The Art of Manliness - Episode #44： Voices Of The Pacific With Marcus Brotherton

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00:00:55.680 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Well, our guest

00:01:05.120 today is a regular contributor to The Art of Manliness. It is Marcus Brotherton. Marcus is an

00:01:10.840 author and has written over 25 books, and he's focused a lot of his writing on the history of

00:01:16.840 World War II, more specifically the lives of the men who fought in World War II. One of his books

00:01:22.140 actually reached the New York Times bestselling list. It's We Who Are Live and Remain, Untold

00:01:28.660 Stories from the Band of Brothers. And today we're going to talk about Marcus's new book,

00:01:32.740 Voices of the Pacific, Untold Stories from the Marine Heroes of World War II.

00:01:38.720 All right, Marcus. Well, welcome to the show.

00:01:41.680 Thanks, Brett.

00:01:43.660 It's actually interesting. You were actually my very first podcast interview when I started the podcast

00:01:48.480 with the Band of Brothers book. So let's talk about Voices from the Pacific.

00:01:56.600 Yeah.

00:01:57.520 Let's talk about your... What I found really interesting is you teamed up with an author,

00:02:02.020 a different writer on this, Adam Makos, who had that great book that he...

00:02:09.300 Yeah, his first book, A Higher Calling.

00:02:11.120 A Higher Calling.

00:02:11.640 Very, very well, yeah.

00:02:13.080 Yeah, so how did that partnership come about?

00:02:15.260 Yeah, I met Adam a number of years ago at an air show and worked with him on several

00:02:20.500 editing projects over the years. He's a very smart guy, very driven. He's got a huge heart

00:02:24.800 of compassion for the men for telling their stories. And so when it came to this project,

00:02:30.140 Voices of the Pacific, unlike the Men of Easy Company Association, it was much more difficult

00:02:36.120 to track down the Marines who were featured in the Pacific. There just wasn't one main association

00:02:41.300 for them. So Adam's company had spent two years doing this, meeting the men, explaining the project,

00:02:46.720 winning their trust. And then the time came to do a oral history project. Adam called me up and said,

00:02:51.600 hey, you've done this before with We Were Alive and Remain. Time is of the essence with these men

00:02:56.160 and their ages. Let's join resources, do it together. It's proved a good partnership all the way through.

00:03:01.760 Fantastic. That actually is, you just mentioned something that leads me to my next question.

00:03:07.480 Is the reason why, it just seems like there's the perception is out there that the men who fought

00:03:13.600 in the Pacific don't get as much attention as the men who fought in Europe, like the Band of Brothers.

00:03:19.640 Is a reason of that because they're so hard to track down? Is that part of the reason why

00:03:23.660 there hasn't been much attention brought to these men?

00:03:26.220 Undoubtedly. I think the spotlight is probably increasing over the years. Certainly battles

00:03:34.220 like Guadalcanal and Okinawa, they've received good coverage. Clint Eastwood, he produced those

00:03:38.840 two movies, Flags for Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima. So it's a more grisly side of the war,

00:03:46.240 I'd say. I mean, certainly there were atrocities in the European campaigns. But the battles in the

00:03:52.280 Pacific, by and large, I'd say you need a stronger stomach to take them. So that maybe just keeps

00:03:57.860 more people away.

00:04:00.000 What were some of the differences? I mean, why were the battles more atrocious in the Pacific than,

00:04:08.740 say, in Europe?

00:04:10.860 Yeah, I can think of at least three reasons there. One was just the climate was certainly different. I

00:04:15.360 mean, the Battle of Bastogne in Europe, it was all about snow and cold and not having enough warm clothes.

00:04:21.520 The battle for, say, Peleliu was all about heat. You've got 120-degree days. The men are all thirsty.

00:04:28.680 There's not enough water in their canteens. There's flies everywhere. And then it's just a different

00:04:34.040 enemy. I mean, Imperial Japan was a pre-modern society in many ways. You have this emperor, 0.92

00:04:40.440 Hirohito, who's the political head of the state of Japan during World War II. And then he's also

00:04:45.280 considered sacred. So he's believed to be directly descended from a sun god, I think it was.

