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World War II – China & the Birth of the U.S. Special Forces – Stephen R. Platt
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Ep 054 – Nonfiction. Historian Stephen R. Platt discusses his new book, “The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II.”
‘The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one of the most controversial officers in the history of the Marine Corps, who dedicated his life to bridging the cultural divide between the United States and China
“He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.”
These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World War—and the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend.
By December of 1941, at the age of forty-five, Carlson had already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Mao’s Communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Inspired by their guerilla tactics and their collaborative spirit—which he’d call “gung ho,” introducing the term to the English language—and driven by his own Emersonian ideals of self-reliance, Carlson would go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders, the progenitors of today’s special operations forces, who fought behind Japanese lines on Makin Island and Guadalcanal, showing Americans a new way to do battle.
In The Raider, Cundill Prize–winning historian Stephen R. Platt gives us the first authoritative account of Carlson’s larger-than-life exploits: the real story, based on years of research including newly discovered diaries and correspondence in English and Chinese, with deep insight into the conflicted idealism about the Chinese Communists that would prove Carlson’s undoing in the McCarthy era.
Tracing the rise and fall of an unlikely American war hero, The Raider is a story of exploration, of cultural (mis)understanding, and of one man’s awakening to the sheer breadth of the world.’
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Transcript
Introduction to War Books Podcast
00:00:01
A.J. Woodhams
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics.
Introduction to Stephen R. Platt
00:00:10
A.J. Woodhams
ah Today, i am extremely excited to have on the show Stephen R. Platt for his new book, The Raider, The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of the U.S. Special Forces in World War II.
00:00:23
A.J. Woodhams
Stephen R. Platt is an award-winning historian of China in the West, whose books include Imperial Twilight and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, the latter of which won the Kundal History Prize.
00:00:34
A.J. Woodhams
He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and holds a PhD from Yale.
China's Overlooked Role in WWII
00:00:39
A.J. Woodhams
Steve, how are you doing today?
00:00:41
Stephen Platt
I am great. Thanks for having me here, AJ.
00:00:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm i'm really excited to to talk about this book for several reasons. ah First, I feel like China, now you're a historian of China, so you might not agree with this, but I feel like China really doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to World War two And um you know I think the the second highest casualty count behind the Soviet Union was China.
00:01:08
A.J. Woodhams
which a lot of people don't realize. um And I feel like I hardly ever hear, not hardly ever, but you know I just don't hear enough about China during World War II.
00:01:17
Stephen Platt
No, absolutely. i mean, Ron Amitter has a a book about China World War Two called Forgotten Ally.
00:01:23
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:01:23
Stephen Platt
um And that really kind of sums it up because, yeah, I mean, yeah, China was a U.S.
00:01:24
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:01:26
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:01:28
Stephen Platt
ally in World War Two. um But the China theater gets completely overshadowed by by the
00:01:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
Evans Carlson: The Multifaceted Marine
00:01:34
Stephen Platt
U.S.
00:01:34
Stephen Platt
Navy campaigns in the Pacific.
00:01:36
A.J. Woodhams
Now, the other reason why I'm really excited to talk about this is when I read the title of your book, and you know it's a ah Marine and the the birth of the um ah and Special Forces, the first image that came to my mind was the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket.
00:01:55
A.J. Woodhams
Just like this really like two-dimensional, like kind of like tough, grizzled Marine. I'm like, what kind of person? could Evans Carlson, who we're talking about today, what kind of person like could he be?
00:02:08
A.J. Woodhams
And like it turns out he's like this very complex guy. He's this very three-dimensional person who is interested in literature and the the arts and he has very strong opinions that I wouldn't expect you know eight eight somebody like him to have.
00:02:25
A.J. Woodhams
And so it's really it's it's it's really neat to read about um know somebody like him in in your book. And I thought it was very well done.
00:02:32
Stephen Platt
I love the full metal jacket example here.
00:02:34
A.J. Woodhams
i know
00:02:36
Stephen Platt
Because yeah, he's he's he's this sort of fascinating combination of being this absolutely like ruthless battlefield commander, but also he's sort of a political idealist.
00:02:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:02:44
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:02:46
Stephen Platt
He wants to be a literary writer, he talks to his men about racial equality.
00:02:48
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:02:50
Stephen Platt
um Yeah.
Carlson's WWII Contributions and Legacy
00:02:52
A.J. Woodhams
Well, let's, before I i am get going too far here, a question I like to start out with for my guests is, could you just tell us what is your book about?
00:03:03
Stephen Platt
It is about Evans Carlson, um a United States Marine Corps officer who in 1938 on a personal mission for FDR um embedded with the Chinese Communist Army in North China fighting the Japanese occupation.
