>> Announcer: From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Ellen: I'm so glad to be here and to see all of you. I'm not going to ask you to stand up now that you're seated, but let's have a show of hands of all the veterans who served. [Applause] All right. Now let's have a show of hands of everybody who worked on the home front. [Applause] Come on, mom. Marion. [Laugher] Now we're going to have a really wonderful panel in just a couple of minutes, and so I'm going to encourage those of you who are standing in the back, just kind of waiting to see if it's going to be really good, come on down. Have a seat because it'll be better if you're sitting near the front and you can hear. So come on and take a seat, and that way you're going to hear from some wonderful people. Now while we're getting our panel set up, I wanted to add my thanks to many of yours to Congress Ron Kind, who was just co-moderating the last panel. He was the father of the legislation that created the Veterans History Project, and if he hadn't had that idea, we wouldn't be here. So thank you, Congressman Kind. [Applause] Everybody in this tent is very special, but I also wanted to acknowledge, and I think he just drifted off, General Don Scott from the Vietnam War is the Deputy Librarian of the Library of Congress, and he's here with us today as well. So welcome to the Veterans History Project pavilion. This is an historic weekend, and we're so proud to be here with you and the Smithsonian Institution and the American Battle Monuments Commission to honor our World War II veterans. The Veterans History Project is part of the Library of Congress and its American Folklife Center, and it was given the job to collect the first hand accounts of those who served in wartime in World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War. How do we do this? We do this with an army of volunteers, and all the people that you see with the purple t-shirt and the purple hats are here to get your stories on audio tape or to interview in the interview booth or to get your story or your memoirs on computer. We do this because Congress created us and because we got some very generous help from AARP, and we're really happy to have them as a sponsor. Now what do we accept as far as your materials and your memories? We love to hear people's voices and hear them telling their own stories. So videotaped interviews, audiotaped interviews, but also wartime letters, your written memoirs, and your photographs, especially if you have annotated them and we know what's happening in the photographs. All the different ways that people tell their stories is what gets collected through the Veterans History Project, and then it's preserved and it's archived in the Library of Congress where it will be there as long as there's a Library of Congress. A lot of the material is also put up on a website, so you can actually watch the interviews and hear the stories and read the letters on your computers, and if you like to do that and you have a pencil and you have any of our material, you'll see that the website is loc.gov [slash] vets. It's very, very easy to find and to go to, and that way you'll see all the stories. When we collect your story, you're going to join about 18,000 individuals whose stories are already at the Library of Congress, and that represents about 70,000 items. So please be sure you see a volunteer or you go to the computer or you go to the back of this table and get the materials because you can do this next week or next month or next year if you want to. So I want to remind you that the Veterans History Project is something that's going to go on. It's all the wars. It's all the branches of service-Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and we don't forget the Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine and the great service they gave us. We also depend on volunteers, so if you want to volunteer as an interviewer, that would be great, too, or if your organization wants to interview veterans. We haven't forgotten the people who work on the home front. We have a lot of interviews from war workers and Red Cross workers and nurses and nurses' aides. So we want to make sure that happens as well, and now I'm getting the signal that it's time to introduce the panel, and I'd like to introduce Commander David Winkler, who is a historian at the Naval Historical Foundation and one of our best interviewers at the Veterans History Project, and he is accompanied by Admiral Holloway and Senator John Warner. [Applause] They're going to be talking about the Battle of Surigao Strait, but also because these two distinguished gentlemen are friends, they're going to be having a dialogue, and I just want to say that it's an honor to welcome Admiral Holloway and Senator Warner. Thank you for being such a wonderful friend of the Veterans History Project, for supporting us, and for being the courageous Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Thank you, everybody. [ Applause ] >> Winkler: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Dave Winkler, and