- Stories from the Second World War continue to fascinate and even entertain audiences around the world.

Today's guest tells those stories to educate a new generation about the horrors of war and the heroes that saved the free world.

He is Tim Gray, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me from his home in Rhode Island is my friend and co-host G. Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal.

Each week.

We talk about big issues with great guests, authors, journalists, filmmakers, and more to make sense of the stories that shape public life in the United States today.

This week we're joined by Tim Gray, an award-winning filmmaker as well as president and founder of the World War II Foundation.

His new film is "Surrender on the USS Missouri," and it can be seen on public television stations across the United States beginning in the spring.

Tim, thank you so much for being with us.

- [Tim] It's always great being on with you guys, thank you for having me.

- We wanna talk about the film, which really is a wonderful achievement, but I wanna begin first with sort of a bigger question about the continuing power and draw and legacy of the Second World War.

Why is it still so relevant to us today?

- That's a really good question.

I think a lot of it has to do with living in a divided America today.

And people like to look back on a time when the United States came together for a common cause and a common good which was to stop fascism and the spread across Europe and also what was going on in the Pacific.

So anytime you put on the television, anytime you go to Barnes & Noble you see new books, you see new films, Hollywood still cranking out documentaries and feature films on World War II.

And a lot of it has to do with just the times we're living in.

People are looking back at that time of their parents and their grandparents as really truly the last time America really came together as a country.

There was a little bit of that after 9/11, we saw when everyone put aside their politics and came together for a certain amount of time.

But it's just looking back and saying, how do we as a country get back to really bringing everyone together.

And they look at that time as a common goal where young people came together and older people came together and there was one goal and we were a team and I think that's something that's definitely lacking today.

- Do you know one of the defining characteristics of your films is the direct, you're telling the stories of veterans, the people who were there, it's not just the big events, but it's the stories of, the individual stories of the veterans who were there.

- Right?

- Do they have that same sense of, I don't know if it's nostalgia for them, but the sense of longing for, that sense of unity that they were a part of?

- They do and a lot of it has to do with, that was an interesting time in our history.

We're coming out of the great depression and young people had seen their fathers lose their jobs.

So they were a tough generation to begin with heading into World War II.

But it just, that generation just goes to show you that if you can come together, you can accomplish anything.

And it was a bunch of teenagers who really helped to save the world.

And so a lot of that blueprint still resonates today.

And we talk to young people about that, that you're capable of doing great things.

You look back on the 17 and 18 year olds and 19 year olds who helped save the world.

And they're still very humble when they talk about it, the veterans, but they also recognize how divided America is today.

And I think they came from that time when that blueprint was, if we do come together, we can be a great nation.

And America became a super power during that time, on June 6th, 1944, D-Day, America became a super power on that day and we've been a super power ever since.

So I think the veterans who are all very humble and not one to offer their opinions about a lot of things recognize that we are capable as a nation of just coming together for that common good and taking care of a lot of the issues that need to be taken care of.

And so they don't volunteer that information, but if you ask them, if they're disappointed about what's going on in our country today, they will tell you that they are because they lived through a different time when it was opposite, that was the opposite scenario.

- Isn't the piece of the continuing power of the story of the war, the fact that there are still people who fought in it who are alive and they are obviously dwindling in number and there won't be many left soon.

And eventually there won't be any, is that part of what you see in your work too?

- Yeah, I mean the message is still there.

You can't talk to a World War I veteran, you can't talk to a civil war veteran about the division in the country in the 1860s.

You can't talk to a veteran of the war of 1812 or George Washington, but these guys still are here.

They have something to offer.

And I think if we don't listen to them, it's a big mistake.

I always tell people, we should get a group of these veterans in a room in Washington and let them hash it out for a couple hours.

And you may not like some of the salty language, you may not like the cigar smoke and some of the other things that are going on in that room, but they're gonna solve the problem.

And they're gonna just cut through all of the red tape and all the other stuff that you really can't say on television, but they are gonna come to a solution based on what's good for everyone.

So I always kind of kid people, put them in a room, give them the topic, give them the issue and let them come out and let them solve it.

But yeah, I mean, they don't go around that the Wallwork Mall or the Mall of America in Minneapolis and wear a t-shirt that says, ask me how to save the world's problems, but yet they lived through that time period.

They're the only ones who did live live through that time period.

And so they have this blueprint and it's whether we wanna listen to it or not, that's up to us.

And unfortunately, history is always the first thing to go in schools these days.

We wanna cut history, we wanna cut the arts and then we'll worry about sports.

But these things that have taught us and brought us to where we are, are being ignored on such a large level that it scares me because history doesn't repeat itself but it certainly rhymes.

And if we can't look back on that time period where we went through so many different things, genocide, war, suffering, civilian deaths, all kinds of things that happened during that time period from 1939 to 1945, they saw it all, they lived through it all, they experienced it all.

