History with David Rubenstein

(theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello.

I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be in conversation today with Craig Symonds who is an eminent naval historian and the author of his 17th book, Nimitz At War.

We're gonna be talking to him today from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York Historical Society.

So, welcome to our, uh, conversation.

SYMONDS: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's suppose, um, somebody been under a rock for the last 50 or 60 or 70 years and they didn't know Nimitz and they don't know who he is, but they're thinking about reading your book.

What is the essence of your book?

SYMONDS: Nimitz is an interesting guy.

He was raised in the hill country of Texas, kind of hard-scrabble.

His grandfather ran a hotel.

His father died before he was born, so he was raised by his paternal grandfather, um, and he one day saw a, a couple of West Pointers shooting a cannon in a county fair and thought they had the snappiest uniforms he'd ever seen, but the position was already filled.

So, he applied to the Naval Academy.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he goes to the Naval Academy and how does he do there?

SYMONDS: He does very well.

He goes early.

He's 17, uh, which is the... you know, you could be 16 in those days, but he's among the younger, of the, uh, midshipman who were there and does quite well.

He doesn't stand out in terms of being a great athlete or a, a striper, which is what they call the brigade leaders.

Uh, but as, uh... His academics were excellent.

RUBENSTEIN: So, after he graduates, what does he do?

What, what part of the Navy does he go into?

SYMONDS: He chooses the submarines, and I suspect the reason he did that was because in those days, submarines were brand new.

Uh, it was cutting edge, like going into the space program, I suppose these days, but it allowed a very junior officer to have a lot of responsibility very quickly, and in fact, he commanded his own submarine boat when he was an ensign.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in what year did he graduate?

SYMONDS: He graduated in the class of 1906.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

So, he's a submariner.

And then, um, his career is moving forward.

He's rising up.

But right before World War II breaks out with Pearl Harbor, what was his position?

SYMONDS: He was the head of what was then called the Bureau of Navigation.

Today we call it the Bureau of Personnel.

He was responsible for managing officer assignments for every officer in the Navy.

RUBENSTEIN: That's not a job where you're at combat.

So, why would he have been... SYMONDS: It is not.

RUBENSTEIN: Chosen to later be in charge of the naval fleet in the Pacific?

SYMONDS: Yeah.

And I, I have a one word answer to that, and I think it's temperament.

I mean, he, he was the kind of person, uh, who could not be, uh, upset, wou, would not be angry, would not confront people.

He got along, and we think, "Well, that's not...

Doesn't sound like a warrior to me."

But he was exactly the kind of person needed after Pearl Harbor when solid command was necessary.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, uh, let's talk about Pearl Harbor for a moment.

There is a rumor... Not a rumor.

A story that's been going around for decades that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance that there was gonna be an attack at Pearl Harbor.

Is there any truth to that?

SYMONDS: No.

Now, what he knew and what virtually everyone knew is that the Japanese were going to strike that weekend.

There's a wonderful headline of I think the Hilo Daily Newspaper in, in letters an inch and a half high, "Japanese May Strike This Weekend," dated December 5th 1941.

RUBENSTEIN: And... SYMONDS: But they expected a strike somewhere else.

No one expected it at Pearl Harbor.

RUBENSTEIN: Why did they not think Pearl Harbor would be a good site, because our naval fleet was there... SYMONDS: Oh, it's a great site.

They didn't think they had the logistical capability to get across the entire Pacific undiscovered and deliver such a strike.

RUBENSTEIN: But when the invasion was beginning and the attack was beginning, when did they actually pick it up?

How far in advance of the actual bombing did they pick up something happening?

SYMONDS: Well, there's a couple of moments when they could have picked something up.

There was a radar station on the north coast of Oahu that saw something on radar.

But remember, radar's very rudimentary in those days.

So, and there was supposed to be a flight of B17s coming in from California.

So, these guys running a rad, radar said that, "Hey, we got something on the screen," and they were all, "Forget it, that's nothing."

RUBENSTEIN: So, the good news, if there's any good news, is that large part of the fleet was not there.

Is that right?

SYMONDS: Well, a significant part of the fleet.

The battleships were there, and it's interesting, that was the primary target in those days.

Battleships were considered to be the spear point of naval warfare.

But the carriers were not there and that is critical.

RUBENSTEIN: So, how many men and women were killed in, uh, Pearl Harbor?

SYMONDS: I think it's 2,800 and change.

Uh, most... A lot of them, the lion share on board the USS Arizona.