I'm pleased on behalf of the Naval Historical Foundation on behalf of the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project to be here in the presence of two great patriots. Both men are naval veterans. In the case of Senator Warner, I say naval because he enlisted in the Navy towards the end of the Second World War, and then you served our country again during the Korean War as a Marine Corps officer. >> Warner: Yeah, but I'm the only damn fool you ever knew that had to go to boot camp twice. [Laughter] Don't put me out here as some bright character. >> Winkler: And then, of course, you went on to be the Under Secretary to Navy and then the Secretary to Navy, and as Secretary to Navy, you were kind of responsible for hiring this man here to be the Chief of Naval Operations. >> Warner: The last act I did was during the fifth year, all during the Vietnam War, was to reach down in the ranks and pluck this character to be the head sailor, and he did one hell of a job. >> Winkler: Of course, both of you got your start somewhere, and that place where you got your start was World War II and the-but before I want to talk a little bit about that, I'd like to ask you, Senator, about the Veterans History Project and how you came about signing on as a five-star member and talk about a little bit about why you're supporting this program and why it's the right thing to do. >> Warner: Well, drop the five-star. I'm petty officer third class, but Jim Billington, a wonderful man who is the top fellow with the Library of Congress, conceived this idea, and I thoroughly supported it because in today's time, Americans should have some record of the sacrifices that so many made to provide the degree of freedom and the strength that this country has today. Each generation has built upon the foundation of the other generation, and I mention that because now as the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I go back and forth each year a couple of times a year to Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the world where I see this generation out on the ramparts just as brave, just as courageous, Jim, as our generation, and we may be known as the greatest generation, but let me tell you. I think we're going to pass the baton to this one. Don't you agree, Jim? >> Holloway: I agree absolutely. I think we sort of didn't anticipate that they would rise to our level, but that was very selfish of us, and now I say so often that I have never known the Navy, which is my service, to be better prepared, more ready, or more capable than it is today, and I sort of have to bite my tongue when I say it because I was responsible for that readiness in years gone by. >> Warner: That's right. >> Winkler: Okay, going back to World War II, I'd like to ask you gentlemen where were you on December 7? Admiral? >> Warner: He's the senior officer, so he gets to speak first. >> Holloway: Don't believe that. December 7, 1941, I was a midshipman first class at the US Naval Academy, and that Sunday afternoon I happened to be have taken a very attractive young lady to lunch. She must have been impressed because four years later, she married me, but I came back from that date with my wife-to-be, and when I got to the gate of the Naval Academy, in those days we didn't have Marines or sailors on the gates. We had what were known as jimmy legs, and the jimmy legs were contract security guards, which we see a lot of today, and I knew that something had happened that afternoon because all the jimmy legs were armed. They all had pistols and side holsters, and my question was, are they armed to keep us in or to keep the enemy out? >> Warner: I was sitting in Griffith Stadium at the Redskin game. I was, I don't know, a young man then, but the thing I remembered-I suppose Griffith Stadium held 25,000 in those days-they very carefully did not make the announcement, but they took the microphone periodically and said, "Would Admiral So-and-So please call your office," "General So-and-So please call your office," and it wasn't until we got out of that game-I think it was the Chicago Bears-that we learned when we turned on our little old radios in those cars of that tragic event to the United States. >> Holloway: I have one question, sir. Did the Redskins win? >> Warner: You know, one of the great things about being a senior citizen, damn, if I remember. [Laughter] >> Holloway: Well, I couldn't either. That's why I asked. >> Winkler: Okay, now Admiral, you go to sea first, graduating a year ahead. They moved your class up at the Naval Academy. Could you talk about reporting aboard, I guess, the Bennion, was it, the ship you were assigned? >> Holloway: I graduated a year early, the first three-year class of World War II, and I had an opportunity to ask for a certain type of ship, and in May of '42, I requested a destroyer, and by the time I graduated in June, it had been sunk. So I was sent to a new construction destroyer. This was the USS Ringgold, and I served aboard the Ringgold for a year. I was an assistant gunnery officer. When I left Ringgold, I was a