Sea Control - Sea Control 255 - Littoral Access Companies with Zach Ota

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Links1. “Littoral Access Companies,” by Zach Ota, Marine Corps Gazette, February 2021.2. “Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations,” by USMC, 2020.3. “Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment,” USMC, 2017.4. Solomon Islanders in World War II: An Indigenous Perspective, Anna Annie Kwai, Australian National University Press, 2017.5. “Sleeper Cell Logistics,” by Michael Sweeny, Marine Corps Gazette, January 2021.6. Civil Affairs: Soldiers Became Governors, by Albert Weinberg and Harry Coles, Center of Military History, 1986. 

Hey folks, Jared here. I've talked about our feed. I'm going to keep talking about it. There are two existing Sea Control feeds out there. The one you want to be listening to is labeled simply Sea Control. It includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. That's Sea Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast. That's where you want to be. Please subscribe, rate, and review. Today we've got Walker Mills hosting. He's joined by Zach Oda, a fellow Marine and a Regional Affairs Officer, to talk about littoral access companies.

This episode was edited and produced by Marie Williams. Please check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We've partnered with Transcom for a call for articles related to strategic sea lift. If you want to get your idea in front of some flag officers, this is your big chance. For more information, check out our website, simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And on that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. This week, we're talking with Major Zach Oda, a U.S. Marine and author of the award-winning essay, Littoral Access Companies. The essay placed first in the Marine Corps Gazette 2020 Lieutenant Colonel Pete Ellis Contest and ran in the February edition of the print magazine. Today, we're going to be talking about the recent essay, The Second World War Coast Watchers and the Future of Marine Forces in the Pacific. Zach, can you go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure thing, Walker. Great to be here, and I'm glad to be a guest on your podcast. My name is Zach Ota. As you mentioned, I'm an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps.

I'm also a Southeast Asia regional affairs officer. I'm currently working at the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific out here in Hawaii. Awesome. We're excited to have you on here. Thanks for coming on the podcast again. Before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and obviously should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we're associated with. So to kind of get us started, you know, I hope that some of our listeners write your essay because I think it's really good and timely. Can you introduce us to it?

Could you give us kind of a summary for those who haven't read it? Give us the main argument and kind of the basic premise about what you're writing about. The premise for my article is that our allies and partners are greatest asymmetrical advantage

against foreign authoritarian powers. My argument for littoral access companies is that we can and we must harness the capabilities of our international affairs marines to build really relevant tactical linkages on key maritime terrain throughout the AO. And so maybe I should ask a little more specifically,

so what is a Littoral Access Company? What is this idea that you've come up with? Sure, so a Littoral Access Company, as I envision it, is a part of the Marine Information Group, the MIG, in each MEF, but specifically in 1 and 3 MEF. And what they do is they task organize specific capabilities. And what I'm thinking of is international affairs experience, language and cultural experience, and possibly some civil affairs expertise to deploy persistently in small teams on key maritime terrain throughout the region so that we can then use them as nodes or connecting files to key allies and partners in the region. And what was kind of your inspiration for this idea or what were you working on the time that kind of sparked this?

Oh, well, as you know, I'm an international affairs Marine myself. I had just completed school at the Naval Postgraduate School and we had moved out here to Hawaii to start our new job. So one, you know, we have a view of Pearl Harbor and of Oahu from where we're staying. So I think just by osmosis, I kind of started thinking about all these ideas and the history behind this location. But also too, probably, you know, sitting on some cardboard furniture and some camp furniture got me thinking about expeditionary bases and our austere posture overseas and how we can best replicate that across the AO. No, I totally buy that. I think that it's, you know, sometimes when you're doing something a little bit expeditionary yourself, it tickles the brain

a little bit. And I should be clear with our listeners. We do know each other from your time at NPS, I was at the Foreign Language Institute, and we overlapped a little bit there. So you mentioned Pearl Harbor and being close to Pearl Harbor. Obviously, Pearl Harbor features in your in your essay. So what's the what's the connection there? And how do you talk about Pearl Harbor? Yeah, you know, I think it's a really interesting connection, actually, to the current day. You know, we always think about Pearl Harbor as this massive failure in imagination and preparedness. And, you know, it was a catastrophe in many ways. But I also think it's important to remember and to recognize that the military leaders that were here in place prior to December 7th, 1941, really thought that they were prepared for the next high end conflict. They had thought their acquisitions, their equipment, their technology, their posture of forces was as ready and as relevant as it could be for the oncoming fight.

