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House on C-SPAN, the Senate on C-SPAN 2.
Also, watch all of our congressional coverage with our free video app, C-SPAN Now or online at c-SPAN.org.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, we'll take your calls and comments live.
And then a look at political shifts among Latino voters and long-established immigrants in the U.S. with ProPublica's Melissa Sanchez.
And for the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we'll look back on events of that day and discuss its historical significance with Craig Nelson, author of Pearl Harbor from Infamy to Greatness.
Washington Journal starts now.
Join the conversation.
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place 83 years ago today.
Some 2,400 American sailors, soldiers, and civilians died that day.
The following afternoon, President Franklin Roosevelt would go before Congress and ask for a declaration of war, launching America into World War II.
This morning, we're setting aside this first hour of the Washington Journal to reflect on the Pearl Harbor attack, its legacy, and the generation of Americans who served during the Second World War.
Phone line split a bit differently this morning for you to call in.
If you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, it's 202-748-8000.
If you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, it's 202-748-8001.
And a special line for World War II veterans and their families.
We'll go to that line as often as possible, 202-748-8002.
You can also catch up with us via text, 202-748-8003 is that number.
Include your name and where you're from.
If you do text us, otherwise on social media, on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Saturday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
Pearl Harbor remembrance ceremony is taking place across the country today at 7:30 a.m. local time in Pearl Harbor in Honolulu.
The National Pearl Harbor Memorial remembrance ceremony taking place there.
It's 11:50 Central Time at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, where their remembrance ceremony will take place.
And it's 12:50 p.m. Eastern Time here in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall at the National World War II Memorial.
Here, we're going to be carrying that ceremony live on C-SPAN II when it happens.
Last night at the White House, President Biden hosted several World War II veterans for a Pearl Harbor remembrance event.
Here's some of what he told them.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's why we're here tonight.
To remember the souls we lost 83 years ago, to honor the brave Americans and greatest generation who stepped up to serve every single day that followed and to recommit to building a better world for which they fought and many of them died, as you know.
How many of you lost someone or your family in World War II?
I know you may.
As my mother would say, God love you.
As so many of you know, earlier this year, I visited Normandy to honor the 80th anniversary of D-Day and urged people everywhere to make this same commitment that was made then.
I walked along the beaches where the Americans and our allies turned the tide of that war.
I stood atop the cliff where 225 Rangers risked everything to breach Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
I prayed at the crosses of men who gave everything to literally save the world, the one hyperbole, to save the world.
I spoke with some of the last surviving veterans from that fateful June day.
But there's another moment in particular, another moment in particular that stayed with me.
When I was standing with other European leaders at the cemetery, I saw those veterans, a 99-year-old man who had met President Zelensky because other world leaders were at that function as well.
The veteran told President Zelensky, and this is what he said.
I remember here exactly what he said.
He said, You are the saver of the people, end of quote.
And President Zelensky shook his veteran's hand and said, No, no, no.
You saved Europe.
You saved Europe.
Here's a reminder that every generation, every generation must defeat democracy's mortal foes.
Every generation must stand up to the forces of darkness and the forces of division.
And every generation must honor the servicemen and women who dare all, risk all to ensure their freedom endures.
You know, that's our charge.
That's literally our charge.
That was President Biden last night at the White House.
It was a ceremony that included a performance of the eyes of the world from D-Day to VE Day, that musical performance and image event that took place at the White House.
They streamed it live at the White House if you want to watch that event.
This morning, we're setting aside this first hour to hear from you about Pearl Harbor and the 83rd anniversary, the legacy of that attack, the legacy of that generation.
Phone lines are on your screen if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones: 202-748-8000.
Mountain and Pacific, 202-748-8001.
And World War II veterans and their family members, we want to hear your stories.
202-748-8002.
This is Gregory Upfirst out of Sherman Oaks, California.
Good morning.
Hello.
I've been thinking a lot about World War II.
And, you know, there were two wars that were fought then.
One of the wars, of course, was the fighting war, the really dangerous, dirty, hard war, fighting in trenches and on battleships and aircraft carriers in the Pacific and all of that.
But there was also another war called the Home Front War, the war that people, that all the people stateside participated in, doing all of this stuff to support the war effort.
And there's an amazing correspondence between the stuff that people did in the country then and what they could be doing and what people should be doing now to fight what I call World War CO2.
For example, people were expected to use a lot less gasoline, and they did.
There was even an article in the Boeing employee newspaper that I found that my father had kept for a completely unrelated reason, an article exhorting people to drive fuel efficiently and to car tool.
So we had conservation of fuel.
We had conservation of paper, paper drives, metal drives.
Today we call it recycling.
There were victory gardens.
Today we call them community gardens.
There were war bonds.
Today we could call them green credits or carbon credits.
And the list goes on.
And the people of this generation, or these several generations, aren't even willing to do that much to reduce our environmental impact and not to win a war against the Axis powers, but to win the war against our own destruction of our planet with runaway climate destruction and runaway global heating.
Gregory, what do you think it would take today to unite the country around a cause in the way in which Americans were united in the wake of Pearl Harbor entering World War II, fighting that war?
Well, understanding that different times call for different responses and, as it were, different wars.
A lot of people today, I think, kind of think, without having to actually make the effort, that they would like to help fight World War II and help win the battle for democracy and for the future.
Well, the war that people can fight right now is, again, what I call World War CO2.
Right now, this generation is going to decide just how half dark our planet's going to be for the generations that are here in the middle of the 21st century and the late 21st century.
And if these conditions get out of control, this literally could be a planet that is substantially degraded, defiled, and ruined for generations to come.
Gregory, I got your point out of Sherman Oaks, California.
You talk about the home front during World War II.
Did want to note on C-SPAN's American History TV, it was just last weekend that we aired an event from the American Veterans Center at their annual conference.
One of their panels this year featured World War II veterans and one of the last living Rosie the Riveters.
Her name is May Cryer, and her image there on the C-SPAN homepage on that panel.
If you want to watch that panel again, it's the American Veterans Center annual conference.
C-SPAN.org is where you can go for that.
Pauline in Jamaica, New York.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hello.
Yes, I'm 95 years old.
And on December 7th, 1941, all I was thinking about was Christmas, because my birthday was on December 14th.
And all I was thinking about is getting a bicycle.
But when they bombed Pearl Harbor, that was over.
No more rubber, no more sugar, no more butter, no more nothing, just erasure and everything.
And all we could say was, God help America.
And I remember President Roosevelt coming on the air.
My daddy listened to him.
My mama listened to him.
And the war was just something that we just had to fight.
And the only time we saw pictures of the war was no TV.
We only had to go to the movies.
That's the only time we saw the past news.
And when I was in high school, we learned everything about the islands.
I never heard about the islands, but I had to remember all the islands of the Pacific Islands.
It's just my memories.
That's my memory.
That's all I want to say.
Pauline, what do you think back, when you think back about that day?
What do you think about Franklin Roosevelt and him addressing a shocked nation on December the 8th and then in the years to come leading this country through World War II?
What are your memories of Franklin Roosevelt?
When he came on the radio and said, we are now at war with the Empire of Japan.
I remember that so clearly.
And when he used to talk to us, you know, in the evening, and Mayor Aguadia of New York used to talk to us about the funny papers on Sundays.
Oh, I remember so much.
I just can't tell you everything because I'm 95 years old, like I told you, but I was there.
And you know what we used to say about the good-looking soldiers and sailors when they used to pass by.
We used to say, hubba, hubba.
Oh, so many memories.
God bless America.
I just hope we turn out better.
I know I won't be here, but I just pray for all of you that's going to be here.
Oh, and thank you for calling in, 95-year-old Pauline out of Jamaica, New York.
Let me take viewers back to December the 8th of 1941.
It was about 12.30 in the afternoon.
Franklin Roosevelt addresses the United States Congress and the country.
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and at solicitation of Japan, still in conversation with its government and its emperor, looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
Franklin Roosevelt from December the 8th, 1941.
We are on the 83rd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, asking you to call in this morning to talk about the legacy of that attack, the legacy of that generation of Americans that fought in World War II.
A special line again for World War II veterans and their families.
Want to hear your stories especially.
202-748-8003.
Ron is in Michigan this morning.
Ron, go ahead.
Good morning.
My father served three years in the Pacific fighting the Japanese.
He's with the Amerikal Division.
I was in Vietnam in 69 to 70.
I served with the Ameri-Kel Division.
Now, people don't know much about the Vietnam history, but two months after we signed a peace treaty with Japan in August, two months later, United States transport ships, United States sailors were transporting Waffen-SS POWs from French POW camps.
They were turned into the French Foreign Legion.
They were sent to Vietnam to recolonize Vietnam.
Every enlisted man on those United States ships signed a petition saying they disagreed with the United States military sending Nazi POWs to start the Vietnam War.
What was the Amerikal Division?
You say you and your father first served, or both served in that?
The Americans and New Americans in New Caledonia, that was the designation for the World War II division that my father served in.
And the Amerikal Division was reactivated for the Vietnam War.
The Ameri-Cal Division also participated in the Milai Massacre.
That's where Lieutenant Kelly came out of.
And one more legacy of the Vietnam War.
Now we are using Roundup, which is a dose of Agent Orange, on the American people, which is poisoning all the bees, all the butterflies, and all the people.
So a legacy of the Vietnam war is the Agent Orange that we dumped on Vietnam that we never compensated those people for.
And it's Vietnam veterans like me that are dying of.
Now the American people are bused with Agent Orange.
Thank you for the corporations of Monsanto and all you other big business people.
That's Ron in Michigan, Ted on that line for World War II veterans and their families in Ocean View, Hawaii.
Ted, good morning.
Hello, John.
Good to talk to you again.
Good to talk to you.
I guess it's late night for you.
Yeah, I'm always up.
I was a manager of the world's largest macadamia nut farm here on the big island.
And when you're the manager of the factory, you're up many hours.
So I've got this sleep deprivation thing going on from people that work too much.
Anyway, I'm retired now, and I wanted to call and say tomorrow morning my father lost his left arm on Pearl Harbor Day.
And there's a few things about that.
I grew up on a farm, and I grew up about nine years later after that in the early 50s.
And I'm a two, three-year-old kid looking around, and I'm looking at my dad.
I'm going, you know, he's only got one arm, and we're running a farm.
And I may be only three, but I kind of know what's going on already.
And it makes you, and other persons would say this, it makes you a better person when you see somebody struggle a little bit to keep things going with one hand.
And at four years old, I became that left hand that he lost.
And it made me think about things from a very early age.
It made me a better person.
It made him a better person.
And all through life, I was his missing left arm.
You know, it's always good to be the right-hand man.
Well, I was the left-hand man.
Did your dad talk much about that day itself and losing the arm?
Like many veterans, him and his brother was in Europe, and he was a tank.
He was a tank mechanic.
He worked on Sherman tanks.
And during the Battle of the Bulge, his other brother was in the Pacific and was in the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines.
And I would talk to both of them, and they all, I guess there's just a, it's hard for them.
And they don't, like many, I hear this story a lot.
Many of them don't like to talk about it.
I would have to very carefully pry a little information out here and there what I could.
And Ted, your dad stayed in the service after losing his arm?
No, no.
His brother was the one in Europe.
Yeah, both of his brothers did on an aircraft carrier in the Battle of Leyte.
He was in a dive bomber.
And real quick, I don't want to drag this out, but he had been shot down in the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines in his plane and was in the ocean for two days thinking they were dead, you know, just from being shot down, number one, and being in the ocean and with the sharks for two days.
Finally rescued him, set him on an aircraft carrier, and he's sitting there going, wow, we made it.
I don't believe it.
And he's talking to his buddy, sitting three feet away from him.
And he looked over, and all of a sudden, his buddy got real quiet, and he looked three feet over where his buddy was, and his head was gone.
A kamikaze plane had come in, and just, you know, one of the blades from the propeller or something took his head off.
And it just, you know, after going through all that, you know, being shot down and living, being in the ocean, pulled out living, and then to sit there on the deck of an aircraft carrier and have a blade come by, and it changed him forever.
He was a very considerate man.
My dad's two years older than him.
But he probably talked more about it than anybody because I used to go visit him.
I've lived here in Hawaii, south of Pearl Harbor, 200 miles on the Bay Island for 50 years.
And I've just found it ironic that I ended up here after in the Air Force in the Vietnam War.
And I told my wife, I said, when this war is over in the Atlanta South, I used to fuel B-52 bombers and JP-4 into F-4s.
But all these things make you think if you're aware.
And I hear a lot of vets and people that are families of vets, and it makes you aware.
Is your dad and brothers, are they all gone at this point?
Yes, they are.
Not too long ago, but yes, yes, they are.
What do we lose when the last of that generation is gone?
Oh, boy.
Well, you know what?
It depends on their families because, you know, me and my brothers, and my dad's brother is a double cousin of mine.
You know, World War II people got together through marriage, through their friends and families.
And I have a double cousin that's Paul, my dad's brother, that was on the aircraft carrier down in Berkeley.
And I stay in touch with him a lot, and we talk about it a lot.
And I always used to ask him, you know, I come by from Hawaii.
I don't get over there.
I used to go once a year and see him.
I would go way out of my way to drive out east of Waterville out of Oakland, California, and visit him because it just seemed like appropriate.
He was the appropriate uncle to visit.
And I got more out of him than anybody.
He went to school on the GI Bill and got his doctor's degree and ended up being a medical examiner of all things.
You wouldn't think, but that's what happened.
And he did his whole career that way.
But yeah, I know he was on an aircraft carrier that was one of the small carriers when the Japanese attacked our fleet.
And he was on what they call the Jeep Carrier, which was one of the smaller transport carriers.
And it's, you know, they always have been considered the greatest generation, and they really were.
And I grew up thinking, you know, how are we ever going to live up to that?
You know, the people that were born in the early 50s and late 40s.
And you know what?
I look around, and I didn't, I ended up getting an engineering scholarship to run steamships during the Vietnam War because we didn't have enough ships to take materials to the Vietnam War from the U.S.
So they started an engineering school, and I got a scholarship to become an engineer.
And again, it makes you think more than the average person.
And I don't think that the people I grew up with, I don't think they appreciate those people and acknowledge them enough.
What was your father's name?
My father's name was Glenn, Glenn Lilly.
Thanks for telling us about Glenn Lilly and being his left hand.
Appreciate it.
Lee in Garrison, New York is next.
World War II veterans and family members line.
Go ahead.