lieutenant, 22 years old, and had been qualified to serve as gunnery officer on new construction. So it was after a year on the DD-500, I went to the DD-662, the Bennion, and where the Ringgold operated principally in the Atlantic, the North Atlantic, on convoys, Bennion went immediately to the Pacific, and it was aboard the Bennion that I served as gunnery officer during the Surigao Straits Battle. >> Winkler: Now at this time, Senator, you're still a young kid going up through school out in, I guess, rural Virginia. Could you talk a little bit about the home front and what folks were doing to support the war effort? >> Warner: Sure, but I'd like just to say with a deep sense of humility that I did serve in the Navy at the end of World War II, and I served in the Marines and went to Korea, but I do not ever put myself in the category of a hero. I just did my duty, stayed out of trouble, and got the GI Bill, and only because of my military training and the GI Bill am I here today as a United States Senator, and I have a heart full of gratitude for the opportunity that this country gave me, and today in my twenty-sixth year in the Senate, I'm trying to do payback to our military. [Applause] I have the most vivid memories of my group. It was the fall of 1944, and I guess in this audience, there's one or more who might have been in the Battle of the Bulge, and we felt as a nation up to that time we were making headway, but that surprise attack and the horrific losses that were suffered in that conflict sobered America up, and everybody in my high school class in the fall of '44, the boys-no disparagement to the girls, but I just can't remember much about that, but I do know we all quit school and joined our services, and I wanted to be an aviator. So I joined the Army Air Corps and the Navy Air Service and waited at home until they first called me up, which was in January of 1945, and America at that time, we couldn't see the end of where it was going to end in Europe and much less the Pacific because as I was in boot camp, you had Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and today's generation don't realize the losses, say at Iwo Jima, we were something like 18,000 casualties. Okinawa, higher causalities than that, close to 20 some odd thousand, and while we are deeply distressed by every loss of every soldier today, America must remember the magnitude of those losses and the currents with which my generation, '17 and '18, were swept into to go into our training camps, and when the war ended in Europe, Jim, that was May of 1945, we could see no end to the war in Japan, particularly after the experience of the tenacious battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and so my class was in training. I met a guy out here a minute ago. We were both trained as radio techs. I had since flunked out of flight training because of airsickness, Admiral, and we were headed into the invasion in Japan when Harry Truman, I think, made that tough decision, which in the end saved many thousands of American lives and, frankly, many more thousand lives of the Japanese, military and civilian. So with that, the war came to an end, and we were headed to the Pacific when the orders were cut. You stay here, finish up your training, and go home, and that was it. So, like millions of others-there were 16 million of us in World War II, my class, the 17, 18 year olds in the fall of '44, '45, we were ready to come take the place of those of you out here who had fought the good war, including yourself, Jim. We were ready to go, and, you know, we had the support of every single person at home to do that job. >> Holloway: Senator, I do have to say that it was your generation that was prepared for the cold war by World War II, and it was your generation that were the field officers in Korea, another savage war. Fifty-five thousand Americans died in Korea, and it was your generation that were the leaders in the war in Vietnam where the toll was 50,000 American troops. So, and you were in the lead of most of those leaders during that time. I'm very proud myself to have served under you when you were Secretary of the Navy and I was the senior military man. >> Winkler: Okay, Senator, you were alluding to this, these battles going across the Pacific and how the war could have been going on. Now one of those battles was the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, that's when the Japanese introduced the kamikaze, the suicide airplane that, you know, took out many of our ships. You know, that's how brutal the war became. Now the Battle of Leyte Gulf is a very complex. It's the greatest naval battle in history. It's a-it was a three or four-day event, and one of the highlights of the battle was the Battle of Surigao Strait where the battleships from Pearl Harbor have an opportunity having been refloated to attack some revenge against the Japanese navy, and Admiral Holloway, being on the Bennion, had a front row seat to this battle that occurred on the night of the twenty-fourth and the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth of October where the setup was that there were these straits leading to the landings at Leyte Gulf. On October 20, General McArthur had landed, and he had fulfilled his pledge that "I shall return." So the Japanese to throw the Americans off the beaches, instituted this plan to distract the American third fleet led by Admiral Halsey away from the beaches, and then they would send these powerful surface forces through San Bernardino Strait to the north and Surigao Strait to the south and to meet the Japanese navy formations coming up through Surigao Strait, Admiral Kincaid sent Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf with the battleships from Pearl Harbor to cross this strait, to form what's called a naval maneuver crossing the t, and he sent ahead these PT boats and destroyers to rim the strait to launch torpedo attacks against these Japanese cruisers and battleships. So with that setup, let me turn it over to Admiral Holloway, who was a gunnery officer on the Bennion, so you can tell us what happened. >> Holloway: If I were to tell you it seemed like yesterday, I would be telling you the absolute truth. On the twenty-fourth of October 1944 in the afternoon, the captain of the Bennion called me down to the bridge and shared with me his message traffic that showed that Leyte Gulf would be the focal point of this tremendous last, all out attack by the Japanese forces and that already one Japanese force had entered Surigao Strait to our south and would try to break through our screen of destroyers to attack and destroy as many of the 100 ships, merchant ships, lying off Tacloban, that were loaded with the support of the army troops ashore. We went to general quarters about 5:00 that afternoon. We put the [inaudible] through the chow line. I went up to the director. We considered that we had a very experienced outfit. We had all put the ship in commission together. We had served together for a year. We had been to Saipan, [inaudible], Quam, Peleliu, and now we were at Leyte Gulf. In fact, only three days before on the twenty-second of October, we were bloodied for the first time when providing gunfire support for the Army troops ashore. The ship was hit. The Bennion was hit by counterbattery fire, and two people were wounded. One was where you are, and one was where Dave Winkler was. I was spared. One of the officers was terribly badly wounded. He survived, but it meant we had to make a few changes to our director crew before the action. That evening, Bennion was made part of a three-ship division and moved down into this strait, Surigao Strait on the western coast. That would-that's the Leyte coast, and it's a very rugged coast. So the three ships could sort of hide in the shadows and not be detected by the Japanese radars. Everyone was exhausted. I remember sitting up in the director, very hot, very confined, in and out of rain squalls, sailors sort of dozing off. We had to shake them to keep them awake, and then I was standing up in the hatch in the director looking south and I heard a noise that sounded like summer thunder. You all know what that's like, very far away, deep rumbling, but it was continuous, and I then saw the telltale flash of gunfire, and while I was looking down there trying to make out what was going on with my binoculars, I felt a tug at my pants leg, and the sailor sitting here, who was the range finder operator, pointed to me. He said, "Look through the optics," and we had very powerful optical telescopes that enlarged the target up to ten times, and I looked through there, and what did I see but a Japanese battleship, and you may be amused at my reaction. My wife always says, "Don't tell this story because people will think you are really dumb," but I said, "I saw this pagoda structure of the mast," and I said, "My God, that looks just like a Japanese battleship." [Laughter] Well, of course, it was a Japanese battleship, but I had spent four or five years of my life, you know, looking at recognition slides, and about that time I saw a second battleship coming out. Following the first was a Fuso. The second was a Yamashiro, and the fire fight was sparked by the PT boats. We had 39 PT boats down in the strait, and they had made an attack on the column coming through. I have to say that they didn't score a hit, but they alerted us to the-gave us warning so we were prepared. About this time, we were told to start our run in towards the launch point. Our plan had been our three destroyers steaming 300 feet apart with absolutely no lights, making black smoke, and the engineers loved that. That was the best part of the battle for them because they were forbidden to make black smoke under normal operations, and with everything blanked out, we headed at 32 knots running to the south. The Japanese force was coming toward us at 25 knots. So we were closing at better than 50 miles an hour, and as we broke away from the radar shadow of Leyte, the coastline, the Japanese picked us up, and it was a very eerie feeling because we were not firing our guns. We were going to make a torpedo attack, but