Episode #44： Voices Of The Pacific With Marcus Brotherton
Episode Stats
Summary
Marcus Brotherton is a regular contributor to The Art of Manliness and has written over 25 books on the history of World War II. One of his books actually reached the New York Times bestselling list. It s called Voices of the Pacific, Untold Stories from the Marine Heroes of WWII. In this episode, we talk about his new book, and why the stories of the men who fought in the Pacific don t get as much attention as the ones in Europe.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Well, our guest
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today is a regular contributor to The Art of Manliness. It is Marcus Brotherton. Marcus is an
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author and has written over 25 books, and he's focused a lot of his writing on the history of
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World War II, more specifically the lives of the men who fought in World War II. One of his books
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actually reached the New York Times bestselling list. It's We Who Are Live and Remain, Untold
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Stories from the Band of Brothers. And today we're going to talk about Marcus's new book,
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Voices of the Pacific, Untold Stories from the Marine Heroes of World War II.
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It's actually interesting. You were actually my very first podcast interview when I started the podcast
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with the Band of Brothers book. So let's talk about Voices from the Pacific.
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Let's talk about your... What I found really interesting is you teamed up with an author,
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a different writer on this, Adam Makos, who had that great book that he...
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Yeah, I met Adam a number of years ago at an air show and worked with him on several
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editing projects over the years. He's a very smart guy, very driven. He's got a huge heart
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of compassion for the men for telling their stories. And so when it came to this project,
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Voices of the Pacific, unlike the Men of Easy Company Association, it was much more difficult
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to track down the Marines who were featured in the Pacific. There just wasn't one main association
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for them. So Adam's company had spent two years doing this, meeting the men, explaining the project,
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winning their trust. And then the time came to do a oral history project. Adam called me up and said,
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hey, you've done this before with We Were Alive and Remain. Time is of the essence with these men
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and their ages. Let's join resources, do it together. It's proved a good partnership all the way through.
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Fantastic. That actually is, you just mentioned something that leads me to my next question.
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Is the reason why, it just seems like there's the perception is out there that the men who fought
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in the Pacific don't get as much attention as the men who fought in Europe, like the Band of Brothers.
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Is a reason of that because they're so hard to track down? Is that part of the reason why
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there hasn't been much attention brought to these men?
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Undoubtedly. I think the spotlight is probably increasing over the years. Certainly battles
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like Guadalcanal and Okinawa, they've received good coverage. Clint Eastwood, he produced those
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two movies, Flags for Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima. So it's a more grisly side of the war,
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I'd say. I mean, certainly there were atrocities in the European campaigns. But the battles in the
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Pacific, by and large, I'd say you need a stronger stomach to take them. So that maybe just keeps
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What were some of the differences? I mean, why were the battles more atrocious in the Pacific than,
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Yeah, I can think of at least three reasons there. One was just the climate was certainly different. I
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mean, the Battle of Bastogne in Europe, it was all about snow and cold and not having enough warm clothes.
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The battle for, say, Peleliu was all about heat. You've got 120-degree days. The men are all thirsty.
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There's not enough water in their canteens. There's flies everywhere. And then it's just a different
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enemy. I mean, Imperial Japan was a pre-modern society in many ways. You have this emperor,
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Hirohito, who's the political head of the state of Japan during World War II. And then he's also
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considered sacred. So he's believed to be directly descended from a sun god, I think it was.
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So he's considered divinity. And that creates a climate where a lot of the Japanese soldiers
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during World War II, they're really fanatical in their devotion to him. They're willing to die
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in his honor rather than being captured by the enemy. And so you really have that different
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worldview. You know, in Germany, you have at least a semblance of Judeo-Christian worldview
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among the German soldiers anyway. They recognize such things as mercy and tolerance and compassion,
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basically what the Western world considers fair play. By contrast, in Japan, you have a worldview
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that considers mercy, tolerance, and compassion to be signs of weakness. So in Japan, if your enemy
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surrenders to you, you wouldn't treat him with mercy. You'd treat him with contempt. Surrender
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in the eyes of the Imperial Japanese soldiers is a sign of weakness and cowardice. So the Japanese
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soldier, even if he's being beaten, he will not surrender. He's going to die by suicide
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first. And this creates a very brutal enemy, a very aggressive enemy. It's an enemy who doesn't
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fight by the same rules that are understood by the Western world.
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And I imagine that was a big culture shock for a lot of these young men who were used to that
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notion of fair play, and they come to an enemy who has no regard for that whatsoever.