00:04:50.440 So he's considered divinity. And that creates a climate where a lot of the Japanese soldiers

00:04:55.180 during World War II, they're really fanatical in their devotion to him. They're willing to die

00:04:59.280 in his honor rather than being captured by the enemy. And so you really have that different

00:05:04.120 worldview. You know, in Germany, you have at least a semblance of Judeo-Christian worldview

00:05:12.000 among the German soldiers anyway. They recognize such things as mercy and tolerance and compassion,

00:05:16.940 basically what the Western world considers fair play. By contrast, in Japan, you have a worldview 0.61

00:05:23.300 that considers mercy, tolerance, and compassion to be signs of weakness. So in Japan, if your enemy

00:05:29.740 surrenders to you, you wouldn't treat him with mercy. You'd treat him with contempt. Surrender

00:05:34.200 in the eyes of the Imperial Japanese soldiers is a sign of weakness and cowardice. So the Japanese 1.00

00:05:39.360 soldier, even if he's being beaten, he will not surrender. He's going to die by suicide

00:05:46.540 first. And this creates a very brutal enemy, a very aggressive enemy. It's an enemy who doesn't 0.99

00:05:52.400 fight by the same rules that are understood by the Western world.

00:05:55.820 And I imagine that was a big culture shock for a lot of these young men who were used to that

00:06:01.360 notion of fair play, and they come to an enemy who has no regard for that whatsoever.

00:06:07.660 Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:06:09.240 And yeah, talking about the climate and the weather, that was something that really

00:06:12.480 jumped out to me while I was reading the book. The thing that really

00:06:15.780 struck, stuck out to me was the emphasis on the jungle rot. A lot of those, a lot of the men

00:06:22.000 brought up the, this fighting jungle rot. Can you kind of describe what jungle rot was?

00:06:28.640 Um, jungle rot, uh, a horrible condition. Um, you might call it jock itch today, but, uh, it would be

00:06:35.720 like a hundred times worse and, uh, it would be in more areas of your body than you care

00:06:40.920 to imagine. So it, it, it, it comes from a situation where you're just always wet all

00:06:46.100 the time and, and coupled with the wet, you're always in this really hot, uh, humid climate.

00:06:52.520 Yeah. And it seems like a lot, a lot of these men too, uh, got malaria and they had it for 30,

00:06:58.700 40 years after the war. They're battling this. Yeah. Malaria, very, uh, tricky and sneaky degrees,

00:07:06.000 uh, disease where, um, you know, it can sort of, sort of, uh, hide in your spleen, I believe it is.

00:07:11.900 And like you're saying, um, well, you can be fighting it for, uh, for years and years to come.

00:07:16.900 So, uh, very, very tough situation there. Yeah. And another aspect of the, their environment that

00:07:23.200 I found was, you know, different from, uh, say what the band of brothers faced was these islands.

00:07:31.020 When we think of like islands in the Pacific, I think the sort of idealized version of islands

00:07:35.440 in the Pacific comes to mind, like, you know, sandy beaches, pristine waters, but the islands that

00:07:41.100 these men were fighting on were some were just made of coral. Like it wasn't made of sand. Some were

00:07:46.820 made of just volcanic ash. And then some were just, just dense jungle. So these weren't like

00:07:52.820 typical islands, I guess. Yeah. Pretty difficult fighting conditions all around. And you think

00:07:58.960 about, uh, how many times a soldier may be down his knees or on his belly and, you know, crawling

00:08:04.600 along, uh, you know, to, to keep out of sight of, of, uh, gunfire. And if you're, if you're, uh,

00:08:11.740 falling down on coral, you know, 10 times within an hour, I mean, that's going to really rip up

00:08:16.340 your front pretty easily, pretty quickly. So it's just brutal conditions. These guys are fighting

00:08:20.820 Yeah. And even digging foxholes was impossible. Like they could, you know, just kind of get

00:08:26.220 like a shallow hole and that was their foxhole. Um, one thing that struck out to me as I was

00:08:31.640 reading this book, uh, was the age of these, the men who fought in the Pacific. I mean, we're

00:08:36.960 talking 16, 17 years old with some of them. Uh, was that something common in the Marines

00:08:43.720 during World War II? Uh, great question. It may have been just the men we featured in

00:08:48.900 this book. Um, you know, young enlistments were, were fairly similar across the board.

