The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II by Bruce Henderson, Gerald Yamada

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II by Bruce Henderson, Gerald Yamada One of the last, great untold stories of World War II—kept hidden for decades—even after most of the World War II records were declassified in 1972, many of the files remained untouched in various archives—a gripping true tale of courage and adventure from Bruce Henderson, master storyteller, historian, and New York Times best-selling author of Sons and Soldiers—the saga of the Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater, in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, with their families back home in America, under U.S. Executive Order 9066, held behind barbed wire in government internment camps. After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei—first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei—many of them volunteering from the internment camps where they were being held behind barbed wire—were selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the Pacific theater. Highly valued as expert translators and interrogators, these Japanese American soldiers operated in elite intelligence teams alongside Army infantrymen and Marines on the front lines of the Pacific war, from Iwo Jima to Burma, from the Solomons to Okinawa. Henderson reveals, in riveting detail, the harrowing untold story of the Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific, through six Japanese American soldiers. After the war, these soldiers became translators and interrogators for war crime trials, and later helped to rebuild Japan as a modern democracy and a pivotal U.S. ally.

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I'm losing my opera voice. Oh, it's not opera voice. Well, on the show, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. As always, we have some of the most amazing authors, brilliant minds, CEOs on the show. And we have a New York Times bestselling author of Sons of Soldiers on the show for his new book, Bridge to the Sun, where we're going to be talking to him about what he has in the latest book that just barely came out. In the meantime, be sure to further show your family, friends, and relatives you know the drill. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss.

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So be sure to check us out over there. You can find me at linkedin.com, for which that's Chris Voss. And there's the stuff on the Chris Voss Show. He's the author of the newest book that just came out, September 27th, 2022. Bruce Henderson is on the show with us today. He's the author of Bridge to the Sun,

the secret role of the Japanese Americans who fought in the Pacific in World War II. Welcome to the show, Bruce. How are you? Hey, Chris. No, I'm good. Thank you. Awesome, Sauce. It's an honor to have you on the show with us. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better. Yeah, brucehendersonbooks.com. There you go.

And you're the author of more than 20 nonfiction books, including a number one New York Times bestseller. It was made into a highly rated television miniseries. Your books have been published in 20 countries. What motivated you to write this latest book? Well, you know, the subtitle on this book, The Secret Role of, I mean, a lot of times the subtitles are marketing hype, but I have to say I was at the National Archives researching my last book, Sons and Soldiers, which takes place in the European theater. And I came across the fact that there were Japanese American soldiers who

were sent to the Pacific in the war against Japan. Now, I knew about the Nisei, as they were called, who fought in Europe for the 442nd, which was the most decorated small unit in that theater during the war. But I did not know that these guys were sent to the Pacific. And I'd written books about World War II, including a couple about the Pacific, the theater. And so I made a note. I said, I'm going to come back, circle back around this and find out how that was for them. Because obviously these guys, their families and a lot of them were in internment camps after Pearl Harbor. And that's an interesting aspect of the story, of course. Now, during the war, this was a highly secret program because we didn't want the Japanese army in the Pacific, the bad guys, to know that our

units in the Pacific had the language skills that they could hear over the radio, understand Japanese, they could read, capture documents. And the Japanese Army was very blasé about that. They just assumed that Westerners were not going to be able to understand their really complicated language. And we didn't want them to know that, you know, our battalions and regiments in the field had these 10-man Nisei teams that were fluent in their language. Wow. How many civilian prisoners of war did they—this covered the survival story of more than 2,000 civilian prisoners of war.

Talk to us about what that was about. I mean, were these all boys that came from internment camps? Well, they were for the most part, and they weren't prisoners of war, but they were for the all, they were Japanese. And would they, you know, what would they do in terms of sabotage and all of that? Well, within a few months of the outbreak of the war, the army, the U.S. army, really realized that we needed some of this language skill that I was just talking about. So the recruiters, they'd go to the internment camps and they go, okay, now we need you guys. And I got to say that not everybody felt really welcoming in the camps. For the most part, they did take the young men who were there were A, anxious to get out of the camp and B, anxious

to prove their loyalty to their country. They were born in America, after all. They were as American as you or me. And by the way, of the 110,000 ethnic Japanese in these camps, 60% of them were American citizens. Yeah. And so they were the Nisei. They were the children of the Japanese immigrants, their parents, who had come over here, worked hard farming, whatever, but were not allowed to become naturalized citizens.