Yes, I'm calling today to honor my honored lieutenant, Leon Henry Boykins, M-I-A-K-I-A, World War II.
He was in the Illinois National Guard on his two weeks active duty when the war broke out.
He never returned home.
He became a P-38 pilot stationed in the Aleutian Islands.
They call it sometimes the forgotten war up there.
He was an escort for bombers, and him and his wingman were both lost in a mission, and they never recovered the bodies or the planes.
And you don't really know exactly what happened to them.
The bomber returned, but the P-38s did not.
And then on Valentine's Day of 1944, the Western Union Telegram arrives.
And of course, my grandmother and my mother think that it's from their son and brother.
And it turns out it was the notice that he was missing.
And then a few weeks later, that he was confirmed dead.
And so I would say that also, since we are kind of the they call us the war babies, which are the children of that generation, and I think we are starting to leave the planet also.
And I think it's time to go back and keep the keep the memories alive and to think about what happened and what language we would be speaking if it wasn't for that generation.
That's it for now.
That's Lee in Garrison, New York.
A couple of your text messages and Facebooks and tweet posts.
This is Darren saying it was indeed an attack that lives in infamy.
My family, several members signed up for military service on December 8th.
My grandfather, as well as several of his brothers, fought in the war as well as my grandmother's brothers.
My uncle Prentice Lindsay was a master sergeant in the Texas 36th Division, and he was friends with and later interviewed by Ernie Pyle.
That's some of your comments via text message this morning, taking your phone calls as well on phone lines as split by region.
202748-8000 if you're in the Eastern Central time zone.
202748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific.
One more had pulled up for you before I hit the wrong button.
Timbo in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, let us pause and reflect on the sacrifices of the American heroes who stood up and said, We will fight for freedom.
Let us celebrate today the freedom that these heroes brought us with their lives, and let us never forget.
Tom is in New York this morning.
You're on the Washington Journal.
Oh, the U.S. people, under God's help, will excel in war and any type of suffering.
See, my uncle, he was my godfather.
He fought in the Army and the Navy and loved the United States.
We were special breed American people.
We love God and we're very patriotic.
Thank you very much, and may all the souls that perished in Pearl Harbor rest in peace.
Amen.
Pam, Randolph, Ohio, good morning.
Good morning, John.
Sorry.
I'm the daughter of a World War II vet.
My dad enlisted after Pearl Harbor.
He wasn't married yet.
He enlisted and spent a few years in the service as a radio man in the Pacific Islands.
And I will say, and I guess maybe this is a point I want to make, he came home a different man.
Unfortunately, alcohol took over as he tried to deal with the stress of those battles he fought.
He, being a radio man, always told me that he was a target, had a target on his back.
So it was difficult for him, for sure, to come home and try to deal with the life after.
His sister told me once that he was not the same man, and that before he married, he would get up through the night and literally go from door to door with a fake gun in his hands, as if he was still fighting the war.
So I think I just want, you know, he enlisted, he was patriotic, he wanted to fight for our country.
I think if people understand that so many of those veterans are just unique in so many ways.
And so I wish I had him around today that I could talk to him more about this.
But unfortunately, as an alcoholic, it was hard to have those conversations.
What would you ask?
You know, John, I would want to know more about, I guess, more than anything, would want to help him deal with the stress that he brought back with him.
He had seven children.
He was a wonderful person in so many ways.
He just couldn't really be the father that we all needed growing up.
But I would just want to help him.
I suppose maybe as a special ed teacher, maybe looking at ills of society, social problems that people have, I would definitely wish I could talk to him more about that, more about how he could maybe confront these demons in a better way.
But I do have such respect for this generation of people who fought and did it because they really loved the country.
So, yeah.
What was his name, Pam?
His name was Charles Burbrick.
He died in 1989.
But yeah.
Pam, thanks for telling us.
Great guy.
Yeah, thanks, John.
Appreciate that.
That's Pam in Ohio coming up on 7:30 on the East Coast, setting aside this first hour of the Washington Journal today to talk about the 83rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.
I want to hear from you about the legacy of that attack, the legacy of that generation who fought in World War II in the broadest strokes.
This was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the numbers.
It began at 7:55 a.m. on Sunday, December the 7th, 1941.
Some 2,390 American service members and civilians were killed.
1,178 were wounded.
That attack lasted 110 minutes from 7:55 a.m. till about 9:45 a.m.
Half of the dead that day were on the battleship, the USS Arizona.
Seven U.S. battleships were at Pearl Harbor.
That included all the battleships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, except for one.
That would be the USS Colorado.
All those there that day were either sunk or damaged during the attack, but all but two, the Arizona and the Oklahoma, were eventually able to return to active duty.
want to show viewers the Universal Pictures newsreel that aired in the months after Pearl Harbor about that attack.
December 7th, 1941, a day of infamy.
Even as Japanese diplomats were conferring with Secretary of State Hull on peace measures, Nipanese planes were swooping down on Pearl Harbor.
This pictorial record includes both U.S. films and pictures made by the enemy as they dropped their load of death on the naval base on Wheeler Field, on civilian homes and schools.
100 Japanese planes and a number of ninja submarines took part in the attack.
In an hour and five minutes, the battleship Arizona was completely destroyed and four others severely damaged.
Three other battleships and three cruisers suffered lesser damage.
Nearly 200 planes were destroyed.
In that Sunday morning inferno, the Pacific Fleet appeared to be completely immobilized by the sneak attack.
Nearly 3,000 casualties added to the catastrophe.
Within hours, the United States declared war.
The attack on Pearl Harbor united Americans as never before in history.
In the explosions at Pearl Harbor, there was forged the will for complete and absolute victory over the forces of evil.
In Hawaii, civilian and soldier alike turned to the task of caring for the wounded and homeless.
At the time, an actual landing by the Japanese was expected, and makeshift plans were made to fight the invader on the beaches and in the streets.
The Japanese lost five midget subs as well as 29 planes and 100 men.
Small cost for the damage they were able to inflict on the U.S. fleet.
Two carriers had been on patrol and thus missed the attack.
These two ships led other units of the fleet in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, less than six months later.
The first steps on the long road to complete victory.
A Universal Pictures newsreel from back during that time, taking your phone calls 83 years later, the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This is Elaine in Texas on that line for World War II veterans and their family members.
Elaine, good morning.
Hi, good morning.
I don't really know much about that time.
My dad didn't talk a lot about it.
I remember being real concerned about having like a cerebral hemorrhage because my dad had a cerebral hemorrhage.
And he said, what are you worried about having a cerebral hemorrhage for?
And I said, well, you had a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 18.
So, yeah, I'm concerned about having a cerebral hemorrhage.
And he said, no, didn't anybody tell you?
I was in the war.
And I said, no, I didn't know anything about you being in a war.
And he explained that he joined the Navy.
He was from southern Illinois.
And he was poor.
And when he was 15, he joined the Navy.
That's 15.
Yeah, he lied about his age.
And I guess he didn't really pay much attention to paperwork back then.
Or maybe it was easier to forge or something.
But so he was in the Navy.
He enjoyed being in the Navy.
He said that he got to see all sorts of parts of the world that he'd never seen before.
And he probably never would have been able to see.
And one day, he was still really young.
I think he was like around 20.
And he was out in the ship.
He was with the Navy.
And they brought him out in the middle of the ocean.
And they said, told everybody to go up on the top deck of the ship and said, watch this.
So they all went out and watched.
And he said, they set up an atomic bomb and let us all watch it.
And so we all stood and watched the bomb.
And then they took half the guys off the ship and left the other half to eat the food.
And it was just not long after that that I had cerebral hemorrhage.
He said, I'm pretty sure it was because of the radiation from the bomb, you know, because in the Navy, they'll let you die by yourself.
But when I woke up, there was all these guys with lab coats around me and clipboards and stuff.
And I was partially paralyzed, and they gave me a discharge from the Army, a medical discharge from the Navy.
And so, you know, that's how I had the cerebral hemorrhage.
It doesn't have anything to do with heredity, you know.
I mean, I think it was.
Did he know which circumstances?
Did he ever find out which atomic test it was?
I don't know anything about it.
The thing that I asked him was, didn't you get really mad?
I would get really mad if they set up a bomb and I was paralyzed for years after that trying to get something To happen.
He said, no, you know, we said we'd do anything they told us to do.
And if it was to support the government, we were going to support the government.
You know, I had friends that went out and they went to war and they died.
You know, they asked me to do this.
I agreed beforehand that I would do whatever they asked.
And so he really didn't have any kind of problem with it.
You know, I had sons that went out and they went to war.
Elaine, thanks for telling us about it out of Texas.
This is Ming Next in Harwood, Maryland.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You're on that line for World War II veterans and their family members.
Yes, good morning.
Good morning.
So who are you thinking about today?
My father served in World War II out of the Philippine Islands at Luzerne.
And as well, I had a cousin that was a Tuskegee Airman, Andrew Turner, and three other cousins that were in the 555, which were firefighters that were paratroopers.
So I have many family members that I look back on and think of and honor as being defenders of our country.
It's so sad that so many of them are gone and family members, the younger ones, don't recall or remember their herotic moves that they did to help our country.
And so I just wanted to express it and to say that I'm so honored to have them have been family members of mine.
That's Ming in Maryland.
This is from Hawaii News Now from earlier this week.
A 104-year-old respected war veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor is back in Hawaii this week.
Ira Ike Schaub Jr. of Portland touched down in Holland Lulu on Tuesday ahead of the 83rd commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He's one of the few remaining survivors from that day and the only one left from the USS Dobbin.
His flight was met with a water cannon salute at the gate and sounds of the Navy's U.S. Pacific Fleet band filling the air.
What do you remember about that day?
He was asked.
Oh, being scared more than anything else.
Wondering about my brothers, where they were.
As a musician in the Navy band, Schaub was starting a seemingly quiet day when the attack in 1941 began.
He quickly sprang into action, feeding ammunition to gunners.
All these years later, he's back in the islands to commemorate that solemn anniversary and the lives of those lost that day.
That from Hawaii News Now.
This is Sandy in Columbus, Ohio.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I was calling because my father served in World War II along with many family members.
He was a sergeant, and I'm reading his papers, administration, NCO, sergeant of rifle company.
He was in combat areas, it says.
And this was, and I can remember as a child, because I was a late child, I can remember him talking about D-Day and his first cousin, they were all over there together.
And he would just constantly, they talked about D-Day.
And then my brother, oldest brother that I never met, he went in at 16 years old in the Navy.
And he, they were going out over a cleanup crew.
Somehow, they said it was a storm.
And he washed ashore in Norfolk, Virginia.
And I never got to meet him, but they have, they lost his records.
So he's in like a nameless grave, but me and the family are working on trying after all these years to get him a stone.
So it's been challenging and some have, but I have an uncle with the purple heart, my father's brother.
And one thing that my other, my mother's brother told, they used to tell things more so and talk sometimes about seriousness of what they went through.
They talk about some of the funny things.
My uncle, he said that the border had stopped, so they decided to go to the latrine, him and his buddy over there.
And he said, when they got there, he asked his brother, buddy, he said, are you scared?
And the man said, no, I'm not scared.
He said, well, then why are you wiping me?
And they would laugh and make some jokes, but it was a serious time.
And a lot of them have been forgotten.
But I honor all of them.
All of them.
And like youngest uncle, he just died two years ago with pancreatic cancer.
And he was a paratrooper, 75 jumps.
So I've seen him through that.
So I honor our soldiers.
You know, they went through a lot, and I'm hearing from other people and all, but they were proud of their service.
Sandy, thanks for that from Columbus, Ohio.
You talk about unidentified remains and working to identify them.
You might be interested in this afternoon on C-SPAN 2's American History TV ahead of the 12:50 p.m. remembrance ceremony that we're going to air live on American History TV.
1220 this afternoon.
We're going to re-air an event that we first showed back in September.
It was the burial at Arlington National Cemetery of Mess attendant third class David Walker of Virginia.
He died on December 7th, 1941, but his remains were not identified until last year at the end of 2023.
And he finally received a burial at Arlington Cemetery earlier this year with full military honors.
Our C-SPAN cameras were there for that ceremony, the family allowing us to record that.
And we'll be airing that.
It's about a half-an-hour ceremony from 12:20 p.m. Eastern Time right up until that live ceremony at the World War II National Memorial on the National Mall.
And again, that's 12:50 p.m. You can watch live.
Rick is in Phoenix, Arizona, this morning on that line for World War II Veterans and Families.
Arizona, very much a state that's connected to Pearl Harbor with the USS Arizona.
Rick, go ahead.
Rick, you with us?
Got to stick by your phone.
This is Turk in Illinois.
Same line, World War II veterans and their families.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
This is Turk from Hegwish.
Me and five buddies visited Pearl Harbor for the 75th anniversary a number of years ago.
We're all Vietnam veterans.
And you can, if you were on the Arizona and you're still alive and you pass, you can be buried on the Arizona.
And the year we were there, a fellow was interred on the Arizona.
And during that ceremony, we were on the mainland.
You couldn't hear a pin drop.
It was so quiet when that ceremony was going on.
My daddy knocked up my mom in the summer of 1942, and my dad joined the Marine Corps the day after my brother's, my oldest brother's first birthday.
When I was in Pearl Harbor, I ran into a fella that was wearing Navy whites, and he had a black page photo album, you know, the years ago photo album.
And of course, I had to start a conversation, and we were the same age.
His daddy was on the Arizona.
The kid opened the photo album and showed me pictures of his dad on the Arizona.
His dad got off the Arizona in 1939.
How fortunate.
This guy also showed me a photo.
His dad had boxing gloves on, and he told the story about his dad fought Tony Zale.
Tony Zale was a lightweight champion from Gary, Indiana.
Blah, blah, blah.
Then the six of us took a ride to Ford Island.
And the warehouse that you see is in all those black and white stuff, photo movie reels from the days past.
That is a museum now with airplanes and all the World War II stuff.
And as I walked in, of course, there's volunteers, and a fella grabbed me and he says, Look at the ceiling.
And I looked at the ceiling.
He says, Do you see the little black ants on the ceiling?
And I looked again, and 37 feet up in the air, here's these black ants on the ceiling.
And I looked at the fellow, I said, Yes, I see them.
And he said, Those would be Japanese zeros at 10,000 feet.
That's what the gunners saw.
Turk, I want to show viewers the National Memorial and have you describe what's out there over the Arizona in that white building that's out on the water in Pearl Harbor.
What's it like to walk through that?
John, my hair is standing on edge right now as I speak.
