ve been working to get your book called Not a Real Enemy About Your Father urban story told into a movie.

00:04:26:22 – 00:04:43:03
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, we can’t predict the future to know when or if that will happen soon, but let’s hope for the best and say it is turned into a movie. So what’s one key thing that you want to make sure the filmmakers don’t change from the true story in the film adaptation?

00:04:43:06 – 00:05:01:18
Robert Wolf
Well, hopefully all of it, of course. But, that’s the easy answer. My dad’s for escapes or what? For example, my dad was a four time escape artist, and he missed an escape, too. He was fortunate, and he sports enough to go to the wrong train station under communist Hungary. And everybody made that train got arrested, including his, medical school classmate.

00:05:01:18 – 00:05:08:07
Robert Wolf
So all of that. I’d like to be, as accurate as possible as, cinematography. Cinematography.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:09:02
Dan LeFebvre
Cinematography.

00:05:09:04 – 00:05:29:27
Robert Wolf
Yeah, yeah, as close as possible. Color movie, color in color. Obviously, a lot of the older movies are black and white, like Schindler’s List, which I hope we talk about a little bit more. That movie I just saw the movie and a resonates very, very much so with the story that I’m that we’re telling here. And then his upbringing, you know, it doesn’t have to be a long part of his upbringing.

00:05:30:00 – 00:05:49:23
Robert Wolf
And if I could cast a movie, it’d be Tom Hanks playing my dad and Tom, or that Tom Hanks Tom cruise. Tom Hanks plays one of the nicer, guards in the labor camp, a forced labor camp. A lot of the movie should cover the forced labor camp, the beatings, getting urinated on, getting shot at by Russian planes, all that kind of thing.

00:05:49:23 – 00:06:09:12
Robert Wolf
So there’s a lot of content. And, you know, of course, we wanted as close as possible, but any good producer writer screenplay would, would switch it up a little. I just hope they keep the, you know, as they keep the fidelity as much as possible. I mean obviously you got to make changes to capture an audience and hopefully that would be the case.

00:06:09:16 – 00:06:29:04
Robert Wolf
And you know the other thing is some people say could be a feature film. Some people say a documentary docu drama series. I wouldn’t care as long as they did a good job with it. There’s 40 chapters in our book, so, you could. I don’t think it’d be a 40, 40, show series, but certainly 10 or 15 would be, you know, one season’s worth at least.

00:06:29:04 – 00:06:45:15
Robert Wolf
So it’s always up to the producer, or whoever gets a hold of, the story. The it’s not in a screen stand in a screenplay yet, but, I, I leave that to the I leave that to Hollywood or whatever, discovers whatever we’re doing here. And if they do so it’s a, it’s a wing and a prayer.

00:06:45:15 – 00:07:02:01
Robert Wolf
And I know it’s a such a long shot. It’s easier to get into medical school, which I’m a position. I’m a radiologist, recently retired. It’s easier to get into medical school than to sell a New York Times bestseller. A bigger story and a movie, as we well know, nobody knew Schindler was, you know, 20, 30 years ago and nobody knew who.

00:07:02:01 – 00:07:18:29
Robert Wolf
And Frank was way back in the day. And, the, Life is Beautiful story I never wanted I mean, I never even think about, Italy and the Holocaust until I saw that movie and both of them the second time. Both great movies. And we could talk about those details and how they resonate with what we’re doing.

00:07:19:01 – 00:07:29:01
Robert Wolf
And I’m glad I saw them after I wrote a book regarding the Holocaust and beforehand to what a what a different viewpoint or what a, what a difference that makes.

00:07:29:01 – 00:07:48:26
Dan LeFebvre
Certainly we’re going to we’re going to talk about those for sure. But as we shift into some of the movies that that have been made, there are a lot of movies that are set before and during World War Two. So what I’d love to do is to get your take on some of those and how they compare to your family’s experiences that you talk about in your book.

00:07:48:28 – 00:08:06:05
Dan LeFebvre
And the first movie that I’d like to start with is a classic film, The Sound of Music, and it tells the story of how life changes for the von Trapp family as Nazi Germany annexes Austria in 1938. And as we watch a movie like Sound of Music, it’s possible to see the warning signs when we watch the movie now.

00:08:06:05 – 00:08:26:00
Dan LeFebvre
But of course, anytime we’re watching a movie like that, we’re also looking at it through a historical lens because we already know what’s going to happen from history instead of being there in the moment. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Austria is like less than 100km from where your father grew up in Hungary, so he wasn’t that far from where the annexation unfolded.

00:08:26:03 – 00:08:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
What were things like in that region as Germany annexed Austria?

00:08:30:27 – 00:08:57:20
Robert Wolf
Well, as you know, the fact the rise of fascism almost simultaneously with the Great Depression, the Roaring 20s, were okay in Hungary and throughout the world. We think the war was over. Things were doing well. And meantime, of course, Hitler was it was a building, the military machine that he was, because Germany’s economy was, it was, that’s how they that’s that was their economy was the military, of course, 33 is where fascism was on a rise in 38, 1938.

00:08:57:20 – 00:09:17:28
Robert Wolf
And in Hungary, there were anti-Jewish laws were initiated. So you couldn’t on the radio, you could only go out at certain times. There was, no Jews or dog signs up, of course, Kristallnacht. If, I’m not mistaken, in Germany, Austria was 1938, a very big event. That’s where they started taking force.

00:09:17:28 – 00:09:39:06
Robert Wolf
Laborers, the men, the young men that were wealthy, they started to take them away to forced labor camps and, really didn’t affect Hungary. I mean, the anti-Jewish laws were there. So they were persecuted and shunned, if you will. But the the killings and the, the the the most of it didn’t really, happened in Hungary till 1943, 1944.

00:09:39:09 – 00:10:03:00
Robert Wolf
My dad ended up going to after his first forced labor camp in 1943 and October, and then his parents were taken away to Auschwitz, in 1944. So Poland got hit first, obviously in 1939, Kristallnacht before that, 1938. And then Hungary, a little bit later, what I’m told. And from when I’ve read Hungary had the fastest, the fastest pace of homicide, of genocide of any of them.

00:10:03:00 – 00:10:33:07
Robert Wolf
So, that includes Ukraine and Russia, which they were brutalized and the Polish, 1939 of the refugees went to Hungary. And, the Hungarian government sent the refugees back, unfortunately. And, and it really badly for them. And so this resonates with Poland, with the, with the Schindler idea too, because, a lot of similarities between that and what happened to Hungary, although we’re talking about 1941 versus 1943 and 1944, but it could be the same, the same idea that, you know, a little bit, a little bit different background, different scenario.

00:10:33:07 – 00:10:36:09
Robert Wolf
But, a lot of the common, a lot of common themes.

00:10:36:13 – 00:10:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
Since you mentioned it didn’t really touch Hungary, but it’s touching all these countries around. And I’ve, I’ve never visited Hungary, but I can imagine that the proximity isn’t that far. I mean, there’s borders, you know, it’s technically a different country, but there’s these atrocities that are happening. What was it like for your your father as a child and your your grandparents?

00:10:59:15 – 00:11:04:12
Dan LeFebvre
And when they’re, when they’re seeing, I mean, they had been seeing in the news what’s going on where they.

00:11:04:15 – 00:11:30:29
Robert Wolf
Well, what a great question. Well, you say seeing in the news, we realize that my dad in Hungary and his parents never own a car. They never owned a TV. You bring up a great point. Jews were not allowed to have radios. So. And so they had a radio. He, his dad had enough courage to hide a radio, and they would quietly listen to the BBC, during the uprise of the uprising, with a lot of hope and a lot of prayer that that it end soon and relevant to that.

00:11:31:01 – 00:11:50:08
Robert Wolf
During my dad’s first escape toward. They thought it was the end of Lord, they don’t get much news that the forced labor camp, but they’re in the middle of nowhere, about near the Austria Hungary border. And even though they escaped, the Jews first of four, which some are remarkable, they didn’t know whether to flee to Budapest or stay in Hungary or go to Austria because they didn’t know who’s going to win the war.

00:11:50:11 – 00:12:04:24
Robert Wolf
And, you know, the Nazis won the war and they end up in Austria. They’re dead men. And if there’s a chance in Hungary, not Hungary proper, but the West, turns out it’s not the West. It was Soviet Union. If they win the war, maybe they’re better off in Hungary. It turns out either way, you know, you’re a Jew.

00:12:04:24 – 00:12:28:23
Robert Wolf
You’re screwed. I mean, those men, only 5% of the forced labor survived, in the in that process, including my dad, because he was on the run and hiding at the time. He wasn’t the. The rest of them that survived were treated as prisoners of war. Unfortunately. So 5% of forced labor, they had death marches. And that’s why my my dad and his friend Frank decided to, escape the first time because they thought they were on a death march.

00:12:28:28 – 00:12:59:27
Robert Wolf
And nobody knows about death marches in Europe. They don’t. I mean, historians might know. We all know about Okinawa and, the Pacific, but not a lot of people know. So when they thought you weren’t useful anymore, they killed you. So. And that was true at the Danube, very end of the war. Unlike Schindler, where the guards just go home, I, I’d like to talk about that for a few minutes, too, but, it’s a fantasy that these people, because the, guardians were treated and my mom and dad said that, that, the the Arrow Cross, for example, was like a Hungarian Gestapo and the the White Terror or the Red

00:12:59:27 – 00:13:17:14
Robert Wolf
terror or the the Nazis. The communists, they didn’t treat if you felt like if you’re Jewish, you were still scared of whoever was in charge. And, the Hungarians, the police and the military treated the Jewish people worse than the Nazis themselves. And that’s another thing that resonates with some of these movies, too. Women versus men.

00:13:17:14 – 00:13:26:27
Robert Wolf
Women guards versus Benghazi, pets. A lot of the, you know, a lot of things, humiliation. There are a lot of compare, a lot of things to talk about that are that resonate, big time.

00:13:27:00 – 00:13:48:21
Dan LeFebvre
I love that you mentioned the the radio and the communications there, because that’s something that I think I kind of like what I mentioned before, you know, when we watch a movie, we’re looking at it with a historical lens. So we think of, oh yeah, you can get news from all around there. And in my question I ask, you know, seeing things, but there’s that there has to be that almost added level of fear.

00:13:48:21 – 00:14:06:13
Dan LeFebvre
I would imagine, of not knowing, like, you know, that there’s some bad things going on, but you don’t know the full extent of it. And you then there’s that fear of just not knowing, because then your mind would start to go make things up that, I mean, there were some horrible things, but I, I mean, and it’s something I have a hard time wrap my head around.

00:14:06:14 – 00:14:12:26
Dan LeFebvre
What, like put yourself in the historical context of what that must have been like. It had to have been just terrifying for your for your father.

00:14:12:28 – 00:14:31:13
Robert Wolf
Well, part of the reason. Yeah. No intervention for many, many years, after the war started, it, because the United States had the, for example, had the, had the, the duty to protect its own citizens. So getting involved with the war, it was, was tough communications. I couldn’t say it better. You know, the real cell phones there, no lawyers or no courtrooms.

00:14:31:15 – 00:14:50:23
Robert Wolf
The cops and the. And the military pointing guns. It. Yeah. And fortunately, in this country, we. That’s not happened yet. So there’s one thing. No communication, just the radio, which was illegal. It probably would’ve been shot and killed if they got caught with it. And, and forced labor camps out in the middle of nowhere, even less communication than we had a regular camp in the US growing up, you know?

00:14:50:23 – 00:15:11:04
Robert Wolf
So, word of mouth. So things got a little easier for the men? Not much. But as the their guards got bribed, dental treat, free dental treatments. But, yes, there was a dentist. Obvious, obvious threat to society, killed at Auschwitz and his mom as well. And Deb didn’t find out about two months afterwards. Another miracle, from an eyewitness.

00:15:11:06 – 00:15:29:04
Robert Wolf
And, that’s another point that, the witnesses besides no cell phones, no video, a lot of photographs taken, as we know, the Nazis took many, many photographs. So denying the Holocaust and even communist Hungary just. There’s no way you can’t sell that. But the witness, the witness was the next victim is how it turned out.

00:15:29:04 – 00:15:46:14
Robert Wolf
Like at the Danube walk and death marches. Or as we’ve seen, these mass burial, sites, in Ukraine for example, or in the concentration camps. So the witnesses were literally the next victim. So very, very hard to, to wrap my arms around that. And like you said, very hard to get information again.

00:15:46:20 – 00:16:07:03
Dan LeFebvre
I it’s it’s hard to wrap your head around, but but putting yourself in that context of what that must have been like, I, I love the like in your book when you’re when you’re telling that story, it, it it does a really good job of, of helping to put the, the reader in that place of what that must have been like in there.

00:16:07:07 – 00:16:23:18
Dan LeFebvre
And I’m curious because there are a lot of details of your, your father’s earlier life were those things that he that he told you specifically or were they things that you had to research after the fact? Or how did that part kind of come together for that story as you’re putting all these pieces together?

00:16:23:21 – 00:16:41:21
Robert Wolf
A little bit of both. I can’t imagine the boredom in living in quarters like that packed when with people or even hiding out in your own home, with, you know, yellow stars, yellow armbands, the anxiety, the depression, the fear. I can’t imagine that. And but like you say, you can feel it, like during my dad’s first escape.

00:16:41:21 – 00:17:00:02
Robert Wolf
So, Yeah, my dad. Mom wrote an autobiography. They wrote the his story, from World War one. The of World War one to the end of the Hungarian Revolution. So literally 1916, 19 1718 to the end of the Revolution, 1956. They wrote the story in the 1970s. They they wrote it as though it happened the previous day.

00:17:00:09 – 00:17:17:04
Robert Wolf
Sharp. Chris. And I turned into a biography many, many years later. Growing up, the first half of my life, not so much as I went to college and medical school at a career as a radiologist, family, all of that things. So I didn’t, but I did read the it went from paper and pencil to typewriter to computer to disk.

00:17:17:06 – 00:17:36:04
Robert Wolf
And, when it was a manuscript maybe 30 years ago, I read it once and didn’t think much of it and didn’t remember much except my dad’s first escape. But then when I reread it after my my dad passed and fortunately my mom, a historian friend, handed me the story on the disk, and I turned his autobiography to biography and, just doing that alone.

00:17:36:07 – 00:17:52:25
Robert Wolf
Long story short, I went back to radiology, and that brought me to the book. And, long story short, the stories were so amazing. At least 20 miracles in my dad’s life and hungry for escapes and 20 miracles. I couldn’t leave it on a computer. I couldn’t leave it on a disk. I wanted to share it with the world and,

00:17:52:27 – 00:18:07:18
Robert Wolf
And so I did. And that’s been my that’s been my charge. That’s been my mission the last 6 or 7 years. The book’s been out a little while now, but, that doesn’t stop me from trying to fight antisemitism. So, this is my main thing, the why I’m doing this, and, but, yeah, it’s my own little corner.

00:18:07:18 – 00:18:23:07
Robert Wolf
I need help with that, obviously, but, no, my my mom and dad, they did this as though they knew I would like if you know me, six years ago, and my mom was a Holocaust educator, by the way. My dad, too, but he was an ObGyn, by the way, deliver 10,000 babies in the Detroit area, which is so a form of redemption.

00:18:23:10 – 00:18:41:06
Robert Wolf
That’s the punch line. It doesn’t bring back 6 million and doesn’t beat back 50 million that died in World War two. But at least he brought some life back in jovial and jolly. No PTSD. My mom to they they educated. They were well-rounded people. And the stories like I said, they were crisp and and then they had a lot of friends in the unlike what’s going on in the world now.

00:18:41:06 – 00:19:00:00
Robert Wolf
They had a lot of friends where I grew up in Michigan and throughout the world, from continental Africa, Asia had Indian friends, a muslim, Christian, Jewish, fellow Holocaust survivors. They shared the stories and, and I, I bought into it. I got a little burnout from it. And then, I brought it back to life, at least in my own legacy towards my family.

00:19:00:00 – 00:19:15:00
Robert Wolf
So, I got this app, you know, Superman’s Kryptonite. You just sort of called out to me, you know? It’s summoned me back in me. So. And so I’m doing it, and I. I couldn’t leave this on a disc. I couldn’t leave it on computer. And so that’s why we’re sharing it. But, very well done by my mom and dad, you know.

00:19:15:00 – 00:19:16:09
Robert Wolf
So.

00:19:16:11 – 00:19:43:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, I’m glad that you are telling that story to to because the world does need to know. And the part that kind of made me think that was when you talking about the the photos and things like the Nazis and the Soviets took. But again, putting yourself in that perspective, a difference from watching a movie today versus versus being there when you like the people that took the photographs to document a lot of that, those wouldn’t be photographs that you’re parents and grandparents would have had access to because they were taken by the people doing a lot of it.

00:19:43:12 – 00:19:53:06
Dan LeFebvre
So it’s not something that they’re going to show. So I was very curious how that story then survives despite trying to be suppressed.

00:19:53:09 – 00:20:12:02
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, you’re right. I mean, but very, very little, belongings left over, from my dad’s side of the family. My mom saved a lot of photographs, and somehow they were preserved, by my mom. So it was a little less harrowing. My mom was in hiding, you know, with her mom, grandma, uncle, grandfather who’s different, you know, on farms and sometimes in Budapest.

00:20:12:02 – 00:20:35:14
Robert Wolf
So she was able to preserve more things. And as a and she also was into genealogy. And I wish I followed it a little bit more, but I do at least have back to World War one. I can’t go back there beyond that. But no, it’s unimaginable. The fear that my mom must add in hiding to and and the fear my dad must have had every day competing and starving and and doing forced labor for hours from, you know, dawn to dusk.

00:20:35:16 – 00:20:52:07
Robert Wolf
Can’t. I can’t imagine it. So, the reality and also photographs. So the Nazis were they took a lot of photographs. They, they sent them home to their families, let them know what they’re doing. And I have a collection of about 18,000 photos on my phone, and some of them are exceptionally disturbing. The last guy surviving in Vilna.

00:20:52:09 – 00:21:18:00
Robert Wolf
They’re about to kill him, and he’s surrounded by, mostly Nazi, officers. And there’s a gun pointed aside, and he knows he’s next. Reminds a little Schindler to you, but he’s the last survivor. They’re a very disturbing photo. I haven’t shared it because they’ll probably kick me out of X and meta and LinkedIn. If I were, were to, the, you know, the burning synagogue is another one, the smashed in homes, the burning homes, one disturbing one.

00:21:18:05 – 00:21:40:09
Robert Wolf
Well, they’re marching off the Jewish people. And I’m thinking, well, who’s taken a picture of all of this and not helping? You know, and these people lived in fear, of course. Another, disturbing photo. I’ve got some from juror. My dad’s home town. Very, very few, very few available. Another one is Kristallnacht. Whether the business, the glass is all broken up and the lady’s walking by the business smiling, I mean, I.

00:21:40:10 – 00:22:00:02
Robert Wolf
How do you smile when she got what? Are you, Jewish? You’re not smiling. If you’re Christian, you smiling, then, Well, I, I guess I know what party you’re in. You’re in the Nazi party or the Christmas party are very sadistic. Some and Christians were afraid for their lives, too. So the ones that helped the Jewish people or the gays, you know, almost sexual, LGBTQ, disabled, they’re there to be loud.

00:22:00:02 – 00:22:15:03
Robert Wolf
It, including guys like Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg is another one that comes to mind. So a lot going on. I can’t imagine being so remote and, and, secluded from the truth, let alone the news.

00:22:15:06 – 00:22:50:28
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movies you mentioned life is beautiful, and that’s another movie I want to talk about. That one starts in 1939, just after the annexation of Austria. And it follows the story of how life changes around a Jewish man named Guido before and during the rise of fascism in Italy. And the movie, it starts off with everyday life, but one of the key differences between life is Beautiful and the Sound of Music that we talked about before is that Life Is Beautiful shows how life changes for the main character because he’s an Italian Jewish man, whereas the Von Trapp family in the sound of Music, they’re not so well.

00:22:50:28 – 00:23:12:22
Dan LeFebvre
I, I we see little signs here and there and Sound of Music. We can see the signs in life and beautiful. Life is beautiful. Those signs are clearly the rise of anti-Semitism. They’re going on in Italy now. In particular, there was a scene where Guido pretended to be an inspector of Rome teaching children in school how they are pure Aryan, the superior race.

00:23:12:25 – 00:23:34:00
Dan LeFebvre
He doesn’t have very comical way in the movie, similar to later in the movie, when Guido’s young son just reads a sign in business window that says no Jews or dogs, and Guido makes a joke about there’s just saying. There’s also a drug store nearby saying that I’m not going to let Chinese in with kangaroo. Right. And he’s making a joke out of out of this very serious situation.

00:23:34:03 – 00:23:49:21
Dan LeFebvre
And that storyline in like Life Is Beautiful is a fictional one. Guido is not a real person, but how old do you think life is beautiful? Did showing signs of anti-Semitism slowly growing in everyday life before the outbreak of World War two?

00:23:49:24 – 00:24:06:05
Robert Wolf
Great question. I mean, that’s an our answer, but fantastic movie. Beautifully done. The cinematography is outstanding. I’m glad you mentioned that scene, because to me, that’s the turning point in the movie. The better part of the first half of the movie is about It’s a Beautiful Life. It’s a wonder it’s not It’s a Wonderful Life.

00:24:06:05 – 00:24:27:20
Robert Wolf
That’s a different, fantastic movie, too. But life is beautiful there. He falls in love with this lady. He’s on the bicycle. It’s a lot of humor. I mean, a lot of humor in that movie. Even to the end. And, you know, it’s admirable how he hides the truth from his son throughout, but, yeah, that’s the turning point in the movies when he’s up there talking about the the perfect race or our rewards it.

00:24:27:27 – 00:24:45:01
Robert Wolf
And then the poor, his relatives horse getting painted, I think was green and purple. I forget the color. Maybe green. That’s good. And. Yeah. And and that’s the turning point there. And then all of a sudden, boom, they’re, they’re in prison and they’re going off to, to concentration camps, different some different things.

00:24:45:09 – 00:25:04:29
Robert Wolf
Some of the similarities with my, my parent, they don’t talk about women that much, but both that movie and similar, the, the women, the women guards, especially at Auschwitz and then in these concentration camps were to me more sadistic and more brutal to the prisoners than, than otherwise. Interestingly, a lot of Nazis, the people that were guarding them were the Germans, the Nazis.

00:25:04:29 – 00:25:22:27
Robert Wolf
So where were the Italians? That’s that’s a little bit different than Hungary, I think, because the Hungarians were the ones who keep an eye on the force. Laborers, and child, my dad’s parents were taken from their home. That was, that was a Nazi. Blue striped pajamas. Interesting. It’s a, you know, we don’t know what color stripes they have in general because black and white movie, but it’s blue stripes.

00:25:22:27 – 00:25:39:21
Robert Wolf
But we all know that, you know, outfits in other places, they were, red stripes. So that was, another thing that, that was those was a familiar, but, or different, I should say. I thought, one thing similar with the both of those movies is the language was a little fast for me. It’s in subtitles.

00:25:39:24 – 00:25:56:13
Robert Wolf
Well, I think they just talked a little bit faster. Was a little. Because, you know, we can read fast, but it just won’t have the pace or the how they talk. Maybe at the very beginning, speed it up because it makes the humor, the humor scenes a little more humorous, so to say, so to speak. But, yeah, they kind of slow that down a little bit, too.

00:25:56:15 – 00:26:12:21
Robert Wolf
What else are we? Yeah. I mean, that’s, just a fact. The met the end was unbelievable. The way the they say, do they want or try? They’re playing in a game to win a tank and they won. You know, the kid survives, but he doesn’t. The mom survives. Was a Dora. And, you know, of course you gets shot.

00:26:12:23 – 00:26:31:18
Robert Wolf
He gets shot for warning. The ladies, including his wife, as are being hauled away in a truck. So another thing that may not be realistic is the son and the father in the same bunk. Because the kids were separated, like in Auschwitz and other places, and like a and Schindler, you know, the kids are all the way, in bundles.

00:26:31:18 – 00:26:52:14
Robert Wolf
And boy, are the parents freaking. They’re all running towards the fences and trying to follow the trucks and talk about learned helplessness and senior kids being all the way to who knows where. So that part may not have been as realistic. But yeah, it was such a well-done movie. And, and I don’t know that much about the Italian history in, in World War Two, so that’s that.

00:26:52:14 – 00:27:11:10
Robert Wolf
But comparing what you to the other movie and to what I’ve read and done, and learned about pretty realistic, I mean, in their own way. Obviously not every concentration camps will be the same. Not a forced labor camps going to be the same. The different guards, different, food supply, who knows? Different amounts of sadism.

00:27:11:12 – 00:27:21:00
Robert Wolf
It’s people to take orders and people that delight in torturing others. And that’s so hard to put your arms around to. It’s just. I don’t know how people could be like that at all.

00:27:21:02 – 00:27:41:21
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned Schindler’s List, and whenever we think of movies that depict the Holocaust, that’s probably the first one that does come to mind. In that movie, we see what life is like in the Jewish ghetto. Of course, Schindler’s List depicts the ghetto in Krakow, Poland, but your grandparents were forced to move to another Nazi controlled Jewish ghetto in your Hungary.

00:27:41:23 – 00:27:44:15
Dan LeFebvre
I’m probably mispronouncing that, but.

00:27:44:18 – 00:27:49:18
Robert Wolf
My Hungarians not so. They never taught me, so I. It’s fine. That was their shooting around which.

00:27:49:20 – 00:27:57:21
Dan LeFebvre
But based on the research that you did for your book, were there similarities to what we see in Schindler’s List and in the ghetto there, and what your grandparents dealt with?

00:27:57:24 – 00:28:19:27
Robert Wolf
Many, many, many. First, I want to talk about, so many. I mean, unfortunately, the movie was in black and white, but the cinematography in that movie is unbelievable. Like I said, they talk a little fast, especially when they’re talking about people’s names a little fast for me, some of the conversation, but, amazing. Some overlap when when they’re taken to Auschwitz, we don’t know if it’s accidentally or if it’s on purpose.

00:28:20:04 – 00:28:37:05
Robert Wolf
And they put them in the chamber and they think that that’s it. The gas chamber and the relief showers. I can picture my mom, my my grandmother, in the in the gas chamber. And, of course, when they’re on trains, when I visit Holocaust museums, when I do book talks, book lectures, I can’t even go into the I.

00:28:37:05 – 00:29:01:10
Robert Wolf
It’s hard to even look in the train, let alone go in the train just because. Just because that imagery. So, so that resonates. The dramatic irony. I guess I can get that, in a minute, but, the random shooting. Okay, so dramatic irony. I’m going to mention the three things where I well, first of all, the turning point is when they’re horseback riding and they’re randomly shooting all the people in the ghetto, the people that stayed, the people that that tried to hide very, very sad scene.

00:29:01:10 – 00:29:18:21
Robert Wolf
Because every. And you know, another thing that’s not talked about is pets. You know, how many did the pets get left behind and the pets get killed. And we know in, life is beautiful. There’s a little kitten, is strolling around the, the clothes that were stolen. Another thing. And I’m going to go back to the dramatic irony, another thing that resonates.

00:29:18:24 – 00:29:35:21
Robert Wolf
With all of it is the stolen luggage. They bring your goods, leave them here, and they’ll come. They will arrive. Big deception. And when my dad’s parents were all to Auschwitz, it was to be they were going to go to forest or farm, plant flowers, trees. Do you know, do, work on the foliage? That’s what.

00:29:35:21 – 00:29:53:15
Robert Wolf
That’s how they were to see. And they end up going to Auschwitz. So. So three points of dramatic irony, not necessarily related to my, my dad, but one is actually. So when, the, engineer they’re building the they’re constructing the building and the engineer comes up to, I think it’s almond goes, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing or I’m on both.

00:29:53:15 – 00:30:09:27
Robert Wolf
He’s the I think he’s a lieutenant, but he’s the most sadistic guy around. And, she says to me now, the structure is not sound, and we need to do this and maybe even start again. And, what does he say? We are not going to argue with these people. And and then he asks the guy shooter, shooter.

00:30:09:27 – 00:30:28:01
Robert Wolf
And it’s one of the few scenes where somebody gets shot and it’s not him doing it. So amazingly enough. And then the irony is that he decides to he changes his mind and, and decides to, to take it down and start all over again. Another irony was, the the lady that comes to Schindler, I don’t know if that was Helen Hirsch.

00:30:28:04 – 00:30:50:13
Robert Wolf
Helen, her hair, shoes, how to pronounce it. I don’t know if it’s her or the other one, but she comes to Schindler and says, can you get my parents into this? Into the factory here? And he says, you know, he’s practically screaming at her, saying, no, I can’t save everybody this and that and that. And then the guy escapes from the camp and, and just, randomly shoots 25 guys and then just Clarkston.

00:30:50:13 – 00:31:23:23
Robert Wolf
If I’m pronouncing Sharon I love, they really did their best trying to do the correct pronunciation and I think an accurate job. But stern tells Schindler that, you know, 25 people died. So Schindler, goes out of his way to bring in, the lady’s parents, which is which is pretty cool, too. I mean, and, so the other irony and oh, that resonates with my dad in the forced labor camp where, an officer would get drunk and some, some little piece of malfeasance, like somebody chirping a word or or moving in the line, and the guy gets past and he’s,

00:31:23:25 – 00:31:40:18
Robert Wolf
And he’s got the he’s got the gun. And, you threatened to shoot every tense man, in his drunk, in his drunk, state, and, in the end, doesn’t. But imagine the fear. You know, you dad, it can seem like that. And everybody else counting 1 to 1 through ten, you know, every 10th man they’re going to kill.

00:31:40:20 – 00:31:58:01
Robert Wolf
And, And the guy does that, too. He’s got the whole line of the men, and he shoots the guy with the, with the, I don’t remember. It’s a gun shot. I think it was a, shotgun. And then they shoot him in the head and and that, like, that scene is so vivid. The way that was bleeding, it would’ve been even more so in color.

00:31:58:04 – 00:32:16:22
Robert Wolf
But the irony there is the same thing. Just like when he randomly shoots the 25 men and, also the one person, and then he says, who’s, you know, who’s next? And then the kid smart enough to step forward and said, you know, you who did this? Who’s the one who created the malfeasance? And the kid points at the dead guy and probably saved a lot of lives, just by doing that.

00:32:16:22 – 00:32:36:01
Robert Wolf
So that’s more irony. And then and, and comparable with my dad had to go through, you know, random threaten to be killed randomly and thank God, they, they didn’t carry that out. The other piece of irony, which is almost redemption itself, is when, the I think it was the rabbi, was one of the older men making the parts, and his productivity was on the low side that compared it.

00:32:36:01 – 00:32:52:17
Robert Wolf
You know, it took some a minute to make the part, which is where you got so few partially take him out to shoot him and his gun jams and, you know, his backup gun jams, and he gets a gun from his, mother, the fellow officers and or soldiers, I don’t remember. It was an officer. And that gun jams and there’s 15 or 20 clicks.

00:32:52:19 – 00:33:08:03
Robert Wolf
We shoot this guy, and the poor guy’s got his neck going down. He knows he’s going to die any second. It reminds me of that, the Vilna, the Vilna photograph. And then he ends up just sitting with the butt of the gun and and lets him live. Imagine going through that kind of trauma and not having PTSD.

00:33:08:05 – 00:33:23:13
Robert Wolf
It’s amazing. But the irony is, when they hang golf, they have a trouble date. They’ve got him by the rope, but they have trouble checking out those. The step stool underneath him, it takes some at least like a half a minute. They can’t do it in the guy. So that’s a little bit of redemption too. But, more dramatic irony.

00:33:23:13 – 00:33:42:17
Robert Wolf
So I it’s a fantastically bad movie. And and so, so similar in in his point, you know, the trains and the, or the, forced labor and, you know, we see forced labor, of course, in concentration camps to sometimes women, sometimes men. We don’t talk about much about forced labor in, with women in our story.

00:33:42:17 – 00:33:48:08
Robert Wolf
But lately I’ve been taught and enlightened about that part, that part of it as well.

00:33:48:10 – 00:34:06:19
Dan LeFebvre
Something that we don’t see in Schindler’s List much is, is how others in the city reacted to the ghetto being set up and the Nazis moving the Jews into it. How did the civilians in and around Europe react to the Jewish ghetto being established for when your your grandparents were there?

00:34:06:21 – 00:34:23:12
Robert Wolf
Well, once they were in the ghetto, they had no access to the outside world. They had limited food, limited medical supplies and my dad, being a dentist, brought what he had. But it wasn’t enough. And ultimately it was to carry him off to Auschwitz to kill them. Most of them immediately, unfortunately. So I don’t think they had much time to even think about it.

00:34:23:12 – 00:34:48:26
Robert Wolf
But during, I’ll say this, that, but they were shunned. No doubt it was hard to go out shopping without being, bullied or picked on or even mugged. We talk about that in the or the fear of it. And also when my, my dad and his friend Frank were out on leave or whatever it was in town, or in that they were on camp, for one thing they didn’t have, then my dad needed a haircut.

00:34:48:26 – 00:35:06:12
Robert Wolf
And if you remember that scene, the anti-Semitic barber. But, they had the yellow bands was ridiculous hats that they had to wear and yellow bit unarmed paramilitary. And yeah, a couple what beautiful women walk by and they, they, they won’t even look at them. And believe me, the matter, they’re dying to meet A and B with a a warm blooded girl.

00:35:06:12 – 00:35:26:18
Robert Wolf
And it just didn’t happen. You were shunned. So, in its learned helplessness. I mean, people feared for their lives, for sure. And, they did what they were told, and and it’s scary stuff. So, and then. Oh, that remind me of another scene where in Schindler, the young girl, is yelling out, Goodbye Jews, goodbye Jews!

00:35:26:18 – 00:35:44:17
Robert Wolf
And, it’s awful to see that, because I think it reminds me of, what we just talked about. The Christians turning on the Jews. It also reminds me of what’s going on in Gaza at the, these children are being educated to hate Jewish people, hate Israel, hate Americans. And it’s that’s got to stop. That really has to stop.

00:35:44:20 – 00:36:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
There is a scene in in Schindler’s List where we see the Nazis going in there clearing everyone out of the ghetto, to take them to the concentration camps. You talked a little bit about that in the movie. The camps they take them to first is off, and then later in the movie we see Auschwitz, which you mentioned, and we’ll talk about Auschwitz in a moment, because I know your grandparents were there.

00:36:03:18 – 00:36:22:07
Dan LeFebvre
But according to Schindler’s List, seeing the brutality of the Nazi soldiers during the liquidation of the ghetto, that’s what leads Liam Neeson’s version of Oskar Schindler to start working with one of his employees. You mentioned him earlier. Is Doc Stern, Ben Kingsley’s character, to hire more and more Jews to help save them from being murdered by the Nazis.

00:36:22:09 – 00:36:36:13
Dan LeFebvre
Were there any transformational points like this for the civilians in Darfur in Hungary, where they started to change their minds about what they’re seeing? But the brutality of the Nazis, like, we kind of start seeing it happening in Schindler’s List with Oskar Schindler.

00:36:36:16 – 00:36:52:09
Robert Wolf
Well, great point. You know, that’s the turning point of that movie. If I haven’t already mentioned, when they’re horseback riding. Yeah, they’re looking down at that. One thing that resonates, too, is, the humiliation, the the general, the the men, the rabbis, you know, religious with the pious ain’t undercutting it. And they’re cutting their hair and laughing.

00:36:52:15 – 00:37:11:18
Robert Wolf
So that kind of humiliation, was there so humiliation we don’t talk about, as much. I think the Aryans were. And Hungary gets mentioned later that they were bringing in Hungarians, to one of the camps late, later in the movie. And that was true later in time, during at least a couple of years later. But that humiliation really, really resonates.

00:37:11:18 – 00:37:30:24
Robert Wolf
Well, what else is it? Yeah. The marching, the other humiliation is that, Gough has his own personal woman slave that he ends up abusing y’all. She’s. She goes the food and probably sex. Well, there is there is a sex scene or two in there. And of course, at the end he beats her up and but she survives.

00:37:30:27 – 00:37:46:29
Robert Wolf
But he beats her up and it’s drunk or whatever. It’s the wine cellar. I basically remember that scene, but, humiliation is a big thing about it. So, and then, of course, starvation is another one thing that resonates people to didn’t have food to eat. There was no there was no trade. There was nothing coming in. So shunned is the best word.

00:37:46:29 – 00:38:08:15
Robert Wolf
And like we said before, the the witness, the witness was the next victim. I also remember, golf shooting randomly at people that were sitting down and taking a break. So, Oh, and know the dramatic irony. He has a kid cleaning out his bathtub, and he’s trying to put the saddle on his horse. I don’t know if it’s the same kid, but, the guy that the kid that can’t put the kettle on the horse properly.

00:38:08:17 – 00:38:25:12
Robert Wolf
It’s right after Schindler talks about power and the power of the power, if you can forgive. And he remembers that for a while. So he forgives the kid, for the for the saddle. But then when he screws up using the wrong material to clean his bathtub, he ends up shooting him. And, it’s just, What a sadistic guy.

00:38:25:12 – 00:38:40:24
Robert Wolf
I mean, I was a guy who deserved to be executed without, without trial. I mean, so many witnesses. So, Yeah, that whole process, of course, it’s never going to be the same at every camp, but what? People running around in fear that they might get shot or killed, or if they take a break, they’re going to get killed.

00:38:41:02 – 00:38:48:14
Robert Wolf
You can’t. It’s just, some furthermore that what people had to think in their minds and stay strong while they’re doing it.

00:38:48:17 – 00:39:11:18
Dan LeFebvre
That those, those types of things are, like you said, unfathomable. Like it’s I, it’s what I’m trying to unravel. A lot of this. But, you know, in our discussion here, but also there are just some things like we there’s only so much that we can do as we’re talking here in this conversation that just it’s not. It will never be enough.

00:39:11:18 – 00:39:20:03
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, there’s to to to tell the true story of it. I mean, it’s yeah, I’ve tried to have words, but yeah, I can’t even do that.

00:39:20:10 – 00:39:42:08
Robert Wolf
Well, it was talk about Christians. You know, if we had Hamas, we had Hamas tanks and armored armored cars, guns, tanks, then that horrible flag, you know, marched in the streets here and, and, Florida or where you’re from, Oklahoma. God bless, the heartland. We would be thinking different then, it would affect us more then we would have.

00:39:42:10 – 00:40:03:26
Robert Wolf
We’d have a lot more fear. Yeah, but it’s it’s patchy areas. It’s Canada, Australia, parts of the U.S anti-Semitic. So it’s not it’s not directly in our face. But that’s why I’m doing this is so that it doesn’t happen. I mean, that’s why, 99% of us are good people. 99% of us believe in work, family, occasional vacation, religion, and if possible, whatever the freedom to vote, freedom speech.

00:40:03:29 – 00:40:26:01
Robert Wolf
Is that 1% or less that the ruins are for everybody and not just Hamas, you know, Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein? Hitler, Pol Pot, the list goes on and on. We can counteract with better names Jesus, Moses, Noah, MLK, Gandhi, that. So there’s a nice there’s a balance there. But, we’re still talking about hate and war rather than these other guys.

00:40:26:01 – 00:40:41:27
Robert Wolf
I mean, unless you’re a staunch Christian or Jewish or Muslim, I don’t think a lot I meant for this to happen. Where? I don’t know, I don’t know much about the Muslim religion, but I do have Muslim friends, and they’re peaceful, and, So what’s going. I mean, I can’t get my arms around it. And, the thing about this book.

00:40:42:01 – 00:40:59:15
Robert Wolf
Yeah. And the story is my parents knew that it would be necessary to share it because they didn’t think that the hate and the Jewish scapegoating issue would go away. And each year they’re right, 60, 80 on our years. And the disturbing part is people find different ways to maim and torture, punish, kill each other. And it’s really sad.

00:40:59:15 – 00:41:16:27
Robert Wolf
And I just I can’t feel it because as a radiologist, we’re into preservation of life. The beauty of the human body, the beauty of the anatomy, the cell and all this training to go through it. There’s no room for racism or prejudice in my field. But these people would just. They would think nothing about chopping your head off or killing somebody instantly.

00:41:17:00 – 00:41:37:07
Robert Wolf
No respect for human life. And I can’t wrap my my hands around that. It’s just not that. It’s not what I was built for. And so we educate, we try to spread the word. We do podcasts, we do, book talks, book presentations, TV interviews, in some cases radio. And, we get the point across while sharing good stories, amazing stories throughout.

00:41:37:07 – 00:42:05:13
Dan LeFebvre
A lot of if you go back to Schindler’s List throughout a lot of that movie, it it does recreate the I mentioned your passion and and Auschwitz and where there were hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered. And unfortunately, that number also includes your grandparents, which is a very moving story told in the book. I think a lot of people base their knowledge of concentration camps today on what we see in movies like Schindler’s List.

00:42:05:15 – 00:42:23:23
Dan LeFebvre
But I remember the story of like The Latrine. And in your book, we don’t ever see in the movie Schindler’s List at all. So there’s obviously other things there that we don’t we’re not going to see in the movie. But based on what you know of your grandparents experience, how well do you think Schindler’s List does capturing the horrors of Auschwitz?

00:42:23:26 – 00:42:44:19
Robert Wolf
I think it’s amazing. Like I said, the cinematography is amazing. The storyline and the brutality. We’ll go back to the women guards that were were tougher than one thing that resonates. So, I mean, I don’t like spoiling too meaning, but my my dad’s a miracle. And my dad found out what happened to his parents. An eyewitness who happened to survive Auschwitz and meet, meet up with him in his hometown of Jura.