we were 20,000 yards away, which is the earliest that their 16-inch guns were accurate, and the ship, the Bennion, was surrounded by these towering columns of water, and you have to see them to understand. These were the 16-inch shells as they were exploding. None of them, we were not hit, but our decks were awash, and we did lose a man over the side because of the tremendous wash of water that from that shell. We were tremendously heartened though because about the time it looked like we were running into serious trouble from these 14 and 16-inch guns of the Japanese, our own battleships opened up. Now this was a sight that I have told people about for years because I just didn't expect it. Everyone of their 16-inch and 14-inch shells had a tracer on it, and overhead we saw, we on the destroyers, could see just like fireworks the shells from the main battery guns of our old battleships and then looking through the optics, see them impact, hitting the Fuso and the Yamashiro. These shells took 20 to 25 seconds from the time they were fired until they hit the target. So we had this opportunity, everything almost in slow motion. When we got to 10,000 yards, we made preparations to launch our torpedoes, and I reported to the captain. I said, "We have a radar lock on. We've been tracking the second ship in the column, the Yamashiro, which was our target, and we've got his course and speed down to a very accurate position. The torpedo battery is ready." All the amber lights were on, and the captain said, "Well, we're going to launch at 7000 yards." I kind of wished he had said "Launch right now" so we could get, you know, get out of there, but we launched each-we were the third destroyer, and the first one made a right hand turn, fired five torpedoes. The second followed in its wake, and we were the third. So we were three or four minutes after the first ship launched, and we were closer than 5000 yards to the Yamashiro when we launched, and as the torpedo tube swung out, we came around in a turn, I checked all the buttons, said "Captain, are we ready?" He said, "Launch them." I hit the firing switch and looked out as five fish, big torpedoes, hit the water in succession. Every one of them was what they call-was a hot run. The engine started, and we could see the trail of the torpedoes headed toward the Japanese battleships. So with that, we had done our job. We were tired. We ran into one of our ships, the AW Grant, was hit and on fire. She was the ship that was just ahead of us, and we were taken under fire by a Japanese cruiser, the Mogami, and we fired back at her, but the-it had become a melee. We didn't know whether these radar targets were friendly ships or enemy ships. We got them all mixed up. >> Warner: Did the torpedoes hit? >> Holloway: The Senator has asked a key question, "Did the torpedoes hit?" And the answer, sir, is yes. Not all, but two of the Bennion's five spread hit the Yamashiro, and, but we had recovered. The next-as soon as light broke, we sort of got our force together, headed south, and a Japanese destroyer was getting away. She was on fire, but she had to be destroyed because that destroyer, like us, carried torpedoes that could be used to attack our forces. So we sunk that Japanese destroyer by gunfire, and she blew up as we passed within 2000 yards of her, and at that instant, a zero dropped out of the skies headed right for us, and we hit it, a direct hit from a 5-inch gun. Now people say that's almost impossible, but, you know, we were lucky that day, and as we turned around and came back because we had destroyed the southern striking force, and the sea was covered with oil, with debris. There were five major fires going. The surface of the water was covered with Japanese sailors, and they were crying. We didn't understand Japanese, and we didn't know whether they were saying nice things or bad things to us, but we did not stop to try to pick them up. We figured that they would wash ashore and we would let the Filipinos deal with that. So by noon that day, the Battle of Surigao was over. Four days later I left the ship, came back to the States, went through flight training, and became an aviator. [ Applause ] >> Winkler: Senator, hearing that story, do you have any thoughts? >> Warner: All this time that was going on, I was in high school and only saw the movietone news. >> Holloway: Sir, by rank I was a lieutenant, and I was approaching my twenty-second birthday. >> Winkler: Okay, I'm going to ask Admiral one more question. First of all, Senator, do you have any more questions? >> Warner: That's the grand finale. >> Winkler: Okay, the-you were the captain of the Bennion tried to keep you on board. What was your comment to him? >> Holloway: Well, he was a wonderful gentleman. His name was-he was Captain Joshua Cooper, and I remember during that entire battle, I looked down on him, and he had his cap on at a [inaudible]. He was sitting out in the open, conning the ship, not wearing a tin hat, but wearing his commander's hat with the gold braid on it. Great destroyer man, and I was leaving going over