And they invested very heavily in material solutions, in manpower and fiscal balancing to make sure the weight of the effort was here in the Pacific. But as we all know, advantage of that preparedness was erased in the blink of an eye. So I think it's important to remember, you know, as we ourselves go through another revision and a force modernization effort, we need to realize and remember that we're not perfect and the enemy has a vote and whatever we purchase and wherever we posture our forces, that situation could change very dynamically. I totally agree. And I really appreciated that you kind of started that way in the essay, because I knew that you had written this piece, our kind of senior podcast. So Jared mentioned that we want to check it out. I knew it was in the magazine. I actually got my copy right here. Checked it out. And then it was talking about, you know, he's talking about Pearl Harbor. And I was like, this is not exactly what I expected. But I think you're you're totally right that that's an impressive takeaway that you're able to put on put on the rear that these guys, they thought they had it all right. They weren't caught unprepared in the sense that they didn't know the threat was out there. They were caught unprepared because they didn't know how to address it, I guess. You're exactly right. And I think, you know, it's interesting for me to contrast that with some of the other responses in the region.

You know, I look at Australia in particular, you know, obviously a different geopolitical and geostrategic outlook, different circumstances for Australia in 1941 versus America. You know, they're already in the war in Europe and in North Africa in a lot of ways, but with an eye, obviously, to the Pacific. And so I think it was an interesting contrast on ways to prepare, ways to kind of secure yourself against some of these emerging threats. And they chose to invest in human capabilities and a network of people across the region to build their security bubble, if you will, in their northern approaches. So very different approaches. You know, none of them outright rejected material advantages or technology. Everybody realizes this is a competition across all efforts, but they weighed their efforts due to some circumstances in the people, specifically in the northern approaches of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I mean, that's the Coast Watcher organization that they had put together, you know, in the pre-war.

Yeah, so the Coast Watcher program writ large was an effort begun in 1921 by the Royal Australian Navy to do just that, observe and secure their northern approaches to the country. Obviously, that's where their security focus is, tourist straits and those critical littoral areas. So this effort was taken even well before World War II. But in the early years of the Pacific War, it really accelerated. And they invested much more heavily in those locations I mentioned, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, to expand their network of people that were originally intended just to observe and report adversary movements, specifically the Japanese Navy. But I think what they found in the early days of the war is that these Coast Watchers, you know, built local relationships, built partnerships with the people that are around them. And I think a lot of that was natural, you know, when you're there and haven't been there for a while, you start to build those networks of people that you can trust and rely on.

And they found that those networks are really multipurpose in nature. You know, although they did primarily observe and report, you know, they could be used for recovering down aviators, logistical resupply, relaying messages, conducting irregular attacks behind enemy lines, a whole wide range of capabilities that were built upon that relationship with the people that lived in those key areas. If I understand right, I mean, what you're really pushing for is kind of a sustained presence of human capital in these areas. And then that kind of builds a network. And you mentioned it's not just that these guys were doing reconnaissance and early warning of Japanese ship movements and aircraft, but they were also able to support U.S. and Australian efforts in material ways as well. Yeah, 100 percent correct. And, you know, my wife always jokes about me for my fascination with maps.

I think you may share a same fascination. Absolutely. But, you know, the world isn't changing too much when it comes to geography and terrain. And I think one of the huge advantages that the allies have or that our allies and partners have is that we are on those key maritime choke points throughout the region. And our allies and partners are there right now. And, you know, pending drastic geopolitical or geographic changes, you know, nothing that's going to remain the same in the next conflict. So if we can have that same foresight that the Royal Australian Navy had and the Coast Watchers had and look out into the future and see that key networks and those relationships are going to be vital for a wide range of operations and contingencies, then we should invest in them now so that they are sustained, they're persistent, and we can put the right people there to develop those relationships.

Zach, how is kind of what you're proposing different than the way the Marine Corps already uses foreign area officers and already uses civil affairs? And maybe give us a little bit of background on how those communities are utilized within the Marine Corps. Yeah, sure. That's a tough question because there are so many broad assignments right now for foreign area officers, regional area officers, which I am one, and civil affairs Marines. You know, there's a lot of dialogue now about, you know, how can we best employ these capable and talented individuals? How can we organize ourselves more appropriately? And, you know, from my perspective, just having been in the community only a couple of years, you know, we have a wide range of requirements across the world that we use foreign area officers and regional area officers and foreign area staff and COs as well to fill. So, you know, those range from everything. They could be working as a Marine attache or in the security cooperation offices in the embassy or as a personal exchange officer, as you're familiar with, or a wide range of requirements that we as a service have and we as a DOD have to fill.