00:42:44:19 – 00:43:06:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, all of those. That’s a miracle after miracle that that happened. But, Yeah, being in the train reminded me of, my my my grandmother, the grandparents I never met, but my grandmother, was an orphan, a little girl orphan. And they went straight to the chamber. So, and actually, when I did that, when I first did this project, turning it from autobiography to biography, I had to walk away from from the book.

00:43:06:28 – 00:43:25:24
Robert Wolf
I had to walk away from the story for at least a week, ten days, because it profoundly affected me. So, so. And, you know, I hate to say this, but fortunately, she didn’t have to it. Her life didn’t have to linger on for months, months at a time. And where you’re starving and you’re trapped and you were on your forced labor, and you don’t know when your last day is going to be, Schindler.

00:43:25:24 – 00:43:40:00
Robert Wolf
I think they capture all of that pretty well. I mean, everybody’s going to have a different story. But it didn’t go well. And then another thing that resonates is my my grandfather, who was a dentist who told the the, the intake people at the intake that he was a dentist was a doctor, and he might be useful.

00:43:40:06 – 00:43:55:27
Robert Wolf
So they assign him to cleaning latrines, and we don’t see that in Schindler. But we sure see all these kids hiding in Auschwitz, including the one that you get shut out by every other letter, every other kid. And then he’s up, he ends up diving into the feces and he hides in the latrine or whatever you want.

00:43:56:04 – 00:44:07:07
Robert Wolf
It’s disgusting. I mean, I can’t imagine what was the movie with the kid from India who does the same thing. He ends up diving into the, into the feces, and it just, the. Joe, remember that movie?

00:44:07:07 – 00:44:07:24
Dan LeFebvre
Yes.

00:44:07:29 – 00:44:10:07
Robert Wolf
And he’s on jeopardy or something like.

00:44:10:09 – 00:44:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Slumdog Millionaire.

00:44:11:16 – 00:44:15:27
Robert Wolf
Yes. Very good. Thank you. I knew you were. No, you got a brilliant memory. I can.

00:44:15:27 – 00:44:17:01
Dan LeFebvre
Go on.

00:44:17:03 – 00:44:35:10
Robert Wolf
And that’s the. Yeah. That’s good. I mean, I need more people like you helped me with the message. This is why we’re doing this, too. But, talking about great movies and and a story that could be a movie. At least some people say that, so, so that resonate. Yeah. And then. So these were I went by at least my, my dad’s parents, didn’t have to endure all that.

00:44:35:12 – 00:44:51:20
Robert Wolf
I mean, if you’ve ever fasted just one day without food, it’s tough enough. I can’t imagine week after week, we would bury little food. And, you know, you’ve seen the pictures of the people that are skin and bones. Those that were lucky enough to survive. But, what a what a terrible life. They must have adapted and they had to live then.

00:44:51:22 – 00:44:56:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it goes back to the words don’t really do it justice to to.

00:44:56:15 – 00:45:13:09
Robert Wolf
Not only that that personal. It’s the light. The light. So. So my dad’s father died probably of cholera week from the feces, you know. So that was, but there’s tuberculosis. There’s lice. My dad had a foot infection, when he was in, when he was forced labor camp, and he had lice a couple times. He had hepatitis.

00:45:13:09 – 00:45:30:10
Robert Wolf
He had a bad back. He had a lot going on. And then. And then recently talking about women in forced labor camps. There’s this guy in England, super nice and super dedicated to what we’re doing. He’s turning black and white photos into color photos, and he’s doing a good job, and he’s trying to get financial support for that.

00:45:30:12 – 00:45:48:13
Robert Wolf
But he did a, it was a short it was a short little documentary, maybe 2 or 3 minutes, maybe five, with conversion from black and white to color. And it was the forced labor. The women forced laborers from Hungary. And a lot of them had gangrene. They had gangrenous legs and gangrenous feet. And they actually, they depicted, what their skin look like.

00:45:48:13 – 00:46:12:14
Robert Wolf
And it’s brutal that. So, you know, you’d never think of gangrene. I mean, so a lot of health issues besides the starvation and lack of water to, of course, dehydration and, you know, electrolytes going to be off and, and, muscle mass goes and eventually you die because you’re, you’re malnourished. So I’m sure many, many people died from, I don’t know the exact numbers, but malnourishment, I’m sure, was not just getting shot or put in the gas chambers.

00:46:12:14 – 00:46:33:06
Robert Wolf
Just. Or other sickness, malnourishment, sickness. It’s just too much. It’s too much to think about. It’s 200. It is. And that need doesn’t need to happen. And it also resonates with Gaza. It with what’s the prisoners that are still there? I can’t imagine even if they released them today, the ones that are still alive, just talk about PTSD, talk about trying to overcome that kind of trauma, not knowing when your last day is.

00:46:33:06 – 00:46:38:03
Robert Wolf
Mostly that’s that’s the big thing, the wait and the boredom and, horror fun.

00:46:38:05 – 00:46:49:06
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movie, there’s, we’re talking about Schindler’s List, and that’s going to be the most popular movie about someone saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. But it’s not the.

00:46:49:08 – 00:46:56:08
Robert Wolf
The Ten Commandments. Well, I gotta say, that’s a fantastic movie, too. But, I don’t mean. Sorry to interrupt. Yes.

00:46:56:09 – 00:47:01:15
Dan LeFebvre
No no no no no, that’s a that’s a classic a little bit outside the time frame that we’re talking about now.

00:47:01:15 – 00:47:07:18
Robert Wolf
And I’m kidding then Fiddler on the roof was another one. But it was a Rorschach. But, you know, that was a lot of anti-Semitism there too. But go ahead. I’m sorry.

00:47:07:18 – 00:47:41:02
Dan LeFebvre
I know you’re there’s another movie, called walking with the enemy about a Hungarian Jew named Ella Cohen, who he dresses up in an SS uniform to help rescue other Jews. Now, Ella Cohen is another fictional character, but he is based on a real person. Again, with with pronunciation. I believe it’s, Pincus Rosenbaum. He was disguised. He disguised himself in uniforms of the SS, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which you mentioned earlier, the the Hungarian Lavant and the with the purpose of of saving, I believe hundreds of Jews.

00:47:41:04 – 00:47:51:15
Dan LeFebvre
During your research, did you come across other stories like Oskar Schindler or like Rosenbaum, of people who risked their lives to save the lives of others?

00:47:51:18 – 00:48:11:04
Robert Wolf
Raoul Wallenberg, my my, my dad and his friend Frank had those, passes, those forged papers. And he did, I don’t know, hundreds, thousands of them to help save people. Wallenberg was from Sweden, if I’m not mistaken. And I believe he was Jewish, but fantastic what he did. You going back to Schindler real quick is the way he laments.

00:48:11:04 – 00:48:26:23
Robert Wolf
You know this. Amongst all the murders he did no lamentation. You know. No. No sense of, of of, of mortality, no sense of, what’s the word I’m looking for? It just does. It doesn’t bother. And it doesn’t affect you.

00:48:26:25 – 00:48:29:21
Dan LeFebvre
No sense of decency. I mean, humanity, like Mr..

00:48:29:25 – 00:48:49:17
Robert Wolf
Schindler saving all these people. And he’s still got his car and he’s still got, like, enough jewelry or whatever. Yet on on him, he used his rings and he still your e remorse about. That’s the what I was and will remark you remorse is he elements about how he could have saved another eight or 10 or 12 Jewish people and and they had to console him because of that.

00:48:49:17 – 00:49:19:28
Robert Wolf
He cries, he breaks down. It’s a real it’s a real irony too. So, Yeah, but, but so he helps. So like Wallenberg, probably countless, Christian people, the Christians out, my dad, I mean, he wouldn’t survive without a lot of Christian help. Now, these aren’t famous stories, but being able to go to a casino, and hide in a casino, hide in a, a nunnery or, nursing home, with demented people and and, where else did he, his friend, hiding in a haberdashery and a hatbox, that kind of thing.

00:49:19:28 – 00:49:36:08
Robert Wolf
A lot of Christians help them. And then even after that, during communist Hungary, my my dad was getting, a few shekels sent, from Israel, from my mother’s mother and stepfather at this point, who was a Marky Mark in Israel, a consulate to Hungary. So they’d sneak them a few shekels, to, to this place in Budapest.

00:49:36:08 – 00:49:53:03
Robert Wolf
And my dad, it was a cloak and dagger story, the way my dad had to weave in and out of buildings to sneak to get that money, because he could have been in prison for that, too. So, a lot of people helped Jewish and Christian. Those that could a lot didn’t, again, fear for their lives. Not a lot of famous, well, here’s one actually.

00:49:53:03 – 00:50:14:15
Robert Wolf
Sorry. In communist Hungary, though, it’s not. My parents had an illegal Jewish wedding in 1953. My mom’s uncle, what? He sponsored that in his home. And like I say, it was illegal, and KGB was there, so, and my parents, when my parents, were on their honeymoon, the. He got arrested. He was a surgeon, chief of surgery in a Budapest hospital.

00:50:14:18 – 00:50:30:28
Robert Wolf
And they Waldemar for 13 months tortured him and, try to get him to confess to the to the murder. I think it was Wallenberg, if I’m not mistaken. So. And he wouldn’t he wouldn’t do it. And he was he came back a broken man, and obviously. And then they put him out in some rural clinic or something.

00:50:31:00 – 00:50:55:22
Robert Wolf
He ended up, ironically, in Sweden, where he had a successful career, and, solo daughter Susie, who was the last survivor in my book and just died in Jerusalem. Couple that soon after the attacks. 12 or 7. So she was comatose at the time and long standing on. And so as bad as that was, and it was great busier the year before, at least enough to know, about what was happening in Gaza and Israel.

00:50:55:22 – 00:51:22:01
Robert Wolf
So, all of them rest in peace. But yeah, so there’s famous and there’s not so famous in the autobiography. My dad mentions Mengele, that that is that Mengele greeted his father. But, the research that we this was a lot of research in our book, multiple people, historians, but, Berenbaum, Michael Berenbaum, who was one of the professors who wrote a tremendous, testimonial to other professors, did too.

00:51:22:02 – 00:51:38:06
Robert Wolf
They’re all good. But he mentions that don’t mix up where we’re talking about an Auschwitz because he had been there. He knows the history. And so we we took out Mengele. But, it may well be. And this is speculation that my dad’s father met Mengele, and he was the one that appealed since he was a doctor, too.

00:51:38:08 – 00:51:54:27
Robert Wolf
He was brutal himself, right? I mean, taking our feelings and using, humans as, for experiments and all that. But, if it was him or whoever it was, I guess I can’t call it nice, but got him a week’s worth. Two weeks worth of life, even though that week was miserable. So there are people that,

00:51:54:29 – 00:52:04:00
Robert Wolf
Yeah, the circles there are overlapping circles, for sure. And, as soon as we are done, I’ll probably think a couple more or two, but, you never know. And that’s a great question.

00:52:04:02 – 00:52:23:15
Dan LeFebvre
I think it’s great to know that. I mean, there are the famous one. Oskar Schindler obviously is famous, but he’s famous because of the movie and and the book and the as well. But he wasn’t doing it for fame. And there’s, you know, a lot of these stories, like you’re talking about the they’re not well known now, but that’s not why they were doing it.

00:52:23:15 – 00:52:54:21
Dan LeFebvre
They were doing it to help fellow humans. And I think that’s that in and of itself is a little bit of a light in, you know, in this dark time of history where there’s all this going on. But there are some people that will help. And I I’m happy to hear that. Yes, there were others that even though we might not know their names and whoever’s listening to this may not know their names, but they were still hoping because it was the right thing to do, not because they wanted to get their name, you know, a movie made about them.

00:52:54:26 – 00:53:00:16
Dan LeFebvre
So that we’d be talking about them on a podcast later. But, you know, it’s just the right thing to do.

00:53:00:18 – 00:53:20:26
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, it’s it’s very palpable. And, you know, you really identify with Schindler and you always have the it’s another ironic thing. You have the swastika. Yeah. The little swastika on a super all the time. But it was, it was this guys, you know, that was it. But you’re right. He just did it out of, the love for human beings and and that that goes for Moses and that goes for Jesus and Gandhi and all these other former leaders.

00:53:20:26 – 00:53:35:03
Robert Wolf
And, of course they got some recognition, of course. But, and another one that comes to mind is Captain Khomeini. If you remember his, he’s the one who got them the forged papers. And, and I believe if I did my memory short, I’m going through my book again. You have to. Every so often. There’s never all the details.

00:53:35:11 – 00:53:54:17
Robert Wolf
But, he might have been Jewish, but since he was a big guy in the military, he had, privileges. So he helped my dad out to more than once, too. So that was another one. You may have been Christian, maybe Jewish, but, I’m glad that my parents didn’t know more famous people because. Or my grandparents, I should say, because, that to me, been more apt to be killed.

00:53:54:19 – 00:54:10:25
Robert Wolf
It didn’t matter anyway. But, if they lived in the out in the middle of nowhere, which Jer was, and it was a, pretty, very populated, industrial town. So, and that was it. They were they were in Transylvania first. And Albert. Julia, if I’m not pronouncing that right, might be I mean, if it was Spanish would be Albert.

00:54:10:27 – 00:54:42:04
Robert Wolf
Julia, I guess, or Julia it might be, but. Albert. Julia. So they they loved Mother Hungary, as do my parents. And, they decided to go back to George. So instead of living Transylvania. So. And that might have been an ill fated decision to my mom and dad. Love mother Hungary, too, by the way, and would have probably stayed if the Americans had taken over rather than the Soviets, because they had had enough with the two wars and, and and countless persecution, illegal weddings, torture, deaths and, deception.

00:54:42:04 – 00:54:58:18
Robert Wolf
You know, their, their colleagues and friends and fellow doctors were trying to get them to convert to the communist ideal. And my parents wouldn’t buy into that. And, and that state, the the Soviets, in their arrogance, called my dad not a real enemy. And that’s what they really were. They love Mother Hungary, but they weren’t going to stay.

00:54:58:21 – 00:55:13:17
Robert Wolf
My mom was a med school, by the way, to winning them. So. And dad was already in okay. And and he had to double down as a trauma surgeon during a revolution. So they’re both frontliners. And after that they said and they were closing the borders and people were leaving in droves. But they managed to get out.

00:55:13:21 – 00:55:19:13
Robert Wolf
That’s my dad’s fourth escape, which is they’re all harrowing, but, memorable for sure.

00:55:19:15 – 00:55:42:17
Dan LeFebvre
Right. Mentioning Hungary and, earlier I mentioned Ben Kingsley and Schindler’s List and that how that movie started in 1939. But Ben Kingsley is in another movie called walking with the enemy, and he plays another person that you mentioned, Regent Horthy, the Hungarian leader. That movie takes place in 1944, when the Germans finally occupy Hungary. And Regent Horthy doesn’t want to let the Nazis take the Jews.

00:55:42:17 – 00:55:58:02
Dan LeFebvre
So he’s trying to sign a deal with the Soviet Union to get the Nazis out of Hungary. But then in a group called Arrow Cross, which you had also mentioned earlier, takes control of Hungary up until the Red Army pushes the Nazis out of the during the siege of Budapest. This is all as far as the movie is concerned.

00:55:58:02 – 00:56:03:09
Dan LeFebvre
But what really happened with Hungarian, Polish artists during World War Two?

00:56:03:11 – 00:56:20:21
Robert Wolf
Oh well, that’s you. And you kind of said it yourself. I mean, you needed a guide. You needed it literally. So Horthy takes over after he was an admirable admiral in World War One. He takes over Hungary again. The Jews feel like he’s he’s not, friendly to the Jews, even though what if what you say is true, that might be the opposite.

00:56:20:21 – 00:56:23:24
Robert Wolf
But, kudos to him for for trying to prevent that.

00:56:23:26 – 00:56:26:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I was in the movie. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s the way the movie presents.

00:56:26:25 – 00:56:40:06
Robert Wolf
Oh, yeah. Got to see the movie in and review the book and compare notes. There’s not a lot in the book about there’s a lot of history, but it’s it’s history light. I call it my coauthor, Janice. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. She’s a fantastic writer, but helped me turn the book and something really special.

00:56:40:06 – 00:56:56:26
Robert Wolf
But, if you were a junior school, they had the red chair. There’s a white chair. You know, you didn’t have communism. It was in then. They’re trying to say communism is no good. They’re beating up people. They’re going door to door. And then, of course, the rise of fascism, the Nazis entering, the, entering Hungary.

00:56:56:26 – 00:57:27:26
Robert Wolf
So the political climate then was you did what the Nazis said or you’re screwed. You know, that was Hungary trying to fight Germany. It was horse horses versus tanks, you know. How does that let me know how that goes for you. Right. And then, finally 1944 or 45, you Arrow cross, tremendously anti-Semitic. In my, I, maybe like a Gestapo or KGB type thing, they were worse to the Jews and they went out of their way opposite of Schindler, where, you know, the last day of the war and all the guards you only day, that’s all the guards.

00:57:27:26 – 00:57:42:24
Robert Wolf
And, in with the, prisoners, the laborers, and, he openly invites them to, to do what they want with them. Kill them or not. Or you can go home to your families, he says, and they all even go, well, that’s not what it was like in Hungary that at the end of the war, they went out of their way to kill as many Hungarians as they could.

00:57:42:27 – 00:58:07:09
Robert Wolf
And we all know about this. The Danube River, 21,000 Jewish people were shot to death, in cold blood, without their clothes on in the winter. December 43rd, January 44th. And, so that’s, it’s complete. Opposite of Schindler and it’s very set. So that’s the politics then. And of course, communism takes over. And, you know, we get the Stalin years and, and they wouldn’t go away.

00:58:07:09 – 00:58:25:20
Robert Wolf
And the irony is, like if the Americans had one or the West, the allies, then I probably wouldn’t be here. And I’d probably been born and raised in Hungary and maybe got lucky enough to go to med school. But they they left for the U.S., so. And then obviously, the Soviet, the Red Army and Soviet stayed on for forever and ever and ever.

00:58:25:23 – 00:58:45:13
Robert Wolf
Maybe now it’s a little bit of a democracy, but I don’t know much about recent Hungarian politics. But what I’ve seen and heard, the, Orban is, is Putin’s puppet. And, I could see him doing land for people. Deal, without dropping out. And let’s listen on. Jared’s never got a break for 80, 100 years, the most the majority of the 20th century was.

00:58:45:20 – 00:59:03:23
Robert Wolf
And the sad thing is, Hungarian Jews were. Well, if we’re going to flash, flash back to before World War one, 1890s, you know, the gay 90s and all that, Hungarian Jews and Jews in Europe were well treated. They were well respected. And and that boy that that climate turned, between world War one, World War two and and beyond with the Communist.

00:59:03:23 – 00:59:21:27
Robert Wolf
So, so Stalin dies in 53. That was good news. Hungarian, because he was really brutal, and I and Hungary in 56, they have their revolution. And, it goes badly for them. And then the hard liners became even more so because they were clamping down on the citizens. They didn’t want people to revolt.

00:59:21:27 – 00:59:37:12
Robert Wolf
And and they almost they didn’t almost win, but they almost got the Soviets out of there. And then just something changed about it. But instead of less, it became more with all the tanks coming in. And, that’s something that my dad said to the were that the men that were driving the tanks were from the Far East.

00:59:37:12 – 00:59:55:04
Robert Wolf
They were from, I don’t think it was Malaysia, maybe Burma. But they thought they were in Egypt. They thought they were in the Sinai, the Sinai War in 56. But they weren’t. They were. They were in Hungary fighting. So, that’s that was an interesting little tidbit. So it’s kind of like, oh, sorry, the North Koreans, you know, going to fight with the Russians kind of sounds like that, right?

00:59:55:04 – 01:00:01:08
Robert Wolf
They, they, you know, they recruit, they recruit people from other countries. Well, World War II was all about that, too.

01:00:01:08 – 01:00:26:05
Dan LeFebvre
But you you mentioned World War One and even before World War One, and that lead right into the last movie that I want to talk to you about, today’s, 1999 film, epic film called sunshine. I know up until now we’ve mostly talked about World War Two, but sunshine focuses on three generations of characters, all played by Ray finds across generations of a family called the Sun Shines, a, Hungarian Jewish family.

01:00:26:11 – 01:00:44:23
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie goes from the end of the 19th century with Hungarian nationalism through World War One, World War Two, and then into the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. And the first generation of the movie we see refines version of ignite, Sun and Shine. He wants to be a judge, but to do that he has to change his last name to something.

01:00:44:23 – 01:01:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie is more Hungarian, so he changes it to show where there pressure even before the rise of fascism. Because in the movie this is happening, you know, before World War one and 19th century, was there pressure for Hungarians to hide their Jewish heritage?

01:01:03:20 – 01:01:18:12
Robert Wolf
Yeah. I’m thank you for reminding me of that movie, because I’ve heard of it recently and I didn’t remember the title. So if you don’t mind, please email me that, because that’s something that sounds like. But it’s totally, it’s encountered distinction too. Oh, he was in Schindler. I mean, that that kind of, that kind of wants to be a judge.

01:01:18:18 – 01:01:37:27
Robert Wolf
And he’s an excellent actor, don’t get me wrong. But, and so is the guy that played Schindler, you know, Liam, Liam Neeson, and we back to Ben Kingsley. But yeah, my dad’s parents converted. They converted to Christianity, reluctantly, but they did. And, it was so he could practice dentistry and hide his heritage. And my dad’s mother hated it, and.

01:01:37:27 – 01:01:55:00
Robert Wolf
But they did. So, and I’m sure a lot of other Hungarian Jews did. I mean, I’ve read about it and heard that other Hungarian used it in it, and of course, hiding certain valuables, hiding radios, hiding your religion. That was a part of your heritage. And it’s horrible thing. Now, they weren’t that religious, but for the Orthodox Jew either.

01:01:55:00 – 01:02:14:14
Robert Wolf
Good luck having that up. And, until they got to Auschwitz and you weren’t allowed to practice religion or do anything, they shaved off all your hair, humiliated you, killed you, clowns too. Not just the religious were clowns. But they were fortunate enough to convert back. My. I’m a mr. Cronenberg. My dad’s father’s, his cousin, just turns up.

01:02:14:14 – 01:02:30:21
Robert Wolf
I forget how the circumstances of how they meet, but he’s he’s wealthy, and he helps him open up a private practice, and they’re in their home and, lends the money or whatever. Maybe if ghost money and we don’t really talk about how it’s returned, if at all. But he has to convert. They have to convert back to Judaism.

01:02:30:21 – 01:02:45:13
Robert Wolf
And as soon as they get that news, my dad’s mom’s taking the cross off the wall. And, not that they didn’t like Christians because most of their friends were Christians, no doubt. Because they didn’t always share in with the Jewish people, especially the Orthodox. So, and so they converted back. So it was a big sacrifice for them.

01:02:45:18 – 01:03:02:19
Robert Wolf
I can’t imagine converting to Christianity. I love Christianity, I think it’s great religion and theory. I think, that Christians have had a hard time over the last, you know, thousand, 2000 years in certain cases. The Bible talks about the Spanish Inquisition. We talk about the Crusades. So all of that, both at both ends of it. Right.

01:03:02:19 – 01:03:23:06
Robert Wolf
And also Muslims and Jews as well, too. So, yeah, a lot of sacrifices they had to make, to finally get a life going, finally having my dad, who grows up, not wealthy, but, you know, upper middle, grows up as a spoiled kid, ironically ends up forced labor and gets through that. But, so the 20s were kind of easy on them.

01:03:23:09 – 01:03:37:02
Robert Wolf
But, in between where during, during certain times they had to convert at the either. And then of course, you couldn’t if you didn’t wear your yellow star or a yellow band. In my dad’s case, in the forced labor, you’d be punished or shot for sure. You’ll.

01:03:37:05 – 01:04:00:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you might have already answered my my next question on that one, because in sunshine, the next generation is very finds plays the same. He, he plays different characters in each generation. So in the first generation refines, character is ignites, and he’s trying to become a judge. And then the next generation, once the child grows up, they have a younger, you know, different actor playing the younger version, and he grows up.

01:04:00:04 – 01:04:18:27
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s also a great find, you know? But this time he’s Adam Shaw. And in Adam’s timeline, this is during World War two, and he has to convert. He converts to Roman Catholicism because Jews aren’t allowed to join the fencing club, which is what he wants to do. But then in the movie, obviously that doesn’t work. They find out about his Jewish ancestry.

01:04:18:27 – 01:04:31:29
Dan LeFebvre
And so you can’t just convert. It doesn’t doesn’t really work. So would it be with the movie’s concept there be correct that switching religions wouldn’t work as far as the brutality of the Nazis to escape that?

01:04:32:02 – 01:04:51:13
Robert Wolf
Probably not. I mean, I don’t even know how people know who’s Jewish and who is. And I mean, I have no idea what’s happened once the traumas, on the door. I mean, I, you know, I don’t know how they, how they could masterfully and systematically find them all and exterminate them. But, you bring up a good point, because my dad, my dad’s father, was Jewish.

01:04:51:13 – 01:05:13:02
Robert Wolf
He lost a government job as a dentist. They he had to be, first of all, let them do part time. And then they laid him off and they said, you know, no pension, no benefits. And then ultimately laid off. We talked about the sign. No Jews or dogs. That was out there in Hungary, too. So you weren’t allowed to fencing, you know, certain, bars, restaurants, places of worship, places of business.

01:05:13:02 – 01:05:27:14
Robert Wolf
So Jews weren’t allowed to go to. So and that same sign that we, we talk about in, life was beautiful and, also my dad was not allowed to be on the swim team because he was Jewish. And, my dad loved to swim. I was a pretty good swimmer in high school. I guess I got that from my dad.

01:05:27:14 – 01:05:44:23
Robert Wolf
I swam for four years, and, he did breaststroke, me butterfly and freestyle. But anyway, he had he was kicked off the swim team because he was Jewish. So, yeah, ramifications were there. And, very sad. And it’s too bad because his coach liked him and and his friends like them. And they were very sad for him, but there was nothing they could do,

01:05:44:25 – 01:06:02:03
Dan LeFebvre
Those sort of things. Again, it’s hard to wrap my head around because. So what does that have to do with swimming? Like it? Like you’re swimming in a pool in water. I mean, you’re competing in not to not to take away from how serious it can be for competitions and stuff, but it’s it’s still a sport and it’s similar.

01:06:02:03 – 01:06:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
We see the similar sort of thing in, in the movie with sunshine, except it’s fencing. He’s, you know, he’s fencing. He’s like, that’s part of the reason why he ends up he converts is because he’s like, this doesn’t really it doesn’t affect my how good I am at fencing and with my practicing. And I imagine a similar thing for, for swimming like it does, it doesn’t affect that.

01:06:21:02 – 01:06:29:17
Dan LeFebvre
And so it’s, it’s, it goes back to that concept of what as we’re talking about, it, there’s so much more that, you know, it’s just it’s hard to wrap your head around.

01:06:29:18 – 01:06:48:00
Robert Wolf
And so it’s awful now, you know, ironically, the Olympics came up in a recent podcast too, and y can every day be like the Olympics? Yeah. Why can’t we do peace negotiations and tear off negotiations in the hot tub, or over find a nice table with a tablecloth and, you know, nice silverware? The the Olympics, exemplifies that.

01:06:48:00 – 01:07:06:14
Robert Wolf
It’s the one time where for the 2 or 3 weeks that the all these countries get together, they compete, they put all the bibs, all the politics, all the disagreements off you know, back. They leave it on the field or behind them and they compete. And it’s great sportsmanship. And why can’t, why can’t our politicians, why can’t our leaders, do that?

01:07:06:14 – 01:07:24:14
Robert Wolf
I mean, it’s such a such a great lesson. So I love the Olympics, not only because I love sports, but also just that concept of, worldwide, a worldwide peace and, the amicable feeling that you got, and I just love it. I mean, third place, person congratulating the first on the gold medal winner, that kind of thing.

01:07:24:17 – 01:07:44:16
Robert Wolf
Arm in arm in arm, holding our flags. Just the fact, you know, we’re talking about kneeling and and, during, it’s not a big thing lightly, thank God. But kneeling or not respecting the national anthem, my mom and dad would spit in those people. They would be. How dare you? You know, we we were barely allowed to practice what we want in a free country.

01:07:44:16 – 01:08:04:15
Robert Wolf
How dare you do that in this country? And they would, think. I mean, they got to their dad, but they. I got the narrative experience, the the the people kneeling and and not respecting the flag, multi-millionaires, people that are privileged, privileged enough and talented enough, and marketable enough to to be in sports and make lots of money, be very popular.

01:08:04:15 – 01:08:24:06
Robert Wolf
And when they do that, it’s it just doesn’t hurt the snarling. And so those kind of things, that’s what we’re battling here. You know, we got to respect our country and our freedoms, and our luck and realize that what happened to my dad could happen to any one of us. Could be a bad neighbor. Bad local government, federal government, foreign government, natural disaster, bad business deal.

01:08:24:06 – 01:08:39:07
Robert Wolf
Whatever it is could happen to us where we’re on the run not knowing where your next meal is. So not only are we going to sleep, not not knowing if you’re going to get a job or where you will, and you still you’re still, you don’t know. You can’t meet people. You can’t be around people that that spot you and say, oh, there’s a Jew.

01:08:39:07 – 01:08:47:24
Robert Wolf
There’s, Because you hear that. So there’s we talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. Even during escapes, there was no such thing.

01:08:47:27 – 01:09:11:23
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to sunshine, the last generation in that movie is Adam, son Ivan. And he survives World War two. But then he joins the communists because they seem to be the liberators of the brutality of the Nazis had inflicted in Hungary. But then, as the Hungarian Revolution breaks out in 1956, in the movie we see Ivan, he realizes the communists are brutal and corrupt also.

01:09:12:00 – 01:09:38:14
Dan LeFebvre
And then at the very end of that movie, Ivan learns from an old letter from his great grandfather, who was at the very beginning of the movie. It’s it’s a long movie. But he finds out that in this letter, it’s the goal is not to be accepted by others. And in this letter, as you reads it, Ivan then has the inspiration to change his name from shores back to sunshine to embrace his Jewish ancestry.

01:09:38:16 – 01:09:58:14
Dan LeFebvre
And like a lot of the movie characters that we’ve talked about today, the Shine is high. Family from the movie sunshine are fictional. They’re not real. But of course, the unimaginable hardships that they faced in the movie were real events that generations of of your family faced as well. So just like Ivan took lessons from his family’s past at the end of the movie and build a better life for himself.

01:09:58:14 – 01:10:09:04
Dan LeFebvre
As we kind of start to wrap up our discussion today, if you took a look at your family’s history, what’s one lesson that you’ve learned that people today can apply to create a better future?

01:10:09:06 – 01:10:26:04
Robert Wolf
I have to see that movie sunshine. It sounds. I mean, it sounds like they stole my stole my own story. Now, would you remind me? Because I do want to, but yeah, my, my mom’s uncle, Zoltan was she. He converted. He was a communist because he wanted to. He wanted to survive. And, my mom probably hated it, but he was.

01:10:26:04 – 01:10:43:18
Robert Wolf
It helped him. He was a he was a monkey in the government and in the economic the economic plan after World War two. And, I read some of the notes, those turned up and I it was really and I don’t mean to get off the subject, but it was really poignant and depressing actually saying, well, what what do we do with our, our Jews?

01:10:43:25 – 01:11:03:10
Robert Wolf
And they are mostly farms and factories. I’m not going to talk about military. I’m talking about the civilian Jews because they couldn’t work. They couldn’t be educated. Finally, they let my dad get into medical school, 10%, quota, which is 10% quota, which is amazing that he even got in. But, so but he was a communist, so he, you know, resonates really, really well with whatever.

01:11:03:10 – 01:11:23:24
Robert Wolf
My mom and dad wouldn’t buy into it as we already mentioned, that, like I said, this country is amazing. Accountability is an important. It’s an important message. Don’t point at people. It just, you know, after 911, we had Islamophobia. After the coronavirus epidemic. We had the Asian eight. Now tober seventh. That’s the Jewish people.

01:11:23:24 – 01:11:39:12
Robert Wolf
Well, what do I have to do with Gaza? And October 7th, I support Israel, I support peace, and, that that that unnecessary. You know, you’re wasting your time, with these protests, these kids in Colombia, you don’t know how good you have it. You know, I, I think people would tell the end of Harvard or Columbia or privilege.

01:11:39:12 – 01:12:03:24
Robert Wolf
They would be. And, people that are doing this and and protesting and calling for the death of Israel and America, it’s just there’s no room for it. Not for me, not for you, and not in this country. And so I identify with the peaceful people, try to get a handle around, at least. Finally, they’re curtailing funding for universities everywhere I could in there, I’d be showing them and and suing them and suing them and and doing more talks in the area.

01:12:03:24 – 01:12:20:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, believe me, that’s all I’m doing anyway, but we need to, appreciate what we have. Accountability. And if you’re bored with what you have, you got if you’re complaining, change vectors. If you don’t like your job, change jobs, work part time, write a book. Everybody’s got a story. Write a poem, write an opera. Go to the library.

01:12:20:28 – 01:12:37:28
Robert Wolf
Go to the museum. Spend more time with your family. Give back to the community. It’s not just about food, shelter, clothing. Unlike for my mom and dad and, all the victims, it’s all food, shelter and clothing. But for now, for us, I put a little more into your life, put a more pot, and, love your neighbor, you know, and I don’t I don’t mean to be corny.

01:12:37:28 – 01:12:57:02
Robert Wolf
Bring a neighbor some macaroons or whatever. Invite them for the Seder. Just get to know them better and embrace them. And things. And things. Well, it all starts. Leadership starts from within. You know, you’re not going to be a leader if you’re not a good person. If you’re not. And I don’t mean no Hitler leader because he just led by charisma and, and, all his, his garbage is, propaganda.

01:12:57:04 – 01:13:14:01
Robert Wolf
But, you can lead by example, and it’s never too late to do the right thing. There’s no substitute for experience. I got a lot of, you know, the trend is your friend, you can learn something from every case, as we say in radiology. But as now, I’ve been on both sides of the needle. You can learn something from every person you know.

01:13:14:01 – 01:13:30:13
Robert Wolf
You can learn from every situation. And don’t forget that, don’t be that. That dead shark swim in the water. Just keep on moving. And if you don’t like what you’re doing and don’t don’t watch and complain, do something else. Life is short here. It’s our only commodity. It’s. You know, time is. Our time is our only commodity.

01:13:30:13 – 01:13:41:24
Robert Wolf
It’s not gold or silver stocks, real estate. It’s time. So use it. Use it wisely. Like my dad used to say. Enjoy every moment. And now I understand why.

01:13:41:26 – 01:14:02:10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I love that I love that, and that’s one thing as we’ve talked about you just looking back to some of the movies we talked about, the concept that I get is a lot of the things that led to like the atrocities Auschwitz that we talked about. It didn’t jump right to that. It was there were steps that they got there.

01:14:02:13 – 01:14:26:01
Dan LeFebvre
And although we’ve we talked mostly about historical events that took place around World War Two today, a lot of people have compared the current climate here in the United States as I’m recording this, similar to the rise of fascism that resulted in Nazi Germany. And I’m just curious, from your perspective, do you think there’s any truth to those comparisons, or is that kind of overblown just, extremism?

01:14:26:03 – 01:14:44:26
Robert Wolf
That’s such a great question. It’s hard to know. I hope not. That’s why there’s people like me trying to prevent that from happening. Call Congress, call you local government. What are you guys doing about anti-Semitism? I’m still doing it. I hate getting ghosted. That’s a big part of it being rejected. I don’t mind getting rejected like people that are apathetic, but too much apathy is going to be the danger to us.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:04:25
Robert Wolf
And if the Jewish population doesn’t survive, you know, the LGBTQ, the criticize the Jewish and African-Americans, if you guys are next and and those those that glorify Hitler, you guys were next. You just don’t even realize it. So, now in some ways, yeah, in some countries worse than here. But even in America, in World War two, there was the rise of anti-Semitism.

01:15:04:25 – 01:15:23:16
Robert Wolf
And, fortunately not fascism. But until the guns are pointed at me, I feel relief. As long as the government and the local police are protecting us, then I feel safe. Whatever. If it starts to turn. And we talked about the your armored trucks and tanks going down the streets with the flags. If it ever comes to that, then I’d say, well, no, we’re doomed.

01:15:23:16 – 01:15:45:23
Robert Wolf
But, at least for the short term. But, hopefully that never happens. I can’t see that happening. But you never know. I mean, Australia and Canada, Europe, it’s still going on. So it’s up to the government, the people that are supposed to protect others. As Reagan said, that’s what government’s job is not to and not to, to to take from others or its or to use the people.

01:15:45:23 – 01:15:52:00
Robert Wolf
It’s, it’s I’m paraphrasing, but a government’s job is to protect us. Jewish. Christian doesn’t matter. Muslim.

01:15:52:03 – 01:15:58:26
Dan LeFebvre
We’re all human. We’re all. We’re all. What is it? The JFK quotes, we all share this planet together or something. Something along.

01:15:58:26 – 01:16:17:23
Robert Wolf
Those lines. Exactly. No. It’s true, it’s true. And we’re we’re getting beyond that. Why are the Soviets and the Americans get along in space stations and the moon or whatever, but they can’t get along and Mother Earth, right? I mean, so that’s, it’s another thing like the Olympics. Yeah. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And probably Antarctica and Greenland and everybody is going to set up whatever.

01:16:17:25 – 01:16:33:08
Robert Wolf
And that works for me. You know, it’s so how about annexing Canada? What about that kind of concept? I, you know, people are thinking out of the box lately and maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, but it’s worth a look because things have to change. Canada needs a security alternative to the US. On and on and on.

01:16:33:13 – 01:16:55:13
Robert Wolf
And maybe it’s good economically too, unless it’s come up. And I don’t know that it would be so complicated. And I know our resistance. The natives would be, Mexico. Maybe not so much, but that would be scary for me because I think it’s a it’s got it’s violent areas and etc.. But interestingly, a Jewish woman is the new president of Mexico, so and a Jewish lady is, is the new mayor of Beverly Hills.

01:16:55:13 – 01:17:15:18
Robert Wolf
So, that gives me hope. I think that’s great. I mean, I love California, and if it weren’t so expensive, I maybe I would live there instead of Florida. But, with who knows? And it’s one of the liberal for me, too. But, you know, it’s a great state and, many, many people. So it’s good to see that some people that are in leadership positions are going to be on the side of peace, not just because they’re Jewish.

01:17:15:18 – 01:17:29:03
Robert Wolf
That’s the side of peace. So they get it. They care. That’s another lesson. It’s good to care. It’s important to care if you, you’re doomed if you don’t. So whatever is your own life or the life of others? It’s important.

01:17:29:05 – 01:17:44:00
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat about all these various movies. I know we’ve mentioned your book called Not a Real Enemy The True Story of the Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for freedom. We’ve mentioned a few times throughout our discussion today, but there’s so many things in the book that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about.

01:17:44:00 – 01:18:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
I’m going to add a link to it in the show notes, so anyone watching or listening to this right now can pick up their own copy. As I was reading your book, it really read like a movie and I can’t wait until it is turned into one. And since all movies have teasers and trailers before I let you go, can you share a teaser of your book for everyone watching this?

01:18:01:06 – 01:18:03:06
Dan LeFebvre
Now?

01:18:03:09 – 01:18:23:14
Robert Wolf
Wow. Yeah, yeah, from your mouth to God’s ears. Because, we we’ve been trying to clear some producers. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a long shot, but a teaser. A man who escapes four times, I can’t imagine one escape. I mean, I’ve been reading books, guys escaping, and they’re not even Jewish. They’re. They’re prisoners of war from Poland or whatever, escaping from thousands of miles away.

01:18:23:16 – 01:18:40:12
Robert Wolf
And that’s like a one big, huge escape. But for escapes, 20 miracles in this book, like you as you know it. Or the way my dad got into medical school, cloak and dagger stories, arguing with armors and soldiers. That’s a scene I’d like to see, and winning the argument, but bluffing his way through it.

01:18:40:15 – 01:19:03:19
Robert Wolf
Of course, his first and last escape. But I think all of them would need to be included. Split second timing. The luck of God. What else? I mean, the fact that my dad was spoiled, but he was also beaten as a kid. It’s another interesting, interesting tidbit. Tidbit? So many, the way the table set, the way the way that you went from, being an upper middle says to starving and how life could change on a dime.

01:19:03:21 – 01:19:24:18
Robert Wolf
So many messages. Resilience, determination, hope, integrity, and ultimately redemption. So it’s it’s loaded. It’s packed with it’s history. It’s an adventure. It’s a biography. And, trials and tribulations. My dad and family and, must read and hopefully, more and more people read it. This is all I do is my charge is fighting anti-Semitism. You help me with that.

01:19:24:18 – 01:19:48:24
Robert Wolf
10% of my, I’m on socials across the board, so please, finally, Robert J. Wolfe, MD, or Google not relented me 10% of my proceeds henceforth and even when I’m gone and my trust are going to the Holocaust Museum in DC. So not only I’m educating in my own little corner, but I’m also contributing. And people that buy the book are contributing to education through the, to the mothership, as I call it, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in DC.

01:19:48:27 – 01:20:06:02
Robert Wolf
I’ve been fortunate enough to be there twice or two to the book signings. I could do that every day, educating kids and families about what’s going on now and then, genocide, etc.. So, it’s a must read. And, I hope that you do enjoy it and reach out to me. I do podcasts and and presentations programs.

01:20:06:02 – 01:20:09:03
Robert Wolf
Please help me fight antisemitism. Can’t do it alone.

01:20:09:05 – 01:20:16:27
Dan LeFebvre
I love education is is the key. Thank you so much for everything you do for educating. Thank you for for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

01:20:17:00 – 01:20:24:22
Robert Wolf
Pleasure. I learned a lot today to.