the side, he let me use his gig to go over to the [Inaudible] Lights, which was a supply ship that was going back to the States. He said, "Jim, you really ought to stay in the destroyer Navy. There's a great spot for you here. You've got this great background. Really, I hate to see you go off to fight training," and I said, "Captain, I appreciate what you're saying, but, look, in 48 hours we've shot down three Japanese planes, torpedoed a Japanese battleship, sunk the Japanese destroyer. What's there left to do?" [ Applause ] >> Winkler: Do you have any-- ? Okay, what I'd like to do is to kind of do the Phil Donahue routine here and take some questions from the audience. We have about 15 minutes left in this session. Do I have any questions? >> Audience: For Senator Warner. >> Warner: Aye-aye, sir. >> Audience: Senator, you mentioned something that hit me sincerely, and I claim that this is one of the reasons why we are such a great nation today, was because of the GI Bill. When we guys came out of the service, most of us did not have anything more than a college education, and the government gave us the opportunity to go back to school, which we took advantage of, and I think that generation that went back to school became the lawyers and the accountants and the professors and the doctors of the generation that was so great, and I'd like to ask you, did you feel that the GI Bill was as strong a thing as I do? >> Warner: I didn't get the question. >> Winkler: He's asking if the GI Bill was a wonderful program. Do you feel as strongly about the success of the program as he does? >> Warner: Enormously. I got my first degree in engineering from modest World War II service, which I'd describe as inconsequential except in the training command, and then I got a law degree for my again another two years in the Marine Corps during the war in Korea. So I wouldn't be here today. The GI Bill is the greatest investment that America made at that time, and today [applause] I make sure that every GI gets equal or better than I did. [Applause] Thank you. >> Winkler: Other questions? Yeah, okay. Let me go right- >> Audience: Yes. I appreciate hearing these stories first hand. It's great to having grown up in the 50's, we saw, my generation, World War II movies, but, as usual, Hollywood couldn't do justice to the real story. So it's quite exciting to be here. Having come out of that 50's generation, growing up that way, when the 60's hit and I found out that black veterans could not vote in the South, that was a great, great shock to me having learned and had so much pride in my country. So I volunteered and worked on Dr. King's staff both in Georgia for ten weeks and as college coordinator for three years, and I know in the black community they called World War II the Double V, being the war against fascism around the world and fighting for civil rights at home, and I'm wondering for both of you, the military was ahead of society integrating in 1948, and as you had your military career, Admiral and Senator Warner, as you went into politics, did the World War II experience translate to you that at some point this country was going to have to deal with that issue and face up to particularly those returning veterans getting full rights and the rest of society also? >> Warner: Well, I give great credit to that man who was my Commander in Chief in World War II and again in Korea, and that was Harry Truman. One of the first things he did upon becoming President was to desegregate the armed services and begin to let the African-American generations have that opportunity that I had, and when I was Secretary of the Navy, we were still working on that, Jim, and I think it's something we always have to work on, but I'm very proud of the history of the African-Americans who have worn the uniform of the United States military. [Applause] >> Holloway: I would like to add I agree with every word that Senator Warner has said, but I would like to add something, and that is when Senator Warner was under Secretary of the Navy, he was heavily involved, in fact, it came close as far as my observation that it was his primary interest was making sure we had equality in the Navy, and then when he became Secretary of the Navy, he was able to capitalize on his efforts and his previous experience to make what he had generated come true, and in the Navy today we look back on the era of John Warner's Secretary of the Navyship as a watershed in the improvement of race relations within our service. [Applause] >> Winkler: Okay, question. >> Williams: Hello. My name is Bradford Williams, and my father was on the USS Maryland battleship at Surigao. I was curious, did-could you tell the individual broadsides from the battleships in the sense of, you know, which ships had eight guns, which ships had twelve guns, that kind of thing. You know, could you tell the difference? Were you that close or not? >> Warner: You go ahead. I think he's talking about the size of the guns. >> Holloway: Yes. USS Maryland had, my recollection is she was a West Virginia class ship. She had 16-inch