I spent three tours out there.
I asked the honor guard there if I could stay on the memorial as a gang left and the ship left, the boat left with a gang and went to the harbor and got another gang and come out there.
And so I sat by myself.
You could feel the power of those 2,000-plus men, John.
There's triplets on that ship, John.
There, I think, are three or four sets of twins on the Arizona that went down with that ship.
As that oil bubbles up from the bottom of the ship, you could just imagine memories.
Memories.
The official National Park Service site, 38 sets of brothers aboard the USS Arizona, including three sets of three brothers.
And 63 of those siblings died in the attack on the Arizona.
After I get off, let's have a moment of silence, John.
Let's have a moment of silence, all you people out there, and just think about the potential that all the servicemen that have passed have had.
And they're the bedrock of the country, right, John?
They're the bedrock of the country.
Turk, thanks for the call from Illinois this morning.
Total casualties at Pearl Harbor, 2,390 American service members and civilians on the USS Arizona.
1,177 service members died on the U.S., Oklahoma.
It was 429 service members who died.
Out at Hickam Field, 191 people, including five civilians, lost their lives.
On the USS West Virginia, 106 service members died that day on the USS California.
It was 105.
49 civilian casualties that day, some by enemy action, some by friendly fire.
The casualty statistics on the National Park Service website.
Rose, Tinley Park, Illinois.
Good morning.
Next.
Good morning, and thank you for this wonderful, outstanding program this morning.
You can hear in these people's voices the pain and the anguish after all these years, okay?
When you lose someone, the pain lasts you forever.
And I just want to say, sir, for all the people that are suffering still today, God loves you, and the people that you love are in heaven.
Now, I respectfully want to submit this, and I hope you let me do this.
It doesn't have to do with the Pearl Harbor, but for the people in my life that I have loved-my Uncle Sam, who was in the CB, my Uncle Vito, who was in the Army, my Uncle Dominic, who was in the Army, for my father, who was in the Navy.
All these men served in World War II.
Let's all remember those people do, but especially today is December 7th.
And God bless all the people that have passed, all the people that are present that are mourning for them.
And God bless C-SPAN for having the heart and the compassion for putting these programs on TV.
Because once we stop putting this stuff on TV, we will forget the past.
And God bless you, sir, who is in the Army.
That's Rose in Illinois.
This is John in Yukon, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Am I on?
Yes, sir, you are.
Okay, I can remember I was peddling papers that Sunday, and in my little town, there was men lining up to get into the service.
The big corporation leaders went to work for the government to build tanks and ships and everything for $1 a year.
They called them $1 a year people.
The kids in the little schools bought little stamps for 10 cents to support the war.
When I got to be old enough, I enlisted in the Navy.
Well, I was only 17 at the time, and they put me in a reserve.
And then, when they called me up, went into Bainbridge, Maryland for boot camp, and they graduated from boot camp.
They took us, put us on a train, took us across the country from Norfolk, Virginia.
I got over in the Philippines.
They transported us on an old Scotty ship, wooden deck.
It took us forever to get over there.
And I was on the Philippines when the war ended.
I had jungle hat, mosquito net, green gear, wooden shoes, and whatnot, wooden shoes.
They called them sand shoes.
Excuse me.
And I thought, hell, I'm in the Navy, but I guess we were going to go into Japan.
But at that time, I can remember the kids.
I told you I was pet on papers.
They didn't have rifles enough.
For the men that were coming in, they used broomsticks for rifles.
We didn't have tanks.
We were not prepared for war at all.
Do you remember the name of the newspaper that you were distributing that day?
Oh, yeah, Pittsburgh Press.
Do you remember the headline on December 8th of the Pittsburgh Press?
Do you remember anything about that?
No, I don't.
It was probably war declared or war attacked or something.
I can't remember.
I was penning papers, and the only thing, one thing I remember, I had to walk down to what they called the Red Row.
It was a miners' buildings.
And I was hoping a train wouldn't come because there was snow on the ground and it was cold.
And sure, naturally, a train came.
But I remember that.
As a kid, the papers, the head of the corporations, there was no panic.
The government got together, both parties got together, and we declared war.
And the women went to work at the factories making bombs, working in a steel mill over at Monessin, working in the steel mills there.
Everybody just, there was no panic.
And we had nothing.
We had all our things were so old.
And we had people, I guess you can look up the names of the people that came, had visited Germany and had come back and told this country that you better get prepared for war or stuff is obsolete and we're not ready for war.
And we weren't ready for war.
Jonathan, if you look at your screen here, this was the evening edition of the Pittsburgh Press from December the 8th, 1941.
So you would have been delivering this on that Monday evening after December 7th on Sunday.
U.S. declares war.
1,500 die in Hawaii in under count by about 900.
Fleets clash.
Nazis abandon the drive from Moscow.
Tokyo claims sinking two American battleships.
Manila is bombed.
They have the full text of President Roosevelt's message and the lead story.
The Senate votes unanimously to victory is pledged.
And that is the headline above the fold of the Pittsburgh Press that day.
You mentioned Roosevelt.
Roosevelt kept his country so calm.
Now that I'm old and I remember, I remember Roosevelt.
Roosevelt, if you think Trump, Trump is the reborn of Roosevelt.
The people at that time were elected, well, they did, what was it, a fifth term?
I didn't know any other president.
And when he passed away and I was in the service, I thought, my God, you know, now what are we going to do?
But here was a man that was crippled.
There were stories about him on TV where he learned to crawl up steps to go to the upstairs in his house and things.
But at that time, you had a guy that would get on there.
And I remember this one speech that he said, well, I don't mind you people criticizing me and criticizing Eleanor.
But when they criticize my dog, that upsets me.
He was just that kind of a speaker.
He would be on radio and he would just be as calm and calm the people and the people didn't panic.
I worked on a railroad at 15 years old during the war and the trains would come by with prisoners on and you could tell who the prisoners were.
They brought the Germans over here and a train would go by with the prisoners on and the curtains would be drawn and we had to turn our backs toward the train as it went by.
Then when the this is the funny part, when the Italians came by in the prisoners train, the windows would be open, the curtains were up and they were just as happy as could be to be in this country, I guess.
John.
Do you mind if I ask how old you are?
I'm 97 and a half.
John, thanks so much for sharing your memories from back then.
Hope you still get a paper up there in Pittsburgh.
Thanks for talking about it.
Just about 10 minutes left in this opening segment of the Washington Journal setting aside this time to remember the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
One other clip we wanted to show you, the Defense Department conducted oral histories with many U.S. service members and those who survived the Pearl Harbor attack, trying to collect those stories before those stories were lost.
Here's one of those that they collected.
This was a medic that day at Pearl Harbor, Doc Munger is his name.
I'm Doc Munger, and I was 23 at Pearl Harbor.
I've been in the Navy about two years and a half.
I was a medic.
The old term for a medic was a pharmacist mate.
I don't think the word war ever entered my head.
It never occurred to me, and I don't think any of my buddies that they were going to fight a war.
On December 7th, 1941, the world changed.
It was a beautiful Hawaiian morning, about 8 o'clock, and suddenly we heard a buzzing across the mountains and kept it bigger and bigger.
And we thought, well, they must be doing some kind of an exercise.
We thought it was our own planes.
But lo and behold, the planes got overhead.
We looked at the wings and there was a rising sun.
But then we knew we were in trouble.
When I saw the first Japanese zero-plane peel off and drop a bomb down the stack of the Arizona, I knew it was for real from then on in in the war.
And they're all hellbrokers.
You can't convey to another person the situation as it really is, mass bombing like that.
The air is full of shrapnel, it's full of smoke, smell like burning gunpowder, vibration, and you have to experience that to ever know it.
But it's not good.
They sure did a bang-up job on our ships.
I don't think they miss much of any of them.
If you made it through the first hour in Pearl Harbor, you were home free.
You had to be smart and lucky.
Shortly after it got quiet in Pearl Harbor, and I knew the planes had left for a while, we started getting casualties by the truckload in our little medical unit.
And we were doing what we could, and with what we had.
Doc Munger there recounting his experiences at Pearl Harbor.
The Defense Department has several of those oral histories that you can find on their website if you want to see more.
C-SPAN as well has an entire section of our American history television programming devoted to oral histories.
You can watch at C-SPAN.org.
Back to Arizona.
This is Rick.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hi, good morning.
I'm sorry I missed the call earlier.
Good morning, everyone.
Yes, my father was a World War II veteran, U.S. Army, enlisted in February, just about a month after the war had begun.
But Phoenix back then was a small, pretty small town.
And I remember myself growing up, I was born in the 60s, that it was such a patriotic group of men.
Most of those guys were all veterans.
A few are still alive, I believe we've seen a few in recent years.
Can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
Okay, so one of the things that I wanted to mention is that over the years, especially places that I've worked, there's been almost a move to erase some of that history.
At one place in particular, they were not referring to it today as Pearl Harbor.
They were talking about Remembrance Day.
And I started asking what that was all about.
And there was no real answer to it, but not even mentioning Pearl Harbor.
And so that's one thing that concerns me is that we lose our history, especially everything that happened during the war.
So that's, again, back to my father, he was a Mexican-American, and this is a small neighborhood that we grew up in.
But like I said, over the years, there's so much patriotism that I hate seeing that.
If we allow that to happen as a nation.
Rick, on losing history, did you listen to Doc Munger there while you're waiting, talking about his experiences on that day on December 7th?
I was trying to listen to it.
In fact, there was a caller earlier that talked about how they were given broom handles to train with.
And I remember my father saying that as well.
Some of the interesting things, and as many kids of veterans will tell you, they didn't speak very much about it.
I remember my dad had a lot of funny stories and kind of crazy stories that he would talk about.
He was a support in the support units, the medical support units.
But again, just a few things that I remember him talking about, driving vehicles at night.
It was real dangerous.
He was in the South Pacific, actually, the whole time.
He went all the way from the Aleutian Islands down to New Zealand.
So he must have crossed the Pacific about at least three times during the war in big aircraft carriers.
Well, Rick, we've talked a little bit about losing that generation, losing those stories.
So Doc Munger, who we just showed before you came on, this is his obituary.
He died in 2017.
And the question we've been asking is, what do we lose when we lose that generation, all of that generation?
What do you think?
Yeah, we lose not only their stories, but the influence, the example that they left us.
They're called the Sona Generation, and that's so appropriate because all of us that have known that generation both are not only the MENFA, but also our moms.
They were such a strength.
I'm curious to see that, though.
That seems to be something that I'm seeing in younger people.
You know, as I speak, I worked in the educational area for many years.
And I do see a lot of younger people interested in some of these things and looking forward that way.
Rick, thanks for the call from Arizona.
Already over time this morning, but want to get one more.
Kathy's waiting.
Fremont, California, on that line for World War II veterans and their families.
Kathy, go ahead.
Hi.
My dad joined the Navy in 1944.
He was 23.
He went to flight training and he was assigned to the Ticonderoga.
He wrote a biography with my sister.
And in this, I have it in front of me.
He was in a flight, an F, where is it, F6F flight group?
And his job was to protect the flight leader.
There were 12 planes.
And they were assigned, it was between Taiwan and the Philippines, and they were assigned to shoot down Japanese planes and ships, which they did.
So it's kind of interesting to read back.
Let's see, he was in the air group 80 of the U.S. Ticonderoga.
A picture of the USS Ticonderoga.
It's designation CV14.
There's the picture there.
What was the name of the book that he wrote with his sister, Kathy?
It's not a book.
It's just a biography.
But he also fought in the Korean War.
And then we actually, I have three sisters.
We lived on Midway Island at one point.
But he hadn't even met my mom yet when he was fighting in World War II.
The Ticonderoga was bombed, and his bunk was bombed, but he was out flying.
But this little incident on November 23rd was his first experience of flying.
It's an F-6S fighter.
And it says when he came back, he didn't have any trouble landing on the carrier.
I made several landings and blew two tires.
And that was not unusual.
And I do have a picture of him of his plane landing on a carrier, and they used a big rubber band to stop it.
And is the plane.
Does the plane look like that?
Was it the F-6 Hellcat?
We'll show you the picture.
Yeah, I have it in the back here.
Let's see.
I don't know if it's labeled.
Take a look at your screen.
Did it look like that?
Yeah, I don't see it yet.
It's delayed.
I think it was, well, what do they call it?
They always told us what it was.
Was it the Hellcat?
No, it's a small, fairly small one.
But I'm getting a blank now.
That's all right, Kathy.
What was his name?
Edward Heasel.
Heasel, he was in the Navy for 20 years.
No, that doesn't look like it.
Well, Kathy, thanks for telling us about him.
For viewers who wanted to get in in this segment and weren't able to, we're going to spend our last 45 minutes today coming back to this topic.
So stick with us and we will certainly return to this remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Up next, though, Melissa Sanchez from ProPublica will join us to discuss differing political attitudes among Latino voters and recent immigrants to this country and how it played out in the past election and later that conversation on December 7th, 1941.
We'll be joined by Craig Nelson, the author of the book Pearl Harbor from Infamy to Greatness for that discussion.
We'll be right back.
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
More than 80 years after his death, the recently identified remains of mess attendant third class David Walker of Virginia were buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
The 19-year-old African-American sailor was killed on the USS California during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
On Lectures in History, the first of a two-part lecture by University of Maryland history professor Michael Ross on the 1893 trial of Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe.
The murders and trial received widespread publicity at the time, and Lizzie Borden became a lasting figure in American popular culture.
And then on the presidency, eyewitnesses recount what unfolded inside the White House on December 7th, 1941, as President Franklin Roosevelt learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and then moved to assess the damage and America's response.
Exploring the American story.
Watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
At 2 p.m. Eastern, Book TV presents coverage of the 2024 Wisconsin Book Festival.
You'll hear from authors on the history of refrigeration, the foster care system, what it means to be Native American, and more.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern will feature a gala held by publisher Encounter Books to honor Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and students for Fair Admissions President Edward Blum for their work advancing American ideals and academic freedom, respectively.
Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, journalist T.J. English talks about the rise and fall of Los Muchachos, one of the most successful cocaine empires in U.S. history, in his book, The Last Kilo.
He's interviewed by author and Brookings Institution senior fellow VondaFelbaugh Brown.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
Washington Journal continues.
A discussion now on political shifts among Latino voters and immigrants in 2024 from Chicago.
Our guest is Melissa Sanchez of ProPublica, who co-wrote a series on this topic.
Melissa Sanchez, the top-line number that we want to start with here is this one.