RUBENSTEIN: And how many ships total did we lose?

SYMONDS: Four battleships were sunk.

Four badly damaged.

18 ships total were rendered inoperable in that attack.

RUBENSTEIN: So, for people who aren't naval historians... We all know, I think, what an aircraft carrier is.

When were they invented?

SYMONDS: Well, the first American aircraft carrier was in 1920 and it was a, a modified oiler.

They put a flight deck on top of another ship and called it a carrier.

But the first real purpose built carriers didn't really come until 1927.

RUBENSTEIN: What's a battleship?

SYMONDS: A battleship is a sh, a gun ship.

Much heavier, very armored, very slow, heavy guns that can fire 1,000 pound shells, 15 to 20 miles.

RUBENSTEIN: What's a destroyer?

SYMONDS: A destroyer, s, uh, is a small, zippy, uh, vessel that, uh, escorts other ships, either protects convoys, and, and can fire torpedoes.

RUBENSTEIN: And a cruise ship?

SYMONDS: A cruiser... RUBENSTEIN: A cruiser.

SYMONDS: A cruiser is in between those two.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

SYMONDS: Between a destroyer and a battleship.

Middle size.

RUBENSTEIN: And what's an oiler?

SYMONDS: An oiler is a vessel that keeps those ships full of fuel.

Goes out with the fleet, supplies them with fuel when the gas gets low.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, Pearl Harbor occurs.

SYMONDS: Mm.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, Nimitz is minding his own business, sitting in, uh, Washington DC.

Who picked him to be the head of the naval fleet?

SYMONDS: Well, that's a bit of a story because FDR is the guy who makes the choice, uh, and he had wanted Nimitz to take that job a year earlier.

Actually floated, asked him, "Would take this position?"

And Nimitz turned it down.

And he said, "The reason is because there are too many admirals senior to me for this plum job.

There would be resentment.

It wouldn't be a happy situation.

Pick someone else."

He picks Husband Kimmel, who was the guy who was then shelved because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that's when Roosevelt is supposed to have said...

I've never been able to track this down, but, uh, supposedly the tradition is he says, "Tell Nimitz to get out to Pearl Harbor and don't come back until the war is won."

RUBENSTEIN: Kimmel, though, is seen as the person who deserves the blame.

And what happened to his career?

SYMONDS: That's the end of it.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, how long does it take after Roosevelt says to, uh, Nimitz, "I want you out there," that he actually gets there?

SYMONDS: About a week.

RUBENSTEIN: And does he take his wife?

SYMONDS: No.

No.

Said goodbye to his family, four children.

Leaves.

RUBENSTEIN: So, what does he wanna do first?

What is his first, uh, mission?

SYMONDS: Well, his first mission I think is to restore morale.

I mean, it was a physical blow to the US Navy, but it was also a psychological blow.

People were devastated.

We thought we'd let the country down.

And to a certain extent, the, the secretary of the Navy felt that way.

Frank Knox was angry by all this.

So, what Nimitz wanted to do first was restore morale, tell people, "Not your fault."

"Help me win this war."

"I need your help."

And it worked.

RUBENSTEIN: So, at the time that he gets there, how many ships are there in the Pacific fleet that are still around that the US has?

SYMONDS: Oh, gosh.

Let's say 150.

RUBENSTEIN: 150.

And how many ships did we ultimately produce and use in the Pacific War?

SYMONDS: Thousands.

And one of the great stories of World War II, generally, and the Pacific of course, but, but generally is the amazing industrial productivity of the American economy.

That's what wins the war.

I mean, Nimitz does his part, no doubt about it.

But he couldn't have done it without those ships.

RUBENSTEIN: So, how many different, uh, commands are under, uh, Nimitz?

In other words, he has... You had to have an aircraft carrier to be, uh, part of a, a co, separate command, is that how it worked?

SYMONDS: Yeah, the spear point of the striking force of the Navy is the carrier task group.

And the task group consists of an aircraft carrier, probably two cruisers, let's say six destroyers and an oiler, maybe two, all operating together with the destroyers in a circular formation around the carrier, and this group goes everywhere protecting the carrier, which is the striking arm of the fleet.

And Nimitz has four of those when the war begins.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, we now know that the Japanese didn't intend to, uh, invade the United States on the continent and they didn't really think they could beat the United States.

What was their reason for attacking Pearl Harbor?

SYMONDS: Well, what they really wanted in this war were the raw materials, the resources, and particularly the oil of what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, British Malaya, French Indo-China and to get all that, they had to go past the Philippines.

