This is a

CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Craig Simons.

Nimitz at war, command leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.

Ernest King Comench, who is always present.

Sixteen times they meet.

King's messages to Nimitz and Nimitz's messages to King, the professor is quoted throughout the book.

Now they're debating in person and also by wire about what is to be done about the Japanese homelands who will not

surrender. The opinion I take it professor from Nimitz and King's point of

view is blockade will force them to the peace table.

I think that's true.

I think naval officers at almost every level did not believe an invasion of the

home islands was worth the risk. Here we are back to calculated risk. It would cost

so much, and we've all heard the line, oh what would cost 100,000 American killed, very likely,

perhaps more, fewerer considered the fact that it would have

cost possibly millions of Japanese to die because Japanese culture was such that surrender was so obnoxious that no Japanese soldier, no Japanese participant in the war at any level could honorably surrender himself therefore you must fight to the death.

So if everyone in Japan fights to the death, what are the consequences of that?

There was literally talk within the combined staff in Japan of the

honorable death of a hundred million. Now the prospect of that was so

horrifying that both King and especially Nimitz believed that avoiding an

invasion by depending on a strict naval blockade, executed mostly by submarines by the way as well as bombing from the

air would create a circumstance where the Japanese would have to accept the Potsdam agreement, and that is to say,

accept an end of the war on terms that the United States

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