Dan LeFebvre
Looking at Black Hawk Down from an overall perspective, what letter grade would you give it for its historical accuracy?

Joshua Donohue
>> So I’m gonna give Blackhawk down at A minus. And the minus just for, you gotta have a little bit of criticism, a little bit of critique, you have the whole Hollywood versus history. Blackhawk now does that in a lot of different areas with characters and things that were said, things that weren’t said, you have things based on actual events as you see in the film. But overall, the most impressive grade that I heard was from the actual veterans themselves who were there. They say that the film really is about 75 to 80% accurate as far as what happened. So really getting that stamp of approval from the guys who were actually there, I thought was pretty profound. So I would say definitely, in terms of military history films, it’s a top 10, maybe even the top five film for me. Ridley Scott, the director, is of course famous for such legendary films as Alien, Blade Runner, the Gladiator films. So this shoot, I restretched, it was quite complex in terms of its logistics. They wanted to give a real urban setting. Of course, Jerry Bruckheimer and his production team involved. His body of work really speaks for itself. So they were actually originally going to shoot in Jordan, but they felt that the city area had kind of long walls. They really didn’t give it that appearance that they wanted. They felt that they wanted to go to Morocco, where actually the year prior Scott had shot scenes for Gladiator there. So I think he really did a great job as far as the landscape there, giving it more authenticity from really from what a true African country, especially Somalia in 1993, what would it have looked like. So Scott was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. The film won two Oscars for Best Filmmaking, Editing, and Best Sound. So the helicopter scenes were real. I mean, didn’t really see a whole lot of CGI in there. Those helicopters were real. They used them. They have all professional pilots in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. You’re in the Blackhawks with the Rangers, on the Little Birds with the Delta guys. So it’s a terrific mix of casting too. It’s, for me, one of the best, maybe the best in terms of casting for a war film. You have Sam Shepard, who plays General William Garrison. Tom Sizemore plays Colonel Danny McKnight. Established actors, younger guys, kind of come up, like Eric Bana, who plays Norm “Hoot” Hooten. You also have Ewan McGregor in there, Jeremy Piven, younger core of actors, like Orlando Bloom, who plays Todd Blackburn. Tom Hardy in there. Josh Harnett, who’s really one of the central characters, plays the Army Ranger Matt Eversman. So Eversman, just so people understand, his character is really the central character really throughout the film. He’s a sort of composite character. He’s actually himself and Lieutenant Larry Perrino. So he’s sort of this composite character. And another character to mention as well is the character played by Sanderson, played by William Fichtner. That’s actually based upon Delta operator Sergeant Paul Howe, who we’ll get to in a moment. He’s quite an interesting guy. So again, the film, I think, really, as far as authenticity, gets the grade A there. What’s interesting about it too is there’s an extended version that’s out there. That’s the one that you watched. And when I first saw the film originally, a lot of those scenes– I mean, I almost felt when I watched the extended version for the first time, I felt like I was watching the movie all over again. It was like, oh, I don’t remember that scene. It was all throughout the film. They had literally made a much longer film, but it tops out over two hours. And it’s difficult to sort of condense an 18-hour battle into a two-hour film. So there’s certain things that are going to get left out, things that the veterans say, oh, that should have made it in. So you’re trying to jam in a lot of people and a lot of different situations and different events to one. But overall, I really think they really scouted, and Brock Harman just did a phenomenal job on it. [AUDIO OUT] Yeah. And I think most people would agree in terms of the authenticity of it. He really pays special detail and special attention to all of those little– right from the weapons that each soldier had. Take the two snipers, Randy Chigart and Gary Gordon. Gary Gordon was carrying a specific type of– it was called an M733. It was a modified M4 rifle. It had a silencer. It had the scope on it. Randy Chigart would carry around an M14 sniper rifle, which was an old Vietnam-style gun. And the guys used to tease him all the time about it. But it had stopping power. It shot the 7.62 millimeter round. And as we’ll discuss in a little bit, in terms of the battle, the heavier round would have made a difference in terms of– especially the militiamen they were going to be fighting up against.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Before the movie jumps to October 3rd, 1993, it uses a lot of on-screen text to kind of set up the situation in Somalia in 1992 and leading into the events that we see in the movie. So I’m gonna read out this before asking my next question. This is a direct quote from the movie, kind of the text that sets everything up. Years of warfare among rival clans causes famine on a biblical scale. 300,000 civilians die of starvation. Muhammad Farah Adid, the most powerful of the warlords, rule the capital Mogadishu. He seizes international food shipments at the ports. Hunger is his weapon. The world responds. Behind a force of 20,000 US Marines, food is delivered and order is restored. April 1993, Adid waits until the Marines withdraw and then declares war on the remaining UN peacekeepers. In June, Adid’s militia ambush and slaughter 24 Pakistani soldiers and begin targeting American personnel. In late August, America’s elite soldiers, Delta Force, Army Rangers, and the 160th SOAR are sent to Mogadishu to remove Adid and restore order. The mission was to take three weeks, but six weeks later, Washington was growing impatient. And that is the end of kind of the introductory text. Since we’re setting up the historical context, is there anything that you would change or add to the way that the movie sets up this situation?

Joshua Donohue
Maybe a few things, but I think overall, again, you’re trying to give people the central themes of what’s– the main events and what’s going on. And I think it does a really good job there, really from describing the events from 1992 into 1993. And I think even before that, again, it pretty much sums up the major sequence of events leading up to the battle. There are other important events within the timeline, especially after, as you mentioned, the Pakistani peacekeepers are killed. So to sort of delve into the history of the events leading up to the Battle of Mogadishu during what’s known as Operation Gothic Serpent, and that’s really when the mission changes from a sort of a humanitarian one to one that are– we’re now going after Mohammed Farah Aidid. It’s also referred to sometimes as the Battle of the Black Sea. So there were a number of sort of geopolitical events which affected Somalia from inside out, really from the year 1991 in particular. So from January 1991 to March of 1991, you have the spectacular victory that America gets in Desert Storm, Operation Desert Storm, defeating Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq, driving them out of Kuwait after they invaded there in August of 1990. So that victory had really bolstered American confidence. I remember it very well. It was the first really conflict that I remember growing up as a child. I remember everyone tying the yellow ribbons around the trees. It was–you know, from what I had been told, it was a much different experience of what happened after the Vietnam War, which was really the last major war that we had fought. So in many ways, that victory helped heal a lot of those old wounds from the Vietnam War that had been left, you know, since their bloody campaign there. Ironically, the Battle of Mogadishu would be the largest firefight that the American soldiers would experience since Vietnam. And one of the commanding intel officers explains that it was worse than what he had experienced. Just that 18-hour battle was worse than all of his four combat tours in Vietnam. So that’s a pretty telling description. Another particular geopolitical event was the collapse of the Soviet Union at that time as well. That had a wide-ranging effect on other countries. They had held influence over Somalica in terms of the geopolitical sphere of influence. So the communist sphere had been lifted, no longer a threat to the international sort of order of things. So with the absence of the old Soviet order, we start to see a profound Islamic influence begin to channel its way through the streets of Mogadishu and throughout the country in that particular region. So as for Somalia itself, the country was soon embroiled in civil war when the president of what was known as the Somali Democratic Republic, Mohamed Siad Barre, was the president who had been ruling since 1969. He was overthrown and the central government effectively collapsed and Mohamed Farah Aidid was instrumental in this occurring. So when civil war begins, you have these rival clans beginning to fight it out on the streets of the city. The country is plunged into a terrible famine and the results in the deaths of estimates over 300,000 men, women, and children dying from the effects of starvation by early 1992. So there were attempts by non-governmental organizations or NGOs as they’re known to alleviate the suffering of the Somali people. They were greeted by attacks by the militiamen, especially those belonging to what was known as the Habergeer clan, the most powerful clan in Mogadishu. Mohamed Farah Aidid was the head and was instrumental in initiating the coup which overthrew Barre, as I mentioned, and he was now the leader of what was known as the Somali United Congress during the Somali civil war. So in addition to the 300,000 Somalis who perished during the famine, tens of thousands more are killed in the intense fighting that’s going on in the city between these rival clans. So another major thing to talk about is you have what’s occurring in the United States at the time. George H.W. Bush 41 lost the election that November, so this is one of his last major decisions as he’s going out. Of course, President Bill Clinton will take the White House over in January of 1993, so one of his last major decisions, President Bush will order 20,000 U.S. Marines to Somalia to really spearhead a new peacekeeping initiative known as Operation Restore Hope. So the Marines are instrumental in restoring order and making sure the food supplies are making it to the Somali people, especially to the people in the sort of the outlying areas, the remote areas outside the city of Mogadishu. So when I was researching it, there was a great documentary that ITN News did, and they followed around the progress of the UN mission and following the food deliveries to these stricken areas. One aid worker there was commenting on how the deliveries of wheat would not have been possible without the aid of the United States Marines. So as a result of the Marines being there, the attacks on the peacekeepers became less and less. Once the Marines were drawn, again, in the middle of 1993, Aidid literally launches an offensive and trying to seize power immediately right afterwards, setting up attacks once again. He launches control of the city, and on June 5, 1993, the Pakistani contingent of UNISOM inspecting one of Aidid’s Radio Mogadishu stations comes under attack by militiamen belonging to the SNA, the Somali National Alliance. A crowd gathers outside, and they absolutely slaughter these 24 Pakistani peacekeepers. Between 16 and 25, Somalis are killed. And in the aftermath of this, in the chilling foreshadowing of the events we’ll see in the aftermath of October 3, the Pakistani peacekeepers’ bodies are butchered. They are desecrated, hacked apart, dragged through the city. I saw one news clip where these two guys are just holding a piece of an arm, and it’s just flesh and clothing hanging off of it. So this is really the central turning point. Now the UN begins to scale down their presence in Somalia, and the media is now questioning whether the UN is even capable of controlling the situation there. Even the people at the food shipment ports are saying the UN is not going to be able to maintain control of it. So as a result of the Pakistani peacekeepers being killed, a squadron of AC-130 Spectre gunships will answer the June 5 attack, hitting four weapons arsenals and the radio station also owned by Aidid. So the UNISOM mission effectively changes from a humanitarian mission into one now, we’re starting to see special forces move in in August of ’93. It’s changing now to a hut for Aidid. So it becomes–the humanitarian mission is at a standstill. UNISOM is eventually replaced by widespread anger at the continued military presence there of the United States. So tensions would further be exacerbated by the raid in what was known as the Abdi house. An American Cobra gunships and OH-58 Kiowa helicopters will fire tow missiles into the house where there’s a meeting of Aidid officials taking place. Between 20 and 70 people are killed, and many people say that that meeting was actually–there were some peaceful Klan leaders and they’re trying to resolve the situation. And again, we never really knew the real story there. So you have August 10, 1993, an IED will detonate under a U.S. military police vehicle, killing four U.S. servicemen. So Somalis were particularly bothered by this constant American presence, especially of helicopters flying over the city all the time. And Aidid’s men are slowly but surely stepping up their attacks on the Americans leading up to October 3. And this comes to a height, and this is about a week shy prior to it, of September 25, 1993, Somali militiamen will shoot down a Black Hawk helicopter over Mogadishu, killing three U.S. personnel on board. So this particular attack will mark a significant psychological victory for the Somali militiamen. They had now successfully–American helicopter– and now are seeing that these pilots are going to go on these raids. There have been six of them conducted before October 3, but the pilots are now being more aware that, yeah, we could be hit by one of these, and we could fall victim to a pretty serious attack.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Well, that’s, I mean, thank you for sharing a lot of that more, more context because there were a few things that you were saying there. Just thinking of perhaps one of the biggest manhunts, you know, that the military did for Osama bin Laden, right, which will be much later. But it wasn’t, you know, sending 20,000 Marines in. And so understanding how this is different, you know, before that and then how it changed too. And I’m sure this will come up later as we start to dig in some of the more details of this particular mission. But the idea of whether or not they could actually shoot down the helicopter and their strategies for that, it sounds like the movie doesn’t really mention that other Black Hawk being shot down in September. But that had to have been top of mind for everybody there.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, absolutely. And they had to, of course, have a contingency plan for this. They knew as soon as going into any of these raids that this was becoming more and more of a possibility. You’re seeing Aidid’s forces– they’re going to go toe-to-toe with the Americans. And again, they’re well aware of every street, every alleyway, how to bottle forces up, how to keep reinforcements from coming into the city by using roadblocks. We see that throughout the film as well. So again, a mission that’s supposed to take 30 minutes, it’s going to be a lot longer than that, unfortunately, for the Americans. But again, there was a lot of tension building up, especially once the mission changes from not so much a humanitarian one now to going after Aidid. It was Admiral Jonathan Howe, I think, was the one that put up the reward poster for Aidid, I think $25,000. His husband, Otto, the guy they capture early on in the film, mentions it when he’s having that cigar conversation. He’s like, “Miami is not Cuba.” You know, that whole thing where they’re having tea and all that stuff. And that raid actually did happen, and he was captured in a little bit different circumstances. And Otto actually himself said when he saw the film, “That’s no way who I am.” And they sort of didn’t really get that character really the way that– in real life the way it was. But you start to see that we’re going after more high-value targets, people who are directly in contact with Aidid. We’re starting to nip away at his network over time, and that comes to an end on October 3rd.

Dan LeFebvre
>> You mentioned taking 30 minutes and that leads right into my next question. Because according to the movie, the goal of the mission is to capture some of ID’s high ranking officials at this secret meeting. And they have a local guy, you know, parking his car near the building where the meeting is taking place so that they know where to drop in the helicopters. The plan is to take the officials prisoner and then signal the Humvees to come pick them all up, the soldiers as well as the prisoners, and then head back to base. And as you said, you know, the mission is supposed to take 30 minutes. Of course, as the movie title suggests, things do not go according to plan. But before we talk about how things go wrong, how well do you think the movie did kind of explaining the mission of October 3rd, 1993?

Joshua Donohue
So as I mentioned before, Task Force Ranger had conducted six missions before October 3rd, and two of Aidid’s men, Omar Salad, who was Aidid’s top political advisor, and Abdi Hassan Awali, who is Aidid’s interior minister, they are considered by the intelligence community there as what are known as Tier 1 personalities, and you hear that mentioned in the film. They were both in regular contact with Aidid, are important to the operation, the daily operation of his militias. So Salad would be observed entering a house, which was located about a block from what you see in the film is called the Olympic Hotel. You see them when they fly in, they’re right above it. A Somali spy actually confirmed that both men were present at this meeting that morning, which also meant that Aidid also could possibly be there as well. And there was no– I should say the afternoon, not the morning, but there was no confirmation. So intelligence was not really– it was kind of scattered. They’re having to rely on locals to kind of work their way around the city. So to locate the precise location of the meeting, the Somali informant– in the film, he’s known as Abdi. He drives this sort of silver sedan with red stripes. In the film, he has black tape on the roof, whatever. In the film, he’s driving a white sedan with a cross over the car so the helicopters can see him.

Dan LeFebvre
So they could see, yeah.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, so he was then instructed to park and stop his car in front of the Olympic Hotel and lift the hood as if giving the impression that he’s having an engine problem, and if Aidid’s militiamen suspected him for any reason, they would simply dismiss him once he’s seen looking under the hood of the car. So he does show some fear that, okay, if I get too close, they’re going to shoot me. So from there, the informant would get back in his car, park directly in front of the target building. So there was a helicopter. They had multiple layers of intelligence assets flying over the city from P-3, Orions, and again, Blackhawks are circling the C-2 bird. They’re monitoring this whole sequence of events that’s going on. So there was a helicopter flying and monitoring his movements, as you see in the film. This is where things start to go a little wrong. So the helicopter that was supposed to track the informant’s car had actually lost sight of him, and he tried to perform the engine check too quickly. He got back in the car and drove away. So by the time that the helicopter tried to reacquire him, he was already gone. So he had only caught the location where he was supposed to still be, but they couldn’t lock back onto his car. So Garrison then has the informant drive around the block, do it again, open his hood once he parks in front of the target building. So Garrison is watching this all unfold at the JOC, the Joint Operations Center. This is being fed live to him. As I said, there’s intelligence assets monitoring what’s going on, indicating now that the informant will park in front of the target building, open his hood. So this is relayed back to the Ranger, Task Force Ranger. Rangers and Delta are beginning to kit up back at their hangar at the Mogadishu Airport, and they start to strategize their plan of attack. So the CHOC leaders, the Rangers, were given detailed plans of where their blocking positions were going to be. They were going to have four Blackhawks basically surround the building, have the Rangers fast rope down. The Delta were all going to be going into the building, landing on the roof, landing on the streets, going right in. So Garrison at this point then has to call it off again. And as you see in the film, Abney makes the comment, “There are too many militia. If I get any closer, they’re going to shoot me.” So the car is parked short of the target building. So the task force was literally minutes away from launching a raid against the wrong house. So a similar event had actually occurred prior when the wrong house was raided, and it turned out to be a UN personnel gathering. There’s questions whether they were corrupt or whatever the case is, but you mentioned Washington in the beginning. This is one of the events that Washington sees, “Okay, we’re losing our patience with this whole thing now. We want to start seeing results. We want ID captured. We’re wasting time. The American public is starting to– We’re going to lose some support over this.” So Garrison then convinces the informant to park his car in front of the building on Hawatig Road. He then drives past the Olympic Hotel one block north, and that turns out to be the same building that Salon was seen entering by American observers from the air. So UN Second-in-Command General Thomas Montgomery, who’s also in charge of the 10th Mountain Division, Quick Reaction Force, or QRF as it’s known, says that the mission is a go to be sure that all UN personnel were cleared from the area. Garrison also gives the order to arm the MH-6 Little Bird helicopters with rockets, which will turn out to be a smart decision in light of what happens next. So when Garrison gives the mission briefing, a combined group of Rangers and Delta, this meeting more than likely didn’t take place, and may have in some levels, but you really had just all the main film characters that you had. Eric Band is there, Josh Hartnett’s there, Jeremy Piven’s there, all the stars are assembled into one place, of course, Tom Sizemore. So you get this sense that the mission is routine, but then you start to get the impression that it’s not going to be an ordinary mission. They go into further specifics about where they’re going to be going in the middle of the day, to Bacara Market, and as McKnight’s character says, it’s the Wild West. So you see the character Hoot, played by Eric Band, he sort of rolls his eyes at Garrison when he asks him, which exactly, which building is it? He says, well, somewhere in the Bacara Market, and he goes, well, it’s not my decision to make these targets, basically. It’s not my fault. So you sense there’s a little bit of a disconnect before the mission even begins. He then brings up another important aspect of the mission, which really did happen. Garrison says he requests light armor and an AC-130 Spectre gunship. I mentioned that earlier. And it says Washington and all of his wisdom decided against this too high profile. So Secretary of Defense Les Aspin actually used the one that is, you know, the Clinton administration, saying, no, we’re not going to give that kind of support. We don’t want this to get out of control. We don’t want these things going, shooting people up in the streets. It’s going to– the optics on it aren’t good. So that was really the impetus beside– you know, on that decision there. So the AC-130 had been in active service since leading up to the Vietnam War and during the Vietnam War. It carried two 20-millimeter cannons, a 40-millimeter cannon, and a 105-millimeter howitzer. So it’s an impressive and lethal weapons platform, and the option that might have changed the course of Operation Gothic Serpent and really the Battle of Mogadishu in total. Another moment is when we see that when McKnight walks out of the tent and he talks to Colonels Harrell and Matthews, and they say, what’s the matter, Danny? Something you don’t like? And then he goes into his whole spiel about middle of the day. Indeed, come out a serious counterattack on a moment’s notice, and I’ll talk about in a moment the plant cot, as it is mentioned a little bit in the film, but there’s more to that story.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Going back to the movie, as we see the mission start, almost right away, you’re talking about how things were, you know, even in the meeting, they were like, okay, things might not be rigid, but we start to see hints, too, as the mission’s starting, that things are probably not going to go right. There’s a line of dialogue I’ll point out from Ewan McGregor’s character, Grimes. He asks if the amount of fire that they’re getting is normal, and somebody with a soldier next to him says, “No, this is about 10 times worse than anything I’ve seen before.” Were there indications that early on that things might be worse than usual?

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, so as I mentioned, the scene with McKnight voicing his concerns to Colonels Harrell and Matthews, who are going to be in the C-2 bird, saying, you know, life’s imperfect for you to up in a bird a couple hundred feet up in the sky, but out on the street, it’s unforgiving, and you see that happen. So there’s that moment of almost foreshadowing of what he tells them. No Spectre gunship, middle of the day, and as I mentioned, cot. It’s a widely dispersed drug that is given out to the militiamen. It’s almost like it has a cocaine effect. Basically, it heightens your senses. You’re high on this drug. You’re chewing on it in the middle of the day. About an hour or so later, you’re twitching.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Just what you want with a gun.

Joshua Donohue
You’re ready to go, and yeah, exactly, and you’re not– your fear factor is brought down significantly. So many of the young men that were patrolling the streets of Mogadishu on what were called technicals– you see them in the film, these pickup trucks with a large caliber– whether it be a .50 caliber machine gun, whether it be an American or a Russian gun, or what’s called a recoilless rifle. So the drug, as I mentioned, many of the men were addicted to it. It’s really a mild amphetamine, so they would start again chewing on it, and it basically increases your aggressiveness, lowering your fear factor. So as the Americans will see once they hit the streets of Mogadishu, these men will sometimes take multiple hits and still keep coming at you, almost like zombies in a way. Those documentaries you watch, even young children, young boys– I vividly remember just seeing these young children. The rifle is practically bigger than they are. They’re in an AK-47. They’re practically dragging it. And they’re fighting literally every able-bodied person in the city. So as we go to the scene where Irene, the call to launch the mission, is given, garrisons going from one helicopter to another, telling the men good luck, no one gets left behind. This actually did happen. So there’s a little bit of a saying, “Okay, he doesn’t really do that,” and kind of giving a sense that, okay, he might have an inkling that this mission might be a little bit more risky. So when we see the Delta Force operators hit the ground at 3.42 p.m. and make their way into the target building, the meeting is taking place, the Rangers begin to fast rope down, and there’s that unforgettable scene where Army Ranger Private First Class Todd Blackburn misses the rope and falls almost 70 feet to the street. This indeed does happen, not because the pilot– in the show, an RPG is fired and Eversman yells to Walcott, “Jeremy Fibbon,” he kind of jerks the helicopter, it flies past. Yeah, it doesn’t really happen that way. Blackburn just–whether he missed the rope and he falls. Again, Eversman–I read his description of it– he doesn’t really see him fall, but as he’s roping down, he sees Blackburn motionless in the street, and that heavy rotor wash, the dust that’s whipped up and the dirt that’s flying around from the Blackhawks rotor wash is already being worked on there by two medics, Private Good and there’s another. They’ve already stabilized Blackburn, opened his airway. Eversman sees first-hand how bad Blackburn’s injuries are. He’s unconscious, he’s bleeding from the ears, nose, mouth, and Sergeant Jeff Strucker and the rest of the ground convoy have already reached their objective and are tasked with loading the prisoners, blocking the assault forces, and taking them really out of the city. So they’re really a mix, the convoy of Humvees, these M939 flatbed, these 5-ton trucks that would be moving in and out of the city. One of the Humvees was a cargo Humvee. They were also carrying a mix of Delta and Navy SEALs as well, so the SEALs were actually involved in this operation too for extra security on the convoy. So McKnight was leading the convoy, Strucker was then ordered to evacuate Todd Blackburn, and one difference that we see is Blackburn is evacuated– he’s actually evacuated in the SEAL Humvee, driven by Master Sergeant Chuck Eswine. So at this point, they have actually seized the objective. They’ve gotten a number of prisoners. They were hoping Idene was going to be among them, but unfortunately he’s not. But again, these two top Tier 1 personalities were the objective at the time. They got them. Obviously, besides the fact that Todd Blackburn’s severe injury, everything is going to plan, but things will, as we’ll see, fall apart pretty quickly.

Dan LeFebvre
>> In the movie it seems like things have just started there when we see the first American soldier getting killed. It’s Sergeant Pilla. He’s operating one of the machine guns on one of the Humvees going — as they’re going to pick up the prisoners. And then he’s shot in the neck and killed almost immediately. Was he the first KIA on the mission?

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, he was. He is– and I– Jeff Strucker tells the story of it, and he is– when they make the turn of the Humvees onto National Street, Jeff Strucker tells this with just such clarity. He says, “They– every side, all sides above them and on either side is just absolutely lit up with machine gun fire. They were just driving through a gauntlet as they were trying to get out of the city.” So Dominic Pilla was indeed the first KIA of the mission. He is shot and killed as the movie depicts. It’s a little bit different than I think you see, somewhat similar. Strucker describes it as they were driving through, and there was a Somali militiaman that stepped out with his gun. He was actually pointing it at a Paulson who was on the .50 caliber, and that Pilla had seen him, and they literally pointed their guns at each other. Pilla fired, killed the militiaman. The Somali fired, killed Pilla. So they literally shot each other dead at that moment. And again, that’s what Jeff Strucker describes. So when Pilla’s death, as you say, Pilla was a guy who was just a jokester in the hangar as he’s depicted in the movie, poking fun at Captain Mike Steele and Lieutenant Larry Perino. So when Strucker confirms Pilla’s death, and you see when McKnight keeps asking, “What’s the status? What’s the status?” and he says, “He’s dead,” all the veterans say the same thing, “What happens next?” The radio went absolutely silent for a couple of seconds, and then radio traffic picks up again. And that’s another thing that we’ll talk about. Just the communications that day were pretty chaotic and nonexistent in a lot of areas, which were the complicated things. So Pilla’s death comes as a bit of a shock for the task force, task force ranger. Strucker, when they pull in back to the base, talks about having to clean out the back of this Humvee, the scene where Eric Banner’s character looks into the back, sees all the blood, all the empty shell casings, the damage to the vehicle, the bullet holes in the glass of the vehicle. So when these Humvees arrive back with Pilla and Todd Blackburn, the activity at the ranger hangar is beginning to step up significantly. So they have to go back in the city because, obviously, what occurs next?

Dan LeFebvre
>> You mentioned — not to go back to Blackburn, I mean him being injured, but you mentioned the SEALs. And maybe one of the reasons why they didn’t really show that — I don’t — did they mention the Navy SEALs in the movie at all? I know they mentioned like the Delta Force and the Rangers, but I don’t remember the SEALs. So maybe it was just simple.

Joshua Donohue
They were there, but they don’t really– there’s no mention of them in the film at all. But during research, they definitely had a bit of a presence there, not nearly as pronounced as Delta Force and the rangers, obviously. But they were there, as I said, as really a backing force, extra security on those convoys. If you’re operating on the streets and you’re in the middle of a firefight and there are a couple of Navy SEALs around, you’re going to feel a little bit better about things. Absolutely, no discredit there either. So it was quite a bit of a mix of special operations groups all sort of intermingled at once. What’s interesting about the rocket-propelled grenade is that it’s actually not meant to be used in an anti-aircraft capacity whatsoever. It’s extremely dangerous and almost suicidal to point an RPG skyward because the violet backblast that’s emitted once the round is fired, if you’re facing a wall, the back of that concussion, that energy can just kill you. There’s been plenty of instances, I’m sure, where some unsuspecting RPG operator may not realize someone’s behind them and that thing goes off and that’ll kill you outright. So the pressure wave that’s created behind the RPG tube itself would basically hit a solid wall in a split second and then the wave comes back at the shooter. So Durant and the other Black Hawk pilots were becoming more mindful of the RPGs as they began to see more and more of them being shot at them in the missions leading up to October 3rd, as I mentioned, the one that happened in September of ’93. So another danger which faced the militiamen firing an RPG in the street was that if they, indeed, lived to tell the tale, they got really well adept at sort of firing quickly in an open area without worrying about killing the operator and quickly ducking away in the best sort of manner because they could be easily seen by an MH-6 Little Bird pilot or a minigunner or one of the crew chiefs on the Black Hawks and they’re immediately going to shoot right at them. So when Cliff Walcott’s Black Hawk Super 6-1 is hit by an RPG, the shooter is actually seen, and this is in real life, by Staff Sergeant Charlie Warren, who was one of the crew chiefs with Staff Sergeant Ray Dowdy in the back of their helicopter. So Super 6-1 will lose sight of the shooter for a few moments as it’s going into its turning orbit. Seconds later, the RPG is fired and strikes Super 6-1’s tail rotor. The film does a good job showing what happens in this particular instance. Walcott’s Super 6-1 will crash into a narrow alleyway on its side leaning up against a brick wall. And to fast forward a little bit, in 2013, CBS News 60 Minutes did a report on– they dug up a lot of the wreckage of Super 6-1. We’ll go to that later on. They show actual footage of Super 6-1’s crash. It’s out there. And you see it immediately starts to spin, and the violence, the horrific impact you see, it takes your breath away. And the film does a good job of depicting this. And when it happens, there are Delta operators also in the back of Super 6-1. Jim Smith, Jim McMahon, and Dan Bush all survive the impact along with the two crew chiefs, Dowdy and Warren. Unfortunately for the two pilots, Cliff– Elvis Walcott and Donovan Bull-Briley, his co-pilot, both are killed in the impact instantly. Delta Staff Sergeant Dan Bush would lose his life defending the crash chopper. You see this depicted in the film. You also see it once in the actual footage of Super 6-1’s crash. They show the camera as it kind of comes around, and you can see right down the narrow alleyway. You can just make out Dan Bush standing at the end of the alleyway firing his machine gun down at the Somalis. As you see in the film, Richard Tyson plays him in the film. He’s all bloody. He’s standing outside defending the chopper. That’s a true story. Dan Bush died defending Super 6-1. He shot multiple times. So as I mentioned earlier, I.D.’s militiamen were getting much more aggressive, but there were attacks on the American helicopters. And again, as I mentioned, the one on September 25th and then the week prior. So there was indeed a plan to go get these guys. And as you see, Star 4-1, the MH-6 Little Birds, ordered to go down, land right at the crash site, and evacuate wounded. This is a true story. Chief Warrant Officer 3, Carl Meyer, and Chief Warrant Officer 4, Keith Jones, both fly in in the middle of this firefight. Literally, I believe it’s–I think it’s Meyer might be the one– is literally his arm is out–you see in the film, his arm is out the window shooting an MP5 with once the stick of the helicopter and his gun out the window shooting back. They would be awarded the Silver Star for their efforts there. So the Dan Bush defense of the helicopter, it did indeed happen. And again, the footage of Super 6-1, as you can see, but when it was released in 2013, is about as close to the actual– what you see in the film–happen.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Wow, wow. Well, obviously, once Super 6-1 goes down in the movie, Yeah, they really had to, because what had happened, it’s going to be obvious to everybody. This is no longer the 30-minute mission that we had talked about earlier. And maybe you already answered this somewhat, but what — did they have a contingency plan in place for, like, when this helicopter goes down?

Joshua Donohue
obviously, as I mentioned the week prior, they immediately send out a quick reaction force to get forces to the site as quickly as possible, because they’re, in effect, in a race against time. And that’s why you see when the helicopter goes down, there’s that immediate–Garrison’s looking at this whole thing happening, and he makes that great quote, “We just lost the initiative.” And that changes the entire landscape of the battle. You now are going from this mission where we’ve just captured a big group of IDID’s top officials, and we are just close to getting everything squared away and out of the city, and then the mission changes once Super 6-1 is shot down. So from that point on, and then obviously later on when Super 6-4 is shot down, the mission will just go right from getting survivors out, seeing what we can do as far as if anyone’s trapped inside, we don’t even know who’s alive. And obviously with Super 6-4, we’ll see a different set of circumstances happen there. It’s a little bit further south of Walcott’s crash site. So they definitely had a plan to go in, get these guys out, and what they do is the survivors, the U.S. Air Force pararescue men come in, Wilkinson and others, as you’ll see in the film, are inside the Black Hawk trying to get the crew chiefs out, both the Dowdy and the other, and literally the helicopter’s on its side. Everything’s just been thrown out of the helicopter. It’s laying in a really tight alleyway. So they literally will use Super 6-1 as a casualty collection point. They’ll put up armor plating and anything they can dig out of the helicopter to defend it. There’s machine guns already in the helicopter. There’s M16s and other rifles in there in case this happens. So they definitely were planning for in case this does happen, we have to consolidate our forces, move them into the crash site, and defend it the best way we can until we can get a ground convoy in there to get everybody out. But as we see in the film, and this does happen in real life, they are able to get Donovan “Bull” Briley’s body out of the helicopter. He’s kind of up, leaning up on its side, so they’re able to kind of pull him down. But for Cliff Wolcott, the crash, the violence of the crash is when he’s driven the helicopter into the ground. He is trapped by the frame, really the front panel, instrument panel of the helicopter. So getting his body out of the helicopter will take some time. But as the military of the United States of America, we strongly adhere to no soldier left behind.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Yeah, and we’ll talk more about that as we get further into the movie. But I’m curious cuz the movie really focuses obviously on the United States side of things. But there are hints that we’ve talked about already about more gunfire than they expected. And so from the Somalian side, again, just being movies being movies, they often tend to exaggerate things. But it just seems like there’s constant waves of the Somalian militia. Can you clarify what the Somalian resistance was like?

Joshua Donohue
Well, as you can see, Aidid’s militia were well-armed and prepared to go toe-to-toe with the Americans on the streets of Mogadishu. One of the key strategies was what we see happens when crowds are gathering. Roadblocks are being quickly put into place. They’re using the burned-out hulks of cars. They’re using anything they could possibly use as a deterrent and preventing American reinforcements from getting in and out of the city. So these tire fires start burning up and going up in the sky. That’s also a signal saying that whoever’s in the immediate area that come to where this tire fire is, and there’s going to be activity where this is going to be. So while it might seem sort of in many ways primitive and shaking their head, “How can we let this possibly happen this way?” They’re not a technically advanced force. But if you’re using simple tactics, they will bring…

Dan LeFebvre
>> It’s their home ground too, so they know, yeah, the ins and outs too, yeah.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, the simplest things can make a biggest difference on the battlefield.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Yeah.

Joshua Donohue
So another thing is, if you’ll notice throughout the film, the Somalis are using both Soviet and American-made weaponry for the most part. The predominant is the Kalashnikov, the AK-47, with its signature banana clip. You definitely see American Browning .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the back of Somali technicals. You also see Russian Dushka heavy machine guns as well. So during the Cold War, there were huge stockpiles of both American and Soviet-made weapons at their disposal. Both countries were major arms suppliers at different points during the Cold War. So there were also numerous amounts of weapons, ammunition going in and out of the city, acquired before and after the regime of the former president, Mohammed Sayyad Barre. So weapons begin to filter through the Somalia from Egypt, from Libya, Kenya, from countries near the Persian Gulf, through the black market. So these heavily armed militias were known as the Moriyan. They’re basically these young Somali gunmen who are recruited from refugee camps and trained as militia. So they fell also into the drunk trade and with warlords controlling the flow of cot, as I mentioned as well. They would hand out the drug to these militias and giving them, obviously, as we talked about, the much more aggressive potency of the drug. You’re basically creating these soldiers who are not going to run away from the fight. As you see, they are standing firm, going out of windows, rooftops. Every which way they can conduct an effective urban combat type of battle, they’re going to do that. So Aidid was able to really round up, organize, an effective fighting force within really minutes or maybe even a few hours. As Major General David Meade noted, he was the command of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division in August of 1993, and only really a quick reaction force of reinforcements, again, preventing the engineers and the tankers from being under attack, overwhelmed and killed, he wrote. So the attack was troublesome, as he mentioned, because of the boldness and the commitment to Aidid’s forces to the apparent planning that went into it. So General Meade estimated between 300 and 500 Somali fighters had assembled, bringing peacekeepers in particular at that point in time under fire on a regular basis. So this is before even a major combat operation is launched. They’re putting these forces against peacekeepers. So they have these really well-coordinated, well-rehearsed scenarios. Okay, when this group comes in, we’re going to hit them here, or we’re going to hit them here, we’re going to trap them here, we’ll let them out here. So when that– really what has changed is that the militiamen, as far as when they were better organized, where the United Nations had sort of took over the Somalia operation in May of ’93, they saw them far more ready to use command-detonated mines, making it more difficult for U.S. forces to attack. You worry about mines and IEDs, you’re really going to– they’ll pay attention using roadblocks, mortar attacks, and ambushes to great effect as well. So it’s also important to note that Somali fighters were also highly experienced. They’ve been fighting the civil war for the better part of the last five or six years. They handle large caliber weapons. Women and children are also fighters as well. So most of the Rangers and even a lot of the Deltas did not have that continuous, sustained combat experience. There were some who had obviously probably seen Operation Desert Storm to a limited degree, but for the most part, in the 1980s, you had these sort of limited operations. The 160th Delta and Rangers were involved in Operation Just Cause, which happened in 1989, taking Manuel Noriega and that whole situation there when George Bush had just become president. So again, most of the Rangers and Delta are fighting an experienced– the average militiaman, even a small child might have experience, and you really don’t know. So it can certainly complicate a typical battle where you’re trying to search house to house for the enemy and try to limit civilian casualties at the same time. That’s something that’s not easy to do, as we see. The scene where Eddie Uric is kind of– he gets lost down an alleyway. He ends up in a school with some young children and a teacher, and he’s telling them to be quiet, and the father and his son are hunting them outside with their AK-47s. He slips, and the son shoots his father on accident and goes to hug him, and he’s dying there as the son, whose arms are around him. That’s the kind of thing that they would experience. It wasn’t just 20-, 30-year-old men. They’re fighting men and children of all ages and all genders.

Dan LeFebvre
>> That really puts a lot more into perspective too, I mean, cuz you think of, if you’re just watching the movie and you think, okay, there’s Delta Force and they’re fighting battles against just civilians that just have been armed with weapons, but there’s more to it than that, than just they’re handing out. Not in this movie, but you see movies where they just have weapons that they just hand out to people as they’re running to the battle, right?

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, you see that in the film.

Dan LeFebvre
And you almost think that that might.

Joshua Donohue
Like right when they are launching the mission and you see where the young child is holding up the phone, and then he calls to the other young boy. He throws the phone down, and it gives it to the head Somali– one of the head Somali militiamen there, and then they go right into– Bacara Market is really what it is, but it’s a market for weapons. They’re just selling assault rifles and ammunition right on the streets, and they’re just going– at any given moment, if there’s an attack, they can gather a good amount of weaponry and use it at their disposal at pretty much a moment’s notice.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Earlier you mentioned Super Six Four, and if we go back to the movie, we see everyone is trying to secure Super Six One’s crash site. And then the unimaginable happens, another Black Hawk helicopter, Super Six Four, is hit. And at first, according to the movie, they think at first it’s gonna be okay, but then we see the tail rotor kind of sputters a little bit and then it flies off. And now there are two Black Hawk helicopters down. How well does the movie do showing the second crash?

Joshua Donohue
So a number of years ago, I read Mike Durant’s book. It came out about 10 years after the battle. It’s called In the Company of Heroes, and he details the sequence of events that occurs. So he describes the RPG hitting his Black Hawk. He definitely feels the impact, but he and his co-pilot Ray Frank are able to continue flying the MH-60 for, as he describes, and then hearing Matthews in the C-2 bird telling him, as you see in the film, that you’re hit pretty bad. You might be okay trying to sit down on the airfield and have it get checked out. He recalls that conversation, and Durant then describes how he wants to try to avoid landing anywhere in the city. He doesn’t want to land right in the middle of a firefight. He makes the decision to try and land– make the landing field, which is about 2 miles away from Mogadishu. So a few seconds later, the tail rotor assembly completely explodes and disintegrates. Again, they show a really good visual of that as it’s kind of flying through that column of smoke, and it’s kind of–you see it’s rotating, and it’s off-center, and it eventually disintegrates.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Kind of wobbles a little bit and then just, yeah.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, so the tail rotor basically counters the torque that’s created by the main rotor. So once that balance is effectively disrupted, the helicopter is going to spin like this. So Durant and Ray Frank are wrestling the controls, trying to counter the spin, trying to pull the engine levers above them offline, but the centrifugal force created from the spin makes it nearly impossible to pull the engine levers, which the pilots were attempting to do at the time. Ray Frank, I think, gets a few of them, but not all of them. And in a chilling sort of audio, when Super 64 crashes, as happens in the film and also in real life, you hear Mike Durant yell “Ray” as soon as the helicopter goes down, and Durant and Ray Frank have managed to land the helicopter flat. It actually comes down and crushes a dwelling that they land right on the middle of it, whereas Super 61 landed with much more of an uncontrolled sort of violent impact. So whatever Durant and Ray Frank were able to do, they were able to somehow, someway, in this cluster of tin roof air in the middle of a neighborhood, just land it right down flat. So Durant then recalls waking and realizing how badly he’s injured in the crash. Two of his vertebrae are crushed together. His right leg is broken on the edge of the seat of the Blackhawk. The seats that were meant to actually absorb a hard landing do its job, but Durant crashes extremely hard, and they basically say he tested that seat well beyond its limits. So Durant then recalls a conversation that he has with Ray Frank, who has suffered similar injuries as he has. They have a brief exchange, then Ray Frank tells him, “I’m gonna step out of the helicopter.” He moves himself out the door, and that’s the last time that Durant would ever see him alive. So in the back of Super 64, our crew chiefs, Bill Cleveland and Tommy Field, are grievously injured by the crash. It’s believed that both men will die not too long afterwards. Durant quickly realizes that the Somalis are on their way to the crash site. He can hear gunfire getting closer, and he’s preparing then to fire his gun out the window at any oncoming militiamen. So there were several photographs taken of Super 64 in the days after the battle. One photo that I came across that I’d never actually seen before, it’s rare, it shows the tail section of Super 64, and you can see the shrapnel damage created by that RPG right in the back of the tail. So it’s pretty striking how much, how successful they are, getting not one, but two, and as we’ll talk about a little bit, there are other Black Hawks that will sustain hits from RPGs as well, not just those two.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Well, I guess it kind of goes to, I mean, they’re not, different crashes, they’re not gonna be the same, the way they’re hitting stuff. But for RPGs, correct me if I’m wrong, but they don’t target, it’s not like you think of a heat seeking missile or anything, it’s not anything like that. So it’s almost like, I’d say pure luck that they hit it, that sounds wrong. But how is the accuracy of that? I mean, I would assume that it’s just kind of, you shoot up and you hope that it hits.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, it’s not a guided weapon. I think a lot of, probably some of the concerns of a lot of the commanders there at the time where there’s what’s called NANPADS, or what’s called a Stinger missile, which is a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking guided missile that once you lock on to an aircraft or a helicopter and that missile’s fired, that thing is going to go straight at its target where…

Dan LeFebvre
>> Use that one in Call of Duty, yeah.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, exactly. Where you have an RPG, it simply, you fire it, it has a rock, sort of like a motor, a spinning propeller motor at the end of it, and it makes that very distinct whirring sound as it goes by you. But once it loses its momentum, it just basically, it just arcs over and just kind of drops down and then it explodes. So you kind of have to be in a spot where the momentum is going to, that projectile is going to go straight up into its target and you’re not really going to have to be sort of lobbing it or arcing, you have to make a really direct shot at the helicopter. And if you see in the film, a couple of RPGs are shot at Durant’s helicopter, one hits and another kind of shoots over it, and it kind of, the physics of it gives you an idea of what the flight of the rocket around itself would do in flight. So I think that, you know, that really Scott just does a phenomenal job there. And again, it’s not a, it’s a dangerous thing to fire one of these things. You’re supposed to shoot it straight ahead, not up. But they’ve again, rehearsed and practiced this and it is again, successful and it turns out to be successful again, as I mentioned, multiple times, not just against Super 6-1 and Super 6-4.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned the other one that the movie shows missing. And we talked about it before with Blackburn, the movie shows another one that gets shot and missing. So you get to see this sense of, it’s not just like they shot twice and happened to hit two helicopters. It was, you’re shooting and just you happen to hit some of them, but you’re shooting a lot in the air.