In 2020, Donald Trump earned 35% of the Latino vote in that election.
One month ago in election 2024, 42% of Latinos broke for Donald Trump.
So in trying to understand the reasons for that shift, what did you find?
Well, there's a lot of reasons why Latinos, more Latinos voted for Trump this time around, and more Latinos have been gravitating toward the Republican Party.
And we, in our reporting with my colleague Micah Rosenberg and with others at ProPublica, like we're aware there's a lot of reasons.
But one thing that kept coming up for us in our reporting that might be surprising to some of our viewers here is that the issue of immigration and how Biden had handled the border, has been handling the border, was really frustrating to long time Latino immigrants in this country and their kids.
And this includes both people who can vote, who are U.S. citizens, and people who are still undocumented.
And the reason there's sort of this sense of frustration and resentment that I keep hearing from folks all over the Midwest that the new immigrants who have been coming into this country in the past few years, the folks who are here seeking asylum from countries like Venezuela, that they've been given this access to government privileges that undocumented people who have been living in this country for decades do not have.
And that has caused this sense of resentment and frustration and anger toward the Democrats.
And Trump is the alternative.
And despite Trump's rhetoric on deporting more people than ever before in the history of this nation, even people who are undocumented tell me that they would prefer him to another Democrat.
What are those benefits that they're referring to?
So the big one that I don't think has been talked enough about is work permits.
So when you come into the U.S. as an asylum seeker, you're also coming in illegally between ports of entry.
But unlike the Mexican immigrants who'd come before as undocumented immigrants, they're not trying to get away from Border Patrol.
They're surrendering themselves and asking for asylum.
And by asking for asylum, if they're let in, some are deported immediately if their claims don't look valid, if the government even has the capacity to screen those claims.
But they're given the right, they're entitled to pursue an asylum claim in court.
And that court system is incredibly backlogged.
It can take years.
But as long as they file an asylum claim, within six months of filing, they're allowed to apply for a work permit.
And a work permit is like a golden ticket.
I mean, I've spent much of my career writing about undocumented people who don't have work permits.
And you have to work with fake papers.
You work for caste under the table.
And you're much more likely to be exploited at work.
You're likely to not get paid your wages.
You're likely to have the most dangerous job, the dirty jobs.
You're likely to, you know, I've spent a lot of time writing about dairy workers in Wisconsin.
Most of them are undocumented.
And they're the ones who are shoveling cow manure 18 hours a day.
If you have a work permit, you don't have to work those kinds of jobs.
You're more likely to get a job with more dignified hours, with slightly better pay.
So that's a really huge economic advantage that the newcomers are getting that long-time undocumented people, people who have been here 20 or 30 years, don't have.
And then there's other advantages too, depending on what state and what city you're in.
So I live in Chicago, and we saw tens of thousands of asylum seekers come in in the past couple of years, people who were bussed in by Governor Abbott in Texas.
And the city was really overwhelmed with these numbers.
And out of a sense of compassion and, you know, trying to be good humans, we provided shelter and food for folks, and that cost millions of dollars.
And I spoke with a housekeeper here in Chicago who's undocumented, who's Honduran, who's lived here for 20 years and has a daughter here.
And she was just angry.
Like, when I came here, I got none of this, she told me.
And I've been paying my taxes for all of these years.
Like, a lot of folks have been told, if you pay your taxes, if you don't get in trouble with the law, one day there's going to be a path towards citizenship for you.
And instead, you know, she's working for cash, cleaning houses, and doing her best.
So there's the work permit, there's kind of the scene, the local or state or federal governments put in all this money to help the newcomers.
And in states like Wisconsin, where I've spent a lot of time, undocumented people are not allowed to drive.
They're simply banned from getting driver's licenses.
And like we all know, especially in rural parts of this country, that it's incredibly difficult to live, to get to work, to get your kids to school without driving.
So undocumented folks in states like Wisconsin drive anyway and then risk getting caught by police and getting ticketed.
And I've talked to people who owe or have paid thousands of dollars in fines for getting caught driving without a license.
But then the newcomers, the asylum seekers, if they're good with their immigration court cases, if they have the right ID, if they can pass the test, they can get driver's licenses.
So, I mean, just a couple of days ago, I was near Madison at a bakery, a big popular Mexican bakery, talking to the manager there.
And she told me how frustrating it is that she's lived here for 19 years, been paying her taxes, hasn't gotten in trouble with the law, and she can't legally drive.
But the Nicaraguan asylum seekers who are coming in to cash their checks, to wire money home, they have driver's licenses, and it just causes a lot of hurt for her.
And she can't vote.
She's not a U.S. citizen.
She's undocumented.
But she told me very clearly that if she could vote, she would have voted for Trump.
So how did this issue of resentment, this frustration that you describe in your stories, how did it play out against the issue of mass deportations, a stepped-up focus on deportations in a second Trump administration?
I asked that question to everybody because I think it's hard to reconcile these two things.
And I mean, the woman at the bakery, for example, I asked her, she had told me about how during the first Trump administration, she knew that there had been what's called collateral damage.
That sometimes, you know, ICE might go after a criminal, somebody who has a conviction for a violent crime, and then kind of in the process, like catch another undocumented person who was just a bystander.
But because they're undocumented, everybody got shipped out.
So she knew somebody who this had happened to during the first administration.
She said she was so afraid the first time around.
She kind of lived in a constant panic, especially early in his presidency.
She was afraid that she would be deported.
This time around, she's not so afraid.
And I asked her why.
And she said that Trump is all talk.
And that last time around, the deportations that everybody feared were not as widespread.
And she doesn't think it's going to happen this time.
And I mean, again, she lives in Wisconsin.
A lot of the clients that come into this place are immigrant dairy workers.
And dairy, like a lot of industries, just simply could not exist without the labor of undocumented people, of immigrants.
And so she has this, I guess, pragmatic sense that this economy cannot survive without people like her, and she doesn't think that Trump is going to do it.
And I guess we'll just have to see.
Melissa Sanchez of ProPublica with us for about the next 20, 25 minutes.
Phone lines put a bit differently this morning.
Latino voters, the number 202-748-8,000 immigrants to this country, 202748-8001.
All others, 202748-8002.
We'll get to your questions.
Melissa Sanchez, though, what should viewers know about Whitewater, Wisconsin?
I'm so glad you asked.
So I spent much of the past six months in Whitewater.
It's a little city between Madison and Milwaukee.
It's about 15,000 people.
And we, ProPublica, me and my colleague Madame Jamil spent a long time there because it's a city that's seen a huge number of asylum seekers in the past few years.
And the numbers aren't gigantic compared to what we've seen in Chicago or New York or Denver.
But it was about 500 to 1,000 newcomers, a lot of them asylum seekers from this country that a lot of people in town probably couldn't even point their finger to on a map.
And people were really confused by how and why they all showed up.
They weren't bused in by Abbott like they had been here in Chicago, but there are folks who had come from word of mouth.
And the city got a lot of attention late last year and early this year because the police chief was simply becoming overwhelmed with a large number of new immigrants in his city who were driving without a driver's license.
And I said earlier that if you're an asylum seeker, you can get a driver's license, but it's like never quite that simple.
You need to pass a driving test.
And a lot of the people who are coming from Nicaragua have never driven a car before.
They used to get around on mule in their little communities.
So there's a learning curve.
They're also often illiterate.
So reading a test, even if it's in Spanish, is very challenging.
And you need to get the right paperwork.
And there's a lot of steps.
So in the meantime, while folks were trying to get a license, they were driving illegally.
And that was causing a problem for police.
And he wrote a letter to Biden late last year asking for help, saying, like, look, like, we're not trying to be racist.
We're not trying to say anybody's a bad person.
But I'm the police chief of this little town and we're struggling.
And we only have like one bilingual cop.
And all these folks don't speak English.
There's language barriers.
There's a lot of issues going on and we need some more resources to deal with it.
And I think kind of what he was describing is a sentiment that a lot of people have experienced in different ways across the country, whether it's at schools or hospitals.
And it's really hard to talk about in this political climate where if you say one thing, you might be seen as a racist or you might be seen as somebody who wants to open borders.
And like, I think for people like this chief and a lot of people in his community, it was something more in the middle.
Like, hey, look, all these people are here.
The government let all these people be here.
Like, that's great.
But their presence here is causing us some problems.
And he wasn't saying that these were all criminals, that there were murders and rapes on his streets because of them.
Like, that wasn't true.
Now, Trump would come in later and make that kind of allegation, say that migrant crime was ruining this little town.
And that wasn't true either.
But the Biden administration didn't respond to this chief's letter for quite a while.
And when it did, it offered a program that wasn't actually available to a place like Whitewater.
And that kind of left the chief and the city sort of in this quandary of like, how are we supposed to deal with this?
Like, the fact that all of these new immigrants have come to a place, like, it means there's going to be some challenges.
Like, you want another bilingual cop.
He wanted a social, like a social worker of sorts in his department to help folks with issues like abuse of landlords or things that were really outside of the purview of a police department.
And so we spent some time in Whitewater because of how these whole dynamics were playing out.
And I'm straying from the topic of this conversation, but there were already immigrants living in Whitewater.
There were already Mexican immigrants living there.
A lot of them were undocumented when they came and they still are.
And so for folks like them, they're sort of sitting back and saying like, hey, what about us?
Like, we're here too.
And so I think the kind of the dynamic between all of these communities playing out is something that we've seen all over the country.
And it's complicated.
It's not something that we can talk about in a quick soundbite.
But it's like the reality.
Like, immigration is messy, and it causes people to have really extreme emotional reactions.
And I think it's good to kind of spend time talking to folks and like listening to them where they're at.
And good to read some of these stories from ProPublica by Melissa Sanchez and her colleagues, ProPublica.org.
Here's just one of those headlines of the topics we've been talking about.
Immigrants' resentment over new arrivals helped boost Trump's popularity with Latino voters.
Taking your phone calls this morning.
And Kirk is up first on that line for immigrants out of Oklahoma.
Kirk, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Very early this morning.
Kirk, speak into your phone a little bit, a little bit more clear so we can hear you.
Okay, morning.
How are you guys?
Doing well.
What's your question or comment?
Yeah, you know, as an immigrant myself, I went through the deportation process under the Obama administration.
And I came back legally.
And, you know, me as an immigrant, I will never hate on new immigrants that come in.
And I see that's a big thing.
And most of those people who support Trump are under bandwagon.
And my thing is that when this whole deportation process starts, nobody's going to be scared because nobody wearing a t-shirt that they support Trump or not.
Yes, I can agree that the deportation process, he might not accomplish all, but he's going to create a lot of havoc.
And the reason being why I say that is that, you know, the fear, and people are going to get caught up, you know, by getting arrested, have to go to the process, have immigration court, you know, banned.
And in immigration, if you do get a ban when you get arrested, it's cash.
You know, it's not, you can't go to a bailed man and say, hey, 10%.
No, if it's 10,000, it's 10,000 cash, you know, and then you work the process.
So, yeah, you know, because the deportation process is a long, grinding hug.
And a lot of people that want to get arrested are going to have release.
They have to go to the judge and the court system.
And that's going to take a long while.
But people's life will be upended, you know, because they will be in custody and all of that.
So it's not an easy process.
I went through it for three years.
And I was in custody for three long years until I got deported wrongfully.
But, you know.
Kirk, where were you in custody?
Okay.
I was here in Oklahoma.
I spent about a year in Oklahoma and two more years in Texas, Hostel, Texas.
There's a big immigration detention center in Hostel that holds over like 3,000 people.
And then how long was that process to come back in legally afterwards?
And how were you able to do that after being deported?
Okay, I'm married to a beautiful American citizen and I was able to, you know, with the I-130 approved, come back.
But it takes me six years.
I was on a 10-year bar and because when you get removed from the United States, automatically 10-year bar.
But because of, you know, legal work and, you know, other things that was available, I was letting back six years after, six years out.
Kirk, thanks for sharing your story.
Melissa Sanchez, so there's Kirk's view of what mass deportations would look like.
And then this is Parkstorm, who tweeted in while we were talking.
The guest makes a valid point, Parkstorm writes, just as Trump didn't build a wall, he isn't going to mass deport all of his Mar-a-Lago workers.
I mean, it's really hard to know.
I try to take people at face value, but Trump has said a lot of things that are frankly going to be just like logistically impossible.
And so much of American business, including Mr. Trump's, has depended on immigrants.
And I think we haven't had an honest conversation about that in this country.
It's a hard conversation because businesses benefit from being able to hire cheaper labor that comes at different costs.
And the business community, one of my colleagues wrote about this earlier this year too.
The business community in the past has been at the table, you know, advocating for immigration reform because it's good for business.
And they've been quiet for the past couple of years because again, this issue has become so politicized that they'd rather not get involved and risk losing people who are just convinced that Trump is right and we have to get rid of everybody.
But yeah, no, I think the caller is right.
I mean, people will get affected.
People will get deported.
People's lives are going to be torn apart.
Families are going to, you know, communities are going to see what it looks like to suddenly lose the people who are doing the backbreaking, dirty, ugly work that nobody cares about.
Let me bounce this text off you that we just got during the conversation.
The text is saying, most of the Latinos that support Donald Trump are products of Ronald Reagan's amnesty back in the 80s, and they have forgotten when they were the ones hiding and hoping that they weren't going to get deported.
What do you think?
Yes and no.
Not everybody I talked to benefited from amnesty.
And also, I mean, to be clear, not all Latinos voted for Trump.
Most did not.
Just to be clear, they're not the ones who got Trump elected.
But the ones who did vote for Trump, some of them came here legally, you know, before Reagan's amnesty.
And a lot of people who are undocumented today who came after amnesty support Trump.
And I've heard this criticism a lot.
I think this story got a lot of vitriol and pushback from the left, which ProPublica doesn't always get.
But we heard from a lot of really angry Democrats.
I heard Rosa should be the first one back on the bus home to Mexico.
Like, how could you pull the ladder up after you?
And I think it's just important to point out that the undocumented folks that we interviewed, not the voters, but the undocumented folks we interviewed, like, they don't have a ladder.
They didn't have a ladder.
They still don't have a work permit.
They still don't have a driver's license.
They still don't have all the things.
So it's complicated.
I think that is true.
It's like a human story.
People are afraid of losing out.
There's the whole resentment thing that we've talked about for all sorts of voters in this country.
I think there's a lot of factors that come into play.
And this is one of them.
It's one that I happen to see a lot in my reporting.