And what I'm proposing is that we take those capabilities, one, we organize them a little bit differently than we have before. We organize them into a tactical unit at the MEF level with the intention of persistently forward staging or forward deploying or forward basing them on these key areas. But really, the crux of it is organizing them to be of tactical benefit to the MEFs and other units. And I think that's something that hasn't really been given much thought. You know, we always kind of think of FAOs, RAOs, FASAs as, you know, at the strategic or operational or, you know, the diplomatic level. There are these folks in the MSCs, broken agreements, arranging meetings, translating, you know. Probably the most common way we see FAOs and RAOs get employed is, you know, just using their language skills to translate their exercises or something of that manner. And what I'm proposing is a much more expansive, but also much more tactically focused organization that does some of those things.

You know, they could interface with the embassy, original offices, or at the diplomatic and strategic level. But they are also bridging that gap between what happens at the tactical level, the relationships that we develop through security cooperation exercises and training events and exchanges. And they sustain that throughout time to really give us a touch point, a critical access point for any range of contingencies in the future. I understand, you know, working here in Columbia, your kind of characterization as most FAOs and RAOs in the Marine Corps, at least, is these kind of embassy bees. And then you've got the exchanges that are kind of at the far end of the tether and don't really then report back and feed the Marine Corps. So I think that you've kind of identified this gap at the tactical level, how the Marine Corps is using its foreign affairs expertise. But I guess then the question becomes, where do you get that from? Do we need to make more in the Marine Corps FAOs and RAOs or kind of shift resources away from the embassy?

How do we get there? What's the actionable steps, I guess? Yeah, you're totally right. And this is where the knife fight comes. You know, when it comes to laying down money, laying down people, laying down requirements and boat spaces, this is where it always becomes difficult. And I just briefly touched on it in the article, you know, with a kind of a proposed task organization of what these forces could look like and, you know, a great structure for them. You're right. You know, I think it can appear to be a heavy investment. You know, an organization led by a lieutenant colonel with a bunch of majors and captains and staff and CEOs in it on its surface seems like a big commitment. And it definitely is a big commitment in personnel and their capabilities. But what I think we'll find as we explore this topic more is that those capabilities and those people already exist.

And in many ways, those folks want to serve in some of these roles, but we just don't have the mechanism really to keep them coming back, you know, to get them on a command slating track or to harness their capabilities on subsequent utilization tours. You know, the folks at PLU-8, I think, are doing a great job with the program, and they're bringing in some really talented people and really knowledgeable folks, you know, yourself included. But I think the challenge really becomes tracking and creating career paths for these folks that want to do these jobs and can give the Marine Corps a huge benefit in the future. But right now they're managing primary military occupation, especially monitors. They're managing key billets. They're managing time in the fleet, first time in B billets or additional duties. So what I hope to do in the future is create a path for these very talented and capable folks to serve in some of these very tactically relevant jobs. Working at IndoPaycom, I assume you've been able to kind of rub shoulders with some of the Army and the Navy FAOs.

And obviously they manage their foreign officer communities a little bit differently. My understanding is they have kind of a permanent FAO path. Do you think that's something that would be advantageous for the Marine Corps? And maybe provide some context for the listeners about how the Marine Corps FAOs go kind of in and out of the FAO track. Yeah, that's a great point, Walker. We approach it in a unique manner. Some services have what you call like a single track foreign area officer professional development course. So once you become a FAO in those services, you stay a FAO and you do FAO jobs for the rest of your career.

I think it has strengths and weaknesses. The primary strength is that you get to harness those capabilities and harness those skills all the way through the rest of your career. You can build upon the language you have, build upon the regional experience you have, build upon the travel and postings you have. I think one of the weaknesses, though, is that that information, those capabilities don't often come back into the parent organization or the parent branch or the parent field, but they are utilized quite well. We in the Marine Corps are what we call dual track. So, for example, I'm an infantry officer, got my education, became a regional area officer in my utilization tour here now, but will most likely go back to infantry and kind of bounce back between those two career paths. for as long as i'm a u.s marine and you hit on a great point you know their strength in that model is that you blend this knowledge and bring this knowledge back to the community and back to