Joshua Donohue
Because these Blackhawks would fly in such a low orbit that if there’s somebody, if someone’s on a roof or has direct line of sight and you’re out in the open and you’re brave enough to go out there and not get caught off guard by a Little Bird or another Blackhawk or the Blackhawk you’re shooting at, you have a pretty good clear line of sight and you can certainly, as the Somali militiamen prove, make that shot and again, to great effectiveness that they know just by the lessons that they’d learned. And this is all playing right into Adid’s strategy because he knows that they’re not going to run away. They’re going to go right to those crash sites and he now has the ability to effectively trap the Americans inside the city itself.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Well, at this point in the movie’s timeline, there’s two crash sites. And according to the movie, there’s a scene in the Joint Operations Center where they kind of lay out the situation once the second Blackhawk goes down. It’s laid out to General Garrison there. And according to the movie, there’s ground forces in several buildings. They’re all kind of spread out. Eversman’s Chalk 4 has a perimeter set up around Super 6-1’s crash site. They were the first helicopter to go down. And then Captain Steele has about 40 men a couple blocks away, but they’ve suffered a lot of injuries, so they can’t all move. And a small Delta Force team under Sergeant Sanderson is leaving Steele’s position to go try to establish a perimeter around Super 6-4’s crash site. Is that a pretty good snapshot of what the situation was like after Super 6-4 went down?

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, it is. As conditions continue to deteriorate and the mission had effectively bogged down because as I mentioned, as the Super 6-1 crash site, Cliff Walcott’s body is crushed inside with the helicopter so they have to literally cut the helicopter apart. They tried digging him out from below. That’s not successful. So they are frantically trying to get his body out. So that is kind of complicating things. Keeping the perimeter around the crash site. There’s about 99 Rangers taking up defensive positions within the buildings in the growing shadows of now nightfall is starting to happen on the city of the northern crash site. So they treat their wounded. They work to free, again, Super 6-1 pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Walcott’s remains from the wreckage. And while all holding off these frantic Somali militias that were trying to get to them as quickly as possible. So as I mentioned, you see in the film where Star 4-1 with Meyer and Keith Jones coming in to get Dan Bush and a number of the other guys out of there, the severely wounded guys out of the crash site. There’s another part that you don’t see in the film. A combat search and rescue, or CSARBUR as it’s known, was dispatched in Blackhawk Super 6-8. So this one was led by Captain Bill Coltrop and a 15-man CSAR team, including, as I mentioned, the United States Air Force Sergeant Scott Fales and Sergeant Timothy Wilkinson. They are USAF para-rescue men. So they, Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Bray is among there, to mention him as well. They fast-roped down to Super 6-1’s crash site, and rappelling down an SNA RPG would hit Super 6-8 as well. It nearly severs the main rotor blades, and Super 6-8 is piloted by Dan Gelada, Chief Warrant Officer Dan Gelada, and Major Herb Rodriguez, and they’re able to limp the helicopter back to base. I think Rodriguez is knocked unconscious, and Gelada has to fly the helicopter pretty much single-handedly and limp this thing, fuel’s pouring out of it. That helicopter takes a major hit as well. So Wilkinson then moves quickly to the front of Super 6-1 on the ground. Delta soldier Sergeant McMahon, who was in the back of Super 6-1 when it crashed, he is already on top of the bird, trying to pull out Donovan “Bull” Briley out of the passenger seat, out of the co-pilot seat, and Briley was obviously dead. He had suffered a major injury, a head injury. His body was, again, brought out. Wilkinson then helps McMahon pull other survivors that they carry them over to, as I mentioned, the casualty collection area in around the crash site itself. So then McMahon goes to get medical attention for his own injuries. So the helicopter itself had not exploded. There was no major fire. It had just simply dropped, and it was just quiet. There was no violent fire or explosions or anything like that. Captain Steele’s primary objective at this point was to consolidate his forces and gain some semblance of order on the ground and to pinpoint exactly where his men were in relation to his position in a courtyard area, which had been set up as a casualty collection point where the dead and wounded were being assembled. Delta operator Sergeant First Class Earl Fillmore had been killed on the way to the crash site, and this also came as a shock to many of the men who knew him. Tom Satterly, one of the Delta operators there, talks about his death and Dan Bush and the Delta guys as the Rangers. We’re all really, really tight with one another, and all of these guys are getting killed out there, and they’re thinking to themselves, “These guys who I’ve been training with and have known all these years are dying, where’s that–what am I going to– where does that leave me?” So Captain Mike Steele had lost contact with Matt Eversman’s Chalk 4. As you see during the battle, Lieutenant Larry Perino’s men would occupy a small tin shed. It was only a few yards away from Super 6-1. So it was around this time when Corporal Jamie Smith was shot, as you see in the film. Medic Kurt Schmidt and Larry Perino would drag Smith into a courtyard where the horses realized the bullet had severed his femoral artery. So that pretty much stalls any kind of rescue operation that’s going–because now they have Smith, who’s bleeding out in the middle of the street of Mogadishu. He’s dying, and Perino, then, radios Captain Steele and tells him that he has many wounded, he cannot move. So in the film, it’s actually Kurt Schmidt and Eversman, as you see working on Jamie Smith’s leg wound, but in reality, it’s actually Larry Perino, not Eversman, that’s with Kurt Schmidt, as they’re trying to clamp his arteries shut, and they can’t find it, it’s retracted up into his hip. So as dust begins to settle over Mogadishu, and one of the many examples of the brave pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment risking their lives to help their fellow soldiers on the ground, a Blackhawk Super 6-6, piloted by Chief Warrant Officers Stan Wood and Gary Fuller, would hover their Blackhawk over Marahan Road for a much-needed resupply. Delta operators in the back are literally shoving kit bags out of the helicopter with water, ammunition, IV bags. The helicopter was hit several times by gunfire, even damaging the transmission. So the pilots of the bird kept that thing steady right above the city, and they were able to resupply successfully and bring the bird back out again. So if you were flying a helicopter, especially a Blackhawk in low orbit over that city that day, you were going to draw fire, an intense amount of fire, as you see, as soon as they get in that vulnerable hold, that hovering pattern, they’re just a sitting duck. Yeah, they really are. And it just kind of gives you a snapshot of exactly what the situation on the streets of Mogadishu were going into from the evening of October 3rd into the next morning of October 4th. So part of the– when I was researching it, I came across one of the Delta operators who was there. I’ll mention him a little bit later on too. His name is Paul Howe, and he’s actually the character that Sanderson is, William Fichter’s guy, I mentioned that earlier. And I mentioned Tom Satterly, who was one of the Delta operators there. And this particular document– it’s almost a documentary, but it’s just Paul Howe talking for three hours about how the Deltas basically conducted the operation, how the Rangers’ leadership was, in many words, inept. He really goes after Captain Steele. So there’s a bit of a disconnect there between the guys on the ground, between the Deltas and the Rangers, a little bit of, okay, Paul Howe talks about he was along that same roadway hunkering down that night, and Satterly says, “I just remember how angry Paul Howe was that night. He was fuming that the mission had gone so badly, and he was literally taking his anger out on every possible person. He sees a Ranger in a wrong spot. “What are you doing? You’re not fighting. Dude, go over there and do it this way.” So he was literally lecturing the Rangers that night that he was just so– had all this pent-up energy, and things had just gone so badly that that description of it– and as I mentioned, that documentary is quite telling, Speaking of the different helicopters, if we go back to the movie, but we’ll get to that later on.

Dan LeFebvre
we see Sanderson’s team can’t get to the Super 64 crash site before another Black Hawk in the area notices that there’s hundreds of Somalian militia just heading to the crash site. So in the movie, we see two Delta snipers, Sugar and Gordon, requesting permission to cover the crash site until ground troops can get there. But they’re denied that request because command doesn’t want to risk another helicopter. Of course, in the movie, we see two of them crash, but as you’re talking about, there’s even more that got hit as well, so it makes sense. But then in the movie, they volunteer to go on the ground after they acknowledge that this means they’re probably going to be on their own. But we see the two Delta snipers, Sugar and Gordon, go on the ground, and they manage to pull out one of the surviving pilots, Durant, away from Super 64’s crash site. But then despite some heroic fighting on their part, the two snipers are overrun by militia. Durant is almost killed, but he’s taken captive instead. And at the end of the movie, we don’t have to go too far ahead, but we find out that Durant was released after 11 days of captivity, while Sugar and Gordon were the first soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor posthumously since the Vietnam War. How well does the movie do telling this part of the story?

Joshua Donohue
It’s about as close to the actual story as you could possibly get. The Black Hawk, which carried Randy Chigart and Gary Gordon, which was Super 6-2, followed by Mike Grafina, who was a good friend of Mike Durant’s, and Jim Racone. When Super 6-2 drops the two Delta snipers on the ground, the helicopter is also hit by an RPG. So this makes four Black Hawks hit by RPGs, and Super 6-2 is hit, and CSAR Bird Super 6-8 is hit. And then this RPG severely damages the Black Hawk and also severely wounds the Delta operator who’s in the back, Delta operator Brad Hauling. He loses his left leg as a result of this RPG hit. So Mike Grafina is able to limp his stricken Black Hawk back to the airfield. Again, it is severely damaged by this RPG. And Durant recalls when he’s at the helicopter and he’s trying to reorient himself, and he sees the Somali militia coming at him, as you see in the film. He sees Chigart and Gordon come around the aircraft and say, as you see in the film, he knocks on the helicopter, says, “Friendlies,” and they start firing. So he actually refers to them as Batman and Robin. They just had that, almost that superhero-like aura about them. They had just come out of nowhere and had this, again, this heroic presence about them. It lifted him out of the Black Hawk, placed him down just a short distance away, propped him up against the wall, and gave him a loaded MP5. So Durant says that they didn’t really say much to him other than ask him about his injuries. They went back around the front of the helicopter and started firing at the gathering crowd that was converging on the helicopter. So Durant actually recalls that Chigart and Gordon took Bill Cleveland, who was one of the Super 64 crew chiefs, placed him near Durant. Durant said that he was kind of incoherent. He can hear him talking but couldn’t really make out what he was saying. Obviously, he was severely injured from the crash, and that he knew he was in great pain, and he was soaked in blood. So Durant, as badly injured as he was, kept his head and really thought to himself that he was going to be rescued at any moment, and that he recounts the volume of AK-47 fire increasing as Chigart and Gordon kept up their fire against the large crowd. So as we see, Gary Gordon is killed, and then eventually Randy Chigart is killed as well. And I think the sequence of events that occurs is pretty accurate. Durant tells the story in such vivid detail. He says he was out of ammunition. He took the weapon, he put it on his chest, crossed his arms over his chest, and just looked up to the sky as the mob ascended upon him. And they just were beating him and just were yanking his gear off. He has a compound fracture of his leg.

Dan LeFebvre
I was going to say, he’s already injured, and then, yeah.

Joshua Donohue
His back is severely injured. I mean, he’s now in this predicament where you also see somebody come over and just absolutely hit him square across the face. It breaks his nose, his eye socket, his orbital, his cheekbone, and this actually does occur. He thinks to himself, “This is it. I’m done. I’m never going to be able to–this is going to be my last couple of breaths on Earth.” And as you see, the mob is quickly broken up by a couple of shots to the air. One of the Somali militiamen realizing that if we capture Durant alive, he could be of good value to us in terms of some kind of ransom. They were using food basically as currency. The more food shipments they’re receiving, that’s basically as good as money. You’re controlling the money, the food, and you’re controlling the entire power base more or less. Ideed’s men did have this sort of awareness of, “You know what? How could this benefit the militia? How is this going to benefit Muhammad Farah Ideed?” So there was that sense that capturing one of the Americans alive will not only have great propaganda value, but will also sort of shift the entire midi, the mood of the public opinion to our side more or less.

Dan LeFebvre
>> I’m assuming then the other, Cleveland, I think you said, right?

Joshua Donohue
Bill Cleveland did not survive.

Dan LeFebvre
I’m assuming he didn’t survive.

Joshua Donohue
And from all accounts, from what I can tell, as we see what happens in real life– and I remember this very well when I was– I had just started high school when this happened. And I vividly remember two things. I remember Mike Durant’s face in captivity, the picture of his face in the picture of his face is bloody, you can see the fear in his eyes. And I remember, and I believe by all accounts, Bill Cleveland is one of the American servicemen that’s dragged to the streets. And that happens. CNN showed those images right after the battle. So that part of it, the soldiers being dragged to the streets, those are the men of Super Six Four. [AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
>> Wow.

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to the movie, we had talked earlier about kind of what the original plan was, and we talked a lot about what happened in the skies with the helicopters,

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
but according to the original plan in the movie, Sergeant McKnight’s convoy of Humvees

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
was supposed to take everybody back to base camp, including the prisoners. But then in the chaos of the battle, McKnight’s convoy takes heavy fire.

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
Many of the soldiers are killed or wounded.

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
They’re low on ammo, and so we see Garrison asking McKnight for a no-BS analysis

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
of whether or not he can actually get to the crash site. McKnight says, “We’re going to do more harm than good if we do that,”

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT]

Dan LeFebvre
so they go back to base camp to rearm and regroup. Can you give an overview of how accurately the movie portrays McKnight’s convoy?

Joshua Donohue
[AUDIO OUT] In terms of the communications that day, as I told you earlier, as the situation on the streets of the city got more and more chaotic and confused, while I was researching it, I was able to hear some audio of the transmissions that were going on. And as I mentioned, you see in the film, “McKnight’s Convoy,” there was a delay from the JSOC to the C2 bird, from JSOC, from the surveillance to the C2 bird with Colonel Matthews and Harrell, then down to the ground elements. So this proved to be costly. And I listened to some of these transmissions, and you really get a clearer picture of exactly what these communication issues were plaguing, how they were plaguing the operation. In one transmission, you hear, quote, unquote, “Continue to take the next right. Turn southbound.” Then you hear a relay, “Next right, next right.” And then all of a sudden you hear, “Alleyway, alleyway.” And then if a long period of silence occurs, “Turn right.” And then you hear a garbled transmission, then all of a sudden, “King element, they just missed their turn. Roger. Take the next available right. Uniform.” Then, “Take the next available right.” That can be blocked. It can be, you know, whatever the case is. Then they have to completely take the convoy back around and what you see happens in the film, in the points where McKnight’s saying, “We just drove through there. Where are you taking us, basically?” And as they’re driving through, still, they’re getting shot to pieces. And another piece of communique you hear is, “Be advised, they’re coming under heavy fire.” And a long delay, then you hear, “Damn it, stop. Damn it, stop.” That they had missed the turn, that they have to hit the brakes, turn back around. And then you hear the relay, “Call me when uniform links up.” We’re still trying to get them into the area. You’re going to have to mark with smoke. Hopefully, we’ll get them close enough to where you can link up. Then it’s again, “Right turn, right turn.” Then they’re always, they’re taking more and more fire. So, as I mentioned, McKnight talks about armor and Garrison mentions armor. Defense Secretary Les Aspin denies that request. And you have to sort of enhance the Humvees with this armor because Hal brings up, as I mentioned, another Delta operator who the last one to lose his life, Matt Ryerson. He appears, Hal appears frustrated with this operation. And since information wasn’t really being passed to the convoy, there was a seven to eight second delay. So, they may really go through one or two intersections not realizing that they’d really missed their turn. So, the radio transmission you hear from McKnight is, “I’ve got a lot of vehicles. It’ll almost be impossible to move with all these casualties that I have getting to the crash site. It’s going to be awful tough. We’re pinned down.” And the reply back, most likely from Colonel Harrell is, “Danny, I really need you to get to that crash site. I know you turned west on Armed Forces Road. What’s your status?” And McKnight replies back, “This is Uniform 64. I have numerous casualties. We have vehicles that are halfway running. We’ve got to get these casualties out of here ASAP, back to the base. We need to get to the K4, over.” So, the fire was just so intense. And McKnight himself is actually hit in the neck, as you see in the film. And they tried a movement from the K4 traffic circle, which they’d also mentioned in the film. But that particular area, as the 10th Mountain Division found out, it was like running a gauntlet. They would have taken even more casualties if they continued to try and push towards the crash site. So, listening to more of that radio traffic going back and forth from the JOC to the C2 burn, McKnight continues to cause– this really causes issues for his convoy getting around. They’re completely lost at this point. And it goes to the point where you hear the transmission, “K55, stop giving directions.” And for a second, you’re talking to the wrong convoy. So, that’s really how badly things are deteriorating. It’s also important to remember that I.D.’s forces were quite effective in positioning, again, as I mentioned, the roadblocks for both Super 6-1 and Super 6-4. I.D. wants to trap the Americans inside the city and not allow any rescue attempts from the outside. And again, it’s– most of the prisoners that they capture, the 20 or so prisoners, are either shot or killed on the way back from their own men. They’re only shot in the back of these trucks as they’re trying to get through the city. So, a lot of these guys they capture in the initial stages of the operation, they don’t make it. [end]

Dan LeFebvre
>> Wow. I think we do see a little bit here. At this point, we see some of those blockades that you were talking about, like, as they’re trying to navigate down the road. They’re like, “Oh, can’t go that way. Nope. Can’t go that way. We have to go almost all the way around the city.” And it just — I’m thinking of, you know, nowadays when I’m navigating, you know, with GPS, it’s like, “Turn right,” you know? But you have — if you just throw that delay and then also streets that you’re not familiar with, some of them are blocked, and then you’re being shot at the whole time. It’s just chaos, I can imagine.

Joshua Donohue
And it really makes you go back to that conversation where McKnight tells Harold and Matthews, “Life’s imperfect for you to circle it above it at 500 feet.” And it’s, again, one of those things where, you know, they just didn’t have that familiarity with the city. Again, the Somalis knew exactly where to pinpoint those roadblocks, where to go, which alleyways, which streets led to where, using those tire fires to get people to those areas as quickly as possible. So, they–credit to them, they really knew how to effectively trap the Americans because, again, this is playing right into the hands of Muhammad Farid Deed’s goal, is to trap the Americans in the city because they know they’re not going to leave their fellow soldiers behind.

Dan LeFebvre
>> Well, you mentioned the 10th Mountain, and if we return to the movie’s timeline, with things going from bad to worse, General Garrison makes the decision to call the 10th Mountain Division with the UN tanks, APCs, whatever it takes to get the stranded soldiers out of there. But the catch, according to the movie, is that the UN doesn’t know anything about this mission. It seems like the mission was kept secret from the UN troops nearby, and that’s why, at least according to the movie, when they talk about how it’ll take a couple hours at least to mobilize the 10th Mountain and 100 vehicles, since they didn’t know about this mission, so they weren’t really prepared for it, of course, General Garrison says they don’t have that long. But the movie doesn’t really talk much about the 10th Mountain’s preparation and role in the American soldiers being rescued. Does the movie do a good job of showing how and when the 10th Mountain got involved?

Joshua Donohue
Well, that’s probably the one part where I might have to push it into why I gave it the A-, because the 10th Mountain

Dan LeFebvre
[ Laughter ]

Joshua Donohue
had a really prominent role in the battle, and there’s actually quite a bit more to the story as far as the 10th Mountain’s division in the battle. They are based out of Fort Drum, New York. They are deployed alongside the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, California, when George H.W. Bush authorizes the deployment of Somalia in December of 1992. So the actions of what’s known as Task Force 214 during the Battle of Mogadishu in this time period, shortly after the murders of the Pakistani peacekeepers, the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry, serves as– as I mentioned earlier, the quick reaction force, QRF. So the 10th Mountain had engaged with IDID’s militiamen and firefights on numerous occasions leading up to the battle. They had been really a liaison to Brigadier General Craig Nixon from Task Force Ranger. So he had helped coordinate operations between the 10th Mountain and Task Force Ranger. So QRF units are sent to respond to any needs of the UN mission, conducting raids, helping security down aircraft. So 214 was supposed to come to the aid of the Rangers and Deltas when Super 6-1 was shot down. They came–they drove from the airfield in an area, as I mentioned, known as the K4 Traffic Circle, where they see a group of Rangers in another column approaching from the opposite direction. So as the Ranger convoy and the other elements from the 10th hit the K4 Traffic Circle, they’re attacked immediately by Somali gunmen. So the convoy of the 10th Mountain gets to National Street where the right turn into there is cut off by a roadblock. They proceed north to a milk factory, which is completely blocked off and surrounded by flames. They then had to turn around and reassemble, and they didn’t have the equipment to break through these barriers. They had to turn and run back through the hail of fire the opposite way. So the 10th Mountain divisions then ordered to link up with a few of the Malaysian mechanized infantry companies and pick up a couple of Pakistani tank platoons at the new port, which is located just outside of the city. So it did, as you mentioned, take quite a bit of time to coordinate with the other tanks, the APC commanders, letting everyone know what the plan is. So they decide to take the route through the city staging area to avoid the chaos of the KFOR traffic circle. So they move into the city or turn onto National Street, which literally puts them in an area between both crash sites. So they commandeer these white armored vehicles that have giant UN on the side of them. So nothing like a giant target, especially when it’s dark out. These white vehicles stand out against the darkness. Because Ewan McGregor’s got that thing where he says these things are bullet-magnets, and that’s the truth. And so they’re going to have to fight, again, in these white vehicles standing out in the darkness. So they’re getting hit on all sides. They’re getting hit with RPGs. So Alpha Company has to dismount their vehicles during this firefight, and that’s when the 10th will lose a prior first-class James Martin, and he will be hit in the fight. They’ll also lose Sergeant Cornell Houston, who was wounded in the chest by gunfire and dies a couple of days later. So Lieutenant Colonel Lee Van Arsdale, a Delta leader who is on the ground, began to organize an exfil from the crash site. Once Wolcott’s body is pulled out of Super 6-1, he then puts the 10th in the lead. He describes this pretty well, that he felt that they, the QRF, should be the element that leads everyone out of the city. He also praises the company commander, Captain Drew Marovitch, and First Sergeant David Meena. Delta operators would be directly behind the 10th, and the Rangers would be the very last out of the city, as we’ll find out later on.

Dan LeFebvre
>> The way that the movie seems to portray it, I guess I understand you’re knocking it from A to A minus here, but it seems like there’s so much more there, but the movie is focusing more on what’s happening there in the city and not so much, you know, all of this preparation outside of it. But was the movie correct to suggest that they didn’t know anything that was going on? So, I mean, the impression I got, I guess, from the movie was you have these helicopters that crashed, but then there also just happened to be all of these troops over here that were completely oblivious to it and didn’t know anything about what was going on.

Joshua Donohue
And there is definitely truth to that, because, and they talk about it, how you get the sense in the film, when Captain Steele opens the door, and they tell people, “Kate, you’re going to have to go up on the roof.” And it’s like, “I’m not going up on the roof. Are you kidding me?” And they already have so many dead and wounded, they’re literally stacking them on top of these vehicles, that there’s no room on the inside. I mean, they had just barely enough space to get these men out. So, there’s that hesitancy that you sense from the Pakistani and Malaysian contingent of the forces there. And the other thing to note is, a lot of the, I think this was one of the, it may have been Eversman or one of the other, maybe Craig Nixon mentioned this, but there wasn’t, they kind of give you the sense that there wasn’t that fighting spirit in their Pakistani counterparts, that they say that a typical patrol mission for one of the, either the Pakistani peacekeepers or the armored crews, they would go out on a convoy, go maybe a few miles down the road to an area where they would think dangerous, turn right back around and come back, and that was the mission. So, that was about the extent of the mission from that standpoint. So, there was a bit of confusion and delay going on, saying, “Okay, we have to get these forces into the city right now. There can’t be any hesitation. Lives are at stake.” So, the film definitely does give you an accurate depiction of what goes on. They’re assembling inside of a Pakistani soccer stadium. So, that’s really where the rendezvous point is, or the staging area, I should say, where they’re going to channel all this armor, all the convoy that’s going to blast their way into the city and get everybody out.

Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of, at the very end of the movie, we do see the 10th Mountain extracting the American soldiers. We see Sergeant McKnight, who made the decision to go back. He was back at the camp, but then he ends up deciding to go back with them to try to get everybody out. Unfortunately, as you alluded to, the APCs and vehicles fill up fast with the wounded, so there’s not enough room for everybody. So we see some of the soldiers actually forced to run alongside the vehicles, and it doesn’t take long in the movie. It seems in the movie it’s like they’re just — like the vehicles are trying to get out of there as fast as they can, and it doesn’t take long for these guys who are running along beside — they can’t run as fast, so they have to fight their way back to the base almost. And then the movie seems to imply that everybody has returned to base, but then at the very final scene — you mentioned him earlier, the character of Hoot, Eric Bannis’ character — he mentions that he’s going back out. There’s still more men out there, so he’s going to go back out with another team, but we never really get to see that because the movie comes to an end. So how well does the movie do showing this extraction, and then were there really soldiers out there like the movie seemed to imply at the end?

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, yeah, there was. The soldiers who had to literally run out of the city, and it’s been… The one thing I was looking more into, that’s called the Mogadishu Mile. Even given the term, which was a running out of the city, it’s been sort of… I’ve heard different accounts of it. Kenny Thomas has a pretty good description of it, saying basically, “We were trying to get… All of a sudden, the vehicles just took off, and we were basically out in the open.” And that’s really what you see depicted in the film. So, the rescue convoy launched multinational forces between 12 and 1 o’clock in the morning. They come under intense fire, as I mentioned, coming down national. They get to the trapped men. The volume of the fire was preventing them from being reached, and the dead were being stacked on top of the vehicles, the wounded inside. They were still trying to get Cliff Walcott’s body out of Super 6-1 at the time. It was nearly 6 o’clock in the morning on October 4, 1993, as the last of the convoy begins to depart to the Pakistani soccer stadium. And as I mentioned, Paulson, one of the gunners in the convoy, also Jeff Strucker, they were leaving, and he’s saying to them, “Hey, I got some guys running behind us.” And Strucker’s response was, “Okay, shoot them.” And Paulson says, “No, I think there are guys.” And sure enough, they were. So, as I mentioned, the Mogadishu Mile, where the Rangers and, as you see, also Delta Force guys are having to run out of the city being fired on from all directions. So when they get to the Pakistani stadium, the scene of what you see is indescribable. The dead and the wounded are just laid out in the open. Bodies are just everywhere. And the adrenaline is effectively worn off from them getting out of the city. But yeah, there are still men trapped in the city, and there will be more men who will go in. I’ll mention Matt Ryerson again. He’s one of them. And again, as I mentioned, he’s the very last of the men who die during the battle. He dies a few days after the battle from a mortar round that strikes and wounds a number of other people. He dies not too long after that. So really from the time that the helicopters were shot down, the time they got out of the city, it is a nightmare having to get in and out of that and having to go to not one, but two crash sites. And as I mentioned, to kind of bring Super Six Four back into the picture, by the time they reach Super Six Four’s crash site, they find nothing. They find pools of blood, spent ammunition shells, no guns, no bodies. Everything is gone. And you see in the helicopter, it’s not a Hooten they show arrives. It’s not him. I think it’s a number of 10th Mountain guys get there, and I believe some of the Deltas will be there at some point as well. They will be in charge of placing thermite on the helicopter to basically destroy any sensitive equipment that might fall into enemy hands. That’s part of the mission as well of any down helicopter. Take Operation Neptune Spear, which is the mission to get Osama bin Laden. If you recall, they use these two stealth Black Hawks, as depicted in the film Zero Dark Thirty, and one of them crashes on the edge of the wall outside of the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden is inside. They have to destroy that helicopter, especially no one even knows that this thing exists, and obviously everyone finds out about it in the days after. That was part of the procedure is they have to destroy the helicopter, but they get everyone out of Super Six One, but they know and they’re well aware that the crew of Super Six One, there’s no sign of anyone. They immediately send up helicopters that night and the next morning calling on a loudspeaker, “Mike Durant, Ray Frank, Bill Cleveland, we’re not leaving you behind,” and you hear that when Durant is captured as well. Yeah, you know, I go back to a moment in the film that occurs when Jeff Strucker’s convoy first gets back with Dominic Pilla’s body and Todd Blackburn in the back of the other Humvee. And there’s a moment, and this really did happen as they show in the film, where Strucker gets out and Hooton is there. They are trying to regather themselves, get more ammunition. There’s a scene where Dale Sizemore has the cast on his arm. He goes to cut it off. He goes, “Okay, okay, okay. Go get your cape out. You can come with us.”

Dan LeFebvre
[laughter] [laughter] No hesitation whatsoever.

Joshua Donohue
That, no hesitation, and which also did happen as well. So that’s the kind of spirit that Yeah.

Dan LeFebvre
Wow.

Joshua Donohue
you’re seeing. Another part of that scene is quite poignant as well, where Strucker comes up to one of the Rangers. It’s Brad Thomas, and he says, “I can’t go back out there again.” He goes, “Listen, it’s what you do right now that makes a difference.” And again, who can blame Thomas? I mean, these guys are going, this is the first combat that these guys have ever experienced, and it’s going to affect people in different ways. I can’t imagine, I’m sure Thomas, he was probably the one that just vocalized exactly how everyone was feeling at the time. “Oh my God, I may not live through this. If I go back into that city and it is where I just came from, it’s going to be worse.” And you’re seeing these guys, Delta guys being killed, the Rangers being killed, the pilots and whatnot. I think it’s fair game. They’re not just going to, someone’s going to hesitate to see a Raider. They are there to kill you. So there’s that moment where Strucker tells Thomas what you do makes a difference. And he gets back in the Humvee, and he distinctly recalls looking in the mirror, as you see in the film, Thomas kind of hesitates, puts his K-Pod back on, grabs his rifle, and gets right back in the Humvee, and he kind of shakes his head. So again, it’s not to bring up any kind of cowardice in any way. Who could blame them? This was something that they had never experienced before. And you also get the sense that these guys know how desperate the situation is. They’re going to go in, and no matter how long it takes, they’re going to get the very, every single person is going to come out of that city one way or the other. As far as the conversation between Eversman and Hooton, a little bit of poetic license there. I think that kind of gives a little bit of a summary of, “This is why we’re doing this.” But I think it also drives home that point as well. And another good, again, this is probably creative license as well, is you have that earlier exchange with the two of them before they go. And he goes, “You don’t think we should be here?” And he goes, that whole thing, once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit goes right out the window. So there’s this bit of the sense you get from the Ranger element to the Delta element. And I think that’s probably true on some levels, that these Delta guys are just, they’re elite. We’re the cream of the crop, we’re the elite guys of the US Army. And the Rangers, obviously, they’re not an elite unit per se. They’re the cream of the crop as far as the summary for the Ranger. Rangers are the same ones that were scaling the cliffs to point to Hock on Normandy on June 6th, 1944. So Rangers have a pretty proud past and the whole Rangers lead the way all the way, that they’re all bonded together in that situation. I think you start, really Scott gives you that sense that this is why. We will risk our lives to go in, whether we know these guys are alive or dead. If there are people in that city, we are not going to quit until the very last one brought out. Exactly. Yeah, I think that it, as far as I’m concerned, I think that’s the way it’s going to be. As far as the competition element goes, it’s really there from the outset. And once you see the more elite groups emerge within the US military, like Delta Force, of course the Navy with the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets and so on. And even before that, you have competition between just the branches, between the Army versus Navy, Army versus Marines. Competition, oh yeah, it plays out on the athletic fields and on basketball courts You have that on the football field too. I mean, oh yeah. everywhere. Yeah. So there’s always that competitive element. And I think competition is what drives and defines this country in a lot of ways. And especially within the military, it’s even to a higher degree. So the young Rangers naturally looked up to the older Delta operators who exuded this sort of irreverent air of any Army norms. And you see that where with Hooton in the hangar where he’s saying, “Oh no, the Delta Safari? Well, not if General Garrison is asking basically, right? The whole, this is my safety, sir, and all that.” So Delta were strongly encouraged individual initiative. Rank was largely shunned and really with deference to only with the most experienced. This did not really sit well with the Rangers and their company commander, Mike Steele, who by all accounts, who was a really die in the wall Army traditionalist. He saw this as a negative and did the utmost that he could to keep the two units separate. And really he was fearful of any influence of the Delta operators. So the Ranger captain was by all accounts, from what I could tell, a divisive figure in a lot of ways. He actually tried to stop the training sessions that involved Deltas, which wouldn’t really would have helped the Rangers in the battle. And it got to the point where the Rangers would sneak out after dark and attend secret training missions with the Delta operators. So Ranger Kenny Thomas gave his own account of the issues between Steele and some of the members of Delta. Perhaps strikes at the heart of the issue. We quoted Steele as telling him, “It’s not Steele dislike the men of Delta. He believed them to be undisciplined cowboys as the film portrayed. He felt that their methods were quote unquote, not our methods.” In the movie they mention that once the bullet goes by, you know, politics are out the window. Yeah. And from the time the mission launched, each individual soldier knows what he or she But to some degree too, I mean, you still have chain of command and you still have all these structures that still need to be in place.

Dan LeFebvre
But also sometimes you got to do what you got to do to get out of this situation where it’s literally life or death.

Joshua Donohue
has to do, where they have to go. When Super 6-1 went down, it didn’t matter if you’re a Ranger or a Delta or a 10th Mountain, a Navy SEAL, Air Force pararescue, they were all performing their assignments under extremely difficult conditions. And everyone is on the same page when lives are at stake and the military follows again, that creed of no one gets left behind. So the word competition seemingly disappears under these circumstances. And it’s about helping the soldier next to you and bless those medics. They never get the attention that they deserve. Guys like Kurt Schmidt, who feverishly tried to save Corporal Jamie Smith’s life, who he would eventually die from his injury. Or Private Mark Good from 3rd Ranger Battalion, who was the first medic to get to Todd Blackburn when he missed the rope and fell from the Black Hawk. And then I mentioned Delta Sergeant First Class Paul Howe and that three-hour documentary he did about his experience in the military and his time in Somalia. He brings up something interesting. He talks about how training aspects or SOPs or standard operating procedures that the Deltas and the Rangers should have been sort of honing was undermined by the actions of Captain Steele. And he actually calls Steele a rogue captain and arrogant, and that he wanted to do things his own way. And he goes on to say that his chain of command should have reeled him in. And during an after action rehearsal, Steele was told by an E7 about the mission problems, but Steele felt that it should have been handled by officers. Howe then describes how his team were attempting to explain to Steele about the mission, which Steele replies, “Mind your own business, we’ll mind ours.” So in Howe’s opinion, he believes that Steele should have been handled by Howe’s chain of command, but failed to do so. So it also does explain this tension between the Steele character played by Jason Isaacs and the Sanderson character played by William Fechner. So the Sanderson character, as I mentioned, is based on Howe. And the two scenes in particular that are striking, the first is when we see Sanderson conferring with Steele and McKnight as the prisoners are being loaded once before Super 6-1 goes down. Steele asks Sanderson if he’s receiving the order, and Sanderson’s kind of like looking off, not even really paying attention. He goes, “Yeah, I heard you. We should be getting out of here soon.” So you detect that there’s some tension right off the bat. And I think there is some deafened credibility to that. So Sanderson, the other scene is where Sanderson defies Steele’s order to get men into the building and he’s yelling, “What the F are you doing out there?” And he goes, “We got to get people to that crash site.” Howe said that this did somewhat happen during the battle and saying that Steele was saying that Howe had really left him behind. So what’s interesting, because after watching Howe’s assessment of Steele as a combat leader, you can see why there’s this tension between how it plays out on the film itself. So this really did exist. So I think even back to the scene where they’re in the hangar and they’re roasting the wild boar, the whole, the Hooten says, “This is my safety, sir.” It did happen, but not in the same sort of context. It was a little bit more drawn out of a conversation that wasn’t as that whole, that they show. But it does have some truth to it. So Howe even says that Steele should have even brought up on UCMJ and thrown out of the military completely. You were from code of military justice and brought up on court martial. Pretty intense feelings there. So he then talks about McKnight, saying he wasn’t counseled properly, which led to the disconnect that you see. So in many ways, I get a lot of Howe’s points. It does seem to be a bit of a Monday morning quarterback thing where he’s kind of grand stings saying, “Well, the Rangers are here, Delta’s here. And if he did it Delta’s way, things would have been different.” So it’s a bit self-serving, but it also reveals quite a bit. And you can tell that a lot of those deeper interactions that did indeed happen play out in the film. [AUDIO OUT] Yeah. And I wanted to mention also earlier too is one of the main impetuses of getting more special forces is what happens during Operation Eagle Claw in 1980. Paul Howe’s daughter is a man named Chargent Charlie Beckwith, his daughter. He married Beckwith’s daughter. We did the We Were Soldiers thing. Beckwith actually interacts with Joe Galloway and is a part of the special forces base there. So Beckwith is part of the planning, the operational planning for Operation Eagle Claw. Eagle Claw is the mission, a special forces mission that’s organized to try and rescue the US hostages being held in Iran. So this mission fails. There are C-130s involved. One of the helicopters crashes into the planes on the ground. It gets caught in a sandstorm at one point. Five of the helicopters are not operational. So the mission is called off. And then this horrible accident happens. Eight people are killed, the eight Marines and some airmen are killed as well. So the failure of that mission, Eagle Claw in 1980s, right at the end of President Jimmy Carter’s presidency, that is a pretty big wake up call saying, you know what, let’s really refocus our energies on how the lessons from the loss, the tragedy of that mission, what are we going to learn from those lessons and how are we going to apply them to future special operations missions in the future? So that particular mission, the failure of that mission is really what drives the reconditioning, I would say, of Delta Force and the SEALs and all those types of special operations.

Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about Blackhawk Down.

Joshua Donohue
Yeah, so I was just in touch with the editor and my article about Everfield is an aspect I believe the last time we talked, you were working on a new article.

Dan LeFebvre
So before I let you go, can you give us an update on what you’ve been working on recently?

Joshua Donohue
of the Pearl Harbor attack that’s a little bit less known about. That’ll be coming out probably towards the end of the year in World War II magazine. Also relaunched my YouTube page at the Freelance Historian. So I plan on doing some big things there probably coming up over the next couple of months. So I’m just kind of doing some odds and ends, some history stuff here and there on there. So I’ve got that going on. And I’ll also be doing a podcast on World War II TV with Paul Woodage, who’s a great historian. He’s based out of France and I’ll be talking about the 70th Infantry Division, March 15th, that’ll be at 2 p.m. So I’ll be doing that. And I also have a book that I contributed to that I wanted to mention. It’s called Son of Wake Island. And it’s sonofwakeisland.com. It’s the second volume of that book as I contributed to the forwarded bunch of photographs that have rare, never been seen before. And I wrote some other stuff in there as well. So that same author, that I’m also working on some other stuff with. We’re collaborating on a new book that’s probably going to come out over the next year or two.

Dan LeFebvre
Fantastic. Well, make sure to add links to those in the show notes Absolutely. Thank you so much. so people can check them out. Thanks again so much for your time.

Joshua Donohue
Thank you. [end]

Dan LeFebvre  03:05

As we always do here, on based on a true story. Let’s kick this off with an overall historical letter grade. What grade does The Bridge on the River Kwai get for historical accuracy?

 

Jon Parshall  03:17

D, maybe, maybe a C minus, if you’re lucky, I mean, yes, there was a bridge on a different river that got blown up by airplanes much later, you know. But that’s, that’s about as far as you can go. And, you know, if you’re like, one of these real world war two gearhead kind of people, you know, you’re gonna look at this thing gonna say, Oh, come on, the Japanese Okay, yeah, they’re in Japanese uniforms, but they’re using British Lee Enfield rifles and Vickers 303, machine guns inside, you know, British lorries. You know, there’s not a lot of a lot of capital being expended here on on realistic kit and equipment and that kind of thing.

 

Dan LeFebvre  04:05

You talk about there was a bridge that got destroyed, I feel like that happened a lot in World War II.