00:08:53.820 I think he had to actually be 18 to go in, but a lot of men just, you know, it's not like

00:08:58.080 he had really, uh, concrete, um, uh, documents back then in many ways. So, um, I, you know,

00:09:04.820 I think, I think one of the factors that really sets apart the study of the Pacific is, uh, is

00:09:10.740 the length of time that the men fought for, you know, in, in Band of Brothers, you have

00:09:14.500 a much long trainer, training period to begin with. And essentially the men, they fight for

00:09:20.400 about a year from D-Day, June 1944 to, um, probably May 1945 in Austria, where the, the

00:09:27.260 high points may begin to be rotated home. So the Marines featured in the Pacific, by contrast,

00:09:32.180 they're fighting from, oh, say like August 1942, which is Guadalcanal until, um, August,

00:09:38.840 August 1945, VJ day. And then even some of them until 1946, they're fighting into occupied

00:09:44.360 China. So it's, it's more like three years of battle there, uh, just a longer series of

00:09:49.280 campaigns on that side of the world.

00:09:51.960 And I also found interesting how a lot of these men ended up in the Marines. Um, and a

00:09:57.560 lot of times it was just sort of happenstance that they ended up in the Marines. Like they,

00:10:01.440 they want, they tried to get into the Navy, but the Navy rejected them. They tried to get

00:10:05.660 in the army, but the army rejected them. And then they showed up at the Marine recruiting

00:10:09.400 office and they're like, okay, yeah, we'll take you. Um, it wasn't like the Marine was

00:10:14.060 where the, were their first choice in a lot of cases.

00:10:17.180 Yeah. Like, uh, Sid Phillips, I believe it was, it was just the shortest line and he had

00:10:21.160 to get back to work or school or something like that. And he's like, well, you know, or

00:10:24.120 we can either wait for an hour in this line or we can wait for five minutes in the line

00:10:28.980 for the Marines. So that's how he became a Marine.

00:10:31.160 It's amazing that the way you make that choice could have such life altering, you know, life

00:10:37.600 altering impact on you. Um, yeah. Yeah. He could have been a band of brother, but because

00:10:42.520 he, uh, it's a shorter line. I'm going to go serve in the Pacific now. Yeah. Um, so what's,

00:10:48.580 let's talk about the men today. What's the average age of the veterans who have survived?

00:10:55.020 Uh, most of them we talked to late eighties, uh, early nineties. Um, one of the men is

00:11:00.880 95, um, Shagreer. Yeah. So it's, they're, they're all, time is ticking, like we say. 0.99

00:11:06.520 Yeah. And how many of them are left?

00:11:09.340 Uh, I couldn't speak for the Marines of the first division all told. Um, I said, the men

00:11:14.100 featured in our book, I think it's all except one or two now. Yeah.

00:11:17.500 Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Um, Marcus, is there anything, I mean, you've been studying,

00:11:24.400 uh, or talking to World War II veterans for several years now. Um, but is there any way

00:11:31.020 that you've changed as a man after talking to these specific men who served in the Pacific?

00:11:39.200 Well, I'm, I'm continually astounded, uh, continually astounded and continually challenged

00:11:43.760 really by the men I meet in these projects. Um, a few years back, I was at an air show. I met

00:11:48.160 T.I. Miller, who's featured in the book. And, uh, you know, after the war T.I., he comes home

00:11:53.220 and right away marries his childhood sweetheart. And he finds the only job that he can find

00:11:58.760 in West Virginia, uh, where a young man can get without education. And that's mining coal.