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And yeah, talking about the climate and the weather, that was something that really
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jumped out to me while I was reading the book. The thing that really
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struck, stuck out to me was the emphasis on the jungle rot. A lot of those, a lot of the men
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brought up the, this fighting jungle rot. Can you kind of describe what jungle rot was?
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Um, jungle rot, uh, a horrible condition. Um, you might call it jock itch today, but, uh, it would be
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like a hundred times worse and, uh, it would be in more areas of your body than you care
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to imagine. So it, it, it, it comes from a situation where you're just always wet all
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the time and, and coupled with the wet, you're always in this really hot, uh, humid climate.
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Yeah. And it seems like a lot, a lot of these men too, uh, got malaria and they had it for 30,
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40 years after the war. They're battling this. Yeah. Malaria, very, uh, tricky and sneaky degrees,
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uh, disease where, um, you know, it can sort of, sort of, uh, hide in your spleen, I believe it is.
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And like you're saying, um, well, you can be fighting it for, uh, for years and years to come.
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So, uh, very, very tough situation there. Yeah. And another aspect of the, their environment that
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I found was, you know, different from, uh, say what the band of brothers faced was these islands.
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When we think of like islands in the Pacific, I think the sort of idealized version of islands
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in the Pacific comes to mind, like, you know, sandy beaches, pristine waters, but the islands that
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these men were fighting on were some were just made of coral. Like it wasn't made of sand. Some were
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made of just volcanic ash. And then some were just, just dense jungle. So these weren't like
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typical islands, I guess. Yeah. Pretty difficult fighting conditions all around. And you think
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about, uh, how many times a soldier may be down his knees or on his belly and, you know, crawling
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along, uh, you know, to, to keep out of sight of, of, uh, gunfire. And if you're, if you're, uh,
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falling down on coral, you know, 10 times within an hour, I mean, that's going to really rip up
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your front pretty easily, pretty quickly. So it's just brutal conditions. These guys are fighting
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Yeah. And even digging foxholes was impossible. Like they could, you know, just kind of get
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like a shallow hole and that was their foxhole. Um, one thing that struck out to me as I was
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reading this book, uh, was the age of these, the men who fought in the Pacific. I mean, we're
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talking 16, 17 years old with some of them. Uh, was that something common in the Marines
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during World War II? Uh, great question. It may have been just the men we featured in
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this book. Um, you know, young enlistments were, were fairly similar across the board.
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I think he had to actually be 18 to go in, but a lot of men just, you know, it's not like
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he had really, uh, concrete, um, uh, documents back then in many ways. So, um, I, you know,
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I think, I think one of the factors that really sets apart the study of the Pacific is, uh, is
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the length of time that the men fought for, you know, in, in Band of Brothers, you have
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a much long trainer, training period to begin with. And essentially the men, they fight for
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about a year from D-Day, June 1944 to, um, probably May 1945 in Austria, where the, the
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high points may begin to be rotated home. So the Marines featured in the Pacific, by contrast,
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they're fighting from, oh, say like August 1942, which is Guadalcanal until, um, August,
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August 1945, VJ day. And then even some of them until 1946, they're fighting into occupied
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China. So it's, it's more like three years of battle there, uh, just a longer series of
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And I also found interesting how a lot of these men ended up in the Marines. Um, and a
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lot of times it was just sort of happenstance that they ended up in the Marines. Like they,
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they want, they tried to get into the Navy, but the Navy rejected them. They tried to get
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in the army, but the army rejected them. And then they showed up at the Marine recruiting
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office and they're like, okay, yeah, we'll take you. Um, it wasn't like the Marine was
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where the, were their first choice in a lot of cases.
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Yeah. Like, uh, Sid Phillips, I believe it was, it was just the shortest line and he had
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to get back to work or school or something like that. And he's like, well, you know, or
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we can either wait for an hour in this line or we can wait for five minutes in the line
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for the Marines. So that's how he became a Marine.
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It's amazing that the way you make that choice could have such life altering, you know, life
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altering impact on you. Um, yeah. Yeah. He could have been a band of brother, but because
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he, uh, it's a shorter line. I'm going to go serve in the Pacific now. Yeah. Um, so what's,
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let's talk about the men today. What's the average age of the veterans who have survived?
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Uh, most of them we talked to late eighties, uh, early nineties. Um, one of the men is
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95, um, Shagreer. Yeah. So it's, they're, they're all, time is ticking, like we say.