 

Jon Parshall  04:13

And the really, the really funny thing is, okay, so the author of this book, Pierre Boulle, who’s a French guy who was actually in what is now Vietnam during the war, and was collaborating with the Japanese because they were running that place too, you know, he heard about this bridge being built on a place called the river Kauai. But the actual bridge is not on the river Kauai. It was on a river at the time that was called the meikong, which was close to the river Kwai. And so what ends up happening, actually, is that this movie is so successful, it comes out in 57 and it’s just a global phenom, right? And so the Thai government ends up renaming the river in 1960 Oh, so that the 20. Tourists can find it. So that’s a whole thing, you know, try and nail down what actually was the name of the river at that time. But yes, the bridge that we’re talking about is actually still there. It was not a wooden structure. Well, there was an original wooden structure that was then replaced by a concrete and steel structure. It was blown up, but the concrete and steel bridge is now still in that location. So there you go. Well,

 

Dan LeFebvre  05:28

you mentioned the author, Pierre Boulle. The movie’s based on a novel, so I’m gonna just guess that a lot of the main characters are fictional people. I’m sure we’ll talk more about them throughout this episode, but I’m thinking of like commander shears, major Warden, of course, Colonel Saito and Colonel Nicholson. Are they fictional people? Then,

 

Jon Parshall  05:45

by and large, yes, there, but there are some interesting sort of nuggets here, and that there were some kind of analogs to real life guys in the movie. So our colonel Nicholson here. There actually was a British colonel of senior officer on this project. Was a guy named Tuesday, and so he’s real the camp in question. There was an actual guy named Saito there, but he was a sergeant, and he was actually one of the more compassionate Japanese guards in the camp, which is kind of weird, because compassion and Japanese guards didn’t often go well together during this war. And then one of our four commandos in this movie is a guy named Chapman, and we’re going to talk about him a little bit later on, but it’s interesting because in the novel, it’s a three person commando team, and there is no Chapman. But this Chapman dude gets added to the screenplay in the 50s, because the real life Chapman was actually a very famous British commando during the war, and we can talk about him later at

 

Dan LeFebvre  06:58

the beginning of the movie, we would kind of get introduced to the whole plot with Colonel Nicholson and his men arrive at the Japanese POW camp called Camp 16, that’s run by the Japanese Commander, Colonel Saito. That camp, according to the movie, Camp 16, is there were some prisoners already there, but then on arrival of these new prisoners, Colonel Saito explains that there’s no need for barbed wire or watchtowers at the camp because they’re on an island in the jungle. Escape is impossible because they die in the jungle even if they leave. So the purpose for being way out in the middle of nowhere, according to the movie, is to build this bridge that we talked about in the River Kwai connects Bangkok to Rangoon, according to the movie. And I’m sure we’ll talk a lot more about the details in a moment. But can you unravel just kind of overall, how this plot actually, how much of this actually happened?

 

Jon Parshall  07:44

Okay, so let’s do a crash course in the early part of World War Two. Okay, so the the initial Japanese campaign that happens right at the same time at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invade Malaya, and they begin moving down the Malayan peninsula to capture the critical bridge Port of Singapore. That’s the prize of this whole thing, and and they they do that. It’s a total curb stop of a campaign. They just route the British and at the end of that campaign, then on February 15, Singapore falls, and it is one of the most catastrophic British defeats in their history, something like 160,000 POWs go into captivity. The majority of them are Indian. But there are a lot of British troops, Australian troops as well. And at the same time, even as the Malayan campaign is unraveling, the Japanese then invade Burma as well, because Burma is right up next to India. India is the biggest, most important colony in the British Empire, and the Japanese do exactly the same thing to the British forces in Burma as well. They route them, drive them out by about april of 1942 so now you’ve got the situation where the Japanese have got three or four divisions in Burma, and they need to keep them in supply. And instead of wanting to sail ships all the way around the tip of the Malayan Peninsula and then up the coast to Rangoon, which is exposed to British air attack and submarine attack, gee, wouldn’t it be nice if instead, we could just sail our ships to Bangkok in Thailand, unload our stuff, put it on a train, and run that train over to Rangoon. Great. The only problem is that you’ve got about 200 miles worth of absolutely virgin jungle here with not a road or anything in sight. So they got to build this 200 mile long railroad. So what they end up doing is they start working from both ends, you know, west to east from Burma and then east to west from Thailand and Malaya. And they end up rounding up about 200,000 indigenous laborers to work on this railroad, both. Burmese and Thai and Malayan. And then they also bring in about 60,000 Allied POWs. Again, the majority of them are British, a lot of Australians. There are some Dutch who were captured in Java and Sumatra and places like that, who are also put to work. And there are smattering of Americans who were either captured from the cruiser Houston, which our guy here is supposedly a member of that’s legit. That’s true. And there were also some American troops in Java, some but any aircraft and artillery guys that get captured, and all those dudes end up on this railroad, and it’s horrific. So of those 200,000 indigenous laborers that are going to work on this thing, about half of them die. Okay, it’s horrible. It’s horrible, and the POWs do better. Only one in five of them die, but you end up within about 13,000 dead Allied POWs and around 90,000 dead civilians, which means that over the course of this railroad, it cost about 350 to 400 dead for every mile or a grave about every 15 feet. So that’s sort of the backdrop to this thing. It is. It’s a horror show. It’s disease mostly that gets rid of these people. You had these massive cholera outbreaks in the camps because there isn’t adequate sanitation, and it just mows people down. So malaria, dengue, fever, tick, typhus, cholera, all of the maladies of the jungle are preying on these people. So to Saito’s comment that, you know, I don’t need, you know, watchtowers and that kind of stuff, there’s a certain element of truth in that there were guards, obviously, but they didn’t have to invest the same sort of human capital in guarding these camps, particularly the ones that are way out in the jungle there. Because, yeah, if you escape, what are you gonna do? Do you know enough to get food and water and that sort of thing? That’s not a trivial problem. That really

 

Dan LeFebvre  12:10

puts it in perspective of just the lies lost in order for, I mean, which I’m sure they didn’t care about net. I mean, that’s they knew it. They knew it was gonna happen.

 

Jon Parshall  12:21

Wow, and that’s important to keep in mind, too, there, there. This is actually one of the more benign railroad projects that the Japanese undertake during this war. There are a couple others that happened down in Sumatra and Java that are almost 100% indigenous labor, and the the cost per mile are even higher, which is, is almost incomprehensible. But from the Japanese perspective, their supply of labor is unlimited, and so they don’t care about these people. You know, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you you know, I’ll just throw human death and suffering at it until it’s done. You know, I just, I don’t, I don’t really care. And so they had no incentives to take care of these labors. They knew they could just go to Rangoon or wherever and just impress another gang of local laborers, and I’ll just refresh the crop. I just don’t care, which

 

Dan LeFebvre  13:12

probably just added even more to it. Like you’re talking about the illness being one of the main things that killed like, well, if you’re not going to take care of them, that because you are just replacing them, then not going to invest in hospitals or things like that, you know, sick days and things like that. That’s

 

Jon Parshall  13:30

exactly right. And so the interesting thing here, though, is the reason that the pow casualties were actually lower than the civilian casualties is because these military units maintained discipline sufficiently that they could tell the men, okay, we’re building latrines over there. You must use the latrines, you know. So there was, there was still discipline and order in the military camps, whereas the civilians didn’t have anybody telling them how to take care of themselves in the face of a cholera outbreak, and so they just died like flies.

 

Dan LeFebvre  14:05

Going back to the movie, when Saito tells Nicholson that even the officers have to work on the bridge, we see Nicholson pulling out a copy of the Geneva Convention. He points Saito to Article 27 it says officers aren’t supposed to do manual labor. Saito doesn’t care. His orders are to finish the bridge by May 12. So he says, all the prisoners will work. Nicholson refuses, and even goes so far as to put in a little box they call the oven. And when that punishment doesn’t work, Saito tries to bribe Nicholson with a nice dinner of English corned beef. But Nicholson still refuses, and he even gets to the point of Saito or he’s actually threatening Saito of reporting him, although he doesn’t really say in the movie who he’s going to report him to he’s the prisoner here, or how he managed to do that. Do we know of any situations like this, where the British officer tried to hold the Japanese officer to the Geneva Convention? I

 

Jon Parshall  14:54

am not aware of any, and I cannot imagine that. That would have been six. Successful, among other things. It’s really the history here is super convoluted, but in a nutshell, the Japanese they signed certain articles of the second Geneva Convention, but they didn’t ratify them by their own government, and so they weren’t they were not really legally held to those agreements they did announce in 1942 that, yes, we will adhere to them, but that was all a bunch of baloney. I mean, they they flagrantly did not hold to those conditions throughout the war anywhere. There was a famous incident during the Malayan campaign where a group of British and Australian wounded get left behind by a bridge called the parrot Sulong bridge, and the Japanese captured them there and killed them all, you know, 145 wounded POWs, and they just, you know, burned them and shot them and did whatever they did. So the Japanese, you know, the notion of being held to, uh, a Western document telling us how to make war when we have defeated you is just laughable to the Japanese. They’re not going to adhere to that at all. Yeah,

 

Dan LeFebvre  16:14

when I saw, I mean, I don’t, don’t know the history there, but when I saw that in the movie again, just watching it again. And I was just like, article really, like he even pulled it out, like he brings it with him, you know.

 

Jon Parshall  16:30

Sorry, no, wow, yeah, it would take a pretty ballsy, uh, British officer to do that. And again, we should. We should contrast that with the real life British colonel, this Tuesday guy. He did not collaborate with the Japanese. In fact, when this movie comes out, there are a lot of British veterans who was just like, What the what? You know, you’re portraying our beloved Colonel to z as a collaborator. And he was not too Z was actively and subtly trying to sabotage this bridge. With every opportunity that he had, they would do things like surreptitiously gather termites and try to put them on the bridge pilings and stuff like that to weaken the structure. Um And toosie was a real Gent. When he finally gets rescued at the end of the war, he weighs, I don’t know, 90 pounds or something like that. They’re like, Okay, we’re gonna evacuate you down to Singapore. He’s like, No, you’re not. We’re going out into the jungle now, and we’re gonna make sure that all of the POW camps are liberated. And I’m not gonna be relieved until I know that all of the men are safe. So, yeah, he was a very upright stand up guy. And you can understand why there would be some tension here between the POWs and, you know, the real life POWs and the portrayal of the British colonel in the movie as being, you know, willing to work with the Japanese. They didn’t like that at all

 

Dan LeFebvre  18:04

right, around this point in the movie, was something I know you wanted to chat about, when Saito is about to murder Nicholson and his officers for refusing to work. So let me play that Clip real Quick here. Yeah,

 

Dan LeFebvre  19:00

I obviously want to ask you about that, but even what you had just talked about, you know, with the civilians that died and everything like that. I can already tell that this is, is this your code, right? I mean, yeah, yeah, it’s

 

Jon Parshall  19:27

our code. This is what we do. This is how we roll. And the notion that, oh yeah, the witnesses in the hospital saw it, yeah, okay, we’ll kill all them too. We don’t care. We have a limitless supply of labor. We will kill you all, and we will get new laborers if you’re going to be uppity. So don’t get me wrong. I mean, it’s a beautiful scene for a movie, but from a realism standpoint, you know, the notion that a guy like Saito would have even batted an eye at gunning these dudes down, in my opinion, is, is laughable.

 

Dan LeFebvre  19:58

Yeah, yeah. And. It really plays a lot more into you’re talking about, not even with the soldiers there too, but civilian life and they just their code, code. Didn’t care,

 

Jon Parshall  20:12

right? But, but, of course, the centerpiece of this whole movie is the developing relationship between Nicholson and Psycho and so you can’t very well, you know, do away with that. You know. The bottom line is that a movie is is telling a story, and unfortunately, this story is, as I say, largely made up. I hope you appreciated to the British truck with the British machine gun.

 

Dan LeFebvre  20:39

I wouldn’t have pointed, I wouldn’t notice that, but yet, that’s

 

Jon Parshall  20:43

couldn’t even bother getting ourselves, you know, a Nambu machine gun to put in a truck. I mean, anyway, it’s just all kind of funny, as far as I was concerned,

 

Dan LeFebvre  20:51

even though Saito said that escape was impossible earlier, we do see an escape happen in the movie. It’s the American shears. He manages to escape. Eventually, he’s helped by local villagers, and that’s the first that we see any locals. But it’s not the last, and we’ll get to when shears comes back with the British commandos later. But when they do that, they meet a local man named Yai. He says he’s helping the British because he hates the Japanese for taking all the men in the village. How realistic would it be for local villagers to help against the Japanese, like we see in the movie?

 

Jon Parshall  21:21

That happened all the time. Actually, what’s happening throughout the course of this war is that the local economies in this neck of the woods are just falling apart because the Japanese are terrible administrators, and they gave no thought to civil administration before they started this war. This war was a very pickup kind of affair on the part of the Japanese. They had to really hurry up and throw together some plans just to get a military operation put together. Who the hell cares about you know, how we’re going to actually administer these countries after we take them over? So what you see in places like Malaya, for instance, Malaya was the world’s largest rubber exporter, and when the Japanese came in at the end of the campaign, they just plundered about 160,000 tons of rubber from the plantations, and they took it all back to Japan. They didn’t have an auto industry that was big enough to actually utilize that amount of rubber in the first place. That was pretty much the last rubber they ever bought from the Malayan economy. And so now you’ve got all of these. You know, used to be rubber farmers who are now like, where am I getting money? And they have to turn to subsistence farming. And this happens again all over Southeast Asia. The same thing happens in Java, the same thing happens in Burma. All of these economies collapse by, like, more than 50% it’s one of the biggest economic collapses in recorded human history. So you can imagine that. You know, first of all, layer this, this economic malaise in all of these countries, against the backdrop of just continued Japanese cruelty, because these indigenous labors are being shanghaied out of theaters and, you know, grabbed off the streets, in some cases, with their families a you’re gonna work on a railroad now and half of you Are gonna die. You know, word gets out of that kind of stuff. And so very quickly, a lot of the indigenous populations, guys are bastards, and, you know, they’re worse than the, you know, the colonial governments that they replaced. And so yes, in a lot of cases, the it was, it was dicey. You never know. I mean, there were plenty of collaborators too, but there were certainly instances where you had native peoples who were just like, Yeah, this is baloney. And I hate these guys. Something

 

Dan LeFebvre  23:53

else we see kind of around this point in the movie is, I have another clip for this. It’s the British soldiers as they’re working on the bridge. It kind of looks like a lot of looks like a lot of them are just kind of splashing around in the river. Let me go ahead and pull this clip here,

 

Jon Parshall  24:12

cheering, cheering. You have a piece of the bridge is just falling down right. Here are boys out in the river.

 

Jon Parshall  24:38

Right see the soldiers scampering around in the back, around there,

 

Jon Parshall  24:54

splashing around, swimming, diving in it’s.

 

Jon Parshall  25:07

Splash, yeah, this is ludicrous, okay, instead, put yourself in the mindset of what it would have been like to have worked on a sugar plantation in the deep south in the 1860s Okay, so there’s a quote from one of the books, the the economic travails in this region at this time. He says, let’s see if I got my notes here. Do to do? To do worker management favored pain incentives rather than ordinary rewards, to a degree extreme by the standards of slave labor, extreme to this already. Wow, yeah. So we, and we have another uh, account by a British survivor, who says it is necessary to note that most of this continual beating was not disciplinary, but was used to drive men as beasts to efforts beyond their strength. So these projects were horrific. These guys were sick, they were undernourished, and, yeah, the Japanese whipped them and beat them with, you know, bamboo canes and, you know, prodding them with bayonets and yada yada yada these. It’s, it’s, you couldn’t put this on a movie screen. What actually happened? You know, no one would be able to tolerate it. You’d walk out of the theater in five minutes because it was just grotesque. You really have to, you know, fast forward to a certain amount of emotional remove, until you get a picture like Schindler’s List or something like that, that even even that sort of obliquely refers to what’s going on. It’s the same thing happening on these on these railroad projects. They’re just, they’re horror shows. And so the notion that, yeah, you’ve got these British troops splash around in the river and, you know, splash fights and that kind of stuff, no way. Man, not at all.

 

Dan LeFebvre  27:11

I can’t. I can’t even wrap my head around how that would would be. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be entertainment like a movie, for

 

Jon Parshall  27:17

sure, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, you can’t make entertainment out of what actually happened there, so you can only sort of allude to it. But yeah, that that scene is completely unrealistic in that respect,

 

Dan LeFebvre  27:32

according to the movie, even though he was stubborn at first, Nicholson does end up cooperating with the Japanese to build a bridge. Actually, it’s, it’s more than just cooperating because we see a conference, and I have a clip for this too. We have a conference between the British prisoners and the Japanese soldiers, where the British talk about how they’re going to build a proper bridge, and it’s essential that they take pride in their job, referring to the British prisoners. So let me pull up that clip here.

 

28:02

Yes,

 

Jon Parshall  28:13

such a great actor. Oh,

 

Jon Parshall  28:25

okay, so pause it here too. There’s so much to unpack here. Obviously, what we’re doing is we’re we’re casting aspersions on Japanese engineering prowess, which is ludicrous. I mean, the Japanese have been building bridges, you know, all over Asia, in the colonies that they have already, you know, been occupying. They’re very competent engineers. They knew exactly what they’re doing. They can certainly do soil studies. And so this is all being filmed, of course, in the basking afterglow of a victorious, you know, World War victory, when the British are very self congratulatory. And I say, you know, but you know, the notion that the British would have any ability to lecture the Japanese on how to build a bridge is laughable. And furthermore, just the notion of having any sort of a conference like this, where a bunch of, you know, sort of smarmy British officers would sit down with the Japanese and lecture them on more than just take them out and shoot them. It would never have happened. But anyway, that’s,

 

Dan LeFebvre  29:28

I mean, that is, that is a great point of, I mean, the Japanese, even, I keep comparing in my mind, you know, the the different theaters, you know, you have the European theater with with the Germans, and they had to build bridges too. But the Japanese, especially, you’re working on islands and jungles and I mean, but I can’t remember what they said in the movie just before this little clip here, it was like, Oh yeah, I’ve worked on like, five or six bridges. I know how to do this, like the British guys, right,

 

Jon Parshall  29:55

right. Well, I mean, the British were good engineers too, but, but as you say, I mean the Japanese. Been in places like Formosa, for instance, and had built great big agricultural irrigation projects there and that sort of thing. I mean, they they were very, very competent and knew what they were doing. That said the route that they end up picking for this particular railroad does go through probably some of the most challenging terrain to make it over the hills and into Burma. They picked a really challenging route to do that, but again, they could do that because I have unlimited labor that I don’t care about, so I’ll just do it. And

 

Dan LeFebvre  30:39

another point too, I’m curious about because the Japanese would have sent the engineers to do that work, whereas the prisoners are kind of, like they just happen to be there, like they’re not. Don’t necessarily have to be, oh, there happened to be an engineer that worked on bridges here. So you’re talking about, you know, the British were good engineers, but it’s not like the British were sending engineers there. Would the Japanese have known who the British engineers were to send them to these particular camps to help at all?

 

Jon Parshall  31:07

I really, really doubt. Again, if I’m the Japanese, I’m just like, Yeah, I’ve got 60,000 units of meat here. You know, I need 2000 units at this place. And you know, I don’t care what you do. You’re, you’re a defeated English soldier, and you have no honor. And I don’t want to know what you your your job is not to think, for me, your job is to, is to lift that rock over there, shut up and go do that.

 

Dan LeFebvre  31:33

Even though the movie shows most of the British prisoners going along with Nicholson’s desire to build a proper bridge, there are some who don’t seem to like the idea, and probably the most outspoken of them in the movie is the doctor clipton. There are a lot of times where clipton points out that they’re collaborating with the enemy, but Nicholson says his the men are happier. Morale is improved. In the movie, those conversations usually end up with something along the lines of Nicholas, no, I’m sorry Nicholson saying something like honestly clipped in. There are times when I just don’t understand you at all, and then that’s just the end of it. And I’ve got another clip of that here to Play you.

 

32:57

So well i

 

Jon Parshall  33:41

There is so much to unpack In this clip, because there’s a really interesting interweaving of things that are true and things that are imagined on the part of Nicholson, Again, the reason that the military units suffered less cruelly than the civilian laborers is because of the maintenance of military discipline in those units. And so Nicholson is absolutely right that it’s essential to the survival of his men, that they retain this self identity as soldiers, and that we are part of a unit and that we stick together and we help each other. So Nicholson is correct that idle hands are the devil’s workshop in this case, and that just keeping the men busy and doing something and focused on surviving and making it through is super important. That’s all correct. But then you also notice this sort of mirroring, mirroring of his language. He talks about other men not happy. And we had the clip of Saito at the beginning of this movie, saying, be happy in your work. And so you can see the sort of convergence of these two kernels here into this sort of, you know, one meta human being who. Um, the medical officer is absolutely right in saying that this could be construed as collaboration on our part, and we should be trying, by implication, to make sure that this bridge is as crappy as possible, so that it falls apart, so that, you know, the Japanese can’t use it to resupply their forces. That’s legit, too. And the other thing at the very end, when, when Nicholson is talking about, you know, one day the wall will be over. And I want the people who live here to remember who built this bridge, because we the British, want to come back and reclaim all of our lost colonies. That’s sort of an underlying subtext here too that, and the only way that we can do that is by establishing a sort of moral superiority of the British soldier. What Nicholson doesn’t realize, and that the movie won’t acknowledge, even though that was made in 1957 is that by having lost the campaigns in Malaya and Burma as disastrously as the British did, and in the case of the Burma campaign, there were a lot of civilian casualties as well, that the British have permanently ceded any sort of moral superiority in this neck of the woods and the the indigenous populations are never going to allow the British to reassume colonial control for any extend period of time. So that’s all a pipe dream, as far as as that’s concerned. Anyway, I just found this as a really interesting clip, because there is a lot of tension there. Nicholson does have to keep his men on. I want to say under control is, you know, the nature of it, but as a cohesive military unit that is very, very important. It’s just that the way he’s doing that is kind of dubious in terms of collaborating with the enemy.

 

Dan LeFebvre  36:54

When I watch this movie, I can’t help but compare the, you know, the Japanese prisoner camps, to what we see in a movie like The Great Escape, where it’s a similar concept of the prisoners have to keep themselves busy and their morale up, and they do things like, you know, learning about birds. And, of course, they’re building these tunnels too, but like, like, they’re doing things that are not helping the enemy, but they’re trying to keep their minds, you know, going which makes sense, so I can understand it from that point

 

Jon Parshall  37:23

of view, absolutely. So anyway, yeah, it’s a really interesting passage there. And just the tension between these two guys and they they both embody, you know, correct tendencies in terms of military officers and clipton. Clipton knows more about the army than Nicholson thinks he does so anyway, honestly,

 

Dan LeFebvre  37:43

Clifton, I just don’t think I understand you,

 

Jon Parshall  37:47

though. Yeah, he’s such he was such a great actor, too. Oh my God, just it’s a wonderful performance. Anyway, circling

 

Dan LeFebvre  37:53

back to the shears, character who escapes in the movie, he ends up back in Ceylon, or modern day Sri Lanka, that’s where shears gets recruited by a team of British commandos called force 316 the commanding officer of force 316 is major warden. And through a discussion with spears, we find out that shears was never a commander. He admits to being a swab jockey on the Houston, which I believe is slaying for a petty officer. Second Class swab jockey

 

Jon Parshall  38:18

is anybody who pushes a mop that and so, I mean shears very well could have been an enlisted man. Yeah, you know, who knows. But he’s obviously very bright and and, you know, clever and adaptable, and has managed to figure out how to survive in this sort of, you know, Lord of the Flies environment that he finds himself in. I do find it questionable, you know, he says he put on the uniform of an officer hoping they would get him better treatment. I don’t really see that as a ticket to the cushy life under the hands of the Japanese. Again, the Japanese, you’re a meat unit. I don’t care what you are, you know, and you’re so, although that said some of the very senior officers, like, Oh, who am I thinking of the guy who was captured on Corregidor, the senior officer Wainwright there, he he’s not sent to war camps. He’s a general, you know, and so you would have been sequestered, but by and large, being an officer wasn’t going to shield you from anything, but cheers, is interesting, cat. Okay, so, so then the question, you know, how much of that is real, okay, so force 316 there was no force 316 but there was a force 136 and that was the actual commando organization the British established in Sri Lanka and Ceylon, as it was called at the time, to run operations in the occupied zone. And we end up running into this character named Chapman, as part of this commando team. And there was a very famous guy named Freddie Chapman, who. Is incredible. He was a British mountaineer and adventurer who decided he wanted to set up a school to train saboteurs that would these parties of saboteurs would be left behind enemy lines and would do things like blow up railways and ambush troop convoys on roads and, you know, do that kind of stuff. And so Chapman goes into the jungle after Singapore falls. He is left behind with a team of four. And there’s a couple other of these teams scattered around here, and he and his men go on kind of a a two week long rampage where they are blowing up bridges and doing all these things. But in the immediate aftermath of the war, a lot more of the malayans were happy to have the Japanese come in. The full horrors of the Japanese occupation hadn’t really, you know, come to the fore, and so a lot of these teams end up getting betrayed by the malayans, one by one, Chapman’s men either get captured or killed. And finally, Chapman is left alone in Malaya. He ends up hooking up with the Chinese Communist guerrillas who were living up in the hills. And Chapman survives in Malaya for three plus years. He is He gets horribly sick. He gets malaria a couple of times. He gets tick typhus. He nearly dies. He gets captured by the Japanese and escapes a couple of times. So he’s a phenomenal physical specimen, but really also a phenomenal mental specimen too. He writes this famous book right after the war in 1949 called The jungle is neutral. My dad had that book as a teenager. He gave it to me as a teenager, and still on my bookshelf, it’s a marvelous account. So there is this real life dude named Chapman, and the fact that there was no Chapman in the novel, but there is a Chapman in the screenplay, hmm, coincidence, I think not. Of course, the Chapman in the movie ends up, you know, dying almost immediately, but nevertheless, there are a couple of interesting scenes with him. That’s sort of the the formulation of this commando team here. So, yeah, not completely historical, historically realistic, but there are some definite echoes of things that actually did happen in the war real.

 

Dan LeFebvre  42:22

Since we mentioned force 316, if we go back to the movie, we do see it is four British commandos. But then when they parachute in, Chapman ends up dying. His parachute lands in one of the trees and kills him. But the remaining soldiers hook up with the local guy that talked about earlier, guy to get to River Kwai, where the bridge is, and the movie shows this as this long, treacherous journey through the jungle. I’ve got, I got a clip of that too that I’ll show that it’s made even more dangerous when they’re discovered by a Japanese patrol. They kill those soldiers, but it leaves Warden injured. That comes into play at the end of the movie. Maybe it’s just me, but I found a few things about the trip implausible because they parachute into the island. Ei sees the plane dropping the team, and then he says there’s a Japanese outpost that’s just like, three miles away. But apparently they didn’t notice the plane as it’s coming in later on, Japanese patrol happens upon the group of 4316, they shoot at the patrol, but then the movie makes a point of showing how 1000s of bats or birds and trees take to the skies. But again, no other Japanese outpost or anybody really seems to notice any of this.

 

Jon Parshall  43:31

And I was also going to say there’s also sort of this humorous scene in the movie when they’re still back in Sri Lanka, where they talk to shears about, you know, we should get cheers here some some parachute training, you know, and and then they come back later, and they’re like, well, they tell us that the odds, you know, you’re likely to get injured if you do more than two of these drops. And so it’s actually more efficacious just to not practice at all. We’ll just put a parachute on you and basically shove you out of the plane. That actually happened to the real life Chapman, okay, so he was going to be parachuted back into Malaya at the very end of the war, and the only way to get him in there was to parachute him, and they asked him about training, and that’s exactly the word that came back. I’ll just, you know, after two of these, you’ll probably be injured, not be able to go, so it’s just better to, you know, to put you, uh, in the plane, and just basically shove you out the door. So, you know, you’re laughing about that, and they laugh about it in the movie as well. But that’s an actual that actually did happen to Freddie Chapman, and he ended up surviving his jump. The Chapman in the movie does not the jungle is weird, though. You’re right in saying, Okay, there’s supposed to be an outpost only three miles away, but yeah, if it’s in the jungle and you’ve got crappy trails, man, that might as well be on the moon. There were. Yeah, here’s, this is a great clip. Go ahead and cue this up. Yeah, I love this clip defines the Triple Canopy jungle, crazy birds, if you’ve ever been in jungle, and this was filmed in Sri Lanka, but they’ve got legit serious jungle there too. The density of the undergrowth is just astonishing. If you go to places like Saipan or Guadalcanal. I mean, my God, you can’t see 10 feet in front of your face, you know, so and actually, let’s continue here, because I think we’re, we’re going to be able to get some clips of them using their their machetes as they’re hacking their way through this. Yeah, here we go. I love how the camera is so close in on them, and it’s so dark, because it is dark down on the jungle floor. You’ve got, you know, all these the canopy above you. It’s often very, very gloomy and very dense. See, I really like this. This particular scene of them popping the way through. The other thing you’ve ever actually picked up a machete. They’re heavy as hell doing 10 or 15 minutes worth of machete work, even for a fit man, will leave you exhausted. We have accounts from the Marines on Guadalcanal and the soldiers on Guadalcanal, you know, hacking their way through the jungle with machetes and whatnot. You had to do it in relays because it was just so exhausting. So you can see why. In some cases, if you don’t have a trail to follow and you’re actually having to do some hacking, you’d be lucky to make a mile a day through this stuff. It is just super, super dense, and it’s really easy to get lost and so forth. So yeah, I really liked this clip,

 

Dan LeFebvre  46:58

and I like that they also showed, I mean, I showed the monkey there, but it’s showing that it is a clear sky, like it’s blue sky. It’s daytime, but this almost looks like nighttime because it’s so dark in there. And

 

Jon Parshall  47:08

that’s one of the things that Chapman remarks upon in his book The jungle is neutral, which is still a great read, even today, that, yeah, it’s dark down here, you know? And it’s a really intimidating environment, particularly for a Western soldier who was not used to fighting in this sort of environment. Well, earlier

 

Dan LeFebvre  47:26

I mentioned the local village in the movie, The villager named ya and he talks about how the Japanese took all his men, and that’s why, in the movie, as we see them going through the jungle, force 316, going through the jungle, we see some women there to help. Speer seems to be a little bit player, not only with the Thai women, but with some of the women back in Ceylon as well. So I’ve got a clip of that too that we can see them.

 

Jon Parshall  47:59

So all of these women were Thai actresses, and actually, a couple of them ended up being very well known in Thailand after the war of the one of them Villa Lane, who ends up running the mortar up on the top of the hill with warden at the end of the movie, she’s still alive as may 2024 I have a picture of her, you know, sipping a chai. But, yeah, this movie, this movie was very female challenged in that there just weren’t a lot of roles that that they could bring women in. So we saw when shears is is on Ceylon, yeah, we have a couple of scenes, gratuitous scenes with a very fetching nurse there and then here in the jungle, we have, you know, four or five very fetching Thai women as well. In the original book, there is not a single female character. They’re not even, you know, even alluded to. So, you know, I guess the movie is a step forward in that respect. At least we have some women, but obviously they’re, you know, we have this later scene where the women are bathing in the river, and, you know, that’s kind of gratuitous to funny how all five of them are just incredibly beautiful, you know, and that’s who we just happen to have in the village, you know, five babes. But anyway, yeah,

 

Dan LeFebvre  49:27

talking about the the jungle and chopping through. I do have another clip of combat in the jungle there, and I want to ask about, I

 

Jon Parshall  49:40

lo and behold, one of them is not dead.

 

Jon Parshall  49:53

Clearly there would have been a trail or something that this guy is boogieing down. I. Yeah.

 

Jon Parshall  50:21

Again, can’t see the hand in front of your phrase, practically super dense vegetation. Sound is incredibly important.

 

Dan LeFebvre  50:42

I so I notice here this is it’s a little bit different from what we just saw before, where the jungle is. I mean, it’s dense, but it’s not as dense. And I kind of got the sense that maybe that was partially for the movie to be able to see a little bit easier, but I think so. How well do you think it does with the jungle combat there? Well, I think it

 

Jon Parshall  51:34

conveys the tension level of that sort of combat very effectively, which you which you end up reading about when you’re talking about land combat in South Asia and any of these places in the tropics is, yeah, sound is incredibly important, and in many cases it was just incredibly confusing. You didn’t know where your enemy was. In fact, in the culmination of this clip, our man, Joyce here is going to, actually, of course, has to encounter the Japanese soldier. And it happens under relatively unrealistic terms, because the Japanese soldier just stands up right in front of him. He never would have done that. He would have shot him, you know. And you know, there were many, many instances where God, particularly in the combat down in New Guinea, around buna GONA, you’d be advancing along a path with a team of, you, know, a squad of 10 or 1112, guys. You can’t see anything in front of you. And the Japanese would have these bunkers that were beautifully camouflaged. The first indication that you get is as to whether there’s a Japanese fortification out there is when it opens up on you and murders the first you know, couple guys in your column, and now you all go to ground and are trying to peer ahead and you know, is there any telltale smoke that will show you where you know, the Japanese firing slit is, or whatever. And not only that, but the Japanese they had very good flashless powder for their rifles. The Arasaka rifle was a piece of crap in general, and it was too big and unwieldy for jungle combat. But because it had pretty good flashless powder. It made it even more difficult to figure out where the hell you’re being shot at from. So I do like this clip in that it, it gives that sort of claustrophobic sense, which is true to life, but the fact that the Japanese soldier then stands up in front of Joyce at the end of this clip and doesn’t murder him, instead, he would have murdered him. And then, you know, left, left warden to try to figure out, you know, whether he could kill the enemy after that. Anyway, yeah, when

 

Dan LeFebvre  53:50

the commandos actually do reach their destination, we get the first glance at the Bridge on the River Kwai as it’s finished, and they’re impressed with how nice it is. They say it’s not like the bridges the Japanese usually throw together. Earlier in the movie, they talk about how some of the British, we talked a little bit about that British, have experienced building bridges, and they don’t think that the guy that Japanese assigned to design the bridge actually knows what he’s doing. But then this scene with the Commandos, and they talk about how it’s not like the bridges the enemies usually throw together, it suggests to me that the British were overall better at building bridges. I know we talked about that, but it kind of goes back to the British desire to build a proper bridge, and they seem to do that, at least according to the movie. But do you think that the movie actually does a good job, since it’s the title of the movie, I have to ask we talked a bit about here and there. But is there any truth to the way the movie shows the Bridge on the River Kwai. No,

 

Jon Parshall  54:41

not really as as I say that the eventual steel and feral concrete bridge that gets put in there, if you look at it today, it’s pretty unimpressive, whereas the bridge pretty unimpressive, but very well engineered and very sturdy, because it’s made. On the concrete, you know, whereas this bridge in the movie is super it’s really interesting looking, because it’s got all these trestles and all that good stuff, you know, it’s so it’s a good looking bridge. But again, I think what you’re seeing here is the sort of rank prejudice on the part of a British American movie having to portray ourselves. Well, we build proper bridges, you know. And the Japanese, we’re simply incapable of that, which is all Balderdash, but, yeah, but they have to make it look that way again in the afterglow of our triumph in World War Two. So

 

Dan LeFebvre  55:35

I’m assuming that’s, I think you sent me a picture of that bridge, and I’ll make sure to add that the actual bridge, right? Yeah, that looks quite different that. I mean, the bridge is beautiful in the movie, I will give it that. I mean, beautiful wood and

 

Jon Parshall  55:49

wooden bridge, and it’s not a model. That’s the other thing that’s kind of cool about it. It was, oh, wow, yeah, it’s full size. And they actually drove a real train over it and blew it up, you know. So, so that’s, that’s kind of cool, and actually, it’s even worse than that. They, they when they were about to film the demolition scene. Spoiler alert, the bridge gets blown up. Feel

 

Dan LeFebvre  56:12

like that’s spoiler trying to spoil that Titanic. Hopefully people know by now. Yeah,

 

Jon Parshall  56:18

they there was a, there was one of the actors was in the shot as the train is starting to come over, and he couldn’t get out of the shot in time, and so they couldn’t actually detonate the bridge then. So they had to let the train just, which is unmanned, just roll across the bridge, and it ends up, you know, running into a wall, and ends up really beating up the train. So then they, the next day, there were going to be a whole bunch of muckety mucks there from the Sri Lankan government to witness this thing. And so they had to patch the train up real fast overnight, you know, get ready for its demolition The following morning. But, yeah, the reason that the demolition scene is as impressive as it is because it’s a real bridge with a real train.

 

Dan LeFebvre  57:00

We will talk a little bit about the way the movie ends there, but after the bridge is completed on time, in the movie, we see it was an interesting scene. There’s British soldiers celebrating with performance and kind of a makeshift theater. But meanwhile, there are some cutaways, and I have a clip here of Colonel Saito. He’s writing a note cuts off some of his hair to put it in the note. Saito doesn’t really say anything in this scene, and I can’t read Japanese, so I’m not really sure what his note says. But the way this all kind of plays out in the movie, it seems to imply that Saito is about to commit suicide. For some reason, it seems almost a little bit odd. Well, I

 

Jon Parshall  57:33

think that no, the implications are clear, that he is going to commit suicide, but what he’s doing here is he’s composing his final letter home, and I find it a very poignant scene, because we’re sort of humanizing Saito here, and that we see him writing, we see a picture, presumably of his wife sitting on that desk there. He’s then cutting off a lock of his hair. This was very common. When the Japanese would write their final letters home, they would either send some of their hair or fingernail clippings. In some cases, you know, something to remember me by. But yeah, all of the the unspoken under underlying context here suggests that Saito is going to kill himself, and I think it’s because, okay, I’ve made my my bridge building date in time, but the only way I was able to do it was by throwing in my lot with these uppity British officers who have essentially taken over this project from me. At this point, they’re in control of this thing. I’m sort of the nominal figurehead, which is incredibly shameful. And so, yeah, I think that he’s, he, he feels he has disgraced himself. And he is, he is going to be taking himself off stage right here at as soon as that bridge is in commission.

 

Dan LeFebvre  58:58

And I mean, we’ve already talked about how it’s implausible that the British would actually take over a command like we see in the movie. But in a what if scenario, if this had happened, would that be something that a Japanese commanding officer would do is as because being so shamed?

 

Jon Parshall  59:15

Well, I mean, the Japanese, the Japanese kill themselves all the time. I shouldn’t laugh when I say that one of the sort of enduring, what I want to say, fascinations around the Imperial military for us as Westerners, particularly people like myself who study them, is just how completely different the Japanese think about a lot of different things, and they have a completely different mindset and a completely different moral code that we as Westerners often find utterly baffling. And so to a pragmatic Westerner, you know the fact that I got my bridge build, everybody’s happy, right? Everyone’s. Would be cool. The fact that Saito is is actively considering killing himself is kind of weird. But throughout this conflict, the Japanese, if they felt a sense of shame or failure over military setbacks and so forth, yeah, there was an absurd mortality rate amongst the officer corps, and frankly, among the the enlisted men as well. You know, a lot of viewers probably don’t know this, but anytime we went into an island fight in the Pacific and had to capture an island that the Japanese held, we typically had to kill between 97 and 98% of that Garrison before that piece of real estate was ours. Okay? And a lot of the prisoners that we would end up taking would have been prisoners who were too injured to have killed themselves, or had been knocked unconscious, or what have you. The number of Japanese who willingly surrendered to us was around 1.3% on average. So this is a very different military. They just have a completely different mindset when it comes to actually doing combat. And it was one that made this war just incredibly terrible, because that obdurates, you know, and unwillingness to be captured, didn’t do anybody any good. Didn’t do them any good, because in many cases, they were fighting to the death when there was no recognizable military benefit from having done so, and yet, that’s just how they were trained and how they had been indoctrinated, frankly. So yeah, it’s a very different military culture than we as Westerners are used to

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:47

what you talked about. The actual during the movie, the bridge being blown up. And at the end of the movie, we do see the train coming across the bridge, but just before it arrives, it’s actually Nicholson, who is the one who spots the explosives wired up to the bridge that the British commandos had set up, and then it’s Nicholson who calls attention to the Japanese that the bridge is mined, and even when they come across, when the force 316, members, Joyce, he’s coming across, Nicholson’s trying to stop Joyce from blowing up the bridge. Japanese soldiers are alerted in the ensuing gunfights, all the commandos are killed, except for Warden, because he’s the one that was injured earlier in the movie. So at this point I talked about, you mentioned this earlier, he’s kind of providing distracting fire using a mortar. Well,

 

Jon Parshall  1:02:30

yes and no, although in the final, the final mortar shell that Warden fires is the one that kills Nicholson. And it’s and it’s deliberate. And you know, because you see the horrified looks on the part of the Thai women, it’s just like you just killed those dudes. And he turns around and says, I had to do it. They might have been captured alive, yada yada yada. And you can see right there, a lot of sharks have gotten jumped in that section of the movie, Nicholson has obviously gone completely over the line. You know, you’re no longer just sort of skirting collaboration. You’re you’re working with the Japanese now to preserve this bridge and are actively collaborating against armed soldiers of your own army who are trying to accomplish a militarily legal and, and, you know, correct sort of thing, they’re trying to blow up an enemy asset here. So that’s weird, you know, Nicholson has gone crazy. And of course, he realizes at the end, you know, what have I done? You know, right? But then you also see Warden jumps the shark too, in that he ends up killing Nicholson, and arguably, also ends up probably putting the coup de gras to shears as well.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:03:51

I was going to say I think he was, he was injured there. We don’t really see him dead, but yeah, the mortar seems to take him out there too. Yeah,

 

Jon Parshall  1:03:57

right, so there’s just a lot of nobody, nobody ends up winding up happy as a result of this. You know all, all of the characters are dead, except for Warden, who has kind of gone insane and is completely destroyed any relationship with with his his Thai porters, who have also lost their village head man as a result of this fight as well. Yeah, I is also killed in this movie. So you can see why, you know, clipton comes in at the end and just says, madness, madness, you know, because that really is the culmination of this movie. And even

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:04:38

though Warden is alive, he barely even made it there, so that trip back, I mean, I don’t know that he would, especially without the help of the women, if they don’t end up helping him.