00:12:04.220 So, uh, you know, he goes to work right away in the coal mine. It's pretty tough to think

00:12:07.860 you're 22, 23 and you're mining coal all day long. So one of his, his first jobs is called

00:12:13.660 cleaning belt. And it's this dusty, heavy job. It's, he's down in the, in the bowels of the

00:12:18.400 mine, just every day in darkness, uh, just watching this belt go by basically. And, uh,

00:12:24.380 like you're talking about malaria, T.I. had contacts malaria back in the Pacific. And, uh,

00:12:29.760 it, one of those things that, uh, you know, you battle it the rest of your life. It just

00:12:33.740 sort of shows up without warning anytime and anywhere. And, and symptomatically it's fevers

00:12:38.980 and chills and aches so bad. You think your body's going to, going to rattle apart, T.I.

00:12:42.980 said. So one day, uh, T.I. Miller's down in the coal mine, he's cleaning belt and he, he

00:12:48.180 feels this malarial fever coming on very quickly, very suddenly. And, and he's almost instantly

00:12:54.700 in this delirium and, uh, he's beginning to hallucinate. And, you know, you think if you

00:13:00.340 or I are, are beginning to hallucinate, you know, we might see some scary things or some

00:13:04.240 normal things, but, uh, T.I. goes back in his, in his mind and, and he begins to hallucinate

00:13:10.260 about all the horrors he's faced during the war. So he starts literally seeing these dead

00:13:16.100 Japanese soldiers riding by on a belt in front of him. You know, basically these, these phantoms 0.94

00:13:21.920 are in front of him. And, and he's, he's still with it enough to know that he needs to get

00:13:26.560 to the surface pretty quickly. So, um, he, he calls over another miner and, and the other

00:13:31.880 miner helps him get to the surface and up to the sun and, and his, his apparitions basically

00:13:36.760 disappear once he gets to the surface. So he goes to the hospital, spends another 20

00:13:41.380 days in, in the, in the VA hospital recovering from his fever. Uh, the point of that story

00:13:46.420 is I, I, uh, a story like that, I meet a man like that who tells me that story face to face

00:13:51.280 and I just go, wow, you know, that helps me put my own job into perspective. You know,

00:13:56.460 we all have bad days at work, even though, uh, you know, some of us, some of us have really

00:14:00.400 great jobs, but the point is we're not down in the darkness of a coal mine fighting off

00:14:05.240 millennial attacks while having hallucinations of dead Japanese soldiers. And so a thought

00:14:10.080 like that goes just a long way toward me being grateful today.

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00:15:07.960 Yeah, that's an amazing story. Is there any, is there another story from, uh, the interviews

00:15:13.180 you, you took part in that really stuck out to you?

00:15:18.200 One of the, one of the saddest stories, I think, uh, Jim Young, he tells this, uh, it's a pretty

00:15:23.100 tragic narrative, really. One day the, the Navy is helping supply the Marines, um, on Guadalcanal,

00:15:29.980 I believe it is. And so Jim Young, he has come down with his bad case of hemorrhoids, which

00:15:35.940 he kind of said with a chuckle when he, when he told me about it. And so the Lieutenant, uh,

00:15:41.020 calls him over and gives him this order. He says, Hey, you know, take 12 men, your squad

00:15:44.960 leader, whatever, you know, go down to the beach, help unload this destroyer. And he's

00:15:48.560 like, man, I can hardly walk much less help unload a ship. So Lieutenant comes and calls over

00:15:53.980 the Corpsman. Corpsman checks him out and says, Oh yeah, you know, this, uh, poor, uh, poor

00:15:58.000 Jim Young, he can barely walk. And so, uh, the, the Lieutenant, he calls another man to take

00:16:04.040 Jim Young's place. And this other man's name is Clifton Barter. He's a corporal. So, uh,

00:16:10.160 Clifton Barter and the men, they go down to the beach, they begin to unload the ship and

00:16:14.880 just sort of a typical, uh, afternoon on, on Guadalcanal, uh, air raids start and, uh,

00:16:20.900 enemy planes fly over and bombs start falling down on, on the men. So, uh, the, the, the