So, they didn't want the Americans to be in a position to interfere with the transportation of all those raw materials back to Japan, so they thought, "Well, we have to take the Philippines, too.

Oh, gosh, that's bad.

That means war with Britain, Holland, France and the United States all at once.

Not a problem.

We can do that.

But we have to knock out their Pacific fleet first and then set up a defensive perimeter.

The Americans will try to come and get us, but, you know, those Americans, they like movies and cars and hamburgers, they'll give up."

RUBENSTEIN: And in those days, the military really had enormous amount of influence in the Japanese government, right?

SYMONDS: Oh, yes, certainly by 1942, they were running the country.

RUBENSTEIN: And who was the head of the Japanese military?

SYMONDS: Well, the fellow who becomes prime minister.

Tojo Hideki, of course, becomes head of Army and head of, of the government as well.

Now, technically of course, the emperor is in charge of everything, but the way this actually worked is the Army and the Navy would work out what they wanted to do, they would go to the emperor and ask for his blessing, which he gave.

RUBENSTEIN: And who planned the Pearl Harbor attack?

Was that Admiral Yamamoto?

SYMONDS: It was Yamamoto.

Yamamoto, uh, was a very interesting character.

He was, uh, someone who'd spent a lot of time in America and opposed the idea of embarking on this war.

"You guys have no idea what you're biting off here.

I've seen the Ford plants building cars.

I've seen the oil fields in Texas.

You can't beat these guys."

But the Army was making all the decisions in those days, and so, Yamamoto said, "All right.

Well, if you're gonna do this, you better take out their fleet first.

That'll at least buy us some time."

RUBENSTEIN: What happened to Yamamoto?

SYMONDS: Well, I guess assassinated is not an incorrect word.

Uh, the Code Breakers... And we haven't touched on the code breaking yet, but that's a big part of the story.

The American Code Breakers had, had decrypted enough of a message to get his itinerary, Yamamoto's flight itinerary when he was visiting some forward bases.

And the message came to Nimitz and the question was, "What do we do with this?"

I mean, there are two reasons why it's problematic.

One, is this an assassination targeting a specific individual?

Uh, but number two is, if we do this, won't they figure out we've broken their code and we'll lose that vital piece of information?

But Nimitz thinks it's worth doing.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Yamamoto, we knew where he was and ultimately we, we, we shot down his plane and his body was ultimately recovered.

SYMONDS: Yes, that's correct.

RUBENSTEIN: By the Japanese.

SYMONDS: By the Japanese, correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Do we know whether the Japanese broke our code?

Were they listening into our communications?

SYMONDS: Not in the same way.

Uh, what everybody did was something called traffic analysis.

You, you would...

There'd be a message.

It's coming from here.

It's going there.

It lasted this long.

Uh, we can triangulate that with another message and figure out there's something here.

That's probably a ship.

But they could not break the content of American messages.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he selected the admirals who were gonna run the various aircraft carrier fleets, right?

SYMONDS: He did.

The task groups, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: The task groups.

And the most famous of them is Bull Halsey.

SYMONDS: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Why is he the most famous?

SYMONDS: Because he's the most self promotional.

RUBENSTEIN: That helps, I guess.

SYMONDS: Are, are you shocked by this?

RUBENSTEIN: Yes.

SYMONDS: Um, Bull, which everybody called him, Bull, was probably originally a typo from Bill, but it stuck, because he looked like a bulldog and he acted like a bulldog.

Reporters loved him.

He was always good for a quote.

RUBENSTEIN: So, was he actually that good a commander?

SYMONDS: No.

RUBENSTEIN: Oh.

SYMONDS: He was competent in terms of managing, uh, the daily activity of a task force, he was, a, and subsequently of a fleet.

Um, but he did make mistakes, uh, and by the time he made the mistakes that were serious enough to matter, he'd become an American icon and was too big to fail, to borrow a modern phrase.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when, let's say, a fleet commander, like Bull Halsey's out, he's got how many ships on hi, wh, at his disposal?

20, 30 or so?

SYMONDS: Possibly.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

So, he has 20 or 30 ships.

They're out on a mission.

We'll talk about the missions in a moment.

Um, how does, uh, Nimitz communicate with, uh, Halsey, or whoever else he's talking to?

SYMONDS: Well, Nimitz can send them messages, that's not a problem.

All...

The Japanese know that there's an American force in Pearl Harbor.