your uh military occupational specialties but it makes it hard to really harness those folks and harness their capabilities for subsequent utilization tours going forward and you're completely right you know me and my buddies in our personal capacity we always talk about which one would be better you know grass is always green do you want to go single track do you want to go double track dual track it is a challenge and i think it's not a problem that i can just solve alone you know i think we as international affairs marines really need uh to comprehensively look at the strengths and weaknesses and figure out uh you know if we're doing things the best way and can we do them better and just for our listeners when when zach says uh the education um usually

for marine is in the in the feo community it's the no master's degree at the naval postgraduate with school, and then language support at the Defense Language Institute, which is also in Monterey. Zach, I'll ask, do you see that the littoral access companies model that you're proposing, is that just kind of a fix specifically for Indo-PACOM? And obviously your historical analogies are all in PACOM, or is this something that you'd like to see in other regions as well? Great question. You're completely right. My background, my experience is in the Pacific primarily, so I focus there. It's the problems that I know and I'm probably more familiar with. And I think in the Pacific, it's very relevant. And that's why I wanted to focus my efforts there first. And being here at MARFORPAC, it's kind of the nexus of all those things I discuss. and to get to your original point uh you know two-thirds of the Marine Corps is in the Indo-Pacific so I think if we start there and focus there the majority of the Marine Corps is going to go in

that direction but I think you're right you know uh there's no region why we couldn't regionally align to MEF to some of uh key littoral terrain you know in Europe Africa's UCC fit I think it applies to wherever the focus of the mef is and i know that's been a point of debate you know do we align all the mefs one way or the other do we build regional capabilities and regional focus within our subordinates one way or the other but i think wherever that conversation goes this concept can follow with it okay that makes a lot of sense yeah that you as you pitched it kind of a mef aligned tactical force and so then it would it would regionally align with the mef and so now I got to ask, we just saw this past week, the release of the tentative manual for Expeditionary

Advanced Base Operations, which we've been waiting on for a while. You know, if you've been able to take a look at it, or just with what you know about EABO, how does this, your littoral access companies kind of align with or help support or help enable something like Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations? First off, big kudos to the team at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, you know, that was a big lift. And I'm really glad they got off the ground. I've just been able to skim through it and read the NIPR version of it, the unclassified version of it. And I think it's really good things and it's going in the right direction and it's pulling the Marine Corps in the right direction as well. You know, I think

this concept really does support EABO because one of the critical requirements for an Expeditionary advanced base is access to where your expansionary advanced base is going to be. And I think this is a critical enabler that allows EABs to happen and to persist and to be successful. You know, just like in the Guadalcanal case study, you can get there and you can put forces there, how much support they have, though, could sway decision of the balance in the course of the war. So I think this is an enabling concept to EAB and some of our other war fighting concepts like a littoral operations and contested environment. It really builds those relationships that you can plug EABs into in the future, helps EABs to be honestly persistent, survive in some of these

very contested spaces, should there be a high-end conflict. And even in short of conflict, it just helps us get access to the places we need, use the relationships that exist to our best advantage, and make sure we're doing so in ways that are consistent with our values as the United States. Right. It's in the name, Littoral Access Companies. That's what, you know, it's providing the concept, I think. Yeah. Keep it simple. Zach, I want to shift back to the essay specifically. And one of the things that I thought was cool is you talk specifically about one Coast Watcher and you tell a little bit about his story, Honorary Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Jacob Vooza. And I'm maybe mispronouncing that name. Can you tell us a little bit about that story and how you found out about it? Okay, so talk about Sergeant Major Sir Jacob Bauza, who was really emblematic, I think, of the Indigenous perspective and the Indigenous effort on Guadalcanal. He was born and raised on Guadalcanal. He served in the armed constabulary of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate before the war, and actually retired in 1941. But with the onset of the war, he decided to help the Royal Australian Navy Coast Watchers that were in the area.

And specifically, he worked with an officer named Martin Clemens, who was the Royal Australian Navy Coast Watcher in the region. I focus on him because I think his experience, one, is very well known amongst the islander community and is also emblematic of the sacrifices and the great lengths to which these indigenous peoples contributed to our success in that operation. he particularly went through great hardship to support the allied effort and the united states marine corps in particular so when the first marine division landed on guadalcanal in august 1942 he was already associated with the coast watcher program there and he had found out about pending attack by the imperial japanese army so he endured torture capture by the the japanese forces escape capture you know was bayoneted and wounded several times but escaped capture and made it to the lines of second time first marines and actually warned them of that impending

attack and you know by doing so gave the allies a huge advantage for his actions he was kind of recognized by general vandergrift the cg of first mardiv he was awarded the silver star like you mentioned he was made an ordinary sergeant major in the marine corps and really remained a lifelong my friend of the Marines, you know, he even came back to the first Marine Division Association Ball in 1968, was buried in his Marine Corps uniform and so forth. And I think he is emblematic of the experience, but he was definitely not the only one to have an experience like that. I think there were many, many additional local forces that serve a similar distinction. And I really have to credit Annie Kwai, whose readings I stumbled across as I was developing this story.