00:03:21
Stephen Platt
um He spent several months, went thousands of miles through North China with communist guerrilla patrols, learned how they fought, studied their guerrilla tactics, and basically came out of this experience as an apostle of guerrilla warfare.
00:03:35
Stephen Platt
And after after Pearl Harbor, he's going to bring that all home. um And found, you know effectively one of the first US special forces battalions in World War Two, ah this battalion of marine raiders, who he trains to fight just like the communist guerrillas in China. I mean, that's, that's the essence of the story here is that this is Carlson's raiders as they were known.
00:03:56
Stephen Platt
um But yeah it's an early special forces battalion modeled after the Chinese communists. And he's the guy who gives gung ho to the English language. He had this whole mystique through his China connections.
00:04:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:04:08
Stephen Platt
And he's a really major figure in the early part of World War II, household name, um forgotten today.
00:04:14
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Hollywood movie made about him. The movie was called gung ho, uh, because of that phrase that he introduced. And I was actually watching a few minutes of Gung Ho before we started.
00:04:26
Stephen Platt
it's terrible Yeah.
00:04:28
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, you know, what's actually kind of nice is, you know, on YouTube, like if you scroll, you can see like the peaks of like what's a very popular scene for people to, yeah. So I scrolled to like the most popular scene in it.
00:04:41
A.J. Woodhams
And it was, it was Evans Carlson.
00:04:41
Stephen Platt
What did it give you?
00:04:43
A.J. Woodhams
He was talking to like his raiders. They were like seated on the ground um in the Pacific theater under, I don't know. I'm not sure where they were, but he was just talking about how they're going to need to use guerrilla tactics to fight this very new war.
00:04:58
A.J. Woodhams
And then I think he ends the scene with something like, now let's go eat chow or something like that. Yeah.
00:05:04
Stephen Platt
I love it. And he actually worked as a technical advisor on the film in 1943 and like rewrote some of the dialogue in it.
00:05:05
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:05:12
A.J. Woodhams
Well, um you know, we I kind of want to start at the end here, um because like you just said, we don't know. he's no He's no longer household name. um I think we could all agree.
00:05:24
A.J. Woodhams
um Even though he had this major Hollywood movie and ah produced about his his time theater and his involvement with the special with the birth of the Special Forces and all his accolades.
00:05:36
A.J. Woodhams
ah Why is he not a household name today?
00:05:40
Stephen Platt
I mean, the short form of it is that his connections to the Chinese communists and his admiration for them, which again, were the basis of his mystique during World War II. This is written about in all the papers. And this is, you know, they all wrote about how to like Carlson, you in bed with the Chinese communists and learned the secrets of how to beat the Japanese, etc et cetera, et cetera.
00:06:02
Stephen Platt
By the time you get to the Cold War, that's going to be the destruction of him. So he dies in 1947. um And almost immediately is accused of being a communist.
00:06:08
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:06:11
Stephen Platt
you know By 1951, McCarthy is going to be singling him out by name. um So he's so he was you know he died as one of the most decorated Marines of the World War II era.
00:06:22
Stephen Platt
um But by the time of his funeral, basically, the Marine Corps didn't want anything to do with him anymore.
Carlson's Political and Personal Evolution
00:06:30
A.J. Woodhams
Isn't that, isn't that just like, so that's so interesting. I mean, sad. It's interesting that, you know, that, that somebody with His kind of accolades, you know, it's just like the it's timing is just like such a ah strange thing.
00:06:44
A.J. Woodhams
um You know, it just so happens that obviously, you know, the Red Scare and the Cold War. And even though he did so many great things, like he's he's kind of people are like, well, let's, you know, let's not let's not remember him.
00:06:56
Stephen Platt
I mean, there's there's sort of an interesting parallel with Smedley Butler, who was sort of in some ways a mentor of Carlson's in the Marine Corps. um that you Both of them take this sort of political left turn after they retire.
00:07:09
Stephen Platt
um you know Carlson gets involved in all these progressive causes after he retires from the Marines. Smedley Butler, who had you know he had been the you know the point of the Marine Corps spear in all kinds of invasions and interventions.
00:07:22
Stephen Platt
um At the end of his career in the 1930s, he started giving speeches about how war is a racket. He was anti-intervention. He started yeah going on record saying that the US just sends its Marines overseas to protect the big business interests and whatnot.
00:07:37
Stephen Platt
The interesting thing though, is that like Smedley Butler did that, but he's still a big hero in the Marine Corps and his name's all over the place. um I think you there just was not a similar tolerance for Carlson at the end of his life. I think the political environment was so different in the Cold War era.
00:07:53
A.J. Woodhams
but Was there something, but was it specifically, and we'll get into this, was it, you know, his association with Mao?