We're not allowed to own the land that they farmed. But, of course, their offspring were purely these American, you say, and they wanted to prove their loyalty. And a lot of them got on the bus right there in the camps and they went off. Although I must say the army, after they gathered them up in the camps, they usually took them out about four in the morning, out the back gate because they didn't want anybody in the camp demonstrating. And, you know, there was bitterness there and not everyone in the camp felt really well about that. Yeah. We had, oh, who was it that we had on the show? We had Bruce, Bradford Pearson came on the show for his book, The Eagles of Hard Mountain. I don't know if you heard about that, but he'd written about a football team that had come out of the internment camps.

And, yeah, they came around offering people, hey, you want to go fight a war for, you know, you can either stay in prison or go fight a war. It's kind of like, it's almost kind of like what Russia is doing with the Ukraine war, where they actually went to some of the Russian prisons and, and have been recruiting for soldiers out of it. And it's like, well, you can either stay in jail or you can go to war. Kind of an interesting thing that we were doing and kind of a dark point in our history, but how does it work out with, with having them, you know, being able to help us with intel and everything else in the war? Yeah, well, first of all, they were the Nisei that the army thought were most valuable, and they were, were those who had been sent over as boys, which was not uncommon, by their parents to Japan for a year or two or three years to go to school, middle school, even high school.

And, of course, they came back before the war started. And they were actually called Kibei, Kibei, which means to return. And so they came back to America. And then when the war broke out, of course, they were still fully fluent in the Japanese language, having gone to school in Japan.

Not every Nisei who, say, was born and raised in California and never left was fluent in the language. I mean, they went to the high schools down the road and that kind of thing. And certainly the Army couldn't make them fluent in the six-month program, I think. Well, what they could do once they got somebody who was fluent in the language, they could take them in six six months teach them how to be an interrogator of prisoners of war. What could you say to them? What can you not say to them? What the terms were, army, military terms, the Japanese army, the American army. So this was a six-month program. And once they got out of that, they were assigned to a 10-man intelligence

team that went into the Pacific and went to various other units. I mean, one of the guys and my six, we follow six of these Nisei soldiers. And the way I chose them was, you know, where they were in the war, I wanted coverage. I wanted one of them in Iwo Jima, one of them in Burma, one of them in Okinawa. I didn't want them all at the same place because I wanted to show, you know, the theater wide campaign. And but if you can imagine, I mean, the guy who was who was in at Iwo Jima, I mean, he was on the in the sands of Iwo Jima with the Marines in a Marine uniform. And he had his own he had his own security guard assigned to him to to keep him from being shot mistakenly by friendly fire. And you can imagine, because this was at a time when, at that same time, there was, word was going out that the Japanese soldiers were stripping the bodies of the dead Marines at

Iwo Jima, putting on their uniforms and infiltrating their lines. So if you see any Japanese in a Marine uniform, go ahead and shoot them. So we got our, in the meantime, we've got our guy who's being the interpreter and translator there. And so it was a dangerous thing on both sides. You know, he could have been shot and some of them were. Wow. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. I would have a big sign on my back. Right. When they fire or something, I'd be like, hey. So you profile, my understanding is you profile six people in the book right and their stories and and stuff like that give us an example of one if you would please well this guy at iwo jima is is is certainly a good one but i got another guy named Kazu Komodo who fought very early in the summer of 43 in In fact, he was the first Nisei to go into combat.

They hadn't even sent him over to Europe yet, the Nisei unit over to Europe. And he was wounded in the Solomon Islands, shot in the knee. And so he was evacuated to a hospital in Fiji prior to coming to the United States where he recovered for another 30 days. But while he was in the hospital,

I mean, not only did he have the distinction of being the first Nisei in World War II to win a Purple Heart for being wounded in combat, but he was in his hospital bed when Eleanor Roosevelt, the president's wife, came through, was doing a tour of the hospitals in the South Pacific. And when she got to his bed, you know, the doctor introduced her as one of the Nisei interpreters. And when she got to his bed, you know, the doctor introduced her, one of the Nisei interpreters. And so she was being very motherly. In fact, she saw really thousands of patients in dozens of hospitals on that tour. And it was really something. But she, you know, is there anything that we can do for you? Can I, you know, work? And Komodo, who was a humble, kind of shy guy, but he decided he would take this opportunity.