and she really uh attuned me to the local and indigenous perspective because we often hear about you know the australian perspective or the uh united states perspective on guadalcanal and i thought it was really fascinating and really interesting that she got focused so heavily on uh what people in guadalcanal did during that time and what some of their motivations were uh so i have to give great credit to her to one uh gun smoke my my whole unit yeah i thought you'd like that yeah but uh no i i think that's a really important thing that comes out in your essay is that the coast watchers it was this a lot of indigenous contributions to to the fight and obviously and you say this it wasn't just guadalcanal but this was all over um new guinea

all over the the solomons um and these indigenous people were absolutely instrumental in in some of the victories and you put a couple quotes in there but you know i think um unless you have it handy you know at one point halsey writes that you know if it wasn't for the coast watchers they wouldn't have won guadalcanal and if it wasn't for guadalcanal you know they wouldn't have won the one the pacific yeah exactly these were not uh minor contributions and another one uh you know isn't it true that uh they were it was a coast watcher report that allowed the united states to run the the mission that where they they caught yamamoto in his in his private plane and they shot it down. Yeah. And, you know, there was definitely effort between them and, you know,

some of the cryptological folks they had here at Pearl Harbor. But I think you're right. It's a combined effort. And in these really contested environments, information that you can glean anywhere and send back for interpretation and action is a huge benefit, no matter how you get it. Absolutely. Yeah. Tie that back to the MEF information group and the information environment. What do you think would be holding back this idea, right? What are the obstacles to implementing something like this in the Marine Corps? And obviously, we already talked a little bit about some of the questions that the international affairs community in the Marine Corps kind of goes back and forth over.

Oh, sure. You know, that's where the rubber meets the road for a lot of these ideas. You know, how do we make them into action and how do we actualize them? You know, I think in the Marine Corps, we have a healthy skepticism and a level of scrutiny for anything that's perceived as like new or revolutionary or you know newfangled and i think that's healthy for a lot of ways you know make sure that we're using our resources wisely and we're using our money and our people in the best possible way to accomplish our mission wherever and whenever that may be so i think first off it's a challenge when it comes to money like we

talked about earlier when we put money and people against this you have to convince folks that this is a worthy endeavor and worthy of the very limited boat spaces that we have in the marine Corps and the very limited budget that we have. So I think the first challenge is to recognize international affairs Marines as the critical enablers that they are. You know, it used to be kind of a cliche in my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan to say that we do everything by, with, and through our partners. But when we're talking about things in the Pacific or around the world, and we're looking to employ these extraditionary advanced bases as part of our primary warfighting concept, you know, we really need to do that with, by, and through our allies

and partners in the region. So one is to just gain recognition that those international Ferris Marines are a critical enabler. Two, and as an effort of one, I think we international Ferris Marines need to do a better job communicating our capabilities and applying our skills to benefit whatever organization we are currently in. As I mentioned before, we fill a wide range of duties and billets but always uh i think we always need to remember you know the marine corps focus writ large and we got to look to ways we can assist in the development and the execution of our mission so i think with the recognition that international fair marines are critical neighbors and with us in their job communicating we then need to internally kind of align our

narrative to advocate for the development and reorganization of these capabilities like you mentioned it's always tough you know they're dissenting viewpoints there are many possible ways we could go there are always pending and looming budget cuts but we need a critical mask of thinkers and advocates to push this concept forward just like the chowder society did after world war ii you know we need a similar effort to refocus our international affairs marines and make sure that we're using them as best as we possibly can and i think we're lucky that we have you amongst them to help build this critical mass of thinkers and innovators for the future. Force design, fiscal management, budgetary cuts, and budgetary issues are always difficult.