 

Jon Parshall  1:04:49

Yeah, you don’t, and we don’t know that’s all sort of unspoken at the end, whether or not he makes it back or not, but yeah, his odds if he has to go alone, no, he’s. Not going to make it. He is not going to make it. I was

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:05:02

going to say you sent me a picture of the real bridge. So I’m assuming the way the movie ends is not anything like what historically actually happened at all.

 

Jon Parshall  1:05:09

Right? So what ends up actually happening is that we use a much more viable military asset than a commando team to blow up this bridge. We use airplanes, because that’s what airplanes do. And so in 1944 there is a campaign that is going through Burma. The British Army eventually counter attacks into Burma at the end of the war, and really puts the hurtin on the Japanese it’s one of the biggest defeats the Japanese army suffers during that war. And obviously one of the things they’re trying to do is shut down the supply line, and so they send army aircraft over, and they bomb the bridge, and they eventually knock the bridge out. So that puts paid to that portion of the railroad. And actually that railroad no longer really exists, because the route that it went through was so rugged and whatnot that, you know, there are segments of the railroad still left but, but by and large, it’s not used today, other than to take tourists up to the bridge and, you know, show them portions of that sort of thing. Um, there’s another sort of little Danu mA here in that one of the very first engine the Japanese used to run over that railroad is preserved today in the ushicon Museum in Tokyo. And when I take tours with with guests from the World War Two Museum, we go to that museum, and it’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door of this museum is this sort of, huh, you know, the railroad engineer, you know. And the English placards don’t really say anything about it. They say, Oh, this engine was manufactured in Japan, and it was used in Thailand for economic development after the war. And it doesn’t mention the fact that, yeah, it basically was the first rent engine that went over this railroad that cost the lives of 102,000 civilians and POWs and whatnot. But that’s the you should con museum for you. It’s got a very hard, right, sort of interpretational slant, and so as far as they’re concerned, you know, it’s a lovely railroad engine. But anyway, yeah, that’s how the historical bridge ends up getting put paid to we bomb it with airplanes. So

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:07:24

then I’m assuming, since they take people on tours there, I’m assuming, did they rebuild it then for tourist purposes? If it’s not really being used, or is it, I think

 

Jon Parshall  1:07:33

that segment of it they actually do use. The actual historical bridge is actually by a fairly large town. It’s not actually out in the middle of the jungle, as movie portrays. So. So it is still in use, so far as I know. But as I say, they ended up renaming the river to be to be KY so it would be more in keeping with what, you know, what the tourists want to see typing

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:07:56

into GPS, you’re not going to find it if it’s not even who

 

Jon Parshall  1:08:00

wants to go to the river over the big long you know, nobody wants to go there yet.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:08:06

Well, thank you so much for taking time away from your new book to come on the show. I’ll make sure to add a link to your book’s website so everybody can sign up to get updates on your new book. The Bridge on the River Kwai, covering that movie. It’s been highly requested here on my podcast, and I’m sure a lot of people want to learn more about the railway of death, Japanese occupation and more, and I know you’re touching on a lot of those subjects in your new book as well. So can you share a peek for what fans of the movie bridge on river Kwai can look forward to when your book is published? Sure. So

 

Jon Parshall  1:08:35

it is a new history of the year 1942 just basically talking about how the Allies turned around their train wrecks worldwide. So I’m talking about Battle of the Atlantic, the Eastern Front, the Mediterranean, but also a lot about the Pacific. And I’m fascinated by these early campaigns in the Pacific in places like Malaya and Burma. So yes, I do talk about that. And I also do have a segment in one of the chapters that talks about just how badly the Japanese mismanaged this whole, their whole new empire that they conquered. You know, they have this, this phrase that this is going to be the the Asian co prosperity sphere. That’s sort of the propaganda phrase that they use, and really what it ends up being is sort of the Asian co impoverishment sphere, as all of these economies fall apart, and so I do delve into some of that as well.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:09:27

Wow, yeah, it sounds like a fast, a lot of stuff to cover there. I can’t wait to check that one out.

 

Jon Parshall  1:09:34

Yeah, it’ll definitely, it’ll definitely occupy the reader for a while. But yes, it should be, it should be coming out from Oxford University Press in the early part of 2026

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:09:44

Fantastic. Thanks again. So much for your time, Jon.

 

Jon Parshall  1:09:53

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Dan LeFebvre  05:00

I always like to kick off with a letter grade for historical accuracy, because I move we all know movies are not entirely accurate. They’re not documentaries, but Tora! Tora! Tora! is a little bit different in how it presents itself. So I’m going to start by quoting the text at the beginning of the movie. It says, The American Pacific Fleet was attacked and partially destroyed by Japan on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 this attack led to the entering of the United States into World War Two. All of the events and characters depicted are true to historical fact. Now, that last line really stuck out to me, because most movies that I’ve covered here, they claim to be based on a true story, but that one’s saying all the events and characters are true to historical fact. And it seems I mean to me, it implies it’s basically a documentary. So I’m going to start off with a two part question, rather than just asking the letter grade one, are all the events and characters in Tora! Tora! Tora! true to historical fact? And if not, I’m guessing maybe we’ll continue with the episode. It’s not an A++++ for letter grade for historical accuracy. So what would it get?

Jon Parshall  06:03

That’s a great question. I think they get a very good grade overall. I do think that there are some characters in here that I have a suspicion are composite characters, right that, and we see that on a fairly frequent basis in movies, but yeah, overall, I would give it, I’d give it an A minus, nice, okay, yeah, a very strong grade. I think that this movie stands up very well, you know, given even despite the fact that it’s, you know, 40 some years, maybe almost 50 years old at this point, I can’t believe I’m even saying that. So, yeah, it gets a good, gets a good grade. There are some things, obviously, just, just given the nature of the special effects that they can use during this time. I mean, we’re using American aircraft carriers, post war aircraft carriers, to film a lot of these sequences. And so those are not necessarily, you know, they don’t look like a Japanese aircraft carrier all of the time that they do use models in the movie. Those are, those are very high quality.

Dan LeFebvre  07:08

At the beginning of the movie, we find out the reason for the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor, as well as the reason why it’s such a surprise for the Americans. And from the Japanese perspective, the movie explains that they’re faced with an embargo of the raw materials that they need for their war in China. According to the movie, they basically have two choices, improve diplomatic relations with the US and withdraw from China, or find another source of raw materials in Indochina. And then a little later in the movie, we find out that the Japanese have set a deadline of October for the diplomatic solution of things. And then, from the American perspective, the movie sets up that even though the fleet has moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, the movie says that there’s not going to be an attack at Pearl Harbor, because a torpedo dropped will plunge to 75 feet, and Pearl Harbor is only 40 feet deep, so that’s not going to happen. But how well does the movie do setting up these two different sides of the story prior to the attack?

Jon Parshall  08:05

That’s all fairly well done, although I’d say that the American explanation of things is sort of overly simplistic. So let’s, let’s talk about that. Yeah, from the Japanese perspective, that’s right on the money. They’re involved in this war in China, the raw materials that are being cut off are American raw materials. We’ve basically, as a result of their move south into French Indochina, which is now Vietnam, the Americans put in place an embargo on the Japanese that cut off all of their scrap iron and steel exports. But most importantly, oil, and Japan has no domestic source of oil, and so at this point, you know the clock is running. Unless that oil embargo ends, you know they’re gonna run out of oil within, I don’t know, a couple of years, something like that, which doesn’t sound all that drastic, but if you’ve sunk as much blood and treasure into building up your navy in the inner your war, inter war years as the Japanese have, you’re now in a position where you got to use it or lose it, right? Because without oil, that Navy is useless. And so the clock is ticking, as far as the Japanese are concerned. And the only place that they can get oil, if they can’t get it from us. They’ve got to go down south to Borneo and Indonesia, because that’s where the oil is and Java and Borneo and those places. So, yeah, that’s, that’s what’s happening on on the Japanese side. They’ve either got to come to a diplomatic solution, or they’ve got to wage war in the South Pacific from the American side. Yeah, we move our battle fleet, the Pacific portion of our fleet. And understand, of course, you know as as being a two ocean country, we’ve got, our fleet is basically split in half, and the Atlantic units are all out there, and the Pacific units, traditionally are based in San Diego. We make the decision to move them out to Pearl Harbor. As a deterrent to let the Japanese know we’re serious about this. But the Yeah, the ability of the Japanese to attack our units at Pearl Harbor is still an ongoing source of controversy. I Yeah, the torpedo thing is one thing, Pearl Harbor is a relatively shallow harbor. Typically torpedoes, when you dump them in the water back in the day from an airplane would need, yes, 75 to 100 feet, it would dive down before it would come back up to running depth again. So that’s one thing, but more important, I think we did not understand at this point in time the level of sophistication that the Japanese carrier forces evolved to. We thought in our minds that, okay, maybe they would conduct a raid against us because we had done similar things during some of our exercises in the inner war years too, we had used our own carriers, like Lexington to attack Pearl Harbor. In our mind, a raid would be maybe one Japanese carrier, maybe two, and they’d launch 3040, 50 aircraft, and then they’d turn around and run right. What’s happened is starting in april 1941, the Japanese make this sort of conceptual leap to what would happen if we started using our carriers instead of in ones and twos. What if we took all the big flight decks in our Navy and put them together into one great, big carrier fleet, and so in April of 41 they make the decision to do that, and it’s one thing to issue an order and say, Okay, we’ll create this thing called, you know, the mobile fleet. It’s quite another to then work out all of the nuts and bolts of, how do you actually make that happen? You know, you got to figure out, how are these ships going to steam together? How when they launch aircraft, how many are they going to put up at a time once those aircraft are up in the air? Okay, now I’ve got these groups of aircraft from four of these carriers, later, six of these carriers. How are they going to operate in the air? Are we going to put them into one big, cohesive Strike Force? Are they still going to be commanded by the individual carrier captains, you know? So they’re all these nuts and bolts that have got to be worked out. And that’s all happening during the summer of 1941 as the Japanese are thinking in themselves, we may go to war. And if we do, Admiral Yamamoto, who’s the head of combined fleet, is like, we’re going to attack Pearl Harbor. So you can think of this almost in terms of like a disease. It’s like, this is cancer metastasizing, and the Japanese carrier force is a completely different animal in six months from April to like november of 1941 they bring on two brand spanking new carriers, the shokaku and the zuikaku. So now they got six carriers to play with. They work through all these administrative issues, and they come to the conclusion that what we’re going to do is we’re going to put up these great big groups of aircraft, 160 180 190 planes at a time, they’re going to be commanded by a single commander in the air. And now we’ve got the ability to not launch 30 planes, but you know, damn near 200 and come. And you know, I can now release these enormous pulses of combat air power, which can do strategically meaningful things on the battlefield. This is absolutely revolutionary. And the British Navy and the American Navy have not made that same leap. It’s kind of the same thing, you know, if you look at 911, if you talk to the average American on the street on September 12, 2001 and said, you know, can you weaponize commercial airliners and fly them into buildings in a coordinated fashion and turn them into terrorist weapons? Everybody be like, Well, yeah, that’s obvious, but it sure as hell wasn’t obvious two days before, right? And so the Japanese have made this leap, and the other navies have not. And so that, I think, just from a conceptual standpoint, that is why the Americans feel that they’re safe at Pearl Harbor. Because the Japanese, they we don’t understand their abilities, first of all, with their carriers, and also, the other thing I should mention is underway refueling. How do you actually get a force of carriers 3500 miles across the Pacific. We didn’t know that the Japanese had actually figured out how to use tankers to refuel those ships underway, and now they’ve got this capability where not only can they bring this great, big, powerful force, but they can refuel it and bring it off of Hawaii. So there’s a bunch of things going on there on the American side as to why we don’t have the sense of danger that we might well have had, you know, a little later on the war, when we understood what their carriers could actually do. Sorry, that’s kind of a long winded explanation, but there’s nuance there.

Dan LeFebvre  14:51

And I like the example that you gave of, you know, with 911 and how after something happens, then you know that that can be done that way. Thing. And. That leads right into something I want to ask about, that the movie shows with the the airfields on the island, that it really suggests in the movie that the Americans are just not expecting an attack. Because we see a scene where, I think it was General Walter short notices that the airplanes are spread out in standard procedure in case of an enemy air attack. But he’s like, there’s 130,000 Japanese on the island. Our biggest problem to worry about is sabotage. So the planes are then grouped together into airfields, and not to get too far ahead of the timeline like I implied to earlier, the result is not good, rows of airplanes just blowing up easily as they’re attacked from the air. And that seems like one of those miscues that it’s an obvious blunder after the fact, after we knew about it. But did that really happen?

Jon Parshall  15:44

Yeah, no, it really did. Okay. There’s a little nuance there. I know the guy who is, is the the greatest Pearl Harbor scholar in the world, and he says that it kind of varied from airfield to airfield. Is just how densely those aircraft were grouped together. But yes, broadly speaking, general short, who’s the army commander on Oahu, thinks that sabotage is the more serious threat, and so in order to make those planes more easily guardable, he congregates them into the middle of the airstrips so that he can put, you know, centuries around them to make sure that nobody can sneak up and try to blow these things up. Because, yes, we were very concerned. I forget what the percentage of the population on Oahu was first or second generation Japanese, but, you know, it’s 3040, 50% something like, there’s a lot of Japanese people there, but as it turns out, they were Americans, you know, and and there really was very, very little in the way of a fifth column or something like that. One

Dan LeFebvre  16:48

thing that we see throughout the movie is the American intelligence trying to figure out what the Japanese are up to. And there’s a mention of even how the Americans can decode the messages faster than the Japanese embassy in Washington. So they seem to be, at least in the movie, it seems like they’re almost know what’s going on in real time as things are being sent, as close as you can get in real time in 1941 I guess there’s in the intelligence circle, there’s mentions of things like the 12 Apostles, that the 12 people that are allowed to see the Japanese intercepts President of the United States, for example, although there was a time, I think, where the movie mentions there was like something found in the waste bin at the inner an intercept in the waste bin in the White House, or something like that. And so he’s taken off. He gets added up again. But overall, how well does the movie do showing the American code breaking capabilities and the intelligence and their impact on the events leading up to December 7,

Jon Parshall  17:38

right? Good question. Um, and, and I’m just going to put out right right away that I do not consider myself a scholar of the cryptographic side of this battle. I’m good enough to be dangerous, but I’m that’s not really my thing, but I can certainly paint some broad brush pictures of what’s going on here. Um, it is true that we had broken two different sets of Japanese codes. The first one that you alluded to is the diplomatic codes that are going back and forth between their embassies and their foreign minister back in Tokyo, a guy named Togo. So we can break that stuff. We’ve also recently broken the Japanese naval operations code, which is called Jn 25 and we’re reading some of that traffic as well at this time, the problem is that, yeah, on a good day, we can maybe decipher, I don’t know, 10, 20% of the code groups at any given message. The diplomatic stuff is better than that, but we’re really gated in terms of translation manpower. This is right before the war. Our military, all through the Depression, has been starved of people and resources and money, and we’re not out of war footing at this point. I was just reading a little bit more about this this morning. I mean, the army had maybe a half dozen good Japanese translators in its crypto unit. The Navy probably had a similar number. So you’re talking about a dozen people trying to evaluate the intelligence that’s coming through here. And, of course, there’s, it’s one thing to be able to decode the message. It’s another to be then able to translate that into English and then analyze Okay, well, what the heck does this mean? Right? So, yes, ex post facto, you know, fast forward to 1945 1946 by the end of the war, we have 1000s of translators working this stuff, and it’s being aided by IBM tabulation machines. We’re using, you know, machine aided methods to do this stuff. So by the end of the war, yeah, we are reading Japanese. These diplomatic traffic that’s going between their foreign ministry out to the embassy in Moscow. For instance, we’re reading that and translating that and turning it into English faster than the Japanese are doing it themselves. It’s really impressive. That is not where we are at September on October of 1941 so at the end of the war, they went back. Now we got all these analysts. Let’s go back and actually look at some of these messages that were floating around in September and October and November. Let’s decode those suckers. Now, what did they tell us? And you know, first of all, there’s 1000s of messages that you got to go through. Were there smoking guns in there? Yeah, there absolutely were. There was a message that was translated in 1946 that laid out the exact composition of nagumos carrier task force, you know, down, you know, ship by ship and yada yada yada. So, you know, if they had gotten lucky and gotten the right messages and gotten them translated by one of those six dudes. You know, we might have gotten the smoking gun. It might have fallen into our lap. The problem then, in in September and October at 41 is, yes, there are some clues out there. But how do you put the put them all together into a cohesive picture? Because the other thing that’s happening is that we’re getting a lot of we would call it false returns, but they were, they were actually, they were real returns. So let me expand the picture here. This movie is about Pearl Harbor. We focus on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, from the Japanese standpoint, is just one small component of their overall plan of campaign, which is aimed to the south. So, you know, as we’re looking at the Intel, we’re like, they could attack us in the Philippines. Maybe they’ll attack down in Malaya. Maybe they’re you going into the Central Pacific. The answer is yes, they’re going to attack in all of those places. Okay, so how do you then make sense of that and pull out the little kernels that might also point to the fact that maybe they’ve got an interest in Hawaii as well. Those pieces were there. But again, just given the deluge of different data points that are all pointing in different directions, it’s real easy ex post facto to come back and say, well, there’s this and this and this and there, therefore, clearly Pearl Harbor was in danger. It was not nearly as obvious at the time. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  22:29

I like what you mentioned, like, with the smoking gun, and as you were saying that, I was thinking referring back what you’re talking about with 911 or, like, how would you know that that’s actually the smoking gun, until you knew after the fact what they did to know that that was the smoking gun and not just some deterrent or propaganda or exactly some other message that you don’t know what it means,

Jon Parshall  22:49

right? That’s right, yeah, if you actually look at just a map of the opening moves of the Japanese offensive that they’re going to start unloading, you know, on December 7. I mean, there’s ships all over the place, because they are landing divisions in Malaya to go after the British and, you know, march down towards Singapore. They are doing initial moves out of the Palau’s, which are southeast of the Philippines, you know, down into the Central Pacific. And very quickly, they’re going to start putting troops into the Philippines as well. There’s a lot of transports moving around in the East China Sea, and it’s all got to happen by clockwork, because the Japanese don’t have enough troop transports. And so the transports, they’re going to take that initial Echelon down to Malaya, are then going to have to move back up north, go to Formosa, pick up more divisions there that are going to be used for the landings against the Philippines. You know, there’s just tons and tons of things going on here. It’s not all it. The movie makes it seem like, you know, you know what’s going on with Pearl Harbor. Where are the Japanese aircraft carriers? But you have to understand that there’s just tons of different stuff happening at the same time.

Dan LeFebvre  23:58

The world’s a much bigger picture. So it’s not being focused on the United States. Yeah, at one point in the movie we did see Colonel Bratton is kind of piecing together the intercepts because of a message from Tokyo that indicated that they wanted to conclude negotiations no later than November 29 so he’s convinced that the Japanese will attack on Sunday, November 30. Was there really a belief that that would be the date of the surprise attack? I

Jon Parshall  24:24

don’t have a definitive answer to that one. I was actually looking around for that on the basis of the those questions. And my sense is that this is another one of those sort of false positives that you’ve got clue A, B and C, that leads you to, you know, an indication that this could be the day. But this kind of stuff happens all the time. You know that you’ll get something that looks like it’s a smoking gun, and then nothing happens on that day. And now all of a sudden, all of the decision makers, you know, the admirals, are looking at you, Mr. Defense analyst, and like, well, what the heck. Robe, no. How many times has

Dan LeFebvre  25:01

the world, the end of the world been predicted over the right? Exactly,

Jon Parshall  25:05

exactly.

Dan LeFebvre  25:08

Yeah, yeah. Speaking of those messages from Japan, there is a plot line during the course of the film that talks about a quote, unquote, very long message in 14 parts that sent from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in DC, and since, like we talked about, the Americans are intercepting everything. They’re able to read each part as they come in in the movie. But then Tokyo specifically doesn’t want to send the final part until the morning of December 7, so the 14th part of the message instructs their ambassadors to submit their reply to the US government on December 7 at precisely 1pm local time in Washington, DC. And then there’s a follow up message where they tell their embassy to, quote, unquote, destroy at once your cipher machine all codes and secret documents. And then, in a nutshell, that’s kind of seems to be the final confirmation about when the attack will take place. Of course, they still don’t know where it’s going to take place, but is the movie accurately portraying the storyline of the 14 part message?

Jon Parshall  26:10

Yeah, that’s that’s basically all correct. There was a 14 part message. It does not and we’re aware that this message is coming, and we know that, yes, the the 14th art needs to be delivered at at 1pm Washington time. The message starts getting transmiss admitted, and it doesn’t come over sequentially. It’s not real clean. It’s like parts five and nine were the first ones to be broadcast. You know, it’s just all over the place. And then there’s this big gap of the number of hours, and then, yeah, so everybody’s kind of waiting around for the for the 14th part to land. And from the Japanese standpoint, this was all kind of bungled. I mean, that what the Japanese wanted to do was be able to walk into our Secretary of War’s office with, you know, a declaration of war precisely at 1pm and then the attack on Pearl Harbor is going to go down like five minutes later. Okay? And they’re cutting things really fine, because, given the sensitivity of this message traffic, the Japanese embassy in Washington was ordered not to use a typist to actually, you know, type out all of the the message and put it into this document that’s going to be, you know, handed to our our guys. So the Japanese end up bungling. This is what it comes down to. And the attack ends up occurring before the message actually gets delivered.

Dan LeFebvre  27:47

Okay, that’s so I think the movie does kind of make a point of having this guy typing there on the key on the typewriter, trying to type things out. Take that jacket off a little bit too. Yeah, and go back to typing and just taking so long everybody else is just watching the clock on the wall to see climbing

Jon Parshall  28:03

the walls. Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny. I actually, I did a presentation, this was years ago down in New Orleans at the World War Two Museum down there on Pearl Harbor, and it was either the son or the grandson of one of those Japanese guys in the embassy was there to give a talk on that very episode, and he was still just infuriated that, basically, you know, the Foreign Ministry back in in Tokyo had set his dad up for failure here because they didn’t get this traffic out to him in a timely basis so he could do his job. It was, it was kind of a, kind of a foster clock on the on the part of the Japanese, I

Dan LeFebvre  28:48

guess they didn’t have the emails they can just schedule to send it. Say, one, two, yeah, a little bit different,

Jon Parshall  28:54

yeah, exactly, yeah. Just, you know, can we just queue this up in MailChimp and have it drop? Oh, come on, exactly. Yeah, that heard it happening. So,

Dan LeFebvre  29:03

yeah. Well, we’re about halfway through the timeline of the movie, and I want to ask about a rather it’s a brief scene in the movie, but it seems to be significant on a rather routine patrol. Least seems so in the movie, there’s a US Navy ship that notices a submarine’s Periscope just a stern of a navy tug seems to be trying to sneak into the net around Pearl Harbor. So the American ship fires on the submarine. And since the movie is focusing heavily on the planes from the characters or from the carriers, I should say that’s really one of the only times that we see submarines used by the Japanese in this movie. So can you feel this more historical context around how they fit into this overall strategy.

Jon Parshall  29:41

So the Japanese want to use five little mini subs that they are. They’re transporting them out on these mother subs. And they’ve got a little hatchway that you can get up into the bottom of the submarine. You’ve got a two man crew in each one of these things that are going to be launched. And the idea. Is that these five mini subs are going to sneak into Pearl Arbor at the same time that the aerial attack is going to go down and deliver their own torpedo attacks. They each carry two torpedoes against the American ships that are in there. Well, you know, things, things go awry. Let’s just put it that way. And and there’s still an ongoing controversy as to whether or not one of those submarines did manage to sneak into Pearl Harbor. There’s a photo that alleges to show, I don’t personally believe it myself, for reasons I won’t go into, but anyway, this incident that we’re depicting here absolutely did happen. So the USS Ward was an old four stacker destroyer, and oddly enough, so I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the ward was manned primarily by naval reservists from Minnesota and so, and she had a brand new captain. This guy had been in charge of the ship for like, less than 24 hours. And just as you say, you know, on the morning of the attack, about an hour and a half before this all goes down, lo and behold, the LORD cites the sub. Yeah, the sale of a sub at a periscope too. And, yeah, they end up taking two shots at it. And for years, the boys from St Paul claimed that they had drilled that sub, you know, put a hole right through the sale of that thing. Neat is neat. And nobody believed them. And it took, I forget, 5560, some years, before they finally found that submarine. And there was a hole in the base of the of the Codding tower, you know. And we still have the number four gun from the USS Ward sits out at the state capitol about seven miles that way. Wow. Yeah, it’s really cool. Wow. So, yeah, this incident happens. They sink this submarine, they kill its crew, and it sinks. And the Lord then sends a message up, you know, through the through the channel, saying we have attacked, and we believe sunk an enemy submarine off of the mouth of the harbor. And normally you would think that that would be sort of an attention getter. But what ends up happening is that it’s we’re at a peacetime setting, and the the people on the land based side of things are looking at the captain, the warden, like, this guy is wet behind the ears, man, this dude doesn’t know what he’s doing. And they’re a bunch of naval reservists. Like, yeah, okay, whatever you know. And so they, they ignore it, and it’s, it’s not really gonna sort of come into the consciousness of the base people, until the attack starts going down. It’s like a light bulb, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s thing. Well, that leads to

Dan LeFebvre  33:04

that, kind of, like the good letter grade that you gave before his historical accuracy. Because I think there is even a mention of how this guy, oh, he’s green, he’s, you know, Captain green, he’s, he’s new. I want confirmation. I need confirmation. And kind of going through that

Jon Parshall  33:18

confirmation of a sub that you’ve already sunk you know, yeah, in the movie. And not to get

Dan LeFebvre  33:22

too far ahead of the timeline, the movie, in the movie, as as all the planes are going, I think that comes back. Is that enough confirmation for you? So I’m like,

Jon Parshall  33:28

yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, and, you know, there’s, there’s a question here. Okay, 630 you’ve got roughly 80 minutes or so before the attack is going to go down. What could the Americans actually have done with that amount of warning time? It would be very, very difficult to start getting the ships actually out of the harbor in that amount of time. I mean, a lot of cases, these ships are not at actions none of them are at action stations. A lot of their crews are ashore for shore leave. It’s Sunday morning, um, and just the physical act of firing up the boilers and raising steam takes a long time on a warship of that vintage. And so, you know, I don’t know that the ships would have been able to be moved Had there been coordinated communications between the army and the navy, though, among other things, you could have had a better air presence over the island as a result of that. I mean, 90 minutes is plenty of time for me to wake up a bunch of pilots at these airfields and get get planes up in the air, so that that could have materially change things. It sounds

Dan LeFebvre  34:41

like that’s another one of those elements that remembering that the US was not in the war, which I know, it’s something that everybody knows, but also it’s helpful to continuously remember that, because I think there’s a big difference between I think I just watched recently another classic, you know, the Battle of Britain, right? Where you have all these pilots that are just waiting for the call to go up, and so they go up in just a matter of minutes. And this is a little bit different for the guys who, you know, there’s no war going on. It’s technically peace. So it’s a little bit different. They’re not gonna, yeah, they could get up faster, but still, it’s not like, it’s not more time. And I think it’s always good to remember that that

Jon Parshall  35:20

and among other things, this is one of those sort of boring, you know, behind the scenes things that nobody thinks about. There was no joint Army Navy operations room for the defense of this island at this time. So there’s no easy way for a navy Skipper to send a report up to, you know, his superiors and then have that information be promulgated across to the army, who is in charge of the air defense of this island, to say, scramble your damn fighters. You know, there could be something coming in here. Something’s up. You know, at least be on higher alert, because we just sank a submarine out out in front of the entrance of the most important naval base in the Pacific. Speaking

Dan LeFebvre  36:01

of things that they hadn’t figured out at this point in the war, yet, there is a new piece of technology that the Americans get, according to the movie, to help detect intruders on the sea and in the air. And this new technology is called radar. On the morning of December 7, we see two guys manning the radar station at Opana point, and they detect two large pulses coming in, so they call it in. Lieutenant Tyler answers, and he says, Ah, don’t worry about it. They’re just the B seventeens coming in from the mainland. And then a little later in the movie, we actually see the B seventeens arriving. So they’re a real thing, but they’re also getting attacked by the Japanese planes. I love the quote from one of the pilots. It’s like, what a way to fly into a war, unarmed and out of gas. Can you take us through what actually happened with the radar and the B 17? That’s

Jon Parshall  36:47

all 100% legit. All of that happened, yeah? So yes, there’s a there’s a brand new experimental radar station up at Opana point. You can still drive by it today. And yeah, there were these two cats up there who were calibrating the radar set, and one of them was brand new. And so, you know, the more senior guy was kind of breaking this junior dude in. And, you know, here’s how you operate this particular radar set. And so, yeah, they see this understand too that at this time, that era of radar didn’t have the sort of the classic radar scope that we look at the where we’ve got this, you know, rotating thingy, and it’s plotting the azimuth. No, basically, these guys are looking at an oscilloscope and and what they’re seeing is that at this bearing, which is almost due north, we got this big old spike, something’s coming in from the north. And so, yes, they, these two cats, telephone down to Lieutenant Kermit Tyler. And I, actually, I met Kermit Tyler right before he died. I was, I was out at a symposium in Hawaii, and that poor guy, I mean, he’s, you know, he had to live with that particular set of events for the rest of his life, because he knows that there’s some B seventeens coming in, and he knows that, you know, they often approach, you know, kind of from the north, to do their their landing exercises. And he, you know, we got a big spike. It’s in that general neck of the woods. Yeah, that’s what he says. Don’t worry about it. And the other thing again, is that even if Kermit Tyler had raised Holy hell, once again, the fact that we do not have joint communications with Army and Navy, he didn’t have the ability to, you know, pick up the phone call Admiral Kimmel, for instance, and say, you know, there’s airplanes coming in. There was none of that sort of, what I want to say, operational communications infrastructure in place. You know, Kermit really had kind of his hands tied behind his back in terms of what he could do. But yeah, he becomes one of these sort of scapegoats that everybody knows about this incident, you know. And, yeah, it absolutely did happen, and Kerman had to live it, live with it, for the rest of his life.

Dan LeFebvre  39:05

It sounds almost like the scapegoat in the movie, at least the version of, you know, the Japanese typist trying to type things out really slowly and and all that kind of makes that out. And it almost sounds like it’s another version of that, you know, you’re, what can you do? I mean, even if you did get that notification, yeah, what would you do with it? What

Jon Parshall  39:26

would you do with it? Right? And this is, this is later than then. You know that that sinking of the submarine, where, you know the planes are getting close at this point, and you know, just given the speed of advance of that, of that air power that’s coming in, you know they’re going, yeah, the better part of 200 miles an hour. You know your your time to take actionable information and turn that into results on those airfields in terms of getting more fighter cover overhead is distinctly limited. And yeah, that window closed. Loses very quickly, and now it’s game on. The

Dan LeFebvre  40:02

movie doesn’t mention this, but I would imagine, especially too, because they changed the formations of the planes on the airfield, that would take a little bit longer for them to get up, I’m guessing, just to a little bit different than what would they would normally be. And so that would just add another they would have to know your even earlier for to make any sort of difference, right on that, right?

Jon Parshall  40:24

The other thing is, too, that the Japanese were taking very serious measures to make sure that they were going to really stomp on air power in the Hawaiian Islands. Again, in the course of the movie, we, of course, tend to fixate on what happens in the anchorage in Pearl Harbor itself. But if you look at a breakdown of the individual sorties that the Japanese, okay, I got this package of 180 planes coming in in the first wave. I got another 167 behind them in the second wave. If you look at what those 180 planes are supposed to be doing in that first way, half of them are airfield suppression, because the Japanese are terribly concerned that there are a lot of aircraft on Oahu, and we don’t want those airplanes coming up in the air, messing with our attack force, or, even worse, reaching out and touching our aircraft carriers. No, no, no, no. So a lot of those planes are devoted to shutting down every airfield on Oahu. Again, from from the American standpoint, a Japanese raid would be one or two carriers, right? And they would be probably focused on the anchorage exclusively the Japanese. This is an entirely different animal. We’re bringing 350 planes, and we’re not just going to attack the Anchorage. We’re gonna we’re gonna shut this whole island down, in terms of all the aircraft too. It’s an immensely sophisticated plan. You know, no, no other Navy in the world could do this at this point in time, the Japanese carrier force, Kido Butai, you know, is as revolutionary in its way as the German Panzer Division was at about the same time in terms of ground warfare, nobody else has this capability at this point. We couldn’t do this kind of attack until early 1944

42:17

Wow. Yeah,

Jon Parshall  42:18

it’s a really this is a distinctly capable beastie that the Japanese have unleashed on us. We just don’t understand what it can do anyway. I’m, I’m, I’m digressing here, but the point of the matter is that even if we had gotten a few more fighters up in the air, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t think in terms of the overall impact, because they’re bringing dozens and dozens of zero fighters down that are expressly tasked with just sweeping the skies clean of any fighters that they run into. The Zero is a better machine than most of the fighters that we am on the island, and at this time in the war, we don’t understand the capabilities of the zero as an airframe, and so we would be fighting it using the incorrect kind of tactics. At this point in time, our fighter pilots are taught you want to get into a dog fight. That’s how you shoot down an enemy plane. Here to tell you, you try flying a P 40 or, even worse, an old or P 36 which was a lot of the machines on this island. You try dog fighting that against the zero. You are dead. You get shot down like boom. They take you right out because the zero climbs faster, turns tighter. It’s just and they got really, really good pilots. So the net result is to say that even if Kermit had done his thing, even if, even if we had given the, you know, call out the hounds and we managed to get a few dozen more fighters up in the air, I don’t know that it necessarily has that big an impact on the outcome of the

Dan LeFebvre  43:41

attack? Yeah. No, that makes sense. And I like that. You mentioned the the zeros and not fighting against that made me ask, not associated with the movie at all. But was it who was the the general The Flying Tigers that were fighting overall in China? Yeah, did that? Did that help them at all to know, like strategy of fighting against zeros, or in that strategy that maybe not every all the pilots on Pearl would happen to to know that. But did that help at all

Jon Parshall  44:10

if they had listened to chenl? Yes, yes, because you’re absolutely right. We, you know, we had this unit in China that had been tangling with the zero for for a little while. And, yeah, we knew the characteristics of this plane, but chanal, really, you know, he’s, yes, he’s technically working for the for the US Army Air Corps. But he’s also kind of this, this rogue operator who’s out in China, and nobody believes the the Intel that’s coming out of there. It’s, going to take, you know, a good six months or so of actually tangling with this airplane and in the in the course of those early war campaigns, the zero gains this reputation is really being sort of a super fighter. You know, it’s not, but if you use the wrong tactic against it, the. The results are distinctly unpleasant, and so it really would not be until the Battle of Midway, a guy named Jimmy thatch came up with a new tactic. He’s like, Okay, well, we can’t out turn these suckers, but I’ve got this method of interweaving, you know, my airplanes, so that any approach that the the enemy fighter takes, they’re going to face the potential of a head on attack against one of my elements of fighters, that is, you know, maneuvering back and forth anyway. We eventually get a handle on how to fight the zero, but it takes a number of months, and honestly, a lot of dead fighter pilots along the way to realize that this is an extremely capable, nimble, dangerous airplane. Don’t dog fight it, or you will die.

Dan LeFebvre  45:42

If we go back to the movie, we’re about an hour and 47 minutes into the movie is when we hear it’s a long the movie. It is a long movie. It is a long movie almost two hours into it when we hear the title, Torah, Torah, Torah. And those are the code words according to the movie. Those are the chord words to be sent by the Japanese pilots if they’ve achieved the element of surprise. And we see it happening the movie. The planes are flying over the island. There’s no anti aircraft guns firing, no American fighters over the harbor. It seems to be a complete surprise. So the code words are sent, and then soon after that, we see the first shots being fired by the Japanese fighters. There’s three planes of strafing a submarine in the harbor that that’s the first shot that we see in in the movie. Moments later, it’s funny, there’s a band playing this the Star Spangled Banner as the flag is being raised on one of the decks of the ship. And then the Japanese start swarming, and they just rush through the song. They don’t just stop. They just rush through their song to finish it as they start to realize what’s happening. How did the movie do showing the moment of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor itself?

Jon Parshall  46:40

I give them a, b, b plus on that. Okay, so the actual first attack on Oahu doesn’t happen at Pearl Harbor. It happens further north on the island at at Wheeler airfield. Oh, okay, yeah, and again, because they want to suppress, they being the Japanese, want to suppress the American air power on this island. Wheeler, which is, which is north, gets, Gets Plastered by dive bombers and strafing fighters and so that goes down about 10 minutes before the actual attack on the anchorage itself. Yeah, I think the first bomb that lands actually does land on Ford Island in the middle of the Anchorage. And then, yeah, there’s a lot of sort of hurry up kind of stuff going on, because you’re right then that that’s legit. You know, there were flags being raised, you know, it’s the beginning of the morning. It’s, yeah, oh, 800 you know, let’s get the get there, get our day on. And all of a sudden, yeah, you got these planes buzzing around the harbor. I’ll tell you what, when you stand today on the on the deck of the USS, Missouri, which is moored there in the harbor, basically at the point where the USS Oklahoma, which is one of the battleships that was sunk during the attack, you stand on the deck of the Missouri and you can look out over the water, and particularly up the length of the southeast lock, which goes up towards the submarine base. And that body of water, because it basically aimed right at Battleship Row, was the point of attack for a lot of the Japanese torpedo planes, they went right down the southeast lock as they’re heading towards Battleship Row, and then they sort of peeled off to hit, you know, Oklahoma, West Virginia, what have you. It is still to this day. It just brings shivers up my spine standing over that, you know, looking over that body water and imagining what it must have been like to be an American sailor on one of those ships, and watching these planes coming in on you and dropping their torpedoes, one, one at a time. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it. I mean, you’re just utterly helpless. You know, the guns are not manned. In many cases, the ready ammunition for the guns is locked up in lockers and you can’t find the keys. I mean, it was a hot mess. And again, just the the feeling of powerlessness, watching these puppies lining up on you and dropping these torpedoes, and, you know, in they come like these accusing fingers, you know, towards the side of your ship. Oh, man, this is not gonna be a good day.

Dan LeFebvre  49:23

It’s understandable, like, you’re not gonna know exactly what happened the moments. It’s not like there was footage, you know, security camera footage that we have of that attack moment. But I did like the way that the movie portrays different reactions by different people. Like, you know, one of the officers is just like, I’ll get that guy’s number, you know, I’m going to get him in trouble, right, for for flying, and then bomb drops. He’s like, wait a minute, what you know? And then you even have the officers off a ways from the harbor itself, and you can see things going off in the distance, right? And everybody’s just starting to recognize what’s going on. And it’s a it’s that moment that you. Yeah, I can imagine what it would be like.

Jon Parshall  50:01

Yeah, unimaginable. You know, how, how, unless they have been feeling trying to change their entire perceptual apparatus to, yeah, oh, my God, you know, because, obviously, there were a lot of guys in the Navy at this point who felt that there’s going to be a war, but not a lot of them thought that we’re going to be there the first casualties in that war. You know, that was not a thought that it occurred to many of these people in peacetime. Oahu at all. You know, it’s going to be this, poor clowns on the Philippines. We know they’re going to get invaded. You know, it’s going to be them, and it’s like no baby.

Dan LeFebvre  50:39

We talked earlier about the airfields and the moving the planes to avoid the sabotage. But then, as we see the attack happening in the movie, can see that the planes are trying. There’s some that are trying to get off the ground. They’re obviously outnumbered. There’s some that are blowing up before they can get off but then there’s two American pilots that manage to get off the ground. We see, I think I counted that they shot down three Japanese planes that we saw in the movie. But we don’t really see a lot about what happened to them. Can you fill in kind of the rest of the story around the American pilots who did manage to get off the ground during the attack?

Jon Parshall  51:11

And this is where you don’t get your good value for your money, because I’m, like, a big picture, you know, operations level dude. And I don’t know the the individual particulars. I can’t remember the names of the two guys. How’s that for lane? But yeah, the the bottom line is that there was a little, um, almost like a divert field. Wasn’t even a main airfield at all. It was like this little dirt airstrip up north on the coast. And these two guys, yeah, they pile into their into their Jeep, and they go racing up there. I don’t think he was a jeep. Actually, was like a civilian Studebaker or something, you know, because there’s a couple of P 40s sitting up at that strip that they know of. And they’re like, Yeah, let’s go. And so yeah, they they hop up there, they get in their planes, they get up and yes, they do shoot down two or three of those aircraft, you know. So yay team. I mean, those guys showed commendable initiative, and they did what they what they could do. And I would just like to stop it there and say that, of course, in one of the movies in the in the recent Pearl Harbor movie, of course, two of those cats then end up supposedly being pilots on the Doolittle mission, you know,

Dan LeFebvre  52:20

of course, which is the Americans had more than two pilots. What

Jon Parshall  52:26

I’m here to tell you that no fighter guy is gonna be like, Yeah, put me in a multi engine medium bomber that, you know, handles like a dump truck. Yeah, that is so the duty that I want. Yeah, it’s just absolute nonsense. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  52:41

was it Ben Affleck? He hands up coming Batman anyway. So you used to flying all that kind of thing. True. Good point.