They have something to tell us, do we want to ask them what is the remedy for the problems that we're facing today?

But they've been through it.

And a lot of people have been through these things.

And if we can't go and talk to them about their experiences during the Vietnam era of how divisive it was during that time and even in the '70's we're just never gonna learn as a society that these things have happened before and there is a remedy, there is a fix to these things that we face.

- Do you get into the stories of people who did not serve but were alive?

The women who stayed at home, the mothers, the children who were coming of age during that time, many of them of course, are still alive, tell us about that, why that is an important part also of the story.

- We get into to the boys and girls who served on the home front and had the victory gardens and helped their moms who went off to work and went from being a homemaker to making tanks and B17s and ammunition.

I mean, World War II is such an important time for women in the workforce to prove that really they could do anything that men could do.

And that was huge.

But we also get into the survivors and the people who were caught up in the war.

You're talking about a time period where 60 to 70 million people died and a great amount of those people were just people caught up in the war.

They were civilians in Russia, or they were caught up in the Blitz during the German bombings of London and in England, people who just suffered because it was war time.

So to me, there's some of the most fascinating stories.

So it's not only the veterans.

I mean, we always look at everything at a 5,000 foot view.

We don't look at it at the 30,000 foot view which is the strategy of the war and why the battle was fought.

We look at it at the view of the individual combatants and those who suffered through it.

And those also who came of age as teenagers and proved to themselves that they could do anything and accomplish anything.

And we try to relate that back to people today, when we have a group of teenagers into our education center, we talk to them like can you believe at your age you were landing on Pella Lu or Guadalcanal, or you were landing on D-Day.

You are capable of great things in your life.

When history and destiny calls upon you, it could be something large, it could be something small.

You are capable.

Look what these country boys and city boys did.

They never thought they'd be able to do things like that in fact, they helped save the world at your particular age.

And it also resonates with me because if you're going through a tough time in your life, the lessons are also there.

Whether you have someone in your family, who's dealing with health issues, or even the pandemic we've been going through.

We've been through the influenza in 1918, we've been through tough times in our history before, we've always gotten through it and we'll get through this as well.

But history has a lesson for us.

History has that blueprint, whether we wanna look back at the blueprint and get it out again, it's up to us.

- Tim, you just mentioned this, but you mentioned the education center.

So in addition to being a really accomplished filmmaker, you're also the founder and chairman of the World War II foundation.

And among its initiatives, is this Global Education Center.

Tell our audience a little bit about what it is and what it does.

- The education center is really geared towards students.

It's an opportunity for them to come into a facility where we have about 4,000 World War II artifacts and have a tactile experience where they get to touch things from the war.

And we've had thousands of kids come in and I can tell you it's been a mix of public charter, private schools.

We have not had one student come in and like go off in the corner and be bored.

They can't believe when they're finally introduced to the colors of World War II, which is considered the Black and White War that there are actually all these vibrant colors from the war or that the Germans wore these helmets and the Americans were these helmets and the Japanese wore these helmets or the flags or anything.

So for them, it's experiencing the war on a different level than our films.

So we have a theater in there, we have a library of about 600 books that students can take out.

So we become this conduit to introducing them to something that really isn't being taught in schools anymore, which is this time period that defines us even to this day.

And they're all caught up in it.

And a lot of it falls on the shoulders of the teachers themselves, who say, we feel that this time period needs to be expanded on.

We can't do this in a day in our classroom.

We want the kids to get this experience where they can learn something, be introduced to it, and then go to Google and Google D-Day or Google Pearl Harbor, or Battle the Bulge or Auschwitz or whatever it is.

So again, you go back to being that conduit to at least getting them exposed to the moments and the people from the war and you hope that they take it from there.

- So you mentioned the in-person experience that teachers and students have is so important.

And I would argue just to digress for a second that it's equally important for other chapters of our history.

I'm thinking of indigenous museums, for example.

When you go into the Tomoquag museum here in Rhode Island, it's very different than just seeing it in a book or you get to touch and experience.

When did you become interested in World War II and why?

- Good question.

When I was six, I think, I was about six and I came across one of those almanacs of the war and was immediately taken by the individual stories not so much the strategy of the war and everything but the soldier in North Africa or Rommel in North Africa or I remember as a 10 year old, my mom asked me, what do you want for your birthday?

And I said, I want Edward R. Murrow's broadcast from the Blitz in London.

And she's like, won't you rather have a bike and I'm like, no, I wanna listen to Edward R. Murrow's broadcast of the Blitz in London.

And she bought all these cassettes back then for me.

And so I was just the drama of the time and the personal stories of the time and how people came through it.

And it just has been a blueprint for my own life, for challenges I've had in my life and the ups and downs that everyone has in their lives.

