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Thank you. Welcome to the Untold Story podcast for this week.

I'm Martha McCallum.

It's great to have you with us.

And today I am joined by the author of The Last Ships from Hamburg, business, rivalry,

and the race to save Russia's Jews on the eve of World War I. It is an absolutely fascinating period to look at, and it is written by the

historian and author Stephen Yujifusa. Did I say her name right?

You did, yes. Thank you so much, Martha.

It's great to have you with us.

It's an interesting name, and I've heard you talk about it.

I always like to, on the untold story, start by having our guests talk a little bit about themselves.

For people who don't know you, tell us a little bit about your background, Stephen.

Well, sure. I have a Jewish mother and a Japanese-American father, both sort of a byproduct of two immigrant stories. And I grew up outside of New York City. I've always been fascinated with ships in the sea. And in many ways, this story was a coming home for me. It was a research into my own mother's family's roots. And also my grandmother, who was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia, she told me the story of the Titanic when I was around six years old.

And that got me interested in history and the start of a long journey, which ended up becoming a professional historian.

So you're a good friend of a good friend of ours, Lucas Tomlinson, who our listeners will know as, you know, our great former Pentagon reporter and producer, and now he travels all over covering stories for us. How did you know Lucas?

We both went to high school together and our father's work together, back at Reader's Digest.

Oh, well, yeah, that's a great history as well.

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