Jon Parshall  52:49

Yeah. There you go. Yeah. But that, that incident did happen. They did shoot down a couple three the Japanese planes, and then kind of, you know, ran out of target. So I think one of them was forced down. I can’t again. I can’t remember the particulars. Well, maybe

Dan LeFebvre  53:04

this is a maybe, maybe you’ve already answered this kind of a hypothetical situation. But as I was watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think about what might have been different if maybe they hadn’t grouped all their planes together so that they had gotten easily destroyed. Maybe they could have more. Do you think that would have changed anything, or kind of what we were talking about earlier? They didn’t know much about the zeros and attacks, and it really wouldn’t have made much difference anyway. Yeah, I

Jon Parshall  53:25

mean, certainly it would have complicated things for the Japanese. But I think in the grand scheme of things, you know, I forget the exact number of zeros that they’re bringing down for the in the first wave, but it’s the better part of 50 or 60 zeros, and they’re, they’re gonna wipe out whatever aircraft we put up. Is my, is my guess. But we should not, we should not poo poo, the the value of time in this case, because even in the first wave attack, where the the Japanese basically had their way with us, because we were completely surprised in the Anchorage, at least, if you really get down in the weeds and grind the numbers on the casualties amongst the Japanese torpedo plane attackers, for instance, it’s clear that even within the space of 234, minutes that American anti aircraft fire was increasing dramatically. And there was a there was a destroyer moored in the southeast lock, a ship called the Bagley, and it had, you know, basically these torpedo planes that were running down the southeast lock, lining up the runs against battleship road were just parading past Bagley. And by the end of that series of runs, the Bagley bags several of those planes. And so you can sort of see the casualties of the Japanese were already starting to go up by the tail end of the first wave attack. And so if you posit that. Yeah, okay, somebody listens to Kermit Tyler. There’s a big bunch of unknown planes coming down on this island, even if we had so much as had 10 extra minutes to just get the ready usage ammunition for the anti aircraft, guns ready to go. And those ships were buttoned up. They couldn’t move. But if they’re at least in better watertight integrity, and they have more of the ready ammo that could have significantly increased Japanese casualties, as it is. You know, the first wave comes in. They do their thing. They destroy the Arizona, they sink the Oklahoma, the capsizer. And the first wave is just a nightmare for us. There’s the second wave that comes in that composed mostly of dive bombers. And if you look at the photography, the historical photography that is taken from some of these Japanese planes in the second wave, as they’re coming in, Holy Moses, there’s a lot of anti aircraft fire. They were very disagreeably surprised with how incredibly dense American hack Act was. So again, in a counterfactual vein, you know, even 10 or 15 extra minutes might not have done that much in terms of the damage that was inflicted against those vessels, but it could have done a lot in terms of the amount of damage we could do against the Japanese attacking force, makes

Dan LeFebvre  56:22

sense. Makes sense, yeah. And then it goes back to, I mean, it’s a what if we don’t looking at it after the fact, we don’t really know, yeah, but if we shift back to the movie while the attack is happening there at Pearl Harbor, the movie then goes to Washington, DC, and we see the Japanese ambassador Nomura arriving at Cordell Hull’s office to deliver their message as ordered by the 14th part. We kind of talked about that a little bit earlier. But even though they were told to deliver it at 1pm The movie shows it’s slow typist. This reason why they’re being late. We already talked about that. When they get there, Mr. Hall is on the phone with the President. Wants to confirm that the attack has happened before he receives the Japanese ambassador. When he does the ambassador hands him the paper, and, you know, he reads it, and this, this is the dialog that hull has in the movie. From that response, he says, I have never seen a document so crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today, that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them, and then no more words said, Nomura just gets up leaves the room with tail between his leg. I mean, obviously very hush, quiet, somber moment. Do you think the movie was successful in capturing the essence of the true story here, word

Jon Parshall  57:38

for word, that’s perfect. Wow, it’s perfect. And the the subtext there that we don’t get is Nomura and Hall are friends. They’d known each other for a long time, and Nomura, there’s some pathos there. Nomura was not aware that this attack was coming. He was he was legitimately sent to DC as a special envoy. And he was working earnestly and honestly to try to come to a diplomatic agreement, you know, between his two countries. And so he really, you know, he’s one of these guys that just really got set up, you know, because the militarists, of course, had made the decision long before that they wanted a war. And so, you know, here’s Nomura really doing his best to bring about a settlement. And yeah, he’s, he’s now the fall guy, and has to give this document to Paul, who he knows, and so, yeah, he he was personally crushed by the the attack and the results of of this war, you know, between these two countries. Because he’s, he’s been in the US a lot. He knows us. Wow,

Dan LeFebvre  58:56

that adds even more context to in the movie when he receives that final message, and he looks at the clock on the wall, and I think it says something like 11 o’clock in the morning or somewhere around there, and he’s expected to deliver this at 1pm in just a couple hours. So it seems like that’s just when, maybe that’s just when he’s finding out what actually is happening. It’s just kind of unraveling like, Yeah,

Jon Parshall  59:18

are you kidding me? Really, wow, yeah, exactly.

Dan LeFebvre  59:22

Yeah, that, yeah, again, that’s one of those things I can’t wrap my head around, like being in that moment realizing what’s happening and right? Or it’s already happened, really, and you have to be the one to break this news. It’s already happened. That’s right,

Jon Parshall  59:34

yeah, the machine is is operating here, and it is completely out of your control, and now you’re left to pick up the pieces and yet be the delivery boy for this thing that you did not want. I mean, understand, there are plenty of people in in the Japanese government who thought that a war against the US was going to be a disaster, and had been, have been working. As assiduously as they could. There’s, there’s a really interesting book written by a Japanese woman called 1941 road to infamy, and she talks about just how feckless the Japanese senior leadership was. And there were plenty of people in their leadership who understood that a war with us is not going to end well, but no one was willing to fall on their sword and actually stand up in some of these liaison meetings where they’re actually, you know, lurching towards war through the fall, and say, time out, guys, this is nuts. You know, we can’t do this. Everyone else is looking at everyone else and say, Oh, that guy falls on his sword. And the result is that the can just keeps getting kicked down the war, you know, down the road. And now the carriers have sailed, and Nomura, you know, is one of these cats, and he gets to pick up the pieces. And the Yeah, the ship has sailed. You know, we’re at war now. Oh, my God, not only

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:59

being at war, but also the manner in which it happens, like if him, if him, finding out that it’s already happened. I don’t know. The movie doesn’t really seem to imply, with no more knew that ahead of time or not, or if it was just hull that knew that the attack had, but you’re gonna find out. I mean, that’s just, yeah, it’s just your honor, your everything is just broken. Yeah,

Jon Parshall  1:01:21

that’s exactly right. Well, if

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:23

we go back to the attack at Pearl Harbor in the movie, it shows the Japanese planes returning to their characters, and focus has on one of the pilots, Lieutenant Commander Futura, who is shocked to find out that they’re not ordering another wave of attacks to destroy the American carriers, and they’re dry docks instead, the signal is for all the ships to head back to Japan as soon as the rest of the planes return, that’s right, the explanation in the movie is that they’ve achieved the mission that they were tasked with. Their task force is vital to the war effort that they’ve just started, and the war is just beginning. Yep. Now, as I understand it, this is the part of the movie that drives what we now know as the fuel tank myth, the idea that if the Japanese had launched another wave of attacks, they would have launched that wave of attacks against the repair facilities and fuel tanks around Pearl Harbor, right? And that would have essentially been the nail in the coffin, so to speak, for the American war effort. Yep. Can you unravel this true story behind the fuel tank myth that’s implied in the movie here? Oh

Jon Parshall  1:02:16

yeah. There’s so much to unpack. Wouldn’t even start, oh, yeah, where do we go? Fuchida is a very important guy. Fuchida was the attack leader for the mission. He was the air group commander on the Akagi. He was a very charismatic, intelligent man who wrote a number of books after the war. He survives the war. He converts to Christianity, becomes a Christian missionary, and he’s a technical advisor also on Tora, Tora, Tora, and he also spins some of the most pernicious myths and lies about this war that pertain to the Battle of Midway, that pertain to some of the early war operations out in places like India, the Indian Ocean, and they really pertain here at Pearl Harbor, that whole sequence of events. So we see fuchi to land on the Akagi, and just as you say, he gets out of his cockpit, he talks to his crew chief. Is like, Why aren’t the preparations for a third attack wave happening here. And the crew chief says, Well, we haven’t gotten any orders. Fuchida looks up to the bridge, and he sees his buddy, Minoru Genda. Genda is the air officer for first air fleet. He’s the real, you know, the visionary, the air power guy. He’s Admiral degunos, right hand man when it comes to air planning. And so fuchida and Genda share this sort of profound look, you know, and and Genda then turns around and has this argument with with Admiral Nagumo on the bridge that, you know, we can’t stop now. We’ve got to go back and attack the America, find the American carriers, attack their their fuel depots and repaired basins. And Nagumo says, somewhat rudely. You can hear this in Japanese chicao, which means it’s different, or you’re wrong. It’s really rude to actually say that in Japanese. It’s just it’s kind of like shut up. And Nagumo says, No, this is the war is just beginning. We have achieved the directives that we’ve been asked to achieve, which was to sink four American battleships. That’s not in the movie, but that we know that now, and so, you know, we have to preserve this force. And we’re turning around. We’re going home. That argument never happened, never happened. It’s all a concoction of fuchida. And Genda tells this. This in his own autobiography that was published after the war as well, where he becomes aware when Tora, Tora Tora comes out. Now, there’s this sort of kerfuffle that happens, you know, in the States and also in Japan. You know that, wow, there should have been a third attack wave. You know, none of that happened because the the Japanese nakuma, nakuma. Never wanted to do a third attack against against the harbor. And even if he had, he never would have targeted repair depots and fuel tanks and stuff like that. And here’s why. If you look at the actual target priorities that are handed down from Combined Fleet ie Yamamoto to Nagumo, this is what your target list is. Buddy. At the top of the list is land based air power. Right again, they’re very concerned about our aircraft that it’s aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and other combatants, merchant ships, and only item number six do you get into harbor facilities. And we as Americans, we look at that, we’re like, Well, my God, why wouldn’t you go after logistics? And it’s like, well, because Japanese naval doctrine didn’t really think that Logistics was all that important. They’re focused on they’re focused on short term gains, because they know this war has got to be short in duration. If they can’t win this thing in a year or less, they’re they’re doomed, right? And the coin of the realm at this point in time, in terms of naval power, is the battleship. So really, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to attack American morale we’re trying to and, yeah, we’re gonna sink a bunch of your battleships, and we don’t have that many, right? There’s only 15 or 16 in the total US inventory at this point in time. And so if you sink four or five of those, man, that’s tantamount to a national calamity there. So the goal is that they’re gonna bloody our Navy and make us basically say, you know, what the heck with this? We’re gonna go fight Germany, and we’ll let the Japanese have their, you know, their ill gotten gains in the Pacific. So it’s a total morale play. In that context, in that metal context, Are we really gonna throw in the towel because they blew up a bunch of our fuel tanks in Pearl Harbor. Oh, nobody, you know the American population. You, you, we’re, we’re the biggest oil exporter in the world at this point. You know, Texas floats on crude oil. Oh, they blew up some fuel tanks. You know, had bed. And it’s absolutely immaterial. And for the Japanese as well, their navy is oriented strictly around, what are we doing in terms of destroying enemy warships? If you’re not sinking anymore warships, you’re doing something wrong. So Logistics is just very much an afterthought. So it’s interesting, if you look at from cheetahs accounts, they interviewed him right after the war in October of 1945 and they asked him point blank in those interviews as part of the strategic bombing survey, they said, Why didn’t you guys go back and hit us again? Why didn’t you go after the fuel tanks? And his answer in October 1945 is, well, you know we had sunk, we knew we had sunk at least four of your battleships, which, you know, check the box in terms of what we were tasked to do. We didn’t know where your carriers were. That really was kind of worrisome. And, you know, at the end of the day, we thought we had fulfilled our mission. So we went home. Fast forward to 1963 when he’s giving interviews to Gordon praying, who’s the guy who wrote At Dawn We Slept, and was also a technical advisor for Torah. Torah Torah fuchida in 63 tells Gordon Prang. Oh, you know, when I was flying back from Pearl Harbor, I was mentally cataloging all of the shore facilities and, you know, fuel tanks and logistics stuff. So what fuchido wants you to believe is that I had this mental epiphany in the air where, you know, we’ve barely worked our way into item number three on the target list, but I know that if I just jump down to the bottom to item number six, that’s going to win the war for us, right? That’s the line he’s basically trying to sell us in this movie. It’s baloney. It’s all baloney. And I think what really happened is that interview in October of 1945 put the clue into Fujita head. They really thought the fuel tanks were kind of important. I wonder why that was. He’s a smart guy, a charismatic guy, and, lo and behold, you know, by 19 6318 years later, his narrative has turned around into a story that hands us Americans this, you know, the thing that we would expect to hear, and also makes fuchida out to be more intelligent and prescient than he actually was so but the bottom line is, because everybody has seen Tora, Tora, Tora, this whole fuel tank thing, and third attack wave is cemented in the collective American consciousness. Amount around this war and to this day, you know, even though I put empty articles out on it, and other people had to, you know, this whole notion of the fuel. Tank attack is still out there, because, of course, how many millions of people have seen Tora, Tora, Tora, as opposed to the, you know, the 10,000 folks, who’s, you know, read some nerd named Jon Parshall article on the fuel tank myth? Right? It’s, it’s an unequal contest, but that’s where we’re at.

Dan LeFebvre  1:10:17

Well, we’re trying to balance that out a little bit, maybe get a few more people to reach That’s right. It’s fascinating that you mentioned that though about the the Imperial Japanese Navy’s perspective on logistics, because you were just talking about earlier too, where the Americans didn’t think that the Japanese would be able to take this huge fleet and fuel them to get a get to where they did, and Japanese figured out how to do that, and so it would make sense then that okay, if we figured out how to do that, it’s only a matter of time before the Americans can too. So that’s probably why it’s not as important, like the ships are more important, just even from that perspective. I’m not a military strategist by any means, but I could, that makes sense to me.

Jon Parshall  1:10:57

Yeah, yeah. So again, yeah, it’s, it’s difficult to to put ourselves back in the heads of participants, you know what, 80 plus years removed, but that you’re exactly right. And there’s, there’s some arrogance on our part too. We also were very good at underwater fueling. We were the, you know, pioneers in the in that respect. And so we knew we could do it, and we were also, we also knew that we were better at it than the British. And so, you know, from our perspective, well, if, if the Brits can’t do it, there’s no way in hell the Japanese are able to do that kind of thing. So again, you know, we’ve got these kind of societal blinders on in terms of what their carrier force could actually do. And man, this is a real eye opener for us here on December 7.

Dan LeFebvre  1:11:43

Well, there’s another major thing that comes out of this movie, Torah Torah tour, that I want to ask you about at the very end of the movie, the line of dialog, and you already know what it is, but I’ll set it up for the listeners. It’s delivered by Admiral Yamamoto in the movie after he finds out about the whole blunder with the diplomats who failed to deliver their message on time. Here is the direct quote from Yamamoto in the movie. Quote. I had intended to deal a fatal blow to the American fleet by attacking Pearl Harbor immediately after Japan’s official declaration of war, but according to the American radio, Pearl Harbor was attacked 55 minutes before our ultimatum was delivered in Washington. I can’t imagine anything that would infuriate the Americans more. I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. End quote, and that is how the movie ends. That last line is what we’ve I mean, it’s that’s really what people have done. But the beginning part sets up some of that context from the movie. So as we wrap up our discussion today, perhaps I’ve saved the biggest question for the end, how accurate is that Sleeping Giant quote from Yamamoto that we see in the movie?

Jon Parshall  1:12:51

Man, screenwriters really get, you know, they earn their money. That line is one of the most famous lines, I think, in almost any war movie, and there is absolutely zero written evidence that Yamamoto ever said it. So, yeah, there you go.

Dan LeFebvre  1:13:12

There’s it just knocked it down from that A plus plus plus plus plus plus all the way down to the today.

Jon Parshall  1:13:18

Yeah, good point. Actually, good point because, yeah, that I, there’s been a lot of speculation about that particular quote, and, you know, some of the nerds and I, you know, there aren’t that many biographies of Admiral Yamamoto. There’s only one that’s sort of the standard work that gets, gets quoted in in English. And yeah, if you, if you troll through a Gala’s biography of Yamamoto, you will not find that quote in there. He does say to several different people, there’s another sort of similar quote where he’s like, you know, if I, if I’m told to go to war against the Americans, I will run wild for the first, you know, six months to a year, but after that, I have no confidence of victory. That is a legitimate, legitimate quote. But, yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  1:14:06

I think the movie mentioned something like that briefly when I don’t remember it. Maybe it was Yamamoto, but early in the movie, was talking to Emperor’s like, how long can we survive a war? And he’s like, maybe a year after that, right? That kind of which, again,

Jon Parshall  1:14:18

you know, gets into this point that the Japanese go into this conflict understanding they’ve got to get it over with rapidly. You know? They’ve got to get us to the negotiating table as soon as possible. Which is why they’re trying to not only Pearl Harbor. There are two intended effects. As far as the Japanese are concerned. From a purely military standpoint, but they want to do is they want to knock the American battle fleet out of action so that it is not in a position to counter attack across the Central Pacific and go into the flank of all of their advances, which were heading south to grab the oil. Right? That’s, that’s the first thing you got to do, is cover your flag. But more important is we’ve got to crush America. American morale, so that they become so demoralized that they will be willing to come to the bargaining table. And from that standpoint, the way that they opened the war with what the American public perceived as being a dastardly sneak attack. You know that quote is right on the money. I mean, we were infuriated. And you know, you can say at that point, you know, the negotiated settlement Gambit is almost is dead on arrival at this point, because Roosevelt says in his address the following day to Congress, when he’s asking for a declaration of war, that the American people are going to win through to to complete an utter victory. Yeah, he’s almost spelling out the whole unconditional surrender thing that’s going to be absolutely clearly articulated starting in 1943 after the Casablanca conference. But from their very get go, he’s basically saying to the Japanese, we’re not negotiating with you guys. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  1:16:01

we tried that not happen again. You know,

Jon Parshall  1:16:04

this is what’s going to happen. We are going to dictate the terms of the end of this war we and only we and so, you know, buckle up because, because here we go. The other thing I would like to say before we wrap this up is that, you know, Pearl Harbor continues to be the source of conspiracy theories. You know that Roosevelt knew, Roosevelt, you know, deliberately got us into this war. And this is another aspect of of this battle that just won’t die. And again, there are clear analogs here between Pearl Harbor and 911, in that, I think we as Americans, being a very large, powerful country, just have difficulty wrapping our heads around when an undervalued, poor enemy somehow gets the drop on us, you know. And the truth of the matter is, of course, that nasty surprises are the or the currency of war. I mean, that’s that always happens, and sometimes even the poorer opponent out thinks you and we hate to admit that, right? So you look at 911, I had to be an inside job, you know, Earl harbor get the same thing just from a what do I want to say a simplicity standpoint, if you posit that FDR did want to get the us into a war against Japan, there were a lot easier ways of going about doing it than getting half of your battle fleet sunk and killing 2500 guys at Pearl Harbor, right? We knew that there were Japanese troop convoys at sea in, you know, the the China Sea, that was basically the waterway that runs between China and the Philippines. All you had to do, all you had to do was send one or two American destroyers out into those waterways from Manila and snoop around some of those Japanese troop convoys. I guarantee you the Japanese would have sunk those ships, and you’ve now got your Cass belly, okay, and you’ve killed 200 American boys, as opposed to 2500 and gotten rid of five battleships, two of them permanently. So I just think that the notion that FDR knew this was coming again, just given the hodgepodge of intelligence that we had, that’s nonsense. And furthermore, even if he had nefarious goals, there were much easier ways of accomplishing those nefarious goals than getting stomped on at Pearl Harbor.

Dan LeFebvre  1:18:47

Well before we do wrap up, there’s one, one thing I want to ask, because we talk about Torah. Torah. Torah today came out in 1970 We talked briefly about the other movie, Pearl Harbor, from 2001 31 years after this one that was still 23 years ago as we’re recording this in 2024 so I have a two part question for you. Do you think it’s time for another Pearl Harbor movie? And if so, let’s just say that they’re going to assume you hire you as the historical consultant. Yeah. How would you approach it differently? Yeah,

Jon Parshall  1:19:16

well, obviously the fuel tank myth is gonna go that’s got to invest a lot more in in CGI, right? I mean, really, what we, what I’d want to do is just have a better depiction of the attack sequences and a little bit more of the nuance around some of the, some of the traditional scapegoats, like Kermit Tyler, you know, let’s you know. But again, even within the context of Tora, Tora, Tora, which is a damn long movie, there’s always this difficulty in how do you convey nuance to an audience who only can really tolerate the introduction of so many characters and so. Many plot twists in the course of a two hour spiel. You know, it’s pretty tough to do.

Dan LeFebvre  1:20:04

It needs to be a series, is what you’re saying, Yeah, kinda,

Jon Parshall  1:20:08

you know, yeah. Turn it into a mini series that probably would, would, would go much better. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  1:20:14

thank you so much for coming on the show to separate fact from fiction. Movie. Torah, Torah, Torah. I guess I lied in the last question before I let you go. Actually, I have two more questions for you. The first is for listeners who have only seen the movie, I want to learn more about the true story. Where would you recommend they start? And then secondly, can you give us a peek into what you’re working on

Jon Parshall  1:20:31

now, you know, there’s a mountain of books on Pearl Harbor, and so I would say, you know, Walter Lords Day of Infamy remains very good from a narrative standpoint. I don’t have a copy of that up here. Gordon prangs, At Dawn We Slept. Still remains sort of a standard. You know, it’s pretty, pretty hefty, but if you want to get into it, that’s a good one. If you’re just going out to Hawaii and you’re going to tour Pearl Harbor, and you want a quick, much thinner, little trimmer, I would say, Mark stills Tora. Tora Tora. He’s using a lot of the latest research on the battle. He’s a really solid author. I recommend him highly if you’re interested in sort of the Japanese side of the battle. HP, Wilmots, Pearl Harbor. This is kind of harder to find, but he is working with a Japanese co author, a very fine naval historian, a guy named Arawa tomatsu, who’s really, really good. So this is a good one too, but in terms of the definitive multi volume series that is still in the process of being published, now, there’s this group effort by my friend Mike Wanger and some of his co authors who are using incredible photography from the battle. Mike does such good work in that regard, and he’s also really good with the Japanese sources. So this multi volume series that is coming out from Naval Institute Press, we’re still waiting for the volume that’s going to actually talk about the attack on the anchorage itself, but when it comes out, I think it’s going to be really wonderful, really definitive, because it really does dig into the Japanese sources. So yeah, Wenger, Bob Cressman and Jon divegilio, and also Sam Tanga is another, their fourth co author that they just roped into this project. These are tremendous in terms of what I’m doing. I have been working for the last 16 years on a new history of the year, 1942 basically talking about the entire war, Pacific Eastern Front, Mediterranean Battle of the Atlantic, the whole schmear, looking at how the Allies turned around their train wrecks during that year. Because the year starts out, it’s just a dumpster fire. You know, Pearl Harbor, calamity all across the Pacific, bad things happening in the eastern run. It’s just, it’s terrible. And yet, by the end of the year, with the battle of El Alamein, the landings in North Africa and torch our successes in Guadalcanal, and, of course, the counter attack around Stalingrad, that war has been turned on to an entirely new path. How did that happen? There’s a lot of stuff going on under the hood. So yeah, I will be publishing that book in the first quarter of 2026 and if you want to learn more about it, you can visit the website, at www 1942 book.com, and yep, sign up for the for the mailing list. I promise not to spam you, but give you occasional updates on how the book is progressing, but I’m looking forward to

Dan LeFebvre  1:23:35

getting it out. Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add a link to that in the show notes. Thank you again, so much for your time. Jon, appreciate it

Jon Parshall  1:23:40

Yeah, great to be here.

September 10th, 490 BCE. Marathon, Greece.

We’re kicking off this week with the movie 300: Rise of an Empire, and as soon as the opening credits are over, Lena Headey’s character, the wife of the Spartan King Leonidas from the first 300 movie.

Lena Headey’s character is Queen Gorgo, and to start Rise of an Empire, she’s addressing many of the Spartan soldiers who fought with her late husband. These soldiers are all carrying spears, shields, and, of course, the impressive physique of bare-chested six packs that we saw the Spartans have in the first 300 movie.

Sixteen Spartan soldiers surround Queen Gorgo as she addresses them, but there are more like 36 or 37 spears visible, suggesting even more soldiers behind those we can see as they hear their queen speak.

She tells them her husband, Leonidas, their king, and the brave 300 are dead.

As she continues to speak, she moves among the men showing even more soldiers beyond the numbers I just mentioned, but it’s nearly impossible to count them as the camera shifts angles. As the camera changes, though, we can see sails above Queen Gorgo’s head. We can hear the creaking of a wooden ship, which tells us they’re all on a ship.

She tells them it was King Darius who came to take our land ten years ago when youth still burned in our eyes. Ten years ago, this war began as all wars do: With a grievance.

Then, the movie takes us back to ten years earlier.

Mud is being kicked up by feet running in slow motion. The particles of mud and dirt flung high into the air just hanging as time moves at a snail’s pace. As we see more bare-chested men wearing helmets, blue robes on two men leading the charge to the right side of the screen, all with the round shields and weapons: Swords and spears.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover continues, saying King Darius was annoyed by the notion of Greek freedom and has come to Greece to bring them under submission.

As thunder claps and lighting strikes, the camera changes yet again. Now we can see a vast mountainous landscape, on a dark and stormy night. In the foreground, numerous ships can be seen, some still in the waters, and other right along the shores. All of them have their sails put up, suggesting the ships are disembarking onto the beach beyond.

And on the beach beyond, tiny black dots can be seen. It’s nighttime so impossible to see all of them individually, but each dot is a soldier from one of the ships, giving the overall scene an enormous size. The beach they’re all on leads to a pathway between right mountains, right in the center of the movie’s frame, and in the distance are even more black dots: Greek soldiers charging at Darius’ men as soon as they arrive on the Greek shores.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover confirms this as she says Darius made landfall at the field of Marathon with an invading force which outnumbered the Greek defenders 3-to-1.

Rain continues to pour down in slow motion as the camera zooms in on the same Greek soldiers we saw in slow motion earlier, this time they’re coming over the muddy horizon and charging directly toward the camera. A bolt of lighting and the loud thunderclap in the stormy sky behind the advancing soldiers suggests even the sky is angry.

She says at dawn the hopeless Athenians do the unthinkable: They attack.

We see King Darius turn around, looking in the direction of the Greek soldiers coming over the horizon. Other soldiers are taking off belongings from the ship. Sure, they’re all soldiers, too, but none of them are ready to fight.

And Queen Gorgo’s voiceover also confirms this, as she says the outnumbered Greeks attacked the weary Persians as soon as they landed after their month-long trip at sea gave them shaky legs. We see some of the Persian soldiers grab spears and swords in haste and start to face the approaching enemy.

Then, the camera cuts to the architect of this mad strategy: A little-known Athenian soldier named Themistokles. The camera focuses in on a single soldier as Gorgo says he gives the Persians a taste of Athenian shock combat.

Sullivan Stapleton is the actor who plays Themistokles in the movie.

The very stylized movie was still going in slow motion this whole time, but now as the Greek and Persian armies clash time speeds back up to normal pace as the sound of swords clanging, and the sound of two fighting armies can be heard against the thunder and rain.

It looks like a bloodbath.

The Persians are caught off guard, and the Greeks run right through most of them. Slicing his way through the Persians is Themistokles, who we can tell now was one of the soldiers wearing a blue robe. That conveniently makes him a lot easier to pick out among the two forces fighting each other in the rain and mud.

Shifting between real-time speed and slow motion, Themistokles fights his way to the shores and the Persian ships. Wasting no time, he runs right up one of the ship’s ramps, slashing and killing everyone on board.

The camera cuts to show King Darius in one of the ships just off shore. He’s watching the chaos unfold in front of him, clearly enraged at what he’s seeing. Back to Themistokles, and he jumps back onto the beach, leaving the ship he was on. There must be no one left to kill on that one.

He races along the beach, killing more and more Persians. An arrow slices at his arm. More arrows hit his shield. Throwing his sword to kill one of the archers, Themistokles charges at the other. Another arrow, this time he turns his head to let it glance off his helmet as he tackles and kills the archer.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover has returned, saying all of this was for a crazy Greek experiment called democracy. A free Greece.

Slamming the archer to the ground, Themistokles seems to have reached the end of the beach, but he takes off his helmet to look out at the Persian ships still in the waters. On one of those ships is King Darius, still watching the slaughter in front of him. For a moment, Themistokles and King Darius stare directly at each other from across the water between them.

Finally, Darius turns away as if to say the Persians are about to leave—at least for now.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover says through the chaos, a moment appeared. And Themistokles took advantage of that moment. We see him pick up the bow from the archer he just killed. Then, pulling back an arrow, he lets off one shot.

Back on the Persian ship, Darius has his back turned now and doesn’t notice the arrow coming toward him. But someone else on the ship does. Another man on the other side of the ship runs in slow motion as he screams, “Nooooooo!”

Queen Gorgo says this is the moment that will ring throughout the centuries and make Themistokles a legend.

The camera follows the arrow he shot as it flies across the water, aimed directly at King Darius. From the other side of the boat, the running man reaches Darius just in time the arrow hits him in the chest, knocking him backward into the other man’s arms. He glares at Themistokles with a burning hatred that tells you there will be vengeance.

Then, Queen Gorgo tells us who this other man is: Darius’ son, Xerxes.

She goes on to say that for all the praise that would be heaped upon Themistokles, he knew he made a mistake. Xerxes’ eyes had the stink of destiny about them. He knew he should’ve killed that boy.

But, instead, after delivering the fatal arrow to King Darius, we see Themistokles simply turn and walk away.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie 300: Rise of an Empire

As immersive as the fictional portrayal is, as we begin separating fact from fiction, let me start with a blanket statement that I’m sure you already know but it’s still worth saying: 300: Rise of an Empire is the sequel to 300, which itself was based on a comic book of the same name.

That’s why it shifts between slow motion and real-time speed, and gives unrealistic streams of blood flying around the scene as soldiers swing their swords.

Even once we separate ourselves from that side of things, another major caveat we have to keep in mind is that we’re talking about something that happened 2,514 years ago. Do we know if Themistokles and King Darius had a stare down across the water like we see in the movie? That’s not the kind of thing that gets documented so of course we don’t know for sure. But, I bet if you had to guess how realistic that sort of moment is, I bet you would come to the same conclusion that I would and guess that’s not very realistic at all, haha!

With those major caveats aside, there really was a major battle at Marathon between the Greeks and Persians that happened 2,514 years ago this week.

Lena Headey’s character, Queen Gorgo, really was King Leonidas I’s wife. He was, of course, famous for the Battle of Thermopylae that was told in the movie 300—which we looked at on episode 5 of Based on a True Story.

Another element of truth the movie shows correctly is the timeframe between the events. We hear Queen Gorgo talk about Leonidas and the 300 being dead, and also how it was ten years ago that Darius brought the fight to our shores at Marathon.

The legend of the 300 at Thermopylae happened in 480 BCE, while the Battle of Marathon was ten years earlier in 490 BCE.

But here’s where the movie takes some creative license, because even though the timeline means Queen Gorgo was alive during both battles, we don’t really know how involved she was with the army to travel with them on ships and telling the story of Marathon to soldiers like we see her doing in the beginning of the movie.

It’s certainly plausible. Especially because we do know she held a position of importance in Greek society at the time, not only because of her husband being king, but also because she was in her own right an intelligent woman. For example, a lot of what we know about her comes from an ancient Greek historian named Herodotus, and even though he didn’t write about women often, one story he told was how Gorgo helped decipher a hidden message warning the Greeks of a Persian invasion. That makes her one of the first female cryptanalysts in recorded history.

Back to the movie’s version of the Battle of Marathon, though, one of the things Gorgo mentions in her voiceover is that the Persians outnumbered the Greeks 3-to-1.

And that’s about right. Historical estimates put the Greeks at about 11,000 soldiers while the Persians had somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers carried by 600 or so ships called triremes. So, of course, the movie uses the higher number to make the contrasts between forces seem even greater.

So, it is true that the Greeks here heavily outnumbered.

Did they attack as soon as the Persians landed in Greece to help overcome the mismatch in numbers?

No, they didn’t. That part of the movie is not true.

And now it’s time for the part of the true story that maybe you’ve heard before from a very different legend. After all, you’ve heard of the long distance run of 26.2 miles, or 42 kilometers, being called a marathon. As the legend goes, that’s the distance the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to inform them of the victory at Marathon. So, obviously that would’ve happened after the battle if he informed them of the Greek victory.

While that is the legend, according to Herodotus, that run actually happened before the battle…and he didn’t run from Marathon to Athens, but he ran the 150 miles, or 240 kilometers, from Athens to Sparta to ask for their help for the impending Persian invasion. Actually, that’s how we know it happened this week in history, because the historical records tell us the Spartans couldn’t march until after their holy day.

Oh, and as a fun little bit of trivia, as of this recording the world record holder for a marathon is Kelvin Kiptum from the 2023 Chicago Marathon where he had an average speed of about 13 mph, or 21 km/h. Of course, that’s a 26.2 mile marathon. It’s said that Pheidippides did his 150-mile run from Athens to Sparta in two days. That’s an average pace of 4.7 mph, or 7.5 km/h. A runner named Yiannis Kouros holds the ultramarathon record of 150 miles in 22 hours, 52 minutes, and 55 seconds in 1984. That’s an average pace of 6.6 mph, or about 10.6 km/h.

Meanwhile, I’d probably pass out from exhaustion way back by the starting line so I’m glad they sent Pheidippides instead of me haha!

Back to the Battle of Marathon, though, the reasons for the Greek’s ultimate victory is still something historians debate, but as with most things in history there’s not likely to be just one thing; there were a number of factors that went into the final Greek victory at Marathon.

But let’s start breaking it down by looking at something the movie doesn’t show: Their armor.

While the actors in the movie are obviously in such great shape they can use their six packs as armor, it’s probably not a surprise that the real Greek army actually wore more armor than we see in the movie.

At least, sort of.

Here’s where the true story really gets more complex than the fictional one from the movie, because the Greek army consisted of a lot of citizen-soldiers called hoplites. After all, ancient Greece wasn’t really unified into the country of Greece that we think of today. It was made up of city-states that banded together when they needed to fight off shared enemies like the Persians. That’s why you’ll find references to the Athenians, the Spartans, and so on…they’re all Greek, but they’re also independent city-states.

On top of that, because Greek hoplites were essentially civilians called into military service when needed they often weren’t trained well and they usually wore whatever armor they could afford.

“Usually” is the key word there, because the Greek general in charge of the force that went out to face the Persians at Marathon had all his men equipped as hoplites for what many say was the first time in Greek history.

Oh, that general’s name was Miltiades and he isn’t in the movie at all.

Even though the armor the Greek hoplites wore was quite different than the lack-of-armor we see in the movie, the Greek’s armor was a lot lighter than the Persian’s armor. That was a major tactical advantage, because that let the Greeks move a lot faster than the Persians.

So, even though the Greeks didn’t charge the Persians as soon as they landed on shore, they did charge at the Persians. That wasn’t a common fighting tactic back then, so it was unexpected by the Persians. But, of course, simply charging your enemy isn’t going to overcome 3-to-1 odds on its own like the movie shows.

Speaking of what the movie shows, in her voiceover, Lena Headey’s version of Queen Gorgo says the architect behind the Greek’s decision to run out to meet the Persians before they could establish a foothold is a soldier named Themistokles.

While Themistokles really was someone who fought at Marathon, the commander of the Greek armies was the general I mentioned before: Miltiades.

Other Greek generals weren’t sure if they should attack the Persians or wait for them to attack them at Athens. After all, then they’d have the benefit of defensive positions in the city to help them fight against overwhelming odds.

As fate would have it, the Greeks found out the Persian cavalry happened to be away from the Persian camp. He took advantage of that situation, and ordered the attack on the Persian infantry.

That made the odds a little more in the Greek’s favor with the 11,000 Greeks attacking about 15,000 Persian infantry. On top of that, since the Greeks were the ones attacking they had more control over where the battle would be fought and they chose to attack on a mountainous and marshy terrain. So, the movie is correct to show mountains and mud…that helped ensure the Persian cavalry wouldn’t hear about the attack and return to route the Greeks while they were fighting the Persian infantry.

Of course, the Greeks were still outnumbered by the Persian infantry alone. That brings us to yet another reason for the real reason the Greeks won at Marathon: Phalanxes.

Basically, with long spears and large, bronze shields, the Greeks packed together so tightly that the Persians couldn’t penetrate with their shorter swords. General Miltiades also employed a tactic that proved to help the Greek victory, too. As the battle raged on, the center of the Greek forces collapsed to allow Persians to advance. Then, the wings of the Greek forces would collapse into the center so all of a sudden the Persians would find themselves surrounded.

While we don’t know for sure exactly how long the battle lasted, most historians believe it only took a few hours for the Persians to be routed and flee back to their ships. In that time, estimates place about 6,500 Persians killed while fewer than 200 Greeks lost their lives in the battle.

What of King Darius himself?

The movie got that wrong, too.

Darius I did not die at the Battle of Marathon. In fact, most historians say he wasn’t even there. Two generals named Datis and Artaphernes led the Persian forces. So, the movie’s plot line of Darius’ son Xerxes wanting revenge for his father’s death isn’t what happened.

In the true story, Darius I dead four years after the battle from natural causes. That’s when his son Xerxes took the throne. He did continue fighting the Greeks leading to a second Persian invasion of Greece that culminated in the Battle of Thermopylae the legend of the 300. But that wasn’t revenge for his father’s death. That was continuing the expansion of the Persian Empire that many consider to be the first global empire in history.

Something else we hear Queen Gorgo’s voiceover talk about in the movie is the idea of a Greek experiment called democracy.

That’s actually true, the ancient Greeks are often credited with what was at the time a new system of governance that was radically different than the monarchies, oligarchies, and tyrannies of the time. More specifically, it was the Athenians who laid down the foundations around 508 BCE.

So, when we take a step back from the Battle of Marathon itself and look at the bigger picture, you can see why so many point to Marathon as being a single day in history that changed the course of history.

Many of the founding figures of Western philosophy such as Socrates to Plato, Aristotle, came from Greece in the years, decades, and centuries afterward. If the Persians had wiped out the Greeks at Marathon, it’s not hard to imagine us living in a very different world today.

If you want to see how the Battle of Marathon is portrayed on screen, hop into the show notes to find where 300: Rise of an Empire is streaming now!

 

September 11, 2001. Herndon, Virginia.

Just saying that date, I’m sure you can guess what our next event is…although the location might throw you off. The reason for that location is because seven minutes into the 2006 movie called United 93, there’s some text on the screen to tell us we’re at the National Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Virginia. The camera follows a man into a room filled with screens and people—it looks a lot like what you’d expect an air traffic control center to look like.

As the man walks into the room, there are some claps and we can hear someone saying, “Congratulations on the promotion, Ben!”

That’s how we know the man is Ben Sliney. Others continue to clap or offer a congratulatory handshake as he makes his way further into the room. He smiles, thanking them, says “good morning” and jokes that he’s glad everyone is awake.

Standing in front of a bank of monitors, Ben talks to some of the other guys about the current situation. One of them says there’s a small system in the southwest, nothing much too big. Another system moved off to the east, so we have clear skies. Ben replies to the weather report saying that’s good, it’ll be a good day on the east coast.

The other guy points to something on the monitor. They can all see what it is, but from the angle the camera is facing Ben Sliney, we can’t see the monitor. But we don’t really have to, because the guy explains that the President is going to be moving to Andrews, so we’ll have restrictions in place around that. Pretty much standard ops. Ben doesn’t take his eyes off the monitor as he nods his approval.

Then, he smiles, and thanks them for their reports. They go back to work while Ben moves onto another area of the room. He looks at the monitors. Everything seems to be pointing to just another day.

The true story behind that scene in the movie United 93

We’ll stop our movie here because, as you might imagine, the entire movie is centered around the same day—and also because I’ve already done a deep dive into this movie over on episode #113, so if you want to learn more about the whole movie that’ll be linked in the show notes.

For today, though, the movie is true that September 11^th, 2001, started off as just another normal day at the National Air Traffic Control Center. But, as I’m sure you already know, it was not just another day.

The movie was also correct to suggest the President traveling to Andrews, referring to Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington, D.C., where then-President George W. Bush was flying in from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

And the movie was also correct to show a reason for Ben Sliney to be congratulated when he entered the room that day. September 11, 2001, just happened to be Ben Sliney’s very first day as the FAA’s National Operations Manager.

While the scene I just described takes place in Virginia that’s just because that’s where the control center is based. Officially known as the Air Traffic Control System Command Center for the Federal Aviation Administration, but since the government loves its acronyms that’s the FAA’s ATCSCC.

What we didn’t talk about in this segment were the four planes hijacked that morning. American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

The fourth plane was a little different, though, because it didn’t hit the hijacker’s intended target.

After it was hijacked, United Airlines Flight 93 was headed toward Washington D.C. with an intended target of crashing into the U.S. Capitol building. But the passengers on United 93 revolted against the hijackers, and the plane crashed in a field near Stonycreek Township in Pennsylvania.

During the course of his first day as National Operations Manager for the FAA on September 11^th, 2001, Ben Sliney made the decision to land every plane in the air over the United States. That was the first time in U.S. history that’s ever happened.