That I look back in that, and I say if they can accomplish and live through that time period, I certainly can move off the beach myself and keep moving forward.

So I've just had a real, and I've read about it my entire life and spent a long time as a journalist in between which helped prepare me to do the film part of what I've been able to do.

But I've never been any, I'd never been more passionate about anything professionally than sitting down with these men and women and survivors and getting into a conversation with them and trying to draw out things from them that they have not even told their own families.

And I think just the knowledge of, I feel like I can sit down and have a conversation with any veteran or survivor who existed in any part of the world during that time and draw things out of them.

And that's been one of the goal of how we produce the films.

- So let's get to the new film, it's "Surrender of the USS Missouri."

Tell us a little bit about it.

- This is a film we spent a lot of time at Pearl Harbor and we spent a lot of time at the Arizona Memorial, and I'm always looking at the USS Missouri.

And it's interesting when you go to Pearl Harbor that you have the beginning of World War II for the United States which is Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.

And then about 250 yards away, you have the end of World War II, which is the surrender on the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1945.

So they're within eyesight of each other.

And I always looked at that and said that's a compelling story to have this battleship 250 yards away from this sunken battleship, where 1,177 sailors died during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And I said, I always wanted to do that book end of the beginning of the war for the United States in the end.

So that's how the film came about.

Anytime we do a film, we wanna make it relatable to the younger generation.

That's always in the back of our mind.

So I thought, who can we get to narrate this, who is out there now, who's popular with a younger generation.

So we came up with country music star, Luke Bryan, who just had his 26 number one hit in country music.

And he's like the biggest name in country music.

And we approached him and he said he would do it.

So it's the first film we've done with a little bit of Georgia twang in it, which is interesting.

But Luke would talk about the film to his audience, which are teenagers and young people.

And we hope that gets them to watch the film.

And then again, go back and want to learn more about World War II.

But this war that started in September 1st, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland ended on the battleship in Tokyo Bay.

And we were able to come up with interviews with some of the survivors who were still around who watch this defining moment in history.

And they talked to us about where they were on the battleship and what they saw and what their feelings were about the war officially coming to an end.

So it was very impactful for them from that standpoint.

- It's just incredible and there's nobody else doing the depth and extent of the work that you're doing.

Tell us about the history of the Missouri itself.

It was the last battleship built, is that correct?

- It was the last battleship built and it headed into the Pacific in 1944.

So work had started on the battleship about 10 months, 11 months before Pearl Harbor even began.

And then finally it ended up in the Pacific and took part in the battle for Iwo Jima and then survived the Kamikaze attacks at Okinawa and then shell, the Japanese mainland as well.

And then they got the order to pull away from the coast of Japan and nobody knew why, but the reason was is that the United States was getting ready to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And then of course, the president at the time was Harry Truman, who was from Independence, Missouri.

So people always wonder why was Missouri chosen as the ship to hold the surrender on?

And the real reason is because Harry Truman was from Missouri and his daughter had Chris in the battleship and send it on its way out to the Pacific.

So there's that tie in there.

But the guys on Missouri didn't know they were going to be the surrender ship until almost like a week beforehand.

And they were just very proud.

And also, they would have taken part in the invasion of Japan as well, Missouri but the atomic bombs ended that and saved millions of lives and the fact is what the dropping of the bombs accomplished.

When you think about the Americans and the allies who would have had to gone in and the Japanese themselves.

So that's why Missouri was chosen and the guys who were on at that day are just incredibly proud to be in that moment in history.

- [Wayne] Where was the ship built?

- It was built in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Navy yard, and was launched from there.

And then headed through the Panama Canal with about 12 inches despair on either side of the canal.

And they were kicking up concrete on, when they were rub up against the canal, and then they headed out into the Pacific and for their shakedown.

And so it was the last battleship built in.

And it's just an important piece of history that still exists that people can go visit today.

And they have a marker on the ship today where you can see where the table was, where the instrument of surrender was signed.

- Hey Tim, so let's talk a little bit about the men that you profile, the Navy and Marine Corps veterans that were there that day in Tokyo Bay.

I'm always fascinated in your films, whether that you find the story first or the veterans to help tell that story first, how does that process work for you?

And tell us a little bit about the veterans that you profiled in this film.

- We look at a story and then we say, we want to do that story.

So we're doing a story, a few stories, we're involved with about six films right now.

So we look at the topic and then you follow up and say, okay, on this topic, are there anybody, is there anybody still alive who can tell us about what it was like to be there at that time?

So when I identified Missouri as the film that we wanted to do, we already had some archival interviews with some Arizona veterans we had done over the years, but it was there anybody from Missouri who was alive that witness to surrender.

So then you start putting your research hat on and wearing out the internet on Google.

Then you find these men, a handful who are still alive in other parts of the country.

And then you follow up with them.