I happen to see a lot in my community where I live here in Chicago, an immigrant community.
And a lot of my colleagues all over the country too have been hearing.
Yermo's next out of Philly, that line for immigrants.
Good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN, and good morning, John.
I haven't talked to you for a while.
I'm going to address the political shift among Latino voters immigrants.
First, I'm going to take immigrants.
We are all immigrants, sojourning to go back to that place of fantasy and love and all of that, and picking up along the way materials for the journey.
As for Latinos, that narrative is wrong.
There is no such thing as Latino people.
We are Native Indigenous American people, whether you're from South, Central, or North.
We are not Latino.
There's no such thing as Latino people.
And the political shift, the political shift is this.
Please stop saying that we are Latinos.
We are not Latinos.
C-Spans, stop talking about people that are Latinos.
There is no such thing as Latino people.
We are indigenous people of this Native American soil.
Yarmo, got your point.
Melissa Sanchez, anything you wanted to pick up on?
Yeah, no, I appreciate that comment.
It's an easy way to describe a bunch of people.
And it's true.
Like, if you talk to an immigrant from Mexico or from Argentina, they won't say, I'm Latino.
They'll say, I'm Mexican.
I'm Argentinier.
I'm Mexican-American.
But I think it's like a helpful, it's a helpful umbrella term.
But, you know, we've heard this over and over again, and I hope people could remember this, that not everybody's the same.
And like even within one family that is from Mexico that came at the same time, you can have very different perspectives on politics.
You can have siblings who vote differently, even though they have the same parents who came here illegally.
So yeah, people are not the same just because they came from the same hemisphere.
And I appreciate what your caller is saying.
Like history is very complicated.
A lot of the stuff did come from indigenous people from the Americas.
But then, you know, there were the Spaniards who came and colonized all of it.
So it's complicated.
We've been talking about Wisconsin.
Let's go to Oseo, Wisconsin, central Western Wisconsin.
Tim, go ahead.
Yes.
I happen to know that I remember when I was a kid, Cesar Chavez, of all people, used to stand down at the border with some of his people.
And he didn't want people coming in illegally to the country because it would drive down the wages for all the other people here, the brown, the black people.
And illegal immigration is putting incredible stress on our educational institutions, our medical institutions, and all this garbage that they're the only ones who do all the bad jobs.
I have friends that do the same kind of jobs.
And we have unemployed people that are, and if they don't want to do the job, they should be forced to do the job.
So please, stop this fallacy that they're the only ones that'll do the job.
Go to Denver and Chicago.
I have a sister that lives in each city.
And they have illegals laying all over the airports, all over the streets, and the crime rates have skyrocketed.
They have illegals at four-star hotels.
I'm a veteran, and there's veterans sleeping on the streets, and illegals are sleeping in these four-star hotels in New York, LA, and Chicago.
So, you know, this is a nice little propaganda piece you got going here, but I'm here to expose you.
Thank you.
Melissa Sanchez.
Yeah, no, I appreciate the comment.
And I think we've heard that sentiment from a lot of people.
It's complicated.
No, you're right.
I mean, there are a lot of people who are unemployed.
Like, why aren't they doing the work?
You don't know how many farmers I've talked to in Wisconsin who have told me that they have not had an American come in and apply to work shoveling manure 18 hours a day in years.
Like, does that mean they have to raise wages?
Probably.
So right now they're paying, let's say, $12, $14 an hour.
And there's no overtime in farms.
Just want to make sure people know that if you work on a farm, you don't have access to overtime pay.
They have to raise the wages.
And then are we willing to pay $8 a gallon for milk?
Maybe.
But I mean, like, to really question this system that exists that's unfair, that means somebody's going to get paid less and somebody's not going to be working, that means that us, the consumers, like, We'll have to pay more for the basic stuff that we depend on that immigrants are producing.
And we haven't figured out as a country whether we want to do that.
Instead, we've just kicked the can down the road.
And now we have, you're right, there were immigrants sleeping at the airports in Chicago.
They're not there right now.
They were sleeping at the police stations and on the street, and we're not seeing that right now because they've been housed, and maybe some of them have kind of resettled into other places.
But we still have a homeless population that had pre-existed the immigrants who came and got all this attention.
And that's caused huge resentment.
One of my colleagues, Angelette Damon, wrote about this in Denver, a city that had already been struggling with a huge homeless problem.
And some of the people who had been unhoused for a long time just felt frustrated to see all these newcomers come in and kind of more quickly get access to the type of housing that they would have liked to have.
And I think they just have become like they're just not easy moral questions.
Like, what do you do when all of these people are already here?
Like, you know, what should good humans do?
And they're not easy because there's not an infinite number of resources, and we haven't had the political will to increase that pot.
And so, as the pot gets divided by more and more people, then some people are going to get less.
And we haven't figured out whether that's okay.
I don't know.
I appreciate the caller.
I think I hear you.
It's really hard.
Like, there's not a really good answer here.
I think no matter what way you turn, like, somebody's going to feel the pain and the hurt.
Gigi is next in Virginia.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just wanted to ask a question of your guest.
Do you believe that the background that these immigrants have, educational background in the countries that they come from, make a difference?
For example, I came to the United States when I was almost 14 in 1969, and I had a wonderful education in my country of birth, Uruguay.
And I know many South American countries that are offering incredible education to their population, even free college.
So, those immigrants are coming to the United States well-educated, perhaps illegally, but well-educated.
And that makes a difference in the way that they're able to basically access all the things that are available to them.
And immigrants who are coming from other locations where they're not being educated in such a way are perhaps not able to access the same benefits that people who are educated are able to access.
And therefore, yes, it did create this resentment of why are those people, mostly from South America, accessing these benefits.
Well, the truth is South America is doing a very good job of educating their population.
And to equate South American countries to Central American countries when it comes to educating their population is absolutely bizarre, in my view.
Yes, I am.
Melissa, Sanchez, go ahead.
No, I mean, it's an interesting call.
And we're not getting a lot of Uruguayans coming in through the asylum system.
I mean, I don't know enough about the political situation right now in Uruguay, but it's not a country that has a collapsed economy, that has an authoritarian state that has sent millions, millions of Venezuelans have left that country over the past decade or so because of just it's just impossible to live.
Yes, maybe Venezuela had a better educational system than Nicaragua or Guatemala, but the economy still had fallen apart and people could not survive.
So that's why you have doctors and lawyers driving, you know, Uber drivers in Miami and here in Chicago.
And their great education, that might help them kind of navigate the system a little bit, but they still came in seeking asylum.
But I think to your question, there are significant differences in how well educated people from different countries are because their governments have been better resourced, not so well resourced.
I spent some time a few years ago talking to young Guatemalan immigrants, teenagers who'd come as unaccompanied minors and who were working in factories at night.
And they were illiterate.
They couldn't read in Spanish.
We wrote a beautiful story about them and their lives working in factories at night and sleeping in high school during the day.
And I realized the day that it published that it was kind of, even though we had translated it for them, they couldn't read the story.
So we had to do an audio version.
And I think people are coming in with different levels of education.
But I think if they're undocumented without access to some of the benefits that you can get if you're an asylum seeker, then you're kind of in a rough place no matter what.
So you do have former bankers or accountants working side by side on factory lines next to like Mexican folks who came from rural parts who have lower educations.
That is true.
But you also do have a lot of asylum seekers from countries like Venezuela or Colombia who, because of that status as an asylum seeker and maybe helped by their education level or their profession or their ability to kind of move around in a bureaucratic system, they're able to get through the system and maybe get better jobs, etc.
So I think the caller is right.
There are differences.
I don't think anybody is trying to compare the education system in Uruguay to Guatemala, but you're also not seeing a bunch of Uruguayans at the border right now.
About five minutes left with Melissa Sanchez of ProPublica.
ProPublica.org is where you can go to see her reporting.
You've talked to a lot of illegal immigrants in your career as a reporter.
Do you get a sense that there are large numbers of illegal immigrants who want to vote in federal elections illegally?
Oh, no.
I mean, I know that's something that's said a lot by the right, and I haven't encountered that.
I mean, a lot of the people I've talked to dream of becoming an American citizen.
They dream of voting.
But I haven't met anybody who's attempted to vote or who has even brought up that notion.
I do understand that we're all worried about that our system is valid.
I don't think this is the place where it's happening at, but I appreciate that question.
To Patrick in New Hampshire, good morning.
You're next.
Hi, Melissa.
So I think I heard you say something about the child's family separation under the first Trump term.
And I was wondering about, obviously, I'm sure you feel like that child separation in the first term, the 4,500, whatever children that were separated from their families at the border.
I think there's like 1,800 left that still haven't been reunited.
And I was wondering what your thoughts are on that compared to Biden and Kamala Harris's administration, where they lost 325,000 kids so far.
And that's family separation.
You know what I mean?
Like, those kids come here and they're never going to get to see their parents again.
Our country doesn't even know where they are at this point.
Yeah, no, I've heard that.
I've heard that argument before about the however many thousand the Harris and Biden administration allegedly lost.
And I think it's a little bit more complicated than that.
I'm not an expert in this, but my understanding is that a lot of these are the unaccompanied minors who came without a parent, and they're kind of plugged into this system, this federally managed system of shelters for people under 18 who come without a legal guardian.
They might come with an older sibling or an uncle.
And ORR, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which kind of oversees that program, hasn't always done the best job tracking what happens to every kid when they leave the system.
But that doesn't mean that they're lost.
That might mean that ORR doesn't know where they all are.
But I've talked to maybe 100 kids who have gone through that system, and they all know where they were going.
I mean, most of the kids who pass through are 14, 15, 16, 17.
And they come here to work.
And they might have an uncle or a brother in, I don't know, Grand Rapids or Miami that they know that they're going to go to.
And maybe ORR, I think in the past, they would check in on these kids like a month or so after they released the shelter system.
And they probably lost track of a lot of them.
These are all underfunded systems, and maybe that wasn't a priority.
And I think that might have changed a little bit.
But to be clear, this has been happening for a really long time.
I was writing about this under Trump.
So I don't think they're actually lost, is what I want to say.
But child, the separations of families have happened under all the administrations in different ways.
So that is true.
Let me try and get in one last call here.
Shea in Baltimore, good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just want to make a comment, a quick comment.
Looking at all this illegal immigration stuff that's happened most recently, I think this is a backfire of what American foreign policy has been doing most recently in Venezuela.
We imposed sanctions on Venezuela.
The British government pretty much told almost $12 billion of the asset.
It's still frozen.
They won't give it to the country.
We're trying to change that government.
And this is what is causing the Venezuelans to come to America.
We are doing this to the Venezuelans, and it's by far coming back to us.
This is our doing.
So your guest sitting there, she supports the Venezuela regime change.
She was advocated for it.
And now she's trying to play it there.
She cares about the blowback effect.
So, Melissa Sanchez, let me give you a chance to respond.
Yeah, no, I don't think I'm an advocate for ready government.
That's not my job.
I'm a reporter.
I think the caller is right.
Like, the U.S. foreign policy has had a huge effect on other governments' ability to be run properly.
And there's a lot of factors.
Sure, there might be corruption.
There might be other issues, mismanagement, et cetera.
But we have, as a country, imposed tons of sanctions on Venezuela, on Nicaragua, on Cuba.
And that's hard for economies to survive.
I went to Cuba 12, 13 years ago.
And I mean, like, People have struggled to get basic necessities, basic foods, because of the embargoes.
And I mean, like, so we're seeing a bunch of Cubans coming in.
You know, we're seeing a bunch of Nicaraguans coming in.
Like, the sanctions do make a difference, and they, and, like, there could be problems already with that government.
Like, the government of Nicaragua is incredibly repressive and authoritarian right now.
It was not the case a few years back, but that has happened, and that's had an effect on the economy.
And then, sanctions on top of all of these things make things worse.
I think the Washington Post did a really good story a couple of months back that looked at just at the issue the caller is examining, and there was a direct relationship between an increase in people fleeing Venezuela and U.S. sanctions.
So, the caller is correct, except for I'm not an advocate for any of these governments.
I know I said last call, but John in Massachusetts has been waiting for something like 25 minutes to chat with you.
So, if you don't mind, John, go ahead.
Thank you so much.
And I hope you guys give me the same time you gave everybody else.
I mean, America hasn't changed quite a bit in 400 years, right?
I consider that no country and no land is poor until you have colonial imperialism and you come in and you overthrow the country because you want democracy, but what you're really after is their resources and you want to colonize.
So, the big ones at Wall Street and the top 1% make all the money, but the middle class suffer.
That's why you got money for war.
You got money to murder other people in the prospective country.
I'm running short on time.
Do you have a question for Melissa Sanchez?
Yeah.
Where is in this planet can a brown person live in his prospective country without being colonized by the superpowers that have bombs?
And in 400 years, these countries cannot pull themselves out of their country.
When is it when Americans stop getting into other countries and overthrowing them to put dictators so they can sell us cheap oil?
John, Massachusetts.
Yeah, no, I wish I had an answer for you.
I don't disagree with you.
It's hard, but the U.S. has a lot of influence and power, and capitalism, and big business has had a lot of influence on our foreign policy for a very long time in Guatemala, you know, like a lot of these places.
So, I don't disagree with you, and I don't have a good answer for you.
ProPublica.org is where you can go to see Melissa Sanchez's work, the work of her colleagues as well.
We appreciate your time this morning, this Saturday morning on the Washington Journal.
Thank you.
Coming up in about 25 minutes this morning, we're going to return to the topic of Pearl Harbor on this December the 7th.
We will be joined by Craig Nelson, author of Pearl Harbor from Infamy to Greatness.
But for the next 25 minutes, it's our open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, the phone lines are yours to do so.
The numbers are on the screen.
Go ahead and start calling in, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
25 years ago, author Malcolm Gladwell published his international bestseller, The Tipping Point, about how ideas and behavior spread in a society to create positive change.
Sunday, on QA, Mr. Gladwell, in his follow-up, Revenge of the Tipping Point, looks at the downside of social epidemics, including the rise of opioid abuse and Medicare fraud.
These guys in the fraud task force took me to an office building in Miami, which had been divided up into hundreds of tiny closet-sized offices, each of which basically Was the mailing address for a different fraudulent Medicare provider?
So you'd see this office, which was the size of a broom closet.
There'd be no one in it, or there'd be one person in it behind a desk, but their computer wouldn't be plugged in.
And on the door, there would be some placard which said, you know, Greater Miami, you know, healthcare research center and or, you know, rehabilitation center.