So, a message coming out from Pearl Harbor being broadcast everywhere.

But Halsey can't respond.

He can't even acknowledge, "I got the message."

So, if Nimitz sends him, "A, Attack this island," he gets no response back.

RUBENSTEIN: So, sometimes Nimitz is waiting days before he knows how... SYMONDS: Weeks.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, before he knows how a battle's gone.

SYMONDS: Yeah.

Right.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's suppose an aircraft carrier is shot and it's sunk.

Do all the, uh, sailors on that, uh, ship die with it?

SYMONDS: No, no, no, no.

Remember that an aircraft carrier never operates alone, there's the two cruisers and six, maybe eight, even nine destroyers circling it.

So, those destroyers immediately sweep in and pick up the survivors in the water.

So, the loss of life, uh, uh...

I mean, sometimes as many as 700.

The Liscombe Bay went down, 700 drowned and th, the Phoenix, which was a cruiser went down and another 600 were killed, most of that from shark attacks.

But by and large, if you lost 100 men of a sunken ship, that was a catastrophe.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, let's go through some of the major battles.

First, there's an effort in the South, uh, Pacific.

SYMONDS: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: And what were some of the major battles in the South Pacific that the US waged?

SYMONDS: Well, early on, there's an attempt by the Japanese to consolidate their defensive perimeter by completing their conquest of the big island of New Guinea.

And on the south coast of New Guinea, there's a place called Port Moresby, and that was their target.

But we find out about this through Code Breakers, and so Nimitz sends a couple of aircraft carriers down there, to interfere with that, and that leads to the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Uh, and the Battle of the Coral Sea, you can argue we lose it.

We lose the Lexington.

The Yorktown is damaged.

That's half our available carrier force.

But the Japanese turn back.

So, it's a tactical defeat, but a strategic win because they don't get Port Moresby.

RUBENSTEIN: What about Wake?

SYMONDS: Wake Island, they take early and three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, they go after Wake Island.

The initial landing is thrown back, uh, the Japanese underestimating the, the tenacity of the marines on shore.

But then they do eventually take it.

RUBENSTEIN: And then we go to Midway.

SYMONDS: Midway is the next one.

Uh, Midway is an attempt by the Japanese to draw out what they'd missed in their attack on Pearl Harbor, which was the carriers.

The idea is, "Attack Midway Island, the Americans will come out in their carriers.

We'll sink them.

We'll have the run of the Pacific."

RUBENSTEIN: What happened?

SYMONDS: Well, we broke the code.

We knew they were coming, so the carriers weren't in Pearl Harbor, Nimitz put them way up north in literally the last place the Japanese looked for 'em, so we were able to spring an ambush.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in something like Midway, how many ships would we have lost or sailors would we have had die?

SYMONDS: Well, we lost the Yorktown, the ship that was badly damaged in the Coral Sea does finally, uh, succumb, uh, after the Battle of, uh, Midway.

But the Japanese lose f, all four of their large deck aircraft carriers that they had committed, and that's...

It's seldom in history in any era that one fleet utterly destroys another.

But the sinking of all four of their major large deck carriers is... RUBENSTEIN: So... SYMONDS: Decisive.

RUBENSTEIN: What happened after that?

Why di, why didn't the war end?

SYMONDS: We, Well, because, uh, they do have other carriers and they have other ships.

They have battleships and cruisers and, and they still control the western half of the Pacific Ocean.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's go through the, um, central part of the Pacific.

So, what battles were in the central part of the Pacific?

SYMONDS: Well, the Central Pacific Drive, as it's often known, doesn't really begin until the last few months of 1943.

We have to wait, we, the Allies, Nimitz in particular, has to wait until he has the wherewithal to begin that offensive.

And those ships that were authorized in 1940 in the, uh, Vinson-Trammel Two-Ocean Navy Act, don't become available until 1943.

RUBENSTEIN: Today, it sometimes takes a decade to build a carrier, or maybe more.

How did they build these carriers in two or three years?

SYMONDS: In three years.

One of the key ships, certainly, in this war was the Liberty ship that kept everybody supplied.

We think of carriers and battleships and-cruisers and destroyers as important.

But none of them can operate without the supplies that get there from the Liberty ships and the Victory ships.

A Liberty ship took 250 days to build in December of 1941.

By the end of the next year, they were building 'em in two weeks.

RUBENSTEIN: Wow.

On the Central Pacific campaign, let's talk about just two of those.