guns arranged three per turret in three turrets. Now that's just a recollection, but let me, if you're interested in following through, I recommend you get Samuel Eliot Morison's History of the US Naval Operations in World War II, and in the volume on Leyte, he not only describes the armament of those ships but actually lists how many rounds were fired by each ship. So you can look up and find out that Maryland fired 64 armor piercing projectiles during that action or something of that nature. I think it's wonderful that you have this great interest in that, and I that's what I believe our program does is stimulate young Americans to be proud of their heritage and particularly their family who served. >> Warner: One little footnote to that, when I finished my training, I was assigned to the USS Hawaii, which was a pocket battleship built midway through the war with a 12-inch gun, and the ship never slipped its hawse line. We stayed ashore because it was being decommissioned. The old gun club in the Navy, the battleship captains and admirals, never wanted to see a little 12-inch gun battleship again, and we destroyed three brand new battleships in the closing year of World War II because they didn't want them anymore. Some day we've got to figure out why that happened. They were afraid Congress would buy the cheaper ship and never build another one, which they didn't do, as a matter of fact. That was the last battleships was the Missouri, the New Jersey, the Wisconsin, and what was the fourth one? Iowa. If there's no more questions, I guess we can secure the [inaudible]. >> Winkler: Well, I just got one point to add is that on Leyte Gulf, he asked a good question here. There's an excellent book by Tom Cutler on the Battle Leyte Gulf. Evan Thomas, who wrote a great book on John Paul Jones, is coming out with a book next year on the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and there's going to be a two-day symposium at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas, in September about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but, you know, there's so much on this topic that takes a whole few days to cover it, and probably then some. So, I don't know, without-Ellen. >> Ellen: Time for one more question? >> Winkler: Do we have time for one more question? >> Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Admiral Holloway, over here. I just wondered if you and the Senator would comment briefly on the long term consequences of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. You know, for people who didn't live through it, what did it mean? >> Holloway: The Senator said it broke the back of the Japanese navy, and that's absolutely true because subsequent to the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese were never able to send their major forces out of their homeland. They were just then sort of relegated to coastguard duties, but I think there's another, that the immediate effect was that had the Navy not prevailed at Leyte Gulf, I think that the entire campaign would have been slow-I'm going to say at least six months-because the landings on Leyte would have been terribly disrupted, and as a consequence, I think the war would have dragged on for another at least six months, and during that time, the Japanese would have been able to prepare themselves better, and, as the Senator has pointed out, the casualties would have been horrific, and it was, I think, that punch that got us rolling, and when General MacArthur said "I have returned," he turned out to be right that time. >> Warner: I'd really like to close with one of my many strong memories. My father had been in World War I and was wounded in France. He was a doctor, and military life was very much in the minds of both my father and my mother, who had been a sort of a nurse to the wounded here at home in World War I, but I mention it because they were a family like millions and millions of other families all across America who did everything to make that war effort possible. The support to the men and women in the armed forces was just all out, and those that stayed at home deserve as much credit as those who went abroad in harm's way. We couldn't have done it had not we had the rationing. I remember we got one pair of shoes a year, remember that? And I remember my feet grew so big that the toes curled under [laughter], so I'm slightly deformed, but those are the days we all remember and this nation, we've got it in us today to see us through this crisis we're in, and we're going to survive because here at home we love liberty, we love this nation, and we got a generation that will take our baton as the greatest and carry on. So hats off-my mother lived to be 98, and my most prized possession today-it hangs in my Senate office-is a little sticker that was on our front door and on the front door of millions of homes, which simply said, "We're proud we have a son in the United States Navy." Remember that? >> Winkler: And that's an excellent place to end. [Applause] Let us- >> Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.