00:16:27.900 men, they all jump in trucks. They try and make a run for it. It's too late. Bombs are raining

00:16:32.320 down them. And, uh, they all, they all jump in this old bomb crater thinking they're going

00:16:36.600 to be safe altogether. But, uh, it's, it pretty much proves to be a direct hit. And one of the

00:16:41.820 bombs falls right on top of them. So one of the Marines survives the blast and he runs

00:16:48.440 back to the company with the news. Uh, the Lieutenant and Jim Young and all the guys, they

00:16:52.520 jump into a jeep, they race to the spot. And they say that when they get there, it's just,

00:16:56.480 uh, just a bloodbath. You know, five of the guys are dead. Everybody's badly wounded. You

00:17:00.980 can hardly tell who's who. And Jim Young finally locates, uh, Corporal Barter, the guy who's

00:17:06.560 taken his place. And Barter is badly wounded. He's just begging for water. And, uh,

00:17:11.820 uh, Jim Young said a fragment about the size of a softball had gone through this guy.

00:17:16.800 And so there, there really, there, there isn't anything more that they can do for, uh, for

00:17:20.760 Corporal Barter. And sure enough, there's a few last words spoken and then, and then

00:17:24.900 Corporal Barter dies. So Jim Young is telling me the story. I mean, it's 67 some years later

00:17:30.260 and, uh, tough as nails Marines. And he, he's, his voice is choking. His voice is cracking

00:17:37.220 when he's telling me the story. And he, he says, you know, it is, it was my fault that

00:17:42.040 this man was killed instead of me. You know, it was supposed to be my working party, but

00:17:46.280 it's, he, he died so that I could live. So, you know, a story like that, I'm just, I'm

00:17:52.160 just hanging on, just listening to it. And so much power, so much poignancy and so much

00:17:56.840 selflessness coming through, uh, this whole theme of another man dies so that, so that

00:18:01.440 you can live. And, and Jim Young says, you know, how are you going to live out the rest

00:18:05.560 of your days in light of that fact? That's just a, it's just a powerful statement.

00:18:09.980 Wow. That is really powerful. Um, let's talk a little bit about, you know, about Jim Young

00:18:17.080 a little bit. Did, did he talk about how he dealt with that, uh, grief or that feeling

00:18:23.720 of responsibility, um, when he came home to civilian life?

00:18:30.620 Yeah, you know, it's, it's a story that strangely enough is not isolated to him. I mean, it's

00:18:35.360 basically what happened in, uh, Saving Private Ryan. And, and I think a man lives with a sense

00:18:41.180 of obligation and a sense of, uh, on, on common gratitude. And, uh, he, he, he wants to live

00:18:49.120 his life, uh, dedicated, uh, to somebody, uh, in terms of what was given to him.

00:18:54.820 Yeah. And what I loved about the book too, is that you don't stop, uh, with the, their

00:19:00.920 story when the war's over, you, you follow up with them and see, you ask them about their

00:19:06.040 life after the war. And what I found interesting with this book and also with, um, your interviews

00:19:13.720 with the men who served with the band of brothers is it seems that for the most part, uh, men

00:19:19.280 who served during World War II, they had their wounds and they had their emotional scars, but

00:19:23.580 for the most part, they seemed well-adjusted. They, they got back into civilian life. They

00:19:26.840 had jobs. And I guess maybe, maybe it's just my perception. It's perhaps it's wrong. Um,

00:19:32.280 but that you didn't see a lot of the post-traumatic stress syndrome that you're seeing, or post-traumatic

00:19:36.980 stress disorder that you see in a lot of our returning veterans today in our most recent

00:19:41.220 wars. Um, is that perception correct? I mean, was the, the, the, a lot of guys who served

00:19:47.100 in World War II, a lot of men come back and get back into civilian life. Okay. Um, or did

00:19:53.780 they actually have the sort of, those scars?