One is, uh, Iwo Jima.

How many soldiers or sailors did we lose there?

SYMONDS: Well, Iwo Jima is a particularly tough one, and not representative because the Japanese early in the war had adopted a tactic of launching these suicidal Bonsai charges.

Guadalcanal in particular was famous for that.

But they figured this out by Iwo Jima.

That's not gonna work.

And Iwo Jima is honeycombed with caves and tunnels and the Japanese dug in and waited for the marines to come and get them.

So, it's the one battle in which the uh, US actually lost more than the Japanese because it was such a fierce battle and we had to go into the tunnels to take them out.

RUBENSTEIN: In other words, their tactic was to build these very complicated, uh, concrete structures, put things over them and not come out when we're attacking them, but stay there and wait till we go in to get 'em.

SYMONDS: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And what was so important about Iwo Jima?

Why did we even want to go there?

SYMONDS: Well, in theory Iwo Jima is important because it's a way station between the Marianas where the B29 bombers were based, and in the main cities of mainland Japan, Tokyo in particular.

It's halfway.

So, if one of these bombers got injured, it was an emergency landing field.

It was also a place where escort airplanes, the P51 in particular, could accompany the bombers to protect them.

RUBENSTEIN: But, after we won the Battle of Iwo Jima, quote, won, but lost a lot of soldiers, uh, and sailors, did we actually use it as an airc, as aircraft?

SYMONDS: Uh, it was used as an emergency landing field, and those who tried to say the sacrifice was worth it will point out how many airplanes actually landed there, but most of those were scheduled landings.

RUBENSTEIN: But hindsight... SYMONDS: It's hard to make an argument that the sacrifice the marines paid to gain that island was worth the number of lives saved from crippled airplanes that used its airfield.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, earlier in the war, I should have mentioned, there was an effort to, um, attack Tokyo and Japan and General Dolittle, he led this.

Why was that so risky and why was it almost a suicide mission?

SYMONDS: Well, yeah.

A, And, and of course in terms of the strategic advantage gained, it's minuscule.

But it's, it's a public relation stunt.

They had bombed Pearl Harbor, by golly, somebody's gonna pay for that.

We're gonna bomb their cities.

We tried to do it from Japan, but the logistics there were absolutely impossible.

So, we thought, "Well, let's bomb 'em with carriers," but you, you'd have to get within 150 miles of Japan in a carrier.

Too risky, right?

We only have four of 'em.

We can't risk two carriers.

So, the idea was we'll put Army bombers, long range bombers on a Navy carrier.

Neither side is very happy about that by the way.

Because the Army bombers are so big, they can't be dropped down into the hangar deck, so they have to stay on the flight deck the whole trip over, which means you have to send a second carrier along with it.

So, that's two of the four that we have.

Very high risk.

And then each airplane could only carrier four bombs, 500 pounds each.

Hardly worth doing.

But in terms of public morale, it was critical.

Headlines six inches high.

RUBENSTEIN: I think that one of the problems was that the planes didn't have enough fuel to go back to land somewhere.

SYMONDS: Could not.

Well, you couldn't land...

Even if you had enough fuel, you couldn't land on a carrier.

RUBENSTEIN: So, where did they land ultimately?

SYMONDS: Well, the theory was they were gonna fly off the carrier, bomb Japan, land in China but they got discovered by a picket line of Japanese.

They had to launch early, which means they couldn't get all the way to China, so they crash landed along the coast and s, a few were taken prisoners.

They had a harrowing journey, uh, helped by local Chinese to get back.

RUBENSTEIN: So, after Iwo Jima, they go to Okinawa.

And why was Okinawa so important?

SYMONDS: Well, Okinawa is the first o, of the Japanese home islands.

So, if America could take Okinawa, it would cut Japan off completely from any of her resources to the south, and it would be a stepping-stone for an increased bombing of Japan itself and an eventual invasion.

RUBENSTEIN: So, what happened?

SYMONDS: What happened at Okinawa?

RUBENSTEIN: Yes.

SYMONDS: Well, again, at Okinawa, the Japanese, as on Iwo Jima, did not defend the beaches.

The landings were easy.

They pulled back and got into these caves and tunnels deep underground and just defied the Americans to come and get 'em, and, and it lasted for months.

And during that, the Japanese launched the kamikazes, and what makes Okinawa so critical is the Japanese decision to turn...

They had used kamikazes briefly in the Philippine attack... RUBENSTEIN: Kamikazes is a pilot who s, knows he's gonna die and just crashes.