Oh, and in the movie, Ben Sliney is played by…well, Ben Sliney. That’s right, the real person played himself in the movie.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to the true story, if you want to learn even more, queue up BOATS episode #113 linked in the show notes for as soon as you’re done watching the movie this week.

 

September 14, 1814. Baltimore, Maryland.

For our third event this week, we’ll pull a dramatization segment from a Smithsonian documentary.

The sky is gray and dreary. It almost looks like fog or some mist. In the foreground, a massive American flag riddled with holes is flapping in the wind.

The camera cuts to three men now. One of them is wearing a uniform, but he’s more in the background. The focus is on one of the two men not in military uniform—in particular, one of the men seems to be pacing around nervously as he’s looking off in the foggy, gray distance.

With a slightly different camera angle now, we can see the three men are standing on the deck of a ship. The pacing man is running his hand through his hair now, as he continues to look off frame.

The camera backs up to further away now, and we can see there are four ships. The closest one fires its cannons, followed by another blast from one of the ships further in the distance. Now the camera cuts back to the American flag flapping in the hazy sky.

The true story behind that scene in the movie A Star-Spangled Story

That short sequence comes from a documentary called A Star-Spangled Story: Battle for America, and event it’s showing is when Francis Scott Key got his inspiration for a poem called, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry” after seeing the flag on Saturday this week.

You probably know his poem by another name: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Francis Scott Key is the guy who I mentioned pacing and running his hands through his hair in the movie. In the true story, Key was a lawyer who went to the British along with another man named Colonel John Stuart Skinner to ask for the release of Key’s friend who had been captured by the British in late August.

Key and Skinner took a ship out to the British fleet that was near the city of Baltimore, Maryland. While they successfully negotiated for the release of Key’s friend, a man named Dr. William Beanes, the timing wasn’t great because the British were just about to launch an attack on Baltimore.

So, Key, Skinner, and Beanes were forced to watch as the British unleashed a 25-hour long bombardment on the American soldiers at Fort McHenry. At dawn on September 14^th, Key saw the huge American flag flying over Fort McHenry and started writing the poem. He didn’t write it all that day, though.

He jotted down a few lines, then completed it a few days later after the three men, Key, Skinner, and Beanes, were released from the British fleet. Most people are only familiar with the first verse of the poem that would go on to become “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Francis Scott Key wrote four verses:

 

O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —

O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —

‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

Key’s poem, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” was published almost immediately along a notation that it goes to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith called “Anacreon in Heaven.”

That was the official song of a club of amateur musicians in London called the Anacreontic Society.

Together, the words from “The Defence of Fort M’Henry” along with the tune of “Anacreon in Heaven” combined to become “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was an immediate hit in America. It wasn’t for over a hundred years, in 1931, that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the national anthem of the United States.

So, now you know the phrase “by dawn’s early light” in “The Star-Spangled Banner” is talking about this week in history: The dawn of September 14^th, 1814.

If you want to learn more about the true story, check out the documentary from the Smithsonian called A Star-Spangled Story: Battle for America. We started our segment at about ten minutes in, but as you can tell from the title the whole thing is about the story of the song, so this is a good week to watch it all!

 

Historical birthdays from the movies

It’s time for the birthday segment, about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 12^th, Henry Hudson was born somewhere in England. Maybe in London, and maybe in the year 1525, but as you can probably guess a lot about his early years aren’t known for sure. He was an explorer who is best remembered through some of the discoveries he made: The Hudson River in New York, or Hudson Bay in Canada. While there haven’t been a lot of movies about him, probably because we know so little about his early years or even his disappearance in 1611, there was a movie in 1964 called The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson if you want to watch something about him.

On September 13^th, 1660, Daniel Defoe was born in London, England. He was a writer who is perhaps best known for the 1719 novel called Robinson Crusoe. He was played by Ian Hart in the 1997 movie about the novel, also called Robinson Crusoe.

On September 15^th, 1254, another explorer was born in Venice: Marco Polo. Although perhaps you best know him as the namesake of the swimming game version of tag, the real Marco Polo made his mark on history by traveling along the Silk Road in Asia in the 1200s and returned to Europe and publicized the great wealth and size of the Eastern empires such as China, the Mongol Empire, Persia, India, Japan, and many more. Until Marco Polo’s book about his travels around 1300, most of Europe didn’t know much about the Asian countries. Netflix had a series about him simply called Marco Polo that ran for two seasons where Marco Polo is played by Lorenzo Richelmy.

 

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

Today is the 19^th anniversary of the release of the supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson that claims to be ‘based on a true story’ called The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Set in the modern era of when the movie was released in the 2000s, the storyline revolves around the trial of Father Richard Moore. He’s played by Tom Wilkinson in the movie, and in the movie, Father Moore is a priest charged with negligent homicide following the death of a 19-year-old college student named Emily Rose.

As you might’ve guessed by the title of the movie, Emily died during an exorcism performed by Father Moore. According to the movie, she’s a devout Catholic college student who begins experiencing terrifying symptoms that she believes are signs of demonic possession. Her symptoms include severe seizures, hallucinations, and physical contortions. Despite medical intervention and a diagnosis of epilepsy, her condition deteriorates, leading her and her family to seek help from the church. Father Moore believes them and agrees to perform an exorcism.

In the movie, the exorcism itself is where we really get into the supernatural horror elements. Emily starts speaking in different languages, has unbelievable strength, and her body moves in unnatural ways. Despite Father Moore’s best efforts, the exorcism does not work, and Emily passes away in the process.

That leads us to the courtroom, where we see the trial of Father Moore after Emily’s death. On one side, you have the prosecution, which is led by Campbell Scott’s version of Ethan Thomas, insists Emily had a medical condition and Father Moore’s exorcism denied her the treatment she needed. For the defense, Laura Linney’s version of Erin Bruner, argues that Emily actually was possessed by a demon. She argues that it was the demon that killed Emily, not Father Moore.

The movie is an interesting clash of religious faith, science, and the law—you know, the kind of things everyone agrees about all the time.

And in the movie, even the jury can’t seem to agree. Their verdict is to declare Father Moore guilty, but also to ask Mary Beth Hart’s version of Judge Brewster to give Father Moore time served. Judge Brewster agrees, and Father Moore is allowed to go free despite the guilty verdict.

The true story behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Shifting to the fact-checking, let’s start with the most obvious of inaccuracies in the movie: The title.

Instead of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a more historically accurate title for the movie would be “The Exorcisms of Anneliese Michel.”

That’s because the real person the movie is based on is a 23-year-old German student teacher named Anneliese Michel, and in the true story, Anneliese had 67 exorcisms before she died on July 1^st, 1976.

Which brings up another inaccuracy in the movie: The timeline.

The true story happened in the 1970s, while the movie makes it more contemporary to when it was released in the 2000s.

So, with all of that said, it’s probably not too much of a surprise for me to say this movie is stretching the term “based on a true story” to its limits. But, to play devil’s advocate to what I just said, that doesn’t mean the concept of the movie is completely fictional.

What I mean by that is if you look at the people, places, timeline, and the location of the movie, sure it’s made up. However, the basic gist of a woman having an exorcism that led to her death and the Catholic Priest involved being put on trial for her death…that is true.

Born in 1952, and raised in a devout Roman Catholic family, Anneliese Michel was a deeply religious woman. Her childhood wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but all that changed in 1968 when, at the age of 16, Anneliese started having some severe convulsions.

Naturally, she went to a doctor first and before long she was diagnosed with epilepsy and depression. Once she was diagnosed, she started receiving treatments with little to no effect. Of course, even that isn’t all that uncommon…people can get misdiagnosed or have medical treatments that don’t help with whatever ails them.

For the deeply religious Anneliese, whatever ailed her started giving her some uncommon symptoms, though. She heard voices, and perhaps most terrifying of all, saw hallucinations that included demonic faces. Of course, when it comes to symptoms like that, it’s not like you can show other people the hallucinations you’re having, so that’s where those around Anneliese started to splinter into two different beliefs about what was happening to her.

On one side, you had the doctors and medical staff trying to help Anneliese through scientific methods while on the other side you had Anneliese and the Michel family. As the medical treatments failed to help, and Anneliese only grew worse, they started to believe more and more that this was beyond anything medical.

Or, in other words, I suppose you could say they lost faith in medicine and returned to their religious faith. So, they went to the Catholic Church to ask for help. At first, they were rejected. After all, the Catholic Church also tends to default to a medical explanation before jumping to a spiritual one.

And, as I alluded to before, Anneliese had been diagnosed by medical professionals with temporal lobe epilepsy, which has been known to cause many of the symptoms Anneliese had like the seizures and hallucinations.

Earlier, I mentioned Tom Wilkinson’s character in the movie, Father Moore. He’s not a real person for all the aforementioned reasons of time, place, people changes, etc. but Father Moore’s character in the movie is based on two Catholic priests named Father Ernst Alt and Father Wilhelm Renz.

Father Alt was the local priest for the Michel family, so he likely spent the most amount of time with Anneliese, and as such he was crucial in helping convince the Catholic Church to change their mind. Eventually, in September of 1975, Bishop Josef Stangl approved the exorcism under the condition that Father Alt and Father Renz adhere to strict secrecy about the whole matter.

On an average of a couple times a week from September of 1975 until June of 1976, Father Alt and Father Renz performed exorcisms on Anneliese. That’s why there were so many exorcisms performed on her. It wasn’t a one-and-done thing. And the movie is correct to suggest some of the things like speaking in multiple languages, abnormal bouts of strength, and strange contortions of her body.

While there’s no footage of the real exorcism of Anneliese publicly available that I could find to compare with what we see in the movie, I think it’s safe to say the movie does what movies love to do and exaggerate things a lot.

We know Catholic priests used the 1614 Rituale Romanum, because that’s basically the Catholic Church’s instruction manual for priests performing exorcisms. As the name implies, that’s from 1614, so I don’t think the exorcisms they actually performed were anything like what we see in the movie…although, again, I’ll have to play devil’s advocate to myself, because the Catholic Church updated that 84-page document for the first time in 1998.

So, from 1614 until 1998, the rite of exorcism remained the same. And since the movie takes a true story from the 1970s into the 2000s, I suppose they’d be using the updated version. And while my Latin is rusty to the point of non-existence, all my research suggests there wasn’t a lot changed. Just some minor things like updating descriptions of what Satan looks like since now the Church teaches Satan is a spirit without a body.

Unfortunately, even the exorcisms couldn’t help Anneliese.

In her final months, she stopped eating. She stopped drinking. In addition to everything else she was going through, Anneliese started to suffer from severe malnutrition. Then, on June 30^th, 1976, Father Renz performed yet another exorcism…one that would be her last.

Anneliese Michel died on July 1^st, 1976.

The movie is also correct to show a trial after her death. Father Alt and Father Renz were charged with negligent homicide just like we see Father Moore charged with in the movie. In a 1978 article from The Windsor Star newspaper, Father Alt said he never thought Anneliese was “dangerously ill.”  In the same article, Father Renz said he didn’t call a doctor because, “the exorcism ritual expressly states that clergymen should not burden themselves with medical matters.”

I’ll add a link to the article in the show notes if you want to read it, because it also talks about how the Michel family sued the five doctors who helped treat Anneliese because they drew up a report of her case—something the Michel family said was a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.

In the end, the verdict in the true story was the same for the two priests as it is in the movie for Father Moore: Guilty. The sentencing was not the same as the movie, though, because in the true story the priests were sentenced to six months in prison, with three years of probation.

And now you know a little more about the true story behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose!

September 5^th, 1666. London, England.

The entire final episode is set on September 5^th, but we’re going to fast forward further into the day. At 39 minutes, we’re in the city streets of London.

We’re in the city streets of London, and although we can’t see any fires in this shot, the air is thick with an atmospheric haze. In the foreground, tents and makeshift stalls line both sides of a narrow, dirt pathway, with awnings draped over them to provide shade and shelter. The scene is filled with activity as various townsfolk go about their business.

Emerging from the haze in the background is Jack Huston’s character, King Charles II. He’s riding a white horse that reminds me of Shadowfax, but it’s really the plumed hat on his head that stands out against the smoky background. Behind the king’s horse, a handful of soldiers march along—it looks like a couple of the soldiers are also on horseback, but mostly the soldiers in the king’s entourage is on foot. Among the crowd we can hear people announcing the king is coming, as everyone turns to watch him make his way through the busy streets.

The camera cuts to a jail cell as we see a woman bound and tied up as a couple other women strip off her red dress to reveal tattered white undergarments. We can tell from the actress, that this is Rose Leslie’s character, Sarah. She looks as if she’s exhausted, or hungry, or in some sort of a daze as she can barely stand on her own power—but she’s forced to be standing because of the chains hanging from the ceiling with handcuffs clasped around her hands.

Charles Dance’s character, Lord Denton, is in the room as well. He’s just looks at Sarah for a moment, before leaving her alone in the room and closing the door behind him.

Back in the street, the crowd is gathering around the king’s horse now as he addresses them all.

He starts by saying there’s been a conspiracy in our city that the great fire was some sort of a Catholic plot to ruin us all. Then, speaking about Sarah, the king mentions how she’s being held captive right now on the accusations of intentionally starting the fire.

Someone in the crowd yells out that they should burn the papist bitch—speaking of Sarah, a woman we can assume this random person in the crowd has never even met. Nevertheless, it showcases the anger and desire for holding someone accountable.

Just then, another man on horseback enters the frame, telling the king that the breaks are holding. We’ve gotten the better of the fire. We can tell from the actor of this new character that it’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s version of James, the Duke of York.

The crowd turns on James, saying he’s one of them—he’s a Catholic, too! Burn every Catholic who started this fire, they should all pay!

King Charles speaks over the crowd, where does that end? My queen? My mother? Where does the death and destruction end, he asks? We have the better of the fire, now. This is a time for reflection. We’ve already lost so much, why should we lose more lives?

Then, he says something that makes the crowd quiet down. He says, do we really see our enemy? Isn’t fear our enemy? And it’s fear that’s making us start these rumors and conspiracies of plots and uprisings? Haven’t you sacrificed enough without seeking scapegoats for our anger in the Catholics or foreigners?

Matter-of-factly, the king states the city stands. We will rebuild. Those who lost homes will be compensated, those who are hungry will be fed. Fear has not defeated us.

The crowd cheers, “Long live the king!”

In the next shot, we can see Sarah released from prison. She returns to what’s left of their home with Thomas and the children. The building is all but gone, with little more than charred remains where the walls used to be. And there it is. The oven that started it all. I suppose it makes sense that it survived the fire. It is, after all, designed to be fireproof. When you close the door, of course.

And so, at the end of the series it comes full circle as we see Hannah opening the same oven door that she forgot to close a few days earlier. Together, the family accused of starting it all helps in the rebuilding process as they bake bread to feed their neighbors who lost everything.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series The Great Fire

That’s was about five minutes of screen time from the series, and let’s start similar to how we did when we learned about the start of the blaze: The people.

Some of them we learned about last time like Thomas Ferriner, so I won’t repeat that. But, a couple characters we didn’t see then that we do now are, in order of their appearance in this segment: King Charles II, Sarah, Lord Denton, and James, the Duke of York.

King Charles II really was the King of England in 1666. Shadowfax was not his horse, though, sorry—I didn’t really mean that—I just said that because anytime I see someone riding a beautiful white horse, I can’t help but think of Gandalf’s horse from The Lord of the Rings.

As for the other characters, both Sarah and Lord Denton are fictional characters, but the Duke of York was a very real person. He was the brother of King Charles II, and would eventually go on to become King James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland. But, for our story today, it is true that Charles asked his brother, James, to supervise something that hadn’t really existed before: A fire brigade.

Now, I know we’re talking about the great fire here, so this isn’t something we don’t see in the series at all, but in the true story the Great Fire of London was not the first disaster that King Charles II had to deal with.

Just the year earlier, in 1665, up to 7,000 Londoners a week were perishing from the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague. History remembers that event as the Great Plague of London, which spanned from 1665 to 1666 and claimed the lives of about 100,000 people. That’s about a third of the entire population of London at the time—which was about 350,000 people. So, you have that happening, then just as that starts to subside, this huge fire breaks out and causes even more destruction.

You can start to understand why Londoners were angry, frustrated, sad…exhausted.

In the series, we see this frustration turning into a call to burn the Catholics or casting the blame on the very vague term foreigners. If you think about it, we still see this sort of thing today—just look at politics anywhere, and they’re blaming foreigners or some vague “other” group of people as the enemy to blame for their troubles.

And the Great Fire of London was no different.

Do you remember the story of King Henry VIII and the Church of England? We’ve covered that more with episodes on movies like The Other Boleyn Girl which I’ll link to in the show notes, but in a nutshell, when the Pope refused to annul Henry’s marriage so he could replace his then-wife Catherine with another woman named Anne Boleyn, Henry took matters into his own hand. To get the annulment of Catherine’s marriage to go through, he broke the entire country of England away from the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England with himself as the head. That let him annul the marriage legally so he could replace his wife.

That was in 1534, and this split from the Roman Catholic Church caused a ton of upheaval in England between Catholics and Protestants. There’s a lot of complexity once you get into religious theology, of course, but basically you can think of Protestants as being any of the Christians who aren’t Catholics.

Fast forward from 1534 to 1666, and in those 132 years, generations of Londoners witnessed or took part in countless acts of violence between Catholics and Protestants. Probably the first big one is what we now know as the Pilgrimage of Grace, which has a deceptively peaceful sounding name. That was a revolt to Henry’s break from the Catholic Church that saw tens of thousands of people revolt until King Henry VIII’s side win and many of the revolt’s leaders being executed. That was two years after Henry’s break from the Catholic Church, but it was hardly the last. The Marian Persecutions from 1553 to 1558, the Northern Rebellion in 1559, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that saw Catholics attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament—remember, remember, the fifth of November—even the English Civil War from 1642 to 1651 saw religion being a major factor in the violence.

With that context in mind, perhaps now it makes a little more sense why Londoners in 1666 jumped to the conclusion that this was a Catholic plot to oust Protestants from England. After all, it does seem to be in line with some of the other acts of violence over the past hundred or so years.

Part of King Charles II’s speech in the series mentions more than Catholics, though, it also mentions foreigners. And that little detail is historically accurate because at the time of the fire, England was at war with both France and the Dutch Republic—today, that’s the Netherlands.

So, those are the “foreigners” referenced in the series, and it is true that Londoners thought they might’ve been behind the fire. If it wasn’t the Catholics, it must’ve been foreigners. Someone was to blame, and it certainly wasn’t the person in the mirror.

Although we don’t hear the name mentioned in the series, in the true story, a lot of English blamed a French watchmaker named Robert Hubert. Why him? Well, because he confessed to throwing a fire grenade into the bakery to start the fire. And it probably didn’t help that Thomas Farriner signed a document accusing Hubert of starting the fire.

They executed Hubert almost immediately, despite the confession being coerced under duress and substantial evidence that he wasn’t even in London when the fire started. Today, it’s accepted knowledge that Robert Hubert’s accusation was false.

The series is also correct to show King Charles II being the one to squash those conspiracies of the fire being arson at the hand of Catholics or foreigners. I highly doubt it happened in a speech from his horse like we see in the movie, but his official stance was that it was an act of God. He pointed out that it was an extra dry summer. There were strong winds that fueled the flames.

And today, that’s what most people think was the real culprit: Almost a perfect storm of conditions, so if it didn’t start with a spark from a bakery then it’s likely something else would’ve started a blaze.

You see, in 1666, they simply didn’t have fire standards in buildings. They were made of wood, they used an extremely flammable substance called pitch for the roofs, and the buildings were packed together so tightly that some buildings were hanging over others—making it extremely easy for flames to fall from one building to another and keep spreading the fire.

If you listened to the starting episode of this miniseries a few days ago, I mentioned the name Samuel Pepys as being someone whose diary has taught us a lot about what really happened. Well, since that was just his personal diary that happened to capture this momentous time in history, he also talked about what things were like in London before the fire.

And even he made note of how unusually dry it was that summer. He commented on how dry the wooden buildings were because of it. So, you essentially have drought conditions in a city made of wood and pitch.

Throw in some strong winds and it’s no wonder the fire spread as fast as it did.

I mentioned the fire brigade before, and that’s another element of the “perfect storm” of conditions. None of this is shown in the series, of course, but to get some more historical context, there simply wasn’t a central firefighting service in place. When a fire happened, local volunteers were called upon to help fight it. Usually what they did was destroy the buildings around the fire, so it had nowhere to go. Then, sometimes they’d throw water on it—but they only had leather buckets or what they called a fire squirt. That’s the precursor to the modern fire engine, but that’s where the comparison ends because squirting water is an appropriate term. Squirts could only hold between half and one gallon of water. That’s about six pints, or 3.4 liters.

Imagine getting a squirt gun and trying to put out a burning building, and that gives you a pretty good idea why they weren’t able to slow down the fire.

In the series, we do see James telling King Charles they’ve finally gotten the better of the fire. And, that is true.

I know at the end of the last minisode, we weren’t sure if the fire would burn down the entire city, but it did not. That’s because the same winds that helped spread the fire started to die down. That, coupled with James, Duke of York’s fire brigades tearing down buildings in the fire’s path finally managed to get the fire under control exactly 358 years ago today.

As a little side note, while it might seem odd to tear down buildings, even with better fire safety standards today, that’s actually a common firefighting tactic. They’re called firebreaks and more commonly today you’ll find natural firebreaks like rivers or sandy areas where there’s no vegetation to burn, things like that. Firefighters today will mimic that sort of thing by clearing out trees or anything else the fires might use to spread as a way of slowing it down. In a dense urban city, that can mean demolishing buildings just like they did back in 1666.

The last thing to point out is that sometimes you’ll find the date of September 6^th as the end of the fire, but the TV series we watched today mentions September 5th—just like I did in this minisode, too. The reason for that is simply because fires aren’t light switches. You don’t just turn them off. So, September 5^th is when they got the fire under control. But, on September 6^th, they did go around and put out the remaining fires that were still burning around the city.

And then, of course, just like we see in the series, began the long process of rebuilding that which was lost.

September 2^nd, 1666. London, England.

About 24 minutes into the first episode of the series, it’s nighttime we’re in the city with the typical Tudor style architecture you’d expect to see in 1600s London. In the center of the frame, we can see a man walking to one of the buildings. He’s wearing khaki-colored pants, a blue coat, and a wide brimmed hat. After a moment, the camera cuts closer in as the man takes off his hat to enter the building.

The camera cuts to inside now as we see him closing the door behind him. Now that he’s inside, we can see his face easier now to recognize him as Thomas Farriner.

A young woman is inside, asking him how it went. It sounds like he has bad news. Holding a piece of paper, he says they won’t take the Navy contract away, and they won’t pay what’s owed. Then, as quickly as he entered the room, he’s on his way back out. He has to go talk to someone about this.

Before he walks out the door again, she asks if he wants her to rake out the ovens. He says no, it’s still early, and he’ll do it later. She shrugs, saying she can do it before she goes to sleep, but he makes no indication of hearing that as the door closes behind him.

Alone in the room now, she stares after him for a moment before returning to her tasks at the oven. Using a rag to grasp the metal handle, she opens the door on one of the ovens revealing something cooking in the flames inside. She grabs the long handle next to the oven and pulls what looks like a pie that was baking in the oven out and places it on the table.

“Hannah!”

Someone off the screen says that name, letting us know the woman is Hannah Farriner. She’s played by Polly Dartford in the series.

Hannah walks off the screen, and the camera stays still to show us that she left the oven door open. As the camera slowly zooms into a couple flames dancing happily in the oven, there’s a pop and a tiny spark flies out of the open door. A close-up camera shot of the building’s wooden floor shows the spark lands amongst a few scattered pieces of hay. As it does, the spark dissipates into a tiny flame that eagerly eats up the hay underneath it.

The camera cuts to where Hannah is, now, and we can see who called her off screen a moment ago. It’s a little girl, and Hannah climbs into bed with her in a sweet moment between what I’m assuming are sisters. By the way, it’s not mentioned here in the show, but the younger girl is named Mary. She’s played by Trixiebell Harrowell in the series.

Meanwhile, though, the camera cuts back to the flame and we can see it wasn’t happy with just the hay directly underneath it. What was a single flame is now a little larger as it seems to have found a little larger clump of hay to feed on. Oh, look at that, there’s more hay off to the right side of the camera’s shot, too, so as the camera pans over we can see the flames following the hay’s path—the flames are growing larger as they have more fuel.

Meanwhile, Hannah is oblivious to the fire below as she sings a lullaby to Mary. Before long, Mary’s eyes close as she drifts off to sleep. Hannah stops her lullaby, but just lies with Mary for a bit in the calmness of the night.

At this point, the show cuts away from Hannah and Mary to follow where Thomas went. Whatever he planned on doing when he left Hannah a moment ago, it looks like he’s decided not to do it because once he sees Charles Dance’s character, Lord Denton, he hides behind a nearby building.

Looking on for a moment from behind cover, Thomas seems to make a decision as he looks at the paper in his hand. Looking dejected, he starts going back in the direction he came from. A quick cut to inside and we can see Hannah has fallen asleep next to Mary on the bed.

Back with Thomas, turning the corner to his street, he looks up to see flames coming from one of the windows. It doesn’t look like a huge fire, but the glow from between the wooden slats of the building suggests there’s a lot more inside we can’t see.

Thomas jumps into action, running to the building. Without hesitation, he runs inside the burning building yelling at the top of his lungs, “Fire! Hannah! Fire!”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series The Great Fire

That sequence ends at about 29 minutes, so overall it’s about five minutes of screen time that you just heard.

Let’s start with the people we see, because that can often give us a good indication of how accurate something is. And in this case, the series centers around Andrew Buchan’s character, Thomas Ferriner. We also see Hannah Ferriner, and little Mary dozing in bed as the first starts.

In the true story, Thomas Ferriner really was the name of the man who owned the bakery where they think the great fire started. “They think” it’s where the fire started because, well, a lot like we see in the series, it’s not the kind of thing people document until afterward—I mean, when the fire started, they were a little preoccupied trying to put the fire out.

And although the series doesn’t name the street in the segment I described, it correctly identifies the street as Pudding Lane. Something else the series got right was the mention of the Navy. Although we don’t know for sure if the specific issue of some sort of payment not being made is true, we do know that the real Thomas Ferriner provided bread for the Royal Navy. So, it’d make sense that he would be talking about contracts or something of that sort. We just don’t know if he did that in the early morning hours of September 2^nd.

The series was also correct to show the bakery downstairs while upstairs being where his family lived.

Something the series got wrong, though, is showing Thomas not in their home/bakery when the fire started. As the true story goes, Thomas was awoken in his bed by the smoke coming under the door from the bakery downstairs.

He grabbed Hannah, and escaped out the window to avoid going through the flames below just like we see in the series.

What about Mary, though? Well, we don’t know if she was a real person. In fact, the historical record only shows Thomas and his daughter Hannah. It’d stand to reason that Hannah has a mom, but we don’t know who she was. We also don’t know if Thomas had any other children like we see in the series. Just Hannah.

Another thing the series got wrong was to show everyone escaping the bakery. You see, Thomas had a maid. She was too scared to jump out of the second-story window…and sadly, she became the first victim of the fire.

So, with that said, it’s probably not a surprise to find out that we just don’t know if the fire started because Hannah left the oven door open.

Something else we see in the series when the fire starts is to see it spread along dry hay on the ground as a sort of kindling to grow out of control. That’s impossible to verify, of course, but it’s plausible because we do know the fire spread fast.

You see, all those buildings packed into the densely populated area of London were made out of wood. On top of that, there just happened to be some strong winds that helped the fire jump from building to building. People desperately tried to both get it under control as well as get out of the way of the flames.

I didn’t mention him because he’s not in the segment from this day in history, but in the series there’s a character by the name of Samuel Pepys. He’s played by Daniel Mays.

The real Samuel Pepys kept a diary that survived the fire, and as someone who lived through the experience, that diary has helped historians piece together what happened. I’ll include a link to the diary in the show notes if you want to read some of the entries, one of the things he wrote about was how people were throwing their belongings into the River Thames that runs through London in an attempt to save their possessions from the flames…that gives you an idea of the level of chaos that ensued in the flames.

Will the entire city go up in flames? Obviously, we know London still exists today…or does it exist, again? Will they be able to put the flames out, or will it only be extinguished when the flames have nothing left in the city to consume?

It’s amidst these burning questions that I’ll have to leave you for today…because that’s how it really was for the citizens of London on this day back in 1666.

 

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/

August 27th, 1964. Los Angeles, California.

We’re starting this week with a movie that shows the premiere of a different movie. And we’ll be looking at a premiere of a “based on a true story” movie later, but this is a based on a true story showing the premiere of a very fictional movie from this week in history.

About an hour and 51 minutes into the 2013 movie called Saving Mr. Banks, we see how Disney’s Mary Poppins premiered on August 27^th, 1964.

As the camera pans down from the night sky, we can see we’re at the famous Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. There’s a massive crowd of people gathered outside, red carpets, fancy cars, and a lot of press photographers snapping photos.

There’s also a small band playing a song, and on either side of the theater the marquee boldly states the movie that’s premiering tonight: Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

The camera cuts down to ground level now, and we can see everyone is dressed in their finest tuxedos and dresses. Walking among the nicely dressed people in attendance is a costumed version of Mickey Mouse’s beloved dog, Pluto. We can also see Goofy, too. They’re both among the crowd that’s now watching as a car pulls up to the red carpet.

A man in a red suit opens up the back door. Stepping out is a woman in a yellow dress. She’s all smiles as she steps out, then looks back at the car just as Tom Hanks’ character, Walt Disney, steps out of the car to join her on the red carpet.

He waves to the crowd.

There are cuts among the crowd. More memorable Disney characters. There’s Victoria Summer’s version of Julie Andrews in the crowd, greeting the guests.

Then, another car pulls up to the red carpet. Inside is Emma Thompson’s character, P.L. Travers. Her driver, Paul Giamatti’s character, Ralph, rushes around the car to get the door for her. She steps out onto the red carpet, and looks up at the huge theater in front of her.

Ralph looks at her and says, “This is your night. None of this would be possible without you.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Saving Mr. Banks

Pamela Lyndon Travers, who went by the pen name P.L. Travers and is played by Emma Thompson in the movie, and it is true that she was the woman who wrote the Mary Poppins books. And I say books because there were eight books in the series. Her first one was published in 1934, and it was an immediate hit.

As the story goes, it was Walt Disney’s kids who loved the book so much that they convinced their dad to make a movie out of it. He tried to do that in 1938, but Travers refused his offer because she didn’t think it’d be a good movie. She simply didn’t believe a film version of Mary Poppins would do her creation justice.

It took Walt Disney over 20 years to finally convince Travers to let him turn her book into a movie. When she finally gave him permission to do so in 1961, she still required final approvals on the script. As you can imagine, she was very picky and wanted a lot of changes…but, according to the contract, while Travers had script approval rights, Disney had the final cut approval, so he was able to overrule her on things like the songs for the movie.

I mentioned the cars coming to the premiere, with Walt Disney’s car arriving first. And the idea of P.L. Travers arriving later than Disney has some basis in truth because it really is true that Travers wasn’t given an invitation to the premiere of her own film. Knowing how picky she was about everything, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was on purpose by Disney to try to not spoil the evening…but, of course, that’s my speculation.

She did manage to get one anyway, so she showed up to the premiere and after the movie, she walked up to Walt Disney and told him that the animated sequence in the film had to be cut out. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but basically Walt Disney simply told her it was too late for that.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Disney’s film version of Mary Poppins was a massive success and as the film debut of Julie Andrews helped launch her into stardom as well.

If you want to watch the scene that happened this week in history, check out the 2013 movie called Saving Mr. Banks. It’s all about the making of the Mary Poppins film, and we can see how it depicts the premiere of the classic film at about an hour and 51 minutes into the movie.

 

August 28th, 1883. Indonesia.

For our next event, we’re going back to a movie from the 1960s that you’ve probably never seen called Krakatoa, East of Java. About an hour and a half into the movie, there’s a ship moving along the ocean when off in the distance is a massive glow. The noise sounds like an explosion of some sort. When the camera cuts to inside the ship, one of the crew—maybe that’s the captain—tells someone else to blow the whistle before we take the wave.

Then, he looks back out the window as we can hear the wind picking up. Someone else helps him put on a coat, as if that’ll somehow help against what’s to come. Outside, the waves are getting choppier.

The camera cuts to somewhere on land and we can see people running and screaming. The sky is hazy, so it’s hard to tell what they’re running from.

A moment later and the camera cuts again back to the ocean.

Slowly, the horizon starts moving up.

Except…wait…the camera isn’t moving at all. That’s a massive wave covering the entire frame now, and it still seems to be growing larger.

There’s a shot of a lighthouse that gets completely engulfed in crashing waves. Another cut to houses, some of them looking like they’re on fire, and the waves knock them all down. The entire houses are washed away before the whole screen is filled with nothing more than ravaging water.

Trees, homes, buildings, any ships that happen to be in the harbor…there are scenes of chaos and destruction as the massive waves take out anything in their path.

The camera cuts back to the people running and screaming from earlier, and now we know what they’re running from. Another massive wave towers above the houses behind the running people before it comes crashing down and everything disappears for a moment before all we see is debris and pieces of things being carried on.

And that’s how the movie goes for the next few minutes.

But, the focus of the film shifts back to the ship we started our segment with. There’s a massive wave in front of it now. The captain and the others on the ship don’t have much choice—they’ll have to try to go through it. When the wave hits, it smashes through the windows and right into the men. But…amazingly, they make it through. They cheer the fact they survived. Back outside, after the wave passes, things seem to calm down as if to say the storm is over.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Krakatoa, East of Java

Transitioning into our look into the true story, and the event we’re seeing in the movie here is one that happened this week in history—and also, last few months in history—but the event itself we’re talking about today is the massive 1883 eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatoa. Technically, that eruption spanned months, from May to October of 1883. Most historians point to the date of May 20^th, 1883 as the beginning since that’s when steam started venting from the volcano.

There would be eruptions of ash every so often. Some estimates say the ash reached heights of almost four miles into the sky—that’s about six kilometers.

Throughout the month of June, the eruptions started getting more violent. More ash filled the sky, with a second column being visible. Around this time, earthquakes started to shake the region. A third column of ash could be seen in early August.

As you can imagine, at this point with ash being thrown into the sky for literally months, the sky in the entire world was affected by this eruption. In fact, it even affected a lot of art around the time. A lot of paintings from that time period depict very colorful skies. Some have even speculated the sky in the famous painting by Edvard Munch called The Scream was influenced by the Krakatoa eruption and the hazy skies that the artist had seen over his home country of Norway just ten years before the painting.

Going back to our story, though, we’re in the August timeframe of 1883: Not quite to this week in history.

Remember how high the ash was before at an estimated four miles, or six kilometers? By August 25^th, estimates for the ash were at about 17 miles, or over 27 kilometers. That’s almost 90,000 feet and over 27,000 meters.

Krakatoa had entered its climactic phase of the eruption.

People reported hearing eruptions every few minutes at this point. It wasn’t just ash being thrown into the sky. Burning hot pieces of rock and glassy lava substances known as pumice were seen falling from the sky—some of them hitting ships nearby.

Four huge explosions were heard in the early morning hours of August 27^th. The largest of these explosions was so loud that it could be heard well over 3,000 miles away. That’s over 4,800 kilometers. People reported hearing what they thought was a cannon being shot.

Some believe this blast was the loudest sound in human history.

Others estimated there was about 200 megatons of energy released.

By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons of energy. That means the Krakatoa eruption was over 10,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it not only the loudest sound in human history but also being the most powerful explosion ever recorded.

Of course, those are best estimates based on the recorded data. It was 1883, after all, and the science of the time couldn’t quite track things as well as we can now.

Then, after the massive explosions on August 27^th, Krakatoa stopped eruptions almost immediately on August 28^th. I say “almost” because there were still smaller eruptions that carried into October, but for the most part it was done on August 28^th.

So, that’s the part we’re commemorating this week, the end of the climactic phase of the eruptions that happened by the morning of August 28^th.

At that point, though, historic damage had been done.

And while the things we see in the movie surely can’t do the real thing justice, the movie is correct to show the tsunamis following the eruption. The massive explosions on August 27^th were followed by waves almost 100 feet high, or about 30 meters.

Some tsunamis hit as far away as South Africa.

As you can imagine, the results were devastating.

Almost 70% of the island of Krakatoa itself was destroyed by the blast, and the entire region around the island was laid to waste. Towns were swallowed by the water. The entire island of Sebesi that was nearby had no survivors. There had been 3,000 people living there.

For months and even up to a year afterward, there were reports of victims’ bodies being found all around—even as far as Africa.

The official death toll was 36,417 people.

As a little side note, if you listened to last week’s episode of BOATS This Week you’ll know that for centuries people believed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to have culminated on August 24^th and August 25^th, so that means for a long time people thought those two massive eruptions happened during the same historical week. I mean, different years, with Vesuvius’ eruption being in 79 AD and Krakatoa being in 1883, but the same historical week.

Except, of course, if you listened to last week’s episode you’ll know why the date changed for Vesuvius in 2018 after almost two thousand years of believing it was in August.

But, if you want to see the eruption of Krakatoa as it’s shown on screen check out the 1968 movie called Krakatoa: East of Java.

Oh—and to give you an idea of how historically accurate that movie is, even the title is wrong. The island of Krakatoa is not east of the island of Java. It’s west of Java, but the filmmakers wanted the whole movie to have the feel of being off in the “Far East” so they wanted the word “East” in the title.

But the eruption we looked at today happens an hour and 35 minutes into the film.

 

August 31st, 1888. London.

Our third event from this week in history can be found at 22 minutes into the 2001 movie called From Hell.

The first thing that stands out from that time in the movie is a lamp post illuminating the street corner in what is otherwise a very dark night. We can see the cobblestone streets, some buildings, and a sidewalk that…oh wait, what’s that? There seems to be someone lying on the sidewalk.

It’s really dark and hard to see, though.

As the movie plays, they’re lying completely motionless.

Are they okay?

Just then, around the corner from behind one of the buildings by the lamp post comes another light. This one seems to be a flashlight, though, because we can see it is held in the hand of a man. The man is also wearing a helmet of some sort and wearing a long cloak.

As he continues to walk toward the camera, his flashlight casts a bright light onto the sidewalk beneath him. When he reaches the person lying on the sidewalk, he stops to investigate. They still haven’t moved at all. Since the man with the flashlight is closer to the camera, we can see a little better now that he’s wearing a uniform.

This must be a policeman.

He shines his light on the person lying on the sidewalk. Then, he puts a whistle to his mouth and starts blowing.

The camera doesn’t change the angle or cut to anything new, but we see a slow fade with more policemen standing around the body lying on the sidewalk. There are four of them, now. Then, we see time passing by as more and more people start coming to investigate the scene. More police. More of a crowd starts to gather, too, as the darkness of night makes way for the morning’s light.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie From Hell

That’s a brief scene because the movie goes on to dig into the investigation behind the murders…yes, murders, not just the one we saw in that segment of the movie because the murders continued beyond this week in history.

But it was in the early morning hours of August 31^st, 1888 that the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in the Whitechapel district of London. Mary, who also went by the nickname Polly, was believed to be the first victim of Jack the Ripper.

Although, I’ll admit that there has been some debate about whether she was the first Ripper victim as some people at the time tied Mary’s murder to some previous murders. For example, in the movie From Hell we see a woman named Martha Tabram being murdered by the Ripper before Polly is…but, in the 135 years since the murders took place, most people have landed on Mary Ann Nichols as the first canonical Jack the Ripper victim.

And that is a good example of just how much mystery surrounds the case of Jack the Ripper because technically, as of this day, Jack the Ripper has never been officially identified.

What we do know, though, is that Mary Ann Nichols had gone to a local pub at about 11 PM on August 30^th, 1888. She hung out there for about an hour and a half before leaving and going home.

But, she didn’t go to bed. You see, she was renting a bed at a lodging house. A little past 2 AM, the housekeeper came to demand her rent of fourpence for the bed.

Mary didn’t have the money, so she was kicked out.

So, Mary went back to work as a prostitute to try and earn money for her bed.

In the movie, we see Mary being murdered by someone in a carriage. The presumption here is that it was someone paying Mary to sleep with them and they ended up murdering her instead. To be honest, we don’t know that part. Of course, it’s plausible.

What we do know is that at about 2:30 AM on August 31^st, another lodging housekeeper named Emily Holland saw Mary walking down the street. Emily was Mary’s friend, so she recognized her. That was the last time anyone saw Mary alive.

At 3:30 AM, her body was found.

It wasn’t found by a policeman like the movie shows, though, but by a man named Charles Cross. He was a carman, so essentially a driver of horse-drawn carriages or carts.

While Charles was passing by, he noticed something unusual on the sidewalk. Initially he thought it was a tarp. When he got closer, he saw it was a body. Another carman passed by and Charles called him over, too. That guy’s name was Robert Paul, and together they investigated the body. They weren’t sure if she was dead or simply unconscious, so they pulled down her skirt—it was raised above her knee—and went to find a policeman. When they did, they told the officer—a man named Jonas Mizen—that she looked to be either dead or drunk.

Charles and Robert went back to work while the policeman investigated the woman’s body which was later identified to be Mary Ann Nichols.

Oh, and something we never see in the movie is that Mary Ann Nichols was born on August 26^th, meaning she was murdered just five days after her 43^rd birthday.

If you want to watch the morbid murder that happened this week in history, check out the 2001 movie called From Hell, named after the “From Hell” letter that Jack the Ripper sent to the authorities.

Mary Ann Nichols’ body is found around 22 minutes into the film.

And if you want to learn more about the true story, we covered that in episode #93 of Based on a True Story over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/93.