You get a hold of them, you say, would you be interested in being a part of this film?

And they always say, yes humbly, they always say yes, and then you get out and you interview them.

So it's always coming up with the story first and then casting a wide net to see who's still around, who can lend perspective to that story.

So that's always a challenging, because these guys are all in their mid nineties, even the babies now are in their mid nineties and approaching 100 years old.

So we were able to find three or four guys who really played a central role in the surrender ceremony that day.

One of them was a Marine named Jerry Pederson, and there were only 40 Marines on the USS Missouri.

There were 2000 plus sailors in this one Marine detachment and he was part of the Honor Guard.

So he and his 40 Marines watched the whole thing happen.

And to have that perspective from somebody who witnessed the whole Japanese contingent coming on board and the surrender signing and being a minority amongst all the sailors was fascinating to me.

- So walk us through the actual ceremony from the moment the Japanese delegation arrives and how did they get there?

I'm curious how they got there.

- They took a launch to the Missouri.

So Missouri is anchored in Tokyo Bay.

So they take a launch.

And one of the things I found fascinating, this was all about intimidation.

This whole ceremony was about letting the Japanese know that the allies were victorious and that this war was over and that the allies had won this war that "The Japanese had started on December 7th, 1941."

So as soon as this Japanese contingent comes on board and the Japanese contingent averages in height 5'2, 5'3 there was a line of Marines, two lines of Marines, six feet or over, taller or over on either side of the entrance.

So when the Japanese come on they're dwarfed right away by the 6'1, 6'2 Marines who are standing at attention.

So right away, MacArthur is sending the signal to the Japanese that you lost the war and we are mightier and we've always been mightier than you and right was always going to win.

So the contingent comes on board and they're made to wait a little bit and then the surrender signing begins.

And it's drawn out, it's about a 23 minutes ceremony, but the symbolism on that day was extraordinary.

And having Generals Percival there and Wainwright, both commanders British and American, who spent the majority of the war in a Japanese prison camp, having them there and signing the instrument of surrender was just another message to the Japanese that we had won the war.

So there was plenty of symbolism during the ceremony itself.

And the Japanese came on and they were made to feel very, very small, both literally and figuratively.

- What about the feelings and what the Marines were feeling and thinking and the other Americans?

Being face-to-face with people they had fought, not face to face, obviously, for the first time they are now seeing actual Japanese people who they had been at war with until that moment.

- It's interesting, most of the reaction we got from the guys were, they were just glad the war was over and they could go home.

That was the universal feeling.

I mean, there was certainly hate there because a lot of their friends had died in the Pacific and islands, like Guadalcanal and Taiwan and Palo Lu and Taisho Jima and Okinawa.

And the brutality of the war in the Pacific was much different than what was going on in Europe because the Japanese never ratified or went by the Geneva Convention.

So the brutality, the war in the Pacific was extraordinary, but most of the feeling was the guys were just ready to put it behind them and go home.

And to a man, that's what all of them said.

There wasn't any outward hostility towards the Japanese.

Maybe they felt it internally, but they were just happy to know that they had lived through this experience and that they were going to go home and to their wives or girlfriends or their families.

So there was a sense of relief that day on the battleship that really, this is it.

You don't know if it's it until it's actually signed because while the war had been over for a few weeks, it wasn't officially over.

And I think a lot of these guys had seen enough to know that it's not a done deal until that instrument of surrender is officially signed.

And once that D-Day took place, they all kind of just exhaled and said, we are really going home.

- Hey, Tim, we got about 40 seconds left here.

I know that you're excited about one of your upcoming films about "Elvis Presley and the USS Arizona" so tell us a little bit about the King.

- Yeah Elvis actually played a role he held a Benefit Concert in Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona Memorial Project was struggling and Colonel Parker, his manager said, would you mind playing a benefit concert at Pearl Harbor at Block Arena?

And Elvis said, sure.

And the concert helped get the Arizona Memorial project over the hump and get it officially dedicated.

So a lot of people don't know the story.

So we were you able to interview a lot of people who went to the concert and we've got some great, great stories in there as well.

And it's being narrated by Jim Nance of CBS Sports and Actor Kyle Chandler as well.

So we're really excited.

Again, it's just another way to connect World War II and people like with Elvis, I'm like, wait till- (all laugh) - [Jim] But the film right now is "Surrender at the USS Missouri."

How can see it?

- [Tim] It'll be hitting American public television in May.

- Super, super it's a tremendous film and just Tim we are great fans of your work.

Thank you so much for being with us.

- [Tim] Always a pleasure thank you.

- He's Tim Gray, the film is "Surrender of the USS Missouri."

You should check it out.

That is all the time we have this week for "Story in the Public Square."

But if you wanna know more about the show, you can find us on Facebook or Twitter or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne I'm Jim asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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