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Uh, I couldn't speak for the Marines of the first division all told. Um, I said, the men
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featured in our book, I think it's all except one or two now. Yeah.
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Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Um, Marcus, is there anything, I mean, you've been studying,
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uh, or talking to World War II veterans for several years now. Um, but is there any way
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that you've changed as a man after talking to these specific men who served in the Pacific?
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Well, I'm, I'm continually astounded, uh, continually astounded and continually challenged
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really by the men I meet in these projects. Um, a few years back, I was at an air show. I met
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T.I. Miller, who's featured in the book. And, uh, you know, after the war T.I., he comes home
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and right away marries his childhood sweetheart. And he finds the only job that he can find
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in West Virginia, uh, where a young man can get without education. And that's mining coal.
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So, uh, you know, he goes to work right away in the coal mine. It's pretty tough to think
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you're 22, 23 and you're mining coal all day long. So one of his, his first jobs is called
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cleaning belt. And it's this dusty, heavy job. It's, he's down in the, in the bowels of the
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mine, just every day in darkness, uh, just watching this belt go by basically. And, uh,
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like you're talking about malaria, T.I. had contacts malaria back in the Pacific. And, uh,
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it, one of those things that, uh, you know, you battle it the rest of your life. It just
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sort of shows up without warning anytime and anywhere. And, and symptomatically it's fevers
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and chills and aches so bad. You think your body's going to, going to rattle apart, T.I.
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said. So one day, uh, T.I. Miller's down in the coal mine, he's cleaning belt and he, he
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feels this malarial fever coming on very quickly, very suddenly. And, and he's almost instantly
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in this delirium and, uh, he's beginning to hallucinate. And, you know, you think if you
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or I are, are beginning to hallucinate, you know, we might see some scary things or some
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normal things, but, uh, T.I. goes back in his, in his mind and, and he begins to hallucinate
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about all the horrors he's faced during the war. So he starts literally seeing these dead
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Japanese soldiers riding by on a belt in front of him. You know, basically these, these phantoms
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are in front of him. And, and he's, he's still with it enough to know that he needs to get
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to the surface pretty quickly. So, um, he, he calls over another miner and, and the other
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miner helps him get to the surface and up to the sun and, and his, his apparitions basically
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disappear once he gets to the surface. So he goes to the hospital, spends another 20
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days in, in the, in the VA hospital recovering from his fever. Uh, the point of that story
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is I, I, uh, a story like that, I meet a man like that who tells me that story face to face
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and I just go, wow, you know, that helps me put my own job into perspective. You know,
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we all have bad days at work, even though, uh, you know, some of us, some of us have really
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great jobs, but the point is we're not down in the darkness of a coal mine fighting off
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millennial attacks while having hallucinations of dead Japanese soldiers. And so a thought
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like that goes just a long way toward me being grateful today.
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Yeah, that's an amazing story. Is there any, is there another story from, uh, the interviews
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you, you took part in that really stuck out to you?
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One of the, one of the saddest stories, I think, uh, Jim Young, he tells this, uh, it's a pretty
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tragic narrative, really. One day the, the Navy is helping supply the Marines, um, on Guadalcanal,
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I believe it is. And so Jim Young, he has come down with his bad case of hemorrhoids, which
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he kind of said with a chuckle when he, when he told me about it. And so the Lieutenant, uh,
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calls him over and gives him this order. He says, Hey, you know, take 12 men, your squad
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leader, whatever, you know, go down to the beach, help unload this destroyer. And he's
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like, man, I can hardly walk much less help unload a ship. So Lieutenant comes and calls over
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the Corpsman. Corpsman checks him out and says, Oh yeah, you know, this, uh, poor, uh, poor
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Jim Young, he can barely walk. And so, uh, the, the Lieutenant, he calls another man to take
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Jim Young's place. And this other man's name is Clifton Barter. He's a corporal. So, uh,
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Clifton Barter and the men, they go down to the beach, they begin to unload the ship and
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just sort of a typical, uh, afternoon on, on Guadalcanal, uh, air raids start and, uh,
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enemy planes fly over and bombs start falling down on, on the men. So, uh, the, the, the
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men, they all jump in trucks. They try and make a run for it. It's too late. Bombs are raining
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down them. And, uh, they all, they all jump in this old bomb crater thinking they're going
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to be safe altogether. But, uh, it's, it pretty much proves to be a direct hit. And one of the
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bombs falls right on top of them. So one of the Marines survives the blast and he runs
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back to the company with the news. Uh, the Lieutenant and Jim Young and all the guys, they
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jump into a jeep, they race to the spot. And they say that when they get there, it's just,
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uh, just a bloodbath. You know, five of the guys are dead. Everybody's badly wounded. You
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can hardly tell who's who. And Jim Young finally locates, uh, Corporal Barter, the guy who's
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taken his place. And Barter is badly wounded. He's just begging for water. And, uh,
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uh, Jim Young said a fragment about the size of a softball had gone through this guy.