And he said, well, Mrs. Roosevelt, I want to tell you, my family, they're, you know, they're in Arizona desert, you know, behind barbed wire, you know. And I'm out here getting shot at. And I don't think that's fair. And so Mrs. Roosevelt, of course, as well, I'll let the president know how you feel as if the president didn't already know. But later, what was funny was Komodo was rather guilty that he had challenged the president's wife in that way. But he he felt that he he needed to, you know, he needed to say how he felt. Well, anyway, he goes to the States 30 days, recovers. Now he's given leave to go and visit his family in Arizona. He's on a bus. He gets off one town short of the camp. He's heard that in the camp, they don't get a lot of fresh meats there. So he's decided he's going to shop

and bring some good food into the camp to his family. So he goes into this little grocery, goes to the back where the butcher is set up, and he says, yes, I'd like these cuts, these cuts. And the butcher looks over at him and says, we don't sell the no Japs. And now Komodo has his uniform on, has his medals on, including the frivolous heart. And Komodo says, I'm not a Jap. I'm an American. And the butcher looks over again as if kind of seeing the uniform and the medals for the first time says, all right, what do you want? So, I mean, even at this point, he did get the meat and he did take it to the calf to his family. But even at this point, here's this guy, you know, this woundish veteran at home fighting really kind of another kind of battle, if you will. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll

resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company.

Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. Yeah, it's just extraordinary. We're still fighting these battles of racism and prejudice, even today, after all these times. I mean, we did the same thing with African-American people, black people in World War II. They came back and Vietnam and were like, hey, man, I serve this country. I put my life on the line. And, you know, it's a city first. I feel like there was really, I mean, even though I kind of stumbled into this topic serendipitously at the archives, honestly, I feel like there's never a better time to have a story like this. I say, sadly, we do in this country often prejudge people, you know, way too much based on race, religion, countries of origin and all of that.

And there's this strong anti-immigrant bias. And I think what we need to, you know, this is a message of courage and true patriotism that, you know, that these guys showed at a time that was not, and it was not easy for them and certainly not for their families. And, I mean, you come back from the war and you're returning to an internment camp, you know? I mean, hey, let's get the guy a nice house and release his family and i mean it was extraordinary the whole history of the internment camps and it's really important we learn from this history the one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history and that's why we just go in circles in our lives so this is an extraordinary time you called it you know this is the secret group was

it was it a secret? Was it a widely held classified sort of thing that they were trying to keep the Japanese from figuring out that we had the edge? Absolutely. And it was, I mean, really the highest classification. We did not want the Japanese army to know that we had those language skills in the Pacific. And they did not. They did not learn that. And so there were the Japanese that were really pretty arrogant, feeling that, you know, the Westerners wouldn't understand them.

So they were sending out a lot of messages during, in battles there, uncoded and in the open. One of my characters, Roy Matsumoto, who was with Merle's Marauders in Burma, they were walking along the jungle at one point. And he looks up and he sees a telephone wire overhead and he climbs up a tree and taps into it. And it's enemy communication. They're talking back and forth.

And he's up there for a few hours listening to whatever was being said. And a lot of it, you know, not important. But all of a sudden somebody comes on and says, I'm a sergeant. We're guarding this ammunition dump. I've only got three soldiers here. The Americans are around here somewhere. Send me help. And so the guy on the other end says, all right, well, give us your coordinates of that ammo.

The guy reads off the coordinates. And the thing is, the Japanese and the thing is he would they the japanese and americans were using the same british army maps the british army were the british were the only people that had mapped burma at that by at that time so the cord the coordinates matched up right to what so roy comes down out of the tree and you know business information and they radioed in. Well, the next morning they hear this single airplane flying over and it goes down a bit, a mile, a couple of miles away in circle, dropped one bomb, blows up the entire ammunition dump. Well, and that's the kind of information, you know, I mean, that not only were they taking ammunition away from the enemy, but they were saving American lives.