And it would just be a front for the collection of fraudulent Medicare payments.
And there would be hundreds of fronts in one building, right?
That's, you don't find that in Minneapolis.
You find that in Miami.
Malcolm Gladwell with his book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session.
The House will vote on the final versions of legislation authorizing water infrastructure projects to be constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and to add new federal judgeships to U.S. district courts.
The Senate will continue voting on President Biden's U.S. District Court nominations.
On Tuesday, Louis DeJoy, United States Postmaster General, will testify before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the finances, performance, and ongoing efforts to modernize operations of the U.S. Postal Service.
And then on Wednesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee reviewing the Biden administration's withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
Watch next week live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of government.
Washington Journal continues.
Some time now this morning on the Washington Journal for our open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is your time to call in.
Also, want to let you know about a busy day on the C-SPAN networks today at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.
It's the reopening ceremony for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after five years of restoration after that devastating fire.
Some 40 heads of state and government and religious dignitaries are expected to be in attendance.
The president-elect Donald Trump expected to join that as well.
You can catch that live at 1 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, c-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now mobile app.
And speaking of President Trump, he will, if President-elect Trump, he will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron today ahead of that reopening ceremony.
It's his first visit abroad since winning the presidential election, of course, a month ago.
You can watch that meeting live just after this program ends at 10 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN.
It's where we're going to take you to right after we end today.
Over on C-SPAN 2 today, several programs relating to the December 7th, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the burial of a casualty from that day whose remains were identified just last year.
We're going to be showing you that ceremony as well as the live memorial ceremony at the National World War II Memorial here on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
That live ceremony, 12:50 p.m. Eastern Time.
Again, C-SPAN 2, American History TV is where you go for that.
With that, it's your calls in open form.
Edna is up first out of Chicago, a Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you today?
I'm doing well, Edna.
What's on your mind?
I have been paying attention to all of the appointments that Trump is making.
He's filling up Washington with ex-convicts and sex offenders.
He's even sending an ex-convict to represent this country in France.
Jared Kushner's father served two years in the federal prison in Alabama, and he's appointing him to serve in France.
I hope that that country will think twice before accepting the convict.
And why is he so set on getting rid of the people that come here to this country?
Some of those people, and like this previous caller said, all of those people are not ignorant.
A lot of them are very educated, but they come here and they're here 20 or 30 years and they don't speak English.
Don't they know that that's what determined when you don't understand the language?
At his rallies, he's telling them to their face that he's going to send them out of the country.
If he's going to get rid of illegal aliens, start with his wife.
She's an immigrant.
She's been here 20 years and can't speak English.
Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.
I think the First Lady can speak English.
You can watch several of her events.
The future First Lady and previous First Lady on our website, you can see several of her events, c-span.org.
Just type in Melania Trump.
This is Frank in Silver Creek, Georgia, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just got to make a comment on one of your earlier callers that talked about how Americans came to America and overthrew the Native, well, you said government and the native.
Total nonsense.
That is total nonsense.
Before 1800, most of the people that came to this country were either enslaved or they were indentured.
They were not immigrants.
Immigrants are people that come over here of their own free will.
So you need to get an understanding of what an immigrant is and what the other two, slaves and indentured.
Okay?
America has never colonized anybody.
We have never taken over a country like the Europeans have.
If you look at the history, England, they're trading companies, France, Spain, you would know that.
But unfortunately, a lot of people aren't too familiar with history and they don't really understand the history of this country.
We are a country of free enterprise and free market.
And it's our way that rebuilt this world twice after two world wars.
And now the media, and you watch what happens over the next four years, it's going to be the globe, the world is going to be anti-American.
And a lot of this was brought on by that fool that's in the White House right now.
And we need to get him out of there before he totally screws up.
That's all.
That's Frank in Georgia to the land of enchantment, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Jorge, Independent, good morning.
Good morning.
I believe that Biden should retire now and let Kamala take over.
The paths to war can be hijacked.
Our ways and weapons have been turned against us.
Let this be a warning.
American women have been and will be used again to drive war.
I call it the La Lorona complex, the loss of a son, usually in a ship for war.
Look at the Spanish American, the Lusitania, the Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin.
What happened with Clarksbuild?
It was the second attack that showed that Pearl Harbor was anticipated.
Trump tried the first time, but during COVID, it stopped because there was an aircraft carrier that they were going to put in harm's way.
Thank you.
Be very careful, America.
Jorge, how do you know there was an aircraft carrier that they were going to intentionally put in harm's way?
Last Jorge to the Green Mountain State.
This is Tom in Beddington.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I love your show.
The greater American States of America was the Philippines was made part of that.
And that was from the Spanish-American War.
And on Pearl Harbor Day, there were 30,000 dead in the Philippines.
And what about the USS Utah?
You know, it sunk too.
And like I said, I just love this program.
And please look up that United States, Greater United States of America, and it was the Philippines from the Spanish-American War.
Thank you very much.
John.
Bye-bye.
It's Tom in Vermont.
This is Mark in Florida.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
You're one of my favorites there because I really enjoy the way you challenge some of the callers.
I'm a little late to the game because I delayed my television and I wanted to speak to Ms. Sanchez, but I just have a couple things.
For all these people who call in and talk about how immigrants are being fed and provided cell phones and four-star lodging, I would ask any American, any American in the United States, if they would trade places with them.
I would ask any of them if they would do that.
And my understanding is I really don't really like the term illegal because if you set foot on this country and on our land, you're entitled to an asylum hearing.
And it isn't these people's fault that our system takes eight years to hear their case.
Thanks a lot for the time.
Mark, before you go, you said you wanted to talk to Melissa Sanchez, the reporter who had joined us from ProPublica.
What did you think of her story?
I don't know if you heard the beginning of her comments about immigrants' resentments, older immigrants' resentment over newer arrivals and what they received, especially under the Biden administration, and that helping boost Donald Trump's popularity with Latino voters, a 7% increase in Latinos breaking for Donald Trump in 2024 compared to 2020.
I just think that, you know, in general, people have short memories.
I remember the boatlift from Marielle.
I live in South Florida.
I remember the boatlift, and I can guarantee that most of those people that are assimilated now, they voted for Trump.
And they all came here illegally.
I mean, this is just like, you know, I mean, we elected the wrong, we elected the guy who said immigrants were eating cats and dogs.
We elected the wrong guy for the wrong reasons.
I'm still, I guess you can hear in my voice, I'm still not over it yet.
But I mean, I heard a caller say to Melissa, we're all immigrants.
And that's essentially true.
And the fact that we're helping immigrants doesn't mean we can't help homeless at the same time, or we can't help our veterans at the same time.
We can do all of these things.
It has to be the will, though.
John, you're great.
Thanks a lot, and have a great weekend.
That's Mark in Florida.
This is Bruce in Summitville, Indiana, independent in the Hoosier State.
Go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
The reporter who seemed to me to be blaming farmers for the work that some of the illegal immigrants were doing, that is just farm work.
I grew up on a farm.
I did the same thing the whole time I was growing up, and even after I would come back to help my dad.
And she needs to understand what she's talking about because cleaning out barns in a livestock farm, you're going to move to manure.
You're going to clean out the barn so the animals are taken care of properly.
If people don't like doing that, they can go get another job.
And it just gets very frustrating that Biden has let all these people come in, and now everyone is saying they're mistreated.
Well, especially the kids, why would parents, even though they're in bad situations where they're at, why would they have them send them on this long trip just to get in the United States?
So, and the other thing is about talking bad about the United States and everything that we do wrong.
Possibly they need to be thinking about trying to straighten out their own governments.
That's Bruce in Indiana to Miami, Florida.
About 10 minutes left in open forum.
This is Nick, Republican.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning.
I had the caller from Massachusetts that he's saying everything that was correct.
Far as America does overthrow other governments, they definitely do that.
And the caller from Georgia saying America does not overthrow occupy governments.
We've been doing it for centuries.
That's all we do.
We have bases all over this planet.
Why?
Why are we so upset when somebody else is in our country when all we do is invade other countries and take their resources?
And God forbid they set up a fight.
We label them terrorists and everything else and destroy them.
The vast majority of these bases that you're talking about, the United States military is invited to be there by some of these countries.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, but the government invited the American military to be not the people.
We never asked the people: is it okay for me to put a military base on your country, and we don't have any foreign bases in America?
That doesn't make any sense.
Why would I allow you to put a base in my country and you don't allow me to put a base in your country for my military?
Do you think we should have other countries, militaries, have bases in this country, Nick?
No, we shouldn't have bases around the world, period.
We should worry about America and American borders.
And if we want resources from that country, let's trade.
What do you have to trade?
But we don't do it anymore.
We did that before.
But now there's only what?
America, you got Russia, you got China, the three big dogs.
And anytime you want to come into your country, we have the military, we have the money to do it.
Despite what the United Nations says, we're going anyway.
That's Nick in Florida.
This is David in the land of Lincoln.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
I like to use nicknames of states.
And I just, in your first segment about Pearl Harbor, I just wanted to mention one caller talked about what civilians did in this country.
And my mother worked during the war as a riveter at a company called Bell Air Bomber, who later became Lockheed in Marietta, Georgia.
And one of the quirky things were if you were in good physical condition, they would train you.
But the main thing is they wanted good roller skaters because they had fewer trucks and the tools were at distant hangars.
And the women would roller skate out there and work on the planes.
And I have a picture of my mother and her crew.
Thank you anyway.
Nice talking to you.
And David, in that picture, are they on roller skates?
Yes, they are.
Did she still roller skate after the war?
I don't know.
What was her name, David?
Addis Holland.
David.
Thanks for telling us about Addis.
This is Albert in Stockton, California, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I'll make it quick.
So my family is very big.
I'm an Hispanic.
I'm speaking clear English.
I don't even speak Spanish, but I am Mexican.
One half of the family voted Republicans.
The other one votes Democrats.
So I'll just kind of leave it with this.
I believe Trump will build the wall and stop the fentanyl, the flood of people.
I mean, it's just too overwhelming.
It'll take management, you know, just like what I work for, property management.
They're going to, the government will manage it somehow.
There's so many people.
And any kids that are out there in the cold, I'd rather see them somewhere in, I don't care what they're surrounded with, you know, surrounded in a building with a controlled environment because everyone kind of throws that out of context.
I know what a cold fishing trip feels like.
And I don't wish it for none of those kids out there.
So I appreciate all the callers.
It goes back and forth.
You know, once again, I speak my parents do speak Spanish.
I'm from Texas.
So we made our way here.
And all my family pay taxes.
One, my sister's son, works Livermore's Lab.
I work Hispanos.
Once again, I'm speaking clear English.
And I also, last but least, believe Trump will pick up the crime.
The guy said, we need to help the homeless.
Well, let's pick up the crime.
He forgot the crime.
Let's fix the crime, fix the people.
People do come out and do well.
I know that personally.
So, anyways, I'm going to stop rambling.
And, John, I appreciate you always.
And a bird's eye view.
I get it.
From here to San Francisco, I'm out of Stockton.
I see it.
The farmland, the farmers get, it's just beautiful.
And that last comment the one lady said, and I'll leave it with this and you can hang up on me.
It was right about the people that are here.
I've heard it right from the people in the restaurants.
They don't think it's fair because everybody kind of has to go to a process.
There's every color in America.
That's why we don't have bases from all over the country.
We have everybody here.
I see it.
That's Albert in California.
This is Art in the Tar Hill State Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just would like to say I've been watching your program for quite some time and I enjoy it.
My biggest thought always is: if all these people in these other countries have such a hard time, why don't they get together like this country did 200 years ago, have a revolution, redo their country, and stay home where they belong, and then we wouldn't have so many people running across our borders.
Thanks, sir.
That is Art in North Carolina, our last caller in this open forum.
About 50 minutes left this morning, and in that time, we will turn back to this December 7th, 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We're going to be joined next by Craig Nelson, the author of the book Pearl Harbor, From Infamy to Greatness.
Stick around for that conversation.
We'll be right back.
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
At 2 p.m. Eastern, Book TV presents coverage of the 2024 Wisconsin Book Festival.
You'll hear from authors on the history of refrigeration, the foster care system, what it means to be Native American, and more.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern, we'll feature a gala held by publisher Encounter Books to honor Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Students for Fair Admissions President Edward Blum for their work advancing American ideals and academic freedom, respectively.
Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, journalist TJ English talks about the rise and fall of Los Muchachos, one of the most successful cocaine empires in U.S. history, in his book, The Last Kilo.
He's interviewed by author and Brookings Institution senior fellow Vondefellbaugh Brown.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
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The House will vote on the final versions of legislation authorizing water infrastructure projects to be constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and to add new federal judgeships to U.S. district courts.
The Senate will continue voting on President Biden's U.S. District Court nominations.
On Tuesday, Louis DeJoy, United States Postmaster General, will testify before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the finances, performance, and ongoing efforts to modernize operations of the U.S. Postal Service.
And then on Wednesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee reviewing the Biden administration's withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
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c-span 45 years and counting powered by cable 25 years ago author malcolm gladwell published his international bestseller the tipping point about how ideas and behavior spread in a society to create positive change
Sunday, on QA, Mr. Gladwell, in his follow-up, Revenge of the Tipping Point, looks at the downside of social epidemics, including the rise of opioid abuse and Medicare fraud.
These guys in the fraud task force took me to an office building in Miami, which had been divided up into hundreds of tiny closet-sized offices, each of which basically was the mailing address for a different fraudulent Medicare provider.
So you'd see this office, which was the size of a broom closet.
There'd be no one in it, or there'd be one person in it behind a desk, but their computer wouldn't be plugged in.
And on the door, there would be some placard, which said, you know, Greater Miami, you know, healthcare research center and or, you know, rehabilitation center.
And it would just be a front for the collection of fraudulent Medicare payments.
And there would be hundreds of fronts in one building, right?
That's, you don't find that in Minneapolis.
You find that in Miami.
Malcolm Gladwell with his book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
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Washington Journal continues.
Today marks the 83rd anniversary of the December 7th, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Joining us to reflect on the attack, its legacy in American history is Craig Nelson.
He's the author of the 2016 book, Pearl Harbor from Infamy to Greatness.
And Mr. Nelson, I want you to start on infamy.
What was President Roosevelt trying to tell a shocked American public on December 8th, 1941, when he said that that Sunday would be a date that would live in infamy?
Well, good morning.
Thank you so much for having me.
The entire idea of infamy comes from the fact that during World War I, which is then known as the Great War, Japan was an ally of the United States.