SYMONDS: Correct.

He, He's got ammunition onboard, but he gonna crash his airplane into the ship, blow himself and the ship up.

RUBENSTEIN: But those kamikaze pilot attacks were pretty effective, weren't they?

SYMONDS: They were very effective.

They were the most effective weapon of the war.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, we, we, uh, won in Okinawa.

Is that right?

SYMONDS: We did.

RUBENSTEIN: The Americans won.

SYMONDS: We did finally conquer, uh, Okinawa.

It took a long time.

Heavy losses, but we did do it.

But the Japanese kamikazes sank 36 American war ships and damaged 300 more.

RUBENSTEIN: So, after Okinawa, the decision has to be made, Are we gonna invade Japan... SYMONDS: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Directly or not?

SYMONDS: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in getting ready to do that, um, the Navy and the Army have to cooperate, is the theory.

Who was the head of the Army in the, uh, Pacific?

SYMONDS: Head of the Army worldwide as far as he was concerned was Douglas MacArthur, who was commander of what's called the South, uh, Southwest Pacific region.

So, he had been operating in New Guinea and in the Philippines and so on.

But he was also designated as the overall supreme Allied commander for the invasion of Japan itself.

RUBENSTEIN: And was that title big enough for him?

SYMONDS: Not quite.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he wanted more, right?

SYMONDS: Well, what, what he wanted was to be in absolute control.

There is a protocol, and I don't wanna get too deep in the weeds here, but in an amphibious operation, the senior admiral is in charge of everybody, Army, Navy, Marines, everybody until the General establishes his headquarters ashore.

Then command shifts to the General ashore.

MacArthur wouldn't accept that.

RUBENSTEIN: And how did that get resolved?

SYMONDS: Well, that would have been very interesting to see.

We didn't invade Japan.

We did something else.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, did, did, uh, Nimitz know about the, uh, the atomic bomb?

SYMONDS: He did.

Um, I mean, how much specific detail, I don't know.

But he was briefed.

He had a briefing in February.

Uh, and then just before that, uh, he a, a s, secondary briefing on the timing of it.

So, yeah, he knew about it.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, after the second nuclear bomb or atomic bomb is dropped, not too long after, the Japanese, um, surrender, the war is ended, what does Nimitz do?

SYMONDS: He wants to be the boss of the Navy.

RUBENSTEIN: So, does he get that?

SYMONDS: He does get that, but there's a bit of a squabble about it.

Uh, J, James Forrestal, the new secretary of the Navy didn't want him to have it.

Uh... RUBENSTEIN: Why?

SYMONDS: Well, he just didn't like him very much.

RUBENSTEIN: Other than that, but that's all that matters.

SYMONDS: That, that was the reason.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

So, he did that, but the agreement was he would do it for two years... SYMONDS: Yeah.

That was the deal.

Instead of a four-year term, he said, "Take two."

And he said, "Yeah, that's fine.

I'll do two."

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

He did two years.

And then after that, what does, what does Nimitz do?

SYMONDS: He retired from the Navy.

Uh, he was approached by the United Nations and asked to solve this little problem that we have that, "I'm sure you can handle this 'cause you handle everybody, including MacArthur.

If you can handle MacArthur, you can do anything.

So, here's what we want you to do.

We want you to fly to India and Pakistan and resolve the boundary crisis."

RUBENSTEIN: Kashmir, right.

SYMONDS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he tried that, then he decided to join a private equity firm, or not?

SYMONDS: No, no, no, no.

RUBENSTEIN: No.

SYMONDS: And it's interesting how many did, including Halsey, by the way.

He was on the board of a number of companies.

But Nimitz, the only job he would accept, and he was offered many, but the only one he would take would be a trustee of the University of California at Berkeley.

RUBENSTEIN: So, if Admiral Nimitz had stayed in Washington, hadn't taken this position in, uh, Hawaii, and then ultimately, he moved his headquarters to Guam, uh, would the war have ended sooner, later, better, worse?

SYMONDS: I think what we can say with some confidence, that there would have been more antagonism, gnashing of teeth and inner service rivalries, even feuding, uh, in, in the Pacific theater, certainly.

It might have prolonged the war some.

I still think the Allies win as long as, uh, as they're willing to stay the course.

RUBENSTEIN: I wanna thank you for a really interesting conversation on Nimitz At War.

A great book.

Thank you.

SYMONDS: Thank you.

(applause) (music plays through credits)