Oh, definitely, yeah. Because American lives were being just, we lost a lot of people during that war, you know. We had another author on the show who talked about how they were integral in mapping the coral reefs that were killing a lot of Marines because they would ground the boats when they would try and land. They would ground on the coral reefs if the tide wasn't at the right place at the right time. And then they would just be just cannon fodder or gun fodder. And so, you know, there's a lot of people that died in that war unnecessarily. I remember reading books that, like, if you were in the first couple waves of Marines,

you just knew your body was going to be, you know, pile up on the beach um it's crazy the stories that came into that theater do we know were you able to interview a lot of these men and talk to them what was that like well it's getting more difficult to find world war ii veterans i mean even if they were really young in that war they're well into their 90s now, and it's really getting more difficult. My last World War II book, Sons and Soldiers, again, I followed six soldiers in Europe. Four of them were alive, and I was able to go and spend several days with them and interview them. And in fact, two of them are still alive at age 101. Pretty amazing. The six Nisei that I chose, only one was still alive. I did get to interview him, but by then he had lost some of his memory. But the reason I was able to do him

and the other five, who of course were deceased when I started the book, was because they had earlier done really extensive oral histories. There are different groups that have them in, for the Jewish soldiers, For example, the Holocaust Museum has done a lot of testimonial stuff and oral histories for the vets. In the case of the Japanese American soldiers, Go For Broke is one foundation that has brought them in when they were, you know, somewhat younger and obviously still alive, able to remember and talk about what their experiences. And you see, when you're doing a book like what I'm doing, it's called narrative nonfiction. That means nonfiction. I don't make alive, able to remember and talk about what their experiences. And you see, when you're doing a book like what I'm doing, it's called narrative nonfiction. That means nonfiction. I don't

make up anything yet. It reads like a novel. And that's why I'm following only six characters. I'm really diving into their, their, what they were feeling, feeling and thinking and all of that. Well, I can't make that up. And if I can't talk to him in person, then it has to come from somewhere. And these oral histories were, you know, I was able, I looked at about 20 or 30 different guys and chose these six because I had the material that I needed. a story that you tell about Mrs. Komodo getting a wire from saying that her son has been injured. And these folks are living in an internment camp, or I guess what they called at the time a relocation center. Some of them call them concentration camps. That may be an appropriate term. They're living in this hell. They've lost everything that was taken from them. You know, I've heard the stories about how, you know, it was a great real estate land grab to throw these poor folks into these internment camps and literally steal all their stuff between their real estate and their businesses and, you know, stuff that they had.

They literally had, like, I think a very short time to just grab some necessities and some basics. And they really couldn't take much with them. And, you know, here they're living this way and they're trying to, you know, farm, you know, sand dunes and, you know, these places in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, meanwhile, they've got to deal with the trauma of their children possibly dying. And I'm sure a lot did during the war. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, some of these older, the older folks, now we're talking the parents of these, you say, soldiers, they never recovered. I mean, they weren't old enough, you know, when the war, by the time the war was over, they had, you know, their best years, let's say, you know,

were already past them and they couldn't start over again, you know, on a patch of land and through the miracle of irrigation, making it productive. I mean, they never really recovered and a good number of them never even returned home. They didn't even try, you know, to go back. And yeah, that's a real, that's a terrible cost for them. And yet they were not, overall, the bitterness was not there. I mean, there certainly were folks that, you know, like Komodo saying to the president's wife, it's not fair. But at the same time, that didn't stop them from, you know, when Uncle Sam said, we need you, they stepped forward and did their duty as Americans. And their parents sent them off.

And, you know, there's one mom, I think it was Mrs. Komodo, who said to her son as he was, you know, getting on the bus at the camp to go to the army, you know, make us proud, make us proud. And that was their feeling. Yeah, it's wild. So the title to the book, Bridge the Sun, what made you choose that title? It's a really interesting title. time in Japan and really loved the country, had certainly had, you know, family there that they loved and friends they'd gone to school with and whatnot. So there were some real emotional conflicts for them. They were very clear on that they were Americans and that that was the right side for them to be on. But at the same time, they were, you know, extremely worried about these folks, you know, in Japan and what would happen to them. And I know one of them had said early on in a letter that I read, you know, that he was really glad that his relatives in Japan were living in a relatively small city outside of Tokyo so he wouldn't have to worry about them being bombed. And the name of that city was Hiroshima.

Wow. This is a small city. You've written a lot about this theater and war and soldiers and stuff. What was it that stood out in this book the most for you that you really enjoyed? Well, Chris, when I'm writing, you know, when I'm writing one of these history books, I mean, I like I like to tell a big story through a few people who lived it. And again, I'm not, you know, writing like Cornelius Ryan, Longest Day, where he's got a cast of hundreds of people. In some cases, only one paragraph about this guy. And while there's certainly a value as a historian from doing that, I really want to get into the lives of these few.