They're always knife fights. And that's why we need as many allies and partners as we can going forward. You know, it starts with aligning the narrative, and then we have to see, you know, where this shakes out in terms of priorities, right? Because obviously, you know, the international affairs community is not the only thing that the Marine Corps does. it's not the only thing that the marine corps wants to spend money on or or use uh boat spaces on um and i should it was another prize-winning essay in the marine corps gazette in the last

couple of months by captain michael sweeney um called sleeper sleeper cell logistics i think it was december right um and so you may be familiar but it was kind of a similar uh idea you know what can you do if you put people that know the human terrain in the capital and you kind of pre-deploy it into key maritime terrain and what can they do for you and and his pitch was more that they can help um just like but i don't think that's you know necessarily at odds with what you're pitching right you know kind of different different perspectives on the same action which is you know pre-deploying um good human capital that we've as the marine corps have invested in in terms of their foreign affairs capability and logistics capability

you know, things like that. Yeah, for sure. They're not mutually exclusive at all. And like we saw in the Guadalcanal scenario, you know, their benefit, I think, just expands as people realize their capabilities and what they can offer. And you're totally right. You know, we already have these people in the force and we have these very talented individuals. It just matter of applying them in the right place. So I think when it comes to budget arguments and somebody asks, you know, why should we buy one less F-35 Bravo, you know, to fund this initiative or to keep these guys going and get this program started. I think you really have to look at the cost benefit

and the return on investment. The prompt for this essay was, how can we create an asymmetrical advantage? And I think part of asymmetry is that you take something that's very cost-effective and what you already have, and you apply it to really affect those costly long acquisition capabilities

that the adversary may have. And so when you're looking at return investment for international affairs Marines, I think the benefit is huge. We already have these folks, like we said, we already developed them. We already have them in the force. If we apply them in this manner, they can have exponential effects that far outweigh the cost of one F-35 going forward. I hope our bosses at Marine Corps International Affairs are listening to this and they agree with you. I hope they agree with me as well. And if not, I apologize.

I want to go back to the Coast Watchers for a second and just ask, because it's been an interest of mine and it was a little difficult to find information on. So what besides, I think you mentioned Annie Kwai, besides her book, what would you recommend anyone who's kind of interested in the Coast Watchers check out? And we'll make sure that we put these in links below the podcast so any of the listeners can find them easily. Okay, so there's some great references in the future reading. I think, as I mentioned, Annie Kwai's Solomon Islanders and War II, an Indigenous Perspective, available online through the Australian National University Press. Great reference to get an Indigenous perspective of the goings-on and the events surrounding and leading up to Guadalcanal. uh i think uh you know the classic is eric felt uh the coast watchers uh which is a memoir that kind of just recants his perspective of the experience uh and more broadly um with regards to civil affairs specifically i think henry coles and albert weinberg did a great piece for the army center of military history called civil affairs soldiers become governors i think that's just a great reference also to understand the effort and the preparedness that we put into civil affairs forces and international affairs capabilities in World War II to be successful

there. And then writ large, there's a great, great trove of ideas on the Marine Corps Gazette, and there have been very smart, very fascinating writers that have put together a very coherent and strong argument. So I always refer back to the Marine Corps Gazette for a great source of professional development. Awesome. And like I said, we'll make sure to get those links in there. So before I ask if you've got any final thoughts, what are you going to do with the prize money? I think the Gazette contests usually have a little bit of money attached. Yeah, I was very fortunate to get bestowed with a small monetary gift from the article. So, you know, Valentine's Day is coming up. I've been working a lot. So first off, I want to take my wife out and give her thanks for,

allowing me to put so much time and effort into this article and work over the weekends to write it. But also personally, I feel a little bit embarrassed to admit, but I'm still using the computer I have from 2011 when I deployed to Afghanistan. So I think that guy's in time due for an upgrade and I'll look to get something a little faster, a little more capable for the 21st century. Hopefully that with that new machine, you can keep writing. And so any final comments you got yeah before we wrap it up no i'm just uh very thankful to be here very honored to be your guest thank you all the folks that are putting a lot of effort and thought behind these initiatives um i'd like to thank my my guest major zach oda a u.s marine working in

the indo-pacific command and lastly before we go uh is there anything that you're working on right now that we can look forward to reading in the future uh and then where uh if anywhere can our listeners find you online? Sure. Right now I'm working on a few initiatives with my shipmates from the Navy and the Coast Guard on how our services can cooperate in the gray zone and in conflict. So hopefully stimulating some thought there in the near future. But folks can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Zach underscore Ota. So pretty easily searchable there and look forward to hearing more ideas and learning from you all. Again, all the opinions presented in this podcast are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we are associated

with. Thank you again for joining me and to our listeners. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 We got to chip on up.