BOMBING MADE THE NVA AND VIET CONG MORE DETERMINED: 3/8: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 28, 2023 by George Black (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Reckoning-Story-Redemption-Vietnam/dp/0593534107
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
1970 USMC FIRST MARINES VIETNAM
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:05.0 | CVS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Craig Simons, |
| 0:09.0 | Meredith's Professor of History from the US Naval Academy. |
| 0:12.0 | Nimitz at War, command leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, the relationships of the |
| 0:16.4 | flag officers and the generals as they prosecute the Pacific War which it was secondary in the minds of the joint |
| 0:24.3 | command, joint chiefs of staff, the British and American working together. |
| 0:29.1 | Europe first, Europe first. |
| 0:30.4 | Ernest King, however, had other ideas and Ernest King has sent Chester Nimitz to Pearl |
| 0:36.0 | Harbor to command this rotating story of ships and men and aircraft. Now King says, Coral Sea and Midway are such a success. We need to go on the |
| 0:48.9 | offense of somewhere. They do not have adequate what is called Sea Lift. They do not have adequate what is called sea lift. |
| 0:53.0 | They do not have adequate what are called forces, divisions. |
| 0:57.0 | However, they're going to get out there even though they're short, |
| 1:01.0 | what Nimitz says repeatedly in the professor's book, |
| 1:04.4 | do the best we can with what we've got. |
| 1:06.2 | So we go to Tulagi, which we know is Guadalcanal, the Marines land, and the fleet that accompanies them, the ships that accompany them, cannot stay all the time. |
| 1:17.6 | They have other duties and they don't want to be tied to ashore to make themselves vulnerable. These are very risky moments again, Professor. |
| 1:25.0 | What was Nimitz's thinking of Guadalcanal? |
| 1:28.0 | Did he want to wait or did it, was he okay with the idea of going now even though we have inadequate resources? |
| 1:35.0 | Nivitz did indeed plan on taking the offensive as soon after the Battle of Midway as possible. |
| 1:40.7 | What he had in mind was an attack on the Santa Cruz Islands, which are a little bit to the southeast of Guadalcanal, and Toulagi. Toulagi is a tiny little island, but it's where the Japanese headquarters were. But across the Sealark channel from Toulagi |
| 1:56.3 | is this much larger island of Guadalcanal. And while Nimitz and King were in San Francisco having a conversation about whether or not they could undertake |
| 2:06.4 | this small offensive news arrived that the Japanese were building an airfield on Guadal Canal. |
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