And we were in the middle of negotiating various treaties, including how much oil America would be exporting to Japan during this entire period before December 7th.
So Pearl Harbor came as a tremendous shock that night.
In fact, watching, excuse me, Roosevelt held his head in his hands and said, What is going to happen?
I'm going to go down in history disgraced.
People really had no idea that Japan was even capable of such a thing.
So this tremendous blow to United States prestige and thinking and military honor was really set the nation asunder and set us on a whole new path to the future.
Japan destroyed a fleet that day, but should Japan have known in December of 1941 that America was a country that could rebuild a fleet and rebuild many fleets?
Well, it's an amazing story because it comes from a number of very contradictory people, notably the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, Yamamoto.
And when you look at what actually happened from a military point of view, almost everything the Japanese did was brilliant.
But it was a win-the-battle, lose-the-war situation where Yamamoto was convinced that Americans would be so devastated by this tremendous show of Japanese force that they would give up and just let the Japanese do anything they wanted in Asia.
And of course, the reaction was quite a bit different from that.
And that's actually the surprise because Yamamoto had spent a number of years in the United States.
He'd learned English from reading biographies of his great hero, Abraham Lincoln, but he totally misjudged the character of the American people.
In the broadest strokes, this was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the numbers.
It began at 7.55 a.m. local time in Honolulu.
2,390 American service members and civilians were killed.
The attack lasted 110 minutes.
Half of the dead that day were on the USS Arizona.
Seven U.S. battleships were at Pearl Harbor.
All were either sunk or damaged, and all but two were eventually able to return to active duty.
That's the broadest strokes of the battle.
As somebody who's studied Pearl Harbor, what are some of the moments that stick out to you, the human moments, when we have one of these days of remembrance, these December 7ths?
Well, I really have to tell you that instead of just being overwhelmed by the tragedy, you can also be inspired by the heroism of Pearl Harbor.
One of the major things I discovered in research is the fact that there are 43,000 Army and Navy servicemen stationed on Oahu at that moment, and the median age was 19.
And most of the officers lived on the ground, on apartments and houses on the ground near Pearl Harbor.
So the ones who were on the ships were little kids.
You could get into the Navy at 16, and many people were trying to because it was the depths of the Depression, and you needed three hots in the cot if you got in the Navy.
So it was very popular to try and get in the Navy.
And so the people that when we talk about the people at Pearl Harbor, we're really talking about teenagers and very young kids who are trying to chase after Japanese zeros on a bicycle and are throwing wrenches because that's the only thing they have.
But we do have some incredible people who rise to the occasion of heroism and really save thousands of lives and how they oversee evacuations and how they oversee saving people out of the six inches of burning oil on the water.
Craig Nelson is our guest.
His book on Pearl Harbor came out in 2016.
His most more recent book, 2023 book, The Is for Victory, Franklin Roosevelt's American Revolution and the Triumph of World War II.
We are chatting with him until the end of our program today.
It's 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
Phone lines for you to call in.
202748-8000 if you live in the Eastern or Central time zones.
202748-8001 if you live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
And that special line for World War II veterans and their family members, we especially want to hear from you.
202-748-8003.
Craig Nelson, as folks are calling in.
In studying Pearl Harbor, is there anything about the attack on Pearl Harbor that historians don't know yet?
Are there lingering historical mysteries still?
Well, we don't really know if the 2,403 dead number is actually accurate.
We keep changing that number every year as more remains and more bodies are found.
Because the attack was so devastating, you know, men were left in dust.
So getting an actual number for that is very difficult.
It wasn't until very recently, right when I was researching this book, that we found out the chaotic state of the Japanese government.
They went through 15 prime ministers in 14 years during 1931 to 1945.
And you can see this chaos taking place over and over again with squabbling going on between the Navy and the Army and all of this.
So really, the new picture that we have about Pearl Harbor is how all this happened from the Japanese side and how, in fact, America couldn't have come up with a defensive strategy because Japan had essentially lost its mind.
Your book is From Infamy to Greatness.
Focus on the greatness side of that and when that turn was made.
So when I talk to people in the Navy about Pearl Harbor, first of all, they don't want to talk about it, but they're very upset about it.
And finally, I explained to them, I said, look, the shock to the system, to the American system that happened at Pearl Harbor is the whole reason America is the way we are today.
The whole reason we have our giant military, our powerful Navy, our tremendous Army and Air Force and Marine Corps.
The whole reason we are this international sort of king overseas in business, the reason why we haven't had a World War III in 80 years is because of how America has reacted to Pearl Harbor.
And really, the start of what we think of the United States now began at that moment.
What did they say?
Has that turned from members of the Navy not wanting to talk about it, has it changed since you were doing that research as we sit here today in 2024?
Well, I do have to say one of my greatest moments as a historian was present.
I'm surrounded.
I did a Pearl Harbor memorial at Norfolk Naval Base, which is the largest naval base in the world.
And I'm surrounded by, you know, there's little old me on the dais surrounded by admirals, like the biggest admirals in town are all there.
And I explained this whole idea that at the moment it happened, it was a huge shame.
But now we have the great Navy we know today started right then.
And a number of the admirals burst into tears.
It was an overwhelming experience.
Let me let you chat with some callers.
Armando is up first, calling from Hawaii this morning, up either very late or very early.
Armando, go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, I just wanted to share my experience.
My mother and my sister on the morning of the attack of Pearl Harbor, they were in church in downtown Honolulu.
And my mother told me that, you know, they could hear the bombing and they would go out and they went outside and they could see the building of smoke rising above Pearl Harbor.
And it was a scary thing because my mother told me they had to cover the windows with black paper at night.
You know, they had martial law and all of that.
So it was, she kind of told me.
She worked for the U.S. Army.
She was, you know, during that time.
And by the way, when they had the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I came home.
I was in school in the mainland.
I came home with a Pearl Harbor survivor.
And it was really funny because the first thing he asked me was about a bar in downtown Honolulu.
And that was a Smith Union bar where all the Arizona people hung out.
But I just wanted to share my experiences.
I live 15 minutes from Pearl Harbor, but yeah, it was a pretty scary day that morning.
Armando.
Are you going to make it down there today, or have you been to any of those remembrance ceremonies recently?
No, I've been there, man.
Usually when visitors come to Hawaii, I take them down there.
You know, I go to Pearl Harbor and I take them because I think it's very important.
And, you know, they've got the Missouri and they've got the submarine over there.
And there's a lot of interesting things to see there.
You know, because the Missouri and Arizona, as you know, there are bookends of World War II.
But one thing I would like to note also and to add was the fact that the Japanese did not destroy the dry docks.
And that was a big mistake.
They did everything perfect, but they didn't destroy the dry docks.
And that was why the United States was able to, you know, refurbish those ships and get them back into war.
I just wanted to share my experience.
Yes.
Thanks for that.
Let me let Craig Nelson jump in.
Well, thank you for saying that.
Because almost all of the Pearl Harbor survivors in the military are not with us anymore.
We historians are really relying on civilian memories, like from your family.
So I really appreciate that.
And you did bring up an important point.
One of the sort of amazing stories that happens after Pearl Harbor is that the Japanese did not destroy the dry docks where we repaired all those ships, and it didn't destroy our fuel tanks, which are very important to get everything going in time for the Battle of Midway, where the United States reversed the course of the naval battle in the Pacific and was the answer to Pearl Harbor.
He also mentioned the bookends of World War II, talking about the Arizona and the Missouri.
Is that because the Missouri was the ship where the Japanese surrender was signed on in Tokyo Bay?
Yes, absolutely.
Take us to that moment for the American Navy on the Missouri years after Pearl Harbor and what it meant for the U.S. Navy in the wake of what you already discussed, the humiliation at the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Well, the great history of the Pacific theater in World War II is called War Without Mercy, because the attack on Pearl Harbor triggered this tremendous visceral reaction across the United States.
And we sort of fought that war pretty much alone of the Allies and really pursued the Japanese with tremendous vigor.
By the time the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made, it was made on two very small cities at the time because all the other cities in Japan had been firebombed by the United States.
So I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities 63 and 64 on the target list, as I remember that number.
So at the time of the arrival of everyone to announce the surrender, Japan was pretty much in tatters.
And here America had triumphed over wars on both the Pacific and the Atlantic.
So it was quite a moment of change from 1941.
Barbara's next out of Newberry Port, Massachusetts.
Good morning.
You're on with Craig Nelson.
Hi, John.
How are you?
Doing well.
Okay, so I'm calling with a comment more than a question.
I was watching the start TV, which is sort of like rerun.
Oh, wait, sorry, not that.
It was story TV.
And it's reruns of history TV.
And they had, and I always loved that, the date that will live in infamy.
I mean, what a great way to say it.
So they were showing how he wrote the speech like the night before he gave it.
And he had it.
It was called A Day That Will Live in History.
And they actually showed the speech what he had written out.
And then that morning, like an hour or so before, he went through the speech and made edits.
And he changed it from a date that will live in history to a date that will live in infamy.
And that's how that came about.
Craig Nelson.
Yes, I have that speech, and it's one of my most thrilling possessions.
I have a Xerox of it.
And we actually have a quote from his secretary detailing how he wrote it and then changed two words, and that was it.
Which, you know, Roosevelt was a very good writer, but I didn't know he was that good.
So really terrific story of behind the scenes.
National Archives with a rundown of FDR's Day of Infamy speech and how he crafted that archives.gov.
This is the first draft that he wrote.
You can see an image of his changes that he made to the first draft in what we can put on our screen for you.
He wrote to, he had his secretary, Grace Tully, come in to write that speech.
Short though it was, they write it has become one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century.
The yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in world history, is the note that was originally taken down.
And he went on to make that famous change.
There's the original speech there.
Anwar is next out of Tacoma Park, Maryland.
Good morning.
Hello, I'd like to ask you, I guess.
I know my grandfather was there, and he told me about there was an oil embargo that the United States had placed on Japan.
And I noticed that he didn't mention that on Friday, August 1st, 1941.
The U.S. announces a ban on oil exports to aggressor countries, including Japan.
And would you not say that that was a precursor to the start of the conflict with Japan when the United States decided to keep all oil from them?
That was August, and that was way before December.
I noticed you didn't mention that when you first started.
You are absolutely right, sir.
During the 1930s, America was the Saudi Arabia for Japan.
We supplied 80% of her oil.
And when Japan started attacking the Chinese, who they treated pretty much the way the Nazis treated the Jews, the Japanese treatment of the Chinese, Roosevelt and many people in America got very upset about this because we had a special relationship with China and the Chinese.
We sort of felt like they were a little brother.
So he decided to attack them, try to change Japan's behavior by using economic sanctions on scrap metal and petroleum.
And he came up with a system where Japan had to apply for licenses to import the petroleum, which means it could be shut down at any time.
And FDR liked this idea because he felt like he could have sort of a noose around the Japanese and yank on it when he needed to.
And then when he went off to Argentia to meet with Churchill, behind his back, Morgenthau at Treasury and Atchison at state sort of changed the rules of the game so that they were essentially embargoing all oil from Japan.
Roosevelt had let Japan have most of its oil that could not be used for military and was holding back on the military.
They cut back on all of it.
And the Japanese felt that we were being pushed into a corner, and that was a great deal.
But the underlying reason for the attack of Pearl Harbor was the fact that Japan was launching one of the greatest military strikes in history, where she was going to take over all of the European colonies in Asia from Indo-China to Kamchatka.
And really, the attack on Pearl Harbor was merely a minor protecting of her flank while she had this huge operation going on.
So it was those two things that really led to the Japanese attack.
Pauling New York is next.
Dave, good morning.
That line for World War II veterans and family members.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
I think this is a great show you're doing this morning.
I have a question for Mr. Nelson.
My father was in World War II, and he was on a ship that got sunk somewhere in the South Pacific.
And we as a family know very little about the events of his life.
I was just wondering, there must be a way where I could possibly find some records of where he was.
It just dawned on me.
I said, well, why don't I try to service?
I mean, I'm 77 years old, but it just dawned on me that I would like to have a look at that.
I know he tells one story.
He was very tight-lipped about the whole war thing.
Nobody spoke of anything.
He was a boxer.
He got malaria over and that ended his boxing career.
But he did tell a story of when the ship got sunk, a horrible story.
He pushed out his best friend.
They started service together, I guess.
And he was a goner.
But then I guess they got to shore and somehow somebody showed up with mail after a couple days.
And it was just when they had another wave of bombing.
And he said the sky was lit.
You could read the newspaper.
And he got a letter from GMAC telling him that they were going to make big trouble for him.
Like, I'm sure that had an impact at the time.
But if you could answer that question, I would certainly appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, thank you so much for calling in and sharing that story.
One thing that I came to believe was that pretty much every man who served and woman who served in World War II ended up with a version of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which they tried to cure for themselves by not talking about anything.
In fact, my father was stationed in New Guinea as part of the Army Air Corps, and he survived a Japanese strike and had to clean up the bodies of his dead friends.
And the first time I heard about it was because I started writing books on World War II.
He never mentioned a word to me about this until I was practically 50 years old.
But as far as your direct question goes, you can go onto archives, A-R-C-H-I-V-E-S.org.
That is the National Archives, one of the great treasures of our country.
And you should start putting in the name of your father and any details you can think of and start from there.
And they will bring up all of the Department of War and Navy Department information out of that one source.
Good luck to you.
How did that story come out of your father?
Do you remember when he told you that story and why?
He just would lead for decades.
We would say, if I said anything about World War II, he would just gloss over it, not say anything.
It finally popped up with his story.
I was stunned, frankly.
And we have pictures from all of this, too.
It's just amazing, but he didn't feel comfortable.
They were protecting their families from the gruesome, horrible things that happened to them, really.
Matt in Washington, good morning.
You're next with Craig Nelson.
Hey, good morning.
I always wanted to ask a Pearl Harbor expert this question.
So it's pretty well known that Hitler was a fan of the United States of America and its early sort of colonialization or colonization of Native Americans.
And he was even surprised.
It's a fact that Hitler was surprised that we, as the United States, as the United States, joined the Allies and sort of joined Europe.
And do you think, especially given the sort of socialist national socialist Sort of support and movement in a lot of parts of the United States in the 30s.
Do you think it's possible that the United States would have joined Germany and or Japan if we hadn't been bombed by Pearl Harbor or bombed during Pearl Harbor?
So, this is a great question because it's the major part of the topic of the other book that our host brought up, Veas for Victory.
