REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR AND THE FIGHT BACK: 1/8: Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay by Craig L. Symonds
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Nimitz-War-Command-Leadership-Harbor-ebook/dp/B09Y64QMZT
From America's preeminent naval historian, the first full-length portrait in over fifty years of the man who won the war in the Pacific in World War Two.
Only days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped Chester W. Nimitz to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. Nimitz transformed the devastated and dispirited Pacific fleet into the most powerful and commanding naval force in history.
Facing demands from Washington to mount an early offensive, he had first to revive the depressed morale of the thousands of sailors, soldiers, and Marines who served under him. And of course, he also confronted a formidable and implacable enemy in the Imperial Japanese Navy, which, until the Battle of Midway, had the run of the Pacific.
Craig Symonds's Nimitz at War captures Nimitz's composure, discipline, homespun wisdom, and most of all his uncanny sense of when to assert authority and when to pull back. As Symonds's absorbing, dynamic, and authoritative portrait reveals, it required qualities of leadership exhibited by few other commanders in history, qualities that are enduringly and even poignantly relevant to our own moment
1941 PEARL HARBOR
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.4 | Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:11.0 | Nimitz at War command leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. |
| 0:15.6 | It's a pleasure to welcome Professor Craig Simons, |
| 0:19.1 | Emeritus Professor from the U.S. Naval Academy, writing of a Manchester Nimitz, who was principal in the Pacific War of 1941 to 1945. |
| 0:32.5 | The story is told from the point of view of command leadership, hence the subtitle. This is the story, as I've |
| 0:40.6 | never read it before, not concentrating on the battles, the moments to moments of the drama, |
| 0:46.0 | the disappointments, and the grief, but on the relationships of the flag officers and their |
| 0:51.6 | equivalent in the U.S. Army. |
| 0:55.8 | Professor, a very good evening to you. |
| 0:56.6 | Congratulations. |
| 0:58.5 | It is Christmas, 1941. |
| 1:02.1 | Chester Nimitz arrives in Pearl Harbor. |
| 1:04.5 | What is his mission at that moment? |
| 1:09.5 | How does he imagine he will proceed, given that the harbor is still burning? |
| 1:10.4 | Good evening to you. Good evening to you, John. |
| 1:11.9 | Thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it a lot. We can imagine Chester Nimitz arriving by |
| 1:17.3 | seaplane in the harbor at Pearl Harbor. Well, the holes of destroyed battleships are still visible. |
| 1:23.8 | Well, small boats are still retrieving American bodies from the water. He has come without a |
| 1:30.8 | staff by himself to take over a wrecked command, and his initial responsibility is to bring about |
| 1:39.3 | some kind of stability, some kind of sense of the possibility of recovering from this disaster. |
| 1:47.5 | So I think that's his first thought and his first job. |
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