I think in a way I'm always looking for heroes. And, you know, I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. I don't try to make somebody into a hero. At the same time, I love doing that to people who don't consider themselves heroes. There you go. And so I look for heroic, you know, and my definition of that is you're rising, you know, certainly what would be expected of you and that you're doing it not for personal gain, but, you know, to save others or to help others.

And so that, you know, that drew me to the story. And by the way, it was this program, again, was secret during the war, but it didn't get declassified for about 40 years. Really? Yeah. Many, many of the secret classified World War Two stuff they didn't get. They didn't do a general declassification until somewhere in the 80s. And so a lot of this we couldn't get to this. People couldn't get to this information that they needed. And then these fellows who were in these small military intelligence teams, they were told when they were discharged, don't talk about it. And boy, a lot of them took that to their graves without, you know, ever talking about even to their own families what they had done. And so I thought,

you know, that was of interest. That's one reason why I think this story is largely unknown and untold as of today. But it's very interesting because you're telling it from the point of view of what people experience. You know, you couldn't write about every single person in a war. Maybe eventually you could if you live long enough. That's a lot of books. But, you know, a lot of times those you know the a lot of times those individual stories are exemplary of the bigger conflict and what goes into them and like you say heroes i mean these are these people put their lives on their line for a country that had turned their back on their family them and then comes around going hey would you like to go

die for the people who imprison you and and and take away all your things and treat you horribly? And you're like, I don't know. Seriously? But these folks go forth and they do an extraordinary job. Were you able to measure what percentage of maybe a difference or impact they made in the war? Well, in the case of the soldiers that were trying to do this in Europe, the German-speaking, mostly Jewish soldiers that went over as the Ritchie Boys, it was a post-war study done by the army accredited something like 60% of the credible, actionable intelligence that came from human sources, came from these language teams. And I would say, even though we don't have a similar report for the Pacific,

that it would have to be about the same. There were major, you know, breaks in the Japanese in our reading of their messages that just time and time again, not only won battles, but saved lives as we talked about. I wanted to tell you about another guy named Takahiro Iga, who was born in Hawaii, but at age two was taken by his Okinawan parents back to Okinawa and lived there until he was in high school and he returned to Hawaii to finish out high school. When the war broke out, well, of course, he could speak Japanese, which is spoken in Okinawa, also the local dialect in Okinawa, as well as, of course, English. So the army, you know, I asked him to join us in this language program, and he did, willingly. His concern, though, from the beginning was, I really hope I don't ever have to go to Okinawa and fight there because, you know, he had family, friends, and all of that.

And so when he ended up being sent out to the Pacific, of course, he ended up with an infantry division that was in Leyte, in the Philippines, planning the invasion of Okinawa. Well, somebody in headquarters found out that this, that they had in their presence, a guy who had been raised in Okinawa. So they sent for him to come to the, you know, general's headquarters. And of course, Higa was very concerned about that. He thought, oh my God, I'm in trouble. What did I do?

I'm being summoned. Well, he went into this room that had all these maps on the wall and he looked on one wall and it was this huge blow up map of Okinawa. And he knew at that moment that why he was being called in there. And they had him brought him back every day for a month to help him with the planning of this invasion on Okinawa.

He, for example, that first day they were showing him some photo intelligence, you know, pictures. And he said, now you see all of these, all these machine gun pillboxes on the coastline. We're going to have to take those out. And Higa looked at him and said, sir, those aren't machine gun pillboxes on the coastline. We're going to have to take those out. And Higa looked at him and said, sir, those aren't machine gun nests. Those are family tombs. Oh, my God. And I don't think you should blow them up. Yeah. And so it was that kind of, you know, they were getting that kind of information from

him. Well, then when the invasion started, Higa was one of the first to get to land. And, you know, his commanding officer said, stick with me so I don't get lost. And almost immediately, our interpreters and translators there started trying to save civilian lives because the Okinawans had been brainwashed by the Japanese and the thinking that they were captured by Americans, they were going to die a virtuous death. Wow. Better to go into the cave and blow yourself up with your family and choose your own time to go. Jesus. So they would sit, you know, Higa would sit outside from one cave to the next, you know, with a loud, you know, bullhorn saying,

I am an Okinawan boy. I am in the American army. We will take good care of you. And these folks, you know, they would come out by the hundreds, you know, and they'd go to the next cave. And so I just want to get to the end. And 50 years later, Takahiro came, returned to Okinawa, obviously as an old man in the 70s,

and the local paper did a story about him, and there was pictures in the paper. And the local paper did a story about him and there was pictures in the paper. And the next day, the reporter called him and said, there's somebody who'd like to meet you. And they set up this meeting at a restaurant and Higa was there when this older lady walked in with a younger woman. And they recognized him from the picture in the paper.