But so, this is a story that begins, in fact, with a number of people wanting us to join the Nazis, notably Charles Lindbergh and an organization that started out as college kids protesting against the draft, just like in Vietnam, was called America First.
And they pretty much tried to counter whatever Roosevelt wanted to do in trying to help Europe.
People in America were very bitter after World War I.
They really felt we'd been suckered into fighting that war, and they were completely hostile to it.
And even as one country after the next fell in World War II, at the start of World War II, we didn't want to get involved in any European wars, as they were called then.
But all the time that this was going on, the Nazis were attacking our shipping in the Atlantic.
Yeah, our shipping back to England and Europe in the Atlantic.
And sooner or later, there was going to be a major loss of American life because of that sort of underground war going on in the Atlantic.
So the Pearl Harbor that triggered everything and really ended America First.
America First, by the way, was the source of the rumor that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor ahead of time, which is not true.
But anyway, that ended the conflict that was going on in America between what were known as the interventionists and the isolationists.
So you are right in one way that Pearl Harbor really turned the corner on that debate, but in another, at any moment, something would have happened in the Atlantic and we would have entered World War II because of that.
You touched briefly earlier on Franklin Roosevelt that day after the attack and his reaction to the attack.
I want to show a video that is airing later today in its entirety on American history TV, but it's First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
She had recorded her memories about Pearl Harbor and what happened that day in the White House.
She recorded them in the 1950s.
This is the audio recording.
It's about a minute and a half long.
I want to play it for viewers.
I thought him looking very strained and tired, but he was completely calm.
His reaction to any great event was always to be calm.
If it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg.
And there was never the slightest emotion that was allowed to show.
While I was very conscious of his tremendous strain, the first thing I noticed was this deadly calm.
And then almost the first thing he said to me was with great bitterness and anger that actually he had hardly finished talking to the Japanese envoys when this was being done in Pearl Harbor.
Beyond that, I had a sense that bad though the news was, and horrible as it was to face, that he was, on a whole, almost relieved to know the worst that had to be faced, and that this country could eventually meet it.
And this kind of Feeling was something one always expected of him.
I have never known him not to be ready to face the worst that could happen, but always to be hopeful about the solution that could be found.
If you want to hear more from that recording, American History TV on C-SPAN 2 tonight, 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Craig Nelson, what did you take from that?
Well, it's always fantastic to hear that sort of floaty Northeastern seaboard voice.
Yes, and remember that's what the Roosevelts talk like.
And I love being able to spend time with both her and him.
It's an incredible story.
But one thing that really is missing from that description is the fact that Roosevelt was the biggest Navy guy you ever met in your life.
He'd been Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson.
He frequently had people meet him in bed because he was paralyzed, wearing his blue Navy cloak.
He would call the Navy us and the Army them until George Marshall made him cut it out.
And in one of his offices, there were two portraits.
One was his mother and one was John Paul Jones.
So the idea that Roosevelt would have started all this with a loss of 2,400 men and the Navy is really beyond even contemplating.
So that is how horrible he felt.
First, that he had let them down, that he didn't do a good job protecting the American people, and that it happened to his beloved Navy.
So that's really how upset and enraged he really was at that moment.
Just about 20 minutes left with Craig Nelson.
I'll remind our viewers that after this program on C-SPAN, we're going to take viewers to Paris, France.
President-elect Donald Trump is visiting with French President Emmanuel Macrone today ahead of the reopening ceremony for the newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral.
You can see the honor guard preparing for the arrival ceremony there.
Stick around here on C-SPAN.
That's where we'll take you after this program.
Back to your phone calls.
This is Sarah in Conover, North Carolina.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My dad went in World War II.
He went in 41 and stayed there to 45.
He never talked about it.
The only thing I ever heard him say about the military, Americans should be ashamed the way they treated the Vietnam veterans.
That's all I ever heard him say.
We should be ashamed.
You have a great day.
Mr. Nelson.
Well, one of the amazing things to look at is that before Pearl Harbor, the United States military was really in a terrible state of disrepair.
At one point before the draft, we only had 135,000 guys in the Army.
We had 300 planes in the Army Air Corps.
We were supposed to defend against the Nazi horde with these paltry items.
People were still, troops were still using pie plate helmets, which you'll remember if we look at pictures of World War I. You can see those and how I guess they would protect the top of your skull and nothing else.
And they were given Springfield rifles from 1903.
So a great deal of the effect of Pearl Harbor was waking people up from this sad state.
We were 14th in power in the world.
We were ahead of Bulgaria.
So that's where we started from leading up to World War II.
Wilmington, Delaware, Jim is next.
Good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, Jim.
You're on with Craig Nelson.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, I'm old enough.
I remember World War II.
And I don't remember the start of it, but I remember during the war, everyone was involved.
And, you know, they told you when you could have your lights on.
I remember the ration books that we had.
And when we were I remember we would have, you know, gun gum wrappers, stuff like that.
We would peel the tinfoil off, and that was used as chafe.
It was taken to a collection center, and it was used as chafe for the bombers to fool the German radar over Germany.
And so I remember that.
I had two uncles that were in war.
My wife had two uncles that were in the war.
And I just'm very emotional about it because of January 6th, it was like, I feel like watching my mother's house being burned down.
So that's why I'm emotional about it.
Thank you.
Mr. Nelson, any thoughts?
Well, thank you for that story about the gun wrappers, because that was known as CHAF, and they would put it out and interfere with radar, but it also made it look to radar like a much bigger invasion of airplanes was happening than was actually going on.
And they used this to fantastic effect in Normandy, where they made the Germans think that Americans were allies were sending in a giant force of flames, of planes far away from the Normandy beaches.
To James, on that line for World War II veterans and their families in Ohio.
Good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, James.
You're on with Craig Nelson.
Okay.
I just wanted to call in this morning.
I was 13 when Pearl Harbor was born, and I become a World War II veteran, one of the last of the 16,000, there are 16 million World War II veterans.
I got in in the mid-50s or the 60s in the early 46, and I served on about six different ships.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps and served with the Navy all the time I was in.
I was on the flagship and went over to North Africa and got on a new heavy cruiser and later got discharged when Israel become a state.
I was on a five-inch on a heavy cruiser in the fleet, 7th Fleet and the 8th Marines when Israel became a state.
And I got discharged in 1948 in August of 48, and I was recalled to Korea in 1950 and 52.
James, what do you remember about that day and how did you hear about Pearl Harbor?
Well, we were in school and we wasn't in school, but the next day after Sunday, we were in school on Monday, and we didn't hear too much about it on Sunday because we had just had radio and radio wasn't too good back then.
You had a hard time of listening to the radio.
You didn't get too much radio.
And we didn't get any information of it until we was in school the next day on the eighth day.
And did you hear the President's speech on the 8th?
Oh, yes.
Would you think of that?
I remember.
I'll be 96 my birthday.
And I was born in late 20s.
And I remember all of the Depression.
And I grew up in the Depression.
And Grew up during and going to school during.
I only went to the eighth grade because I wanted to get into the military as soon as I could.
And I had to wait till I was 17.
I just turned 17 when I went into the Marine Corps.
And it was kind of a difficult life growing up in the Depression and through the war.
And then a lot of these historians trying to tell about it.
If you lived through it, it was a different story than what most of these historians know about because the things that we've done, nobody seems to realize that we were hungry and we had to go through the Depression before the war.
And then after the war, people didn't particularly interested in talking about the war because all they wanted to do was get into a family and raise a family and build a house and have a family.
Most of us, that's all we wanted to do.
And that's all I wanted to do once I got out, build a house and get a family.
And I have a fine family now.
I have a son and a daughter.
My son died with pancreatic cancer when he was 50.
And I still have my daughter.
And I have 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren and one great-great-granddaughter.
So I've lived through a lot of things I could tell you about, but these historians don't always get the story.
If you live through it, you know what happened.
James, thanks for the call from Ohio.
Let's talk again next Pearl Harbor Day next year.
How's that, James?
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Craig Nelson.
So I agree with you, James.
Thank you so much for sharing your remarkable life.
And in my research on the Depression, what I thought was missing was, you know, our memory of the Depression is of that people in breadlines wearing their nice overcoats and nice Hamburg hats, and it looks pretty good.
In my research, I found out the Depression was just an incredibly gruesome time with stories such I can't even tell you all of them, but one of the most memorable till T is about a little girl's in school, and she's 12 years old, and she just starts crying and crying.
And the teacher says, What's the matter, Hungry Honey?
And the little girl says, I'm so hungry, I can't even listen to what you're saying.
And the teacher says, Well, it's okay.
You can go home and eat.
And she goes, I can't.
It's my sister's turn to eat.
So that's how serious things were during the Depression.
To James's comments, do you think people can imagine a time in which an event like Pearl Harbor could happen, and you wouldn't learn about it until the next day?
Well, I think that you can make a direct parallel with 9-11, the destruction of the World Trade Center.
We didn't really understand what was going on for a number of days.
So maybe things haven't changed that much.
Roger in Nebraska, good morning, World War II veterans and their families.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm a veteran, but I got a couple comments.
My dad, my uncle, was in World War II.
But I'd like to first say that your guest was talking about the condition of the military before World War II.
That ought to be a warning to everybody and not let our military get in that condition, which I think it's kind of headed that way right at the present time.
Also, like I say, my dad, my uncle joined the Army the same time.
My dad was lucky enough to be shipped to Trinidad, where he spent the entire war just, I guess, guarding the beach, which was, you know, lucky for us, lucky for him.
My uncle ended up in the Army Air Corps as a gunner and one of the bombers.
He was wounded and spent a lot of time in the VA hospitals in his lifetime.
So, you know, I guess it's just the luck of a draw.
But thankfully for our immediate family, dad was lucky enough not to have to go into combat.
And so I'd say, you know, I mean, he was talking about the Depression.
My dad grew up in the Depression.
Some of the stories he tells, used to tell, would just make your hair stand up on end.
And so, you know, people really don't realize what things were like in those days.
So anyway, thank you and thank your guest.
Thanks, Roger.
Craig Nelson, in about 10 minutes, we're expecting President-elect Donald Trump to meet with Emmanuel McCrone.
It's the President-elect's first overseas trip since the election last month.
Any thoughts on the importance of the U.S.-French relationship, comparisons today to that time at the end of World War II and the beginning years of the Cold War?
Well, we have such an up-and-down relationship with the French, with the Americans, as it's an up-and-down relationship.
I remember when they wouldn't join us for the war in Iraq under President Bush, and so we tried to change the name of French fries to something else.
Freedom fries, I remember.
Freedom Fries, that's it.
That's right.
But at the same time, they were our great ally in the war against the British for independence.
They've been great allies in many times during many wars over the years.
And we really have, even though people talk about the special relationship we have with the British, we also have a very special relationship with France.
So I certainly hope we keep it that way.
France is going through its own political turmoil right now.
So there may be some excitement over this trip to Notre Dame, which it looks like they did an incredible job with that.
The pictures from that are just incredible.
And we'll see the inside of that.
You can watch it on C-SPAN at 1 p.m. Eastern today.
That's when we'll be airing that ceremony live.
40 heads of state, government officials, religious dignitaries, religious leaders and dignitaries will be there.
I hope viewers join us here on C-SPAN to watch that.
A few minutes left with Craig Nelson this morning.
Rick in Iowa, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
You know, I'm down in my basement right now.
I'm looking at, we have two papers framed here.
Both are from Minneapolis, and they came out of my wife's grandmother's attic when she passed.
And I often wondered about all the things that went on.
So I appreciate everybody's input this morning.
One of them says Japs declare war on U.S. and the other one actually is war over official from Truman.
And it's interesting because it has the, you know, where the Marines are pushing up the flag.
I'm not certain exactly where that was, but they show all the pictures of those folks.
Was it Iwo Jima?
Was it the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima?
Yes.
And they have all the soldiers there on that.
That is from the Minneapolis Daily Times.
And then the Japs declare war on U.S. That's from St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Express.
And of course, December 7th.
But there's something here that's mentioned.
I'm curious if your guests would comment on it.
It says arrest of Japs ordered.
Colonel Charles B. Borland, Norfolk Director of Public Safety, immediately ordered the arrest of all Japanese nationals in this strategic naval center Sunday as soon as he learned of the Japanese attacks on the United States Pacific bases.
There's other headlines on this 350 killed Navy battle reported off highway.
Yeah, it's just, it makes your hair stand up as you sit here and look at this and then listen to everybody's input this morning.
So, yeah, I was just curious if you had any input on that.
So there was an entire history of the Nazis sending in saboteurs and intelligence agents and spies into countries they were going to invade.
So when the Japanese attacked on Pearl Harbor, many in America immediately had this fearful reaction that they were coming to invade here or that they had saboteurs already in place.
So notably all across the West Coast was where the local general in defense of the United States demanded all the way up through the federal government that the Japanese on the West Coast had to be interned.
And he ended up arranging for 110,000 of them to be interned, which was a financial boom for the American farmers there, the Caucasian farmers, to take over the Japanese farms when they were interned.
But anyway, but in fact, in Hawaii, there was no Japanese being interned.
There was something like almost a third of the population, and it would have collapsed the state of Hawaii or the territory of Hawaii, excuse me.
So while no one was interned in Hawaii except for direct officials of the Japanese government that were there at the time, 110,000 were interned on the West Coast.
Time for just one or two more calls before this ceremony in Paris is set to get underway.
It's the arrival ceremony for President-elect Trump, meeting with Emmanuel Macrone, the Honor Guard lined up there.
This is Bill in Florida, North Palm Beach.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Bill, you with us?
Then we will go back to the Hawkeye State.
Floyd is in Iowa.
Go ahead.
Floyd, did we lose you as well?
I'm not finding out about it.
There we go.
The USS Pueblo, a U.S. Navy ship, attacked off the coast of North Korea in international waters.
We didn't find out about that one for a while.
That's no surprise.
North Koreans, one of our deadliest enemies.
But the one that threw me off for a long time was the USS Liberty, attacked off the coast of, I think it was Egypt, in the international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean, 8 June 1967.
We didn't find out about that until at least 10 years after it happened.
And the attacker that really threw me off, Israel, IDF.
That attack went on for hours.
They knew they were deliberately attacking American.
I couldn't hardly get over it.
Does your guest have anything to say about that?
Please, thank you.
I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that, but I can tell you that Roosevelt was very upset at Pearl Harbor that American spirits would be destroyed if they knew how horrible the attack on Pearl Harbor was.
So he deliberately withheld a great deal of the information about it.