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And so there, there really, there, there isn't anything more that they can do for, uh, for
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Corporal Barter. And sure enough, there's a few last words spoken and then, and then
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Corporal Barter dies. So Jim Young is telling me the story. I mean, it's 67 some years later
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and, uh, tough as nails Marines. And he, he's, his voice is choking. His voice is cracking
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when he's telling me the story. And he, he says, you know, it is, it was my fault that
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this man was killed instead of me. You know, it was supposed to be my working party, but
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it's, he, he died so that I could live. So, you know, a story like that, I'm just, I'm
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just hanging on, just listening to it. And so much power, so much poignancy and so much
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selflessness coming through, uh, this whole theme of another man dies so that, so that
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you can live. And, and Jim Young says, you know, how are you going to live out the rest
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of your days in light of that fact? That's just a, it's just a powerful statement.
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Wow. That is really powerful. Um, let's talk a little bit about, you know, about Jim Young
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a little bit. Did, did he talk about how he dealt with that, uh, grief or that feeling
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of responsibility, um, when he came home to civilian life?
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Yeah, you know, it's, it's a story that strangely enough is not isolated to him. I mean, it's
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basically what happened in, uh, Saving Private Ryan. And, and I think a man lives with a sense
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of obligation and a sense of, uh, on, on common gratitude. And, uh, he, he, he wants to live
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his life, uh, dedicated, uh, to somebody, uh, in terms of what was given to him.
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Yeah. And what I loved about the book too, is that you don't stop, uh, with the, their
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story when the war's over, you, you follow up with them and see, you ask them about their
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life after the war. And what I found interesting with this book and also with, um, your interviews
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with the men who served with the band of brothers is it seems that for the most part, uh, men
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who served during World War II, they had their wounds and they had their emotional scars, but
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for the most part, they seemed well-adjusted. They, they got back into civilian life. They
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had jobs. And I guess maybe, maybe it's just my perception. It's perhaps it's wrong. Um,
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but that you didn't see a lot of the post-traumatic stress syndrome that you're seeing, or post-traumatic
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stress disorder that you see in a lot of our returning veterans today in our most recent
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wars. Um, is that perception correct? I mean, was the, the, the, a lot of guys who served
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in World War II, a lot of men come back and get back into civilian life. Okay. Um, or did
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Yeah, it's, it's a good question. It may simply be the perspective of time that, that
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we're dealing with here in the books. I, I'm not positive if the veterans of World War
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II adjusted any better. Maybe it's just the perception. Like I say, um, sometimes they
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just didn't talk about it, you know, back in that generation, it just, uh, a man
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came home and a lot of the vets I've talked to say, well, you know, nobody wanted to hear
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what I had to say. So, uh, so I just climbed up for the rest of my life until I was, uh,
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you know, elderly or whatever. Um, there, there certainly were a lot of stories, um, you
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know, men coming home, dealing with nightmares, flashbacks, rage, depression, um, men of that
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generational turn to alcohol. A lot of the time it was kind of that generation's
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drug of choice. And so, uh, I'd say more that the veterans I've talked to would say
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that war affects any man, you know, no matter what time, what, what time period he
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lives in. So it's, it's, it's really raising a valid question here. And I don't have all
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the specific answers to it. It's, it's, um, you know, can we do anything differently or
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better as a country and a culture to help our returning soldiers? Really? That's what the
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Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, it seemed to me that in your interviews that a lot of these
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men had communities like tight knit communities to return home to. Um, and
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tighter than today, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we had that less so today.
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Um, a lot of people, they come home and you have these soldiers and they're just sitting
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in an apartment by themselves away from family, no friends. Um, and I guess to us, uh, one,
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I, one thing I found very interesting about, uh, soldiers who fought in World War II, they
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have the reunions, right? Where they'd get back together. And I don't know, is that,
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is that something that's common with more recent veterans? Do they have reunions or is
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
00:23:08.520
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.
00:25:33.300
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
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.
00:26:43.820
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,