00:19:57.640 Yeah, it's, it's a good question. It may simply be the perspective of time that, that

00:20:01.700 we're dealing with here in the books. I, I'm not positive if the veterans of World War

00:20:05.180 II adjusted any better. Maybe it's just the perception. Like I say, um, sometimes they

00:20:09.520 just didn't talk about it, you know, back in that generation, it just, uh, a man

00:20:12.680 came home and a lot of the vets I've talked to say, well, you know, nobody wanted to hear

00:20:16.560 what I had to say. So, uh, so I just climbed up for the rest of my life until I was, uh,

00:20:20.940 you know, elderly or whatever. Um, there, there certainly were a lot of stories, um, you

00:20:26.940 know, men coming home, dealing with nightmares, flashbacks, rage, depression, um, men of that

00:20:33.720 generational turn to alcohol. A lot of the time it was kind of that generation's

00:20:37.340 drug of choice. And so, uh, I'd say more that the veterans I've talked to would say

00:20:42.100 that war affects any man, you know, no matter what time, what, what time period he

00:20:45.400 lives in. So it's, it's, it's really raising a valid question here. And I don't have all

00:20:51.000 the specific answers to it. It's, it's, um, you know, can we do anything differently or

00:20:55.820 better as a country and a culture to help our returning soldiers? Really? That's what the

00:20:59.480 question is.

00:21:00.100 Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, it seemed to me that in your interviews that a lot of these

00:21:06.080 men had communities like tight knit communities to return home to. Um, and

00:21:12.580 tighter than today, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we had that less so today.

00:21:17.080 Um, a lot of people, they come home and you have these soldiers and they're just sitting

00:21:20.600 in an apartment by themselves away from family, no friends. Um, and I guess to us, uh, one,

00:21:27.620 I, one thing I found very interesting about, uh, soldiers who fought in World War II, they

00:21:31.420 have the reunions, right? Where they'd get back together. And I don't know, is that,

00:21:35.320 is that something that's common with more recent veterans? Do they have reunions or is

00:21:39.800 it too soon for that?

00:21:42.820 I, I honestly don't know. I mean, you hear about them in the news once in a while. Um, uh,

00:21:47.520 Donovan Campbell wrote that great book, uh, was it Joker one where he really talks about

00:21:52.060 the camaraderie that his men felt and, and he really led with that, uh, really a theme of

00:21:57.040 love is the word he uses, which is kind of a word that you don't expect, um, uh, you

00:22:02.340 know, veterans really to use, but that was really the kind of the guiding and shepherding

00:22:06.220 principle that he had with those men. So, um, it's, it's a good question. I mean, you

00:22:10.900 know, how, how do we help veterans of today transition back to our communities, to our

00:22:15.360 workplaces, to our training programs, our universities, our churches? It's, it's a great

00:22:20.020 question. And, uh, you know, certainly begins with gratitude. I think we do see that much

00:22:25.700 more today than we did, you know, say with Vietnam era. Um, and yet gratitude can't, can't

00:22:32.060 exist on an isolated plane. It's gratitude has got to be expressed, uh, with actions,

00:22:36.560 followed up with actions, you know, begins by saying thanks for what you did and then

00:22:39.820 followed up with dates. So, yeah, great question.

00:22:43.440 One of the things that I love what you do with your writing on your blog and you've done

00:22:46.800 it on when you've written articles for the art of manliness is extracting lessons

00:22:52.360 that men today can apply to their lives, um, from these soldiers who fought in World War

00:22:59.540 II. What are some of the lessons that you think that men can take today, um, can take

00:23:05.980 from the men who fought in the Pacific?