And she sat down and she said, I remember you. I was in one of the caves. I remember you saying, I am an Okinawan boy. I am an Okinawan boy. And I just want to thank you because I walked out of there because of what you said. And you've given me this life. And then the younger woman said, and I need to thank you as well, because my mother, you know, walked out of the cave and then gave me my life.

So I owe you my life as well. So Iga felt, you well. So he felt, you know, he accomplished what he set out to do. He never once fired his gun. He didn't have to in Okinawa, but he's, but his team alone,

his 10, 10 man intelligence team was credited with something like 30,000 civilians that they brought out of these caves. There were about a hundred thousand total that were, that were saved. There were many more who weren't saved and it was a horrendous you know the okinawa was a horrendous battle and many civilians were killed but some were saved because of these guys that that is extraordinary story my god that just sent chills up my spine the you know the the the suicide element you know the kamikazes and the yeah i know you

correct me if i'm wrong because you're the historian the researcher here but one of the reasons we decided to drop the nuclear bomb was because because of the suicidal nature of of their military and that we we knew that trying to take the peninsula of japan would would you know it would be extraordinary cost to our manpower. And people would die because they were just to that sort of mantra of their military. Did they help in determining that and making those decisions to drop the bomb? You know, I think that it was just viewed as, I mean, I've seen estimates that there were going to be a million American casualties, death and wounded in an invasion of the main mainland japan and yeah the civilians in japan were

well they were lining up i mean they were you know they had their you know whatever kind of weapon they would have had they would have used to defend their homeland the japan in those days it was of course a very militaristic government. And these fellows who, my guys in the book I covered, as I say, had gone to Japan for two or three years, and they had seen for themselves how the Japanese people themselves were really brainwashed by Tojo and his gang, you know, and were, you know, saying that we have to defend Japan's, you know, Japan's security. But at the same time, they were invading China before they hit Pearl Harbor. And some of these guys said, well, why, why do you have to invade China to defend Japan? So, but the people in Japan were, you know, accepted this. And I think, you know, so, and yet, you know they they were a people that when war when when peace came, there helped win the occupation to make, have Japan recover from that war. There you go. And you write in the book, too, about how the soldiers became, they helped with the war crime trials after the war and helped rebuild Japan.

So they were part of that rebuilding thing. And that goes to the bridge to the sun, I think, you know, kind of bringing these two countries together, certainly after the war. Yeah. It was really interesting how we went in and tried to rebuild and help them get back on their feet. It was a really interesting way that we did that. And so if we certainly didn't do that in Vietnam. Well, we did in Germany, too. I mean, you know, there was a time that, you know, I guess to be defeated by America was a pretty good thing. And now we have Afghanistan. So wonderful history, man. I love reading about all this stuff and the stories that don't get told and the things that you can learn about history that, you know, hopefully we take these lessons and make them so that we don't make the same mistakes again, or at least I hope we don't. Thank you very much for being on the show.

This has been pretty exciting and insightful, Bruce. And I love you telling me these amazing stories. Give people your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, BruceHendersonBooks.com and Bridge to the Sun is available, hopefully, wherever books are sold. And you've written about how many years, 20 books? Well, I honestly, Chris, I stopped counting the 20 because I thought it'd make me sound too old. But yeah, over 20. Congratulations. For example, look in for my next book right now. So it's like we don't rest on our luck.

There you go. This would make a great movie, too. Yeah, there's talk in Hollywood. As they say. Awesome songs. Tell these stories and people learn your history. It's really important. Well, thank you very much, Bruce, for being on the show. We really

appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks, Madis, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com Forge has Chris Voss. Go to Goodreads.com Forge has Chris Voss. Or go to some Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time. And I should have a...