00:23:08.520 Yeah. Um, and I always want to let the men speak for themselves as much as possible. And

00:23:13.400 so, um, most of the lessons that I do talk about are lessons that they've actually, they've

00:23:18.900 actually taught me about and things that they want to convey to the men. So I guess I want

00:23:23.000 to be careful to answer that question. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to stand in place

00:23:26.420 of the men. Um, and yet it is really hard as a journalist to not, uh, interact with this

00:23:31.900 material and, and have it affect you as a man or, or have it, uh, you know, life lessons

00:23:37.400 are often universal in terms of humanity. So, um, you think about, um, you know, big lessons

00:23:45.640 of war and I think, uh, we, we see a lot of iconic images today, um, both from wars of

00:23:52.340 yesteryear and wars of today. And I think, I think iconic images of national triumph are

00:23:58.440 really a good thing. You know, you think about, uh, the 82nd Airborne Division marching in New

00:24:04.240 York Times, uh, or New York, uh, ticker tape parade. Um, or you think of the image of the,

00:24:09.600 the nurse who kisses a sailor in Times Square after Japan's surrender. And, and those, those

00:24:14.800 images are really good, really, really good. And yet it's the other images of war that

00:24:20.520 we also need to continually bring to national forefront. It's, it's the bloody images, the

00:24:26.460 ghoulish images. It's, it's, um, you know, it's Dan Lawler. He's, uh, there's that story

00:24:32.240 in the book of, he finds this five-year-old girl in, in Okinawa, civilian girl, and, uh, and

00:24:39.000 she, she wraps her tiny arms around his neck and he just weeps at the injustice of civilians

00:24:44.880 being caught in crossfire. I mean, that's an image we want to burn into the consciousness

00:24:48.960 today. Or, you know, Clarence Ray, uh, there's a scene in the book with him and he goes to

00:24:55.160 this hospital on Guam after he's wounded in the arm. And Clarence Ray, he glances around

00:25:00.660 the hospital ward and just, he can kind of take them off one by one. There's a man with both

00:25:05.860 legs amputated. There's another man with his jaw shot off. There's another man who's

00:25:10.200 burned so badly. He, he doesn't look human anymore. And that's, that's really the message

00:25:14.860 of this book. It's war is war and we can never forget that.

00:25:20.300 Very powerful stuff. Um, so Marcus, you've interviewed, you've talked to men and interviewed

00:25:25.940 men who fought in Europe. You've talked to men, interviewed men who fought in the Pacific.

00:25:30.720 Whose story do you plan on capturing next?

00:25:33.300 Hmm. Well, it's always a great question. I'm, I'm always on the lookout for the next great

00:25:38.300 story. Um, you know, I, strangely enough, I've been doing a lot of, uh, I run an editorial

00:25:43.300 company in, in, uh, in my off days, I suppose, or not my off days, but my other time. And I've

00:25:50.420 been doing a lot of editing work lately with historical fiction, which really fascinates me.

00:25:54.520 So, um, I just did a project by a guy named Sean Hoffman. He's a movie producer in Hollywood

00:25:59.740 and he wrote a historically based novel called Samson. It's about boxers and Auschwitz.

00:26:05.740 And so Sean, um, he was uncovering, he uncovered the fact that, that, uh, Nazi guards, they used

00:26:12.040 to hold boxing matches on weekends for entertainment. And basically they'd get two Jewish prisoners 0.91

00:26:17.320 to fight and the winners would receive extra food rations and the loser would go to the gas

00:26:22.360 chambers. So I think that book's going to be out maybe late this summer. Um, so just projects

00:26:27.240 like that. I'm always on the lookout, just the next, the next powerful story.

00:26:31.420 Very great stuff. Well, Marcus, thank you so much for your time. Uh, Voices of the Pacific

00:26:35.160 was a great book and, uh, I can't wait to help my readers go out there and check it out.

00:26:41.740 Thanks, Brett. It's always great to talk.

00:26:43.820 Our guest today was Marcus Brotherton. Marcus is the author of the book,

00:26:47.180 Voices of the Pacific, Untold Stories of the Marine Heroes of World War II. You can find that book

00:26:52.700 on amazon.com or any other bookstore. And you can find out more about Marcus's work at marcusbrotherton.com.

00:27:02.780 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:27:07.960 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And until next time,

00:27:13.840 stay manly.

00:27:22.700 All right.

00:27:43.760 Bye.

00:27:45.360 Bye.

00:27:45.520 Bye.

00:27:47.740 Bye.

00:27:50.660 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #44： Voices Of The Pacific With Marcus Brotherton

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