00:07:53
Stephen Platt
That, yeah.
00:07:58
A.J. Woodhams
um You know, was it, were was he giving speeches, political speeches? what what was it that just left such a bad taste in the public's mouth when it came to Carlson?
00:08:08
Stephen Platt
Well, it was his association with Mao and the positive things that he said about the Chinese communists. And we can come back to this later, but he, like I mean, he he was very insightful in some ways and also like misinterpreted a lot of things. And he actually did not believe that the Chinese communists were really communist.
00:08:25
Stephen Platt
um He thought they were sort of fundamentally democratic. um And he thought they they were they were actually, like I mean, He brought ah in one of his journeys with him. He brought along a New Testament. he's He was a very religious man. He's the son of a congregationalist minister.
00:08:39
Stephen Platt
um And he came to his own private conclusion that the Chinese communists, with the work that they were doing for the poor in China and the way that they were looking out for each other, they were actually doing Jesus Christ's work without realizing it.
00:08:49
Stephen Platt
So, I mean, I'll just say that, like I mean, he wasn't actually a communist, but the it's partly his association with the Chinese communists. And that's, you know, once once you get to the Red Scare, then yeah then he's being painted as you know a subversive, as a radical, et cetera.
00:09:02
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:06
Stephen Platt
Yeah. um But it's also just like, I mean, this is why i call him the renegade Marine and the in in the title. Like, he rubbed the Marine Corps the wrong way throughout his career.
00:09:17
Stephen Platt
He just did not get along um with other officers.
00:09:20
A.J. Woodhams
and
00:09:21
Stephen Platt
um He was very individualistic in a profession that demanded conformity. um He was, you know, he had this... deep seated inspiration from Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially his essay on self-reliance and Carlson for his whole life. like He never wanted to conform.
00:09:37
Stephen Platt
He never wanted to be like others. He wanted to follow his own path, follow his own conscience. So by the end of World War II, that made him a lot of enemies within the Marine Corps. So they were they were sick of him for being famous. They were sick of his politics. They were sick of his antagonism to the to the culture of the Marine Corps. And yeah, they didn't want anything to do with him.
Carlson's Early Life and Military Ambitions
00:09:54
Stephen Platt
And for the general public, it's you know that he's now a communist.
00:09:58
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, let's talk about um his his childhood, his his kind of backstory. um What was he what was he like as a kid? What was his family like? Where did he come from?
00:10:09
Stephen Platt
He was a child of a congregationalist minister, as I said, um who shuttled around in New England between all kinds of different parishes um in Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, moving around a lot. So um Carlson is never in his life going to have a stable home. I mean, he's always moving every couple of years from one place to another.
00:10:29
Stephen Platt
um But he's largely left to his own devices. His father is very busy with his sermons. His mom is sort of bitter and disillusioned. She came from a somewhat aristocratic family and married this poor minister and had this hard life and in Vermont.
00:10:44
Stephen Platt
So Carlson is going to start running away from home by the time he's 12 years old. He's, I mean, it's, it he's a remarkable character. And, you know, when he's 14, he manages to run away from home and make it stick.
00:10:56
Stephen Platt
And, know, he's never, he's never going to come back again. um He's going to go off and lie his way into the army when he's 16 years old, even though the age for enlistment at the time was 21.
00:11:06
Stephen Platt
um So he's this incredibly remarkable.
00:11:07
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, it should be noted that he joined the army before he was a Marine. ah First, he he was in the army, he got out of the army. And then later, he wanted to get back into the military. So he joined the Marines.
00:11:18
A.J. Woodhams
I thought that was very fascinating.
00:11:19
Stephen Platt
Yeah, the I mean, i mean he made it he made it to captain of artillery in the Army during World War I and yeah just got so fed up with things that he yeah he left and then he eventually joined the Marines as a buck private. So the yeah the joke in the Marines is yeah is that you yeah Carlson walks into the recruiting office and he's like, well, I used to be a captain in the in the Army. And the recruiter is like, well, I guess you could make an okay private in the Marines.
00:11:42
Stephen Platt
Yeah. So yeah, he has these like these two military careers.
00:11:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:11:48
Stephen Platt
um But the main thing about him is this restlessness from a very early age, wanting to go out and see the world, make his mark on it. um you know i was I was fortunate to be able to get access to his to his letters to his family from his whole life.
00:12:03
Stephen Platt
And you know from an early age, he's writing to them about these visions that he has of like trying to find my true purpose, the reason that I'm here, like what I'm going to do with my life.
00:12:03
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:12:11
Stephen Platt
So he's he's one of these individuals who is really driven by this absolute faith that he's meant to do something big with his life. And and at the times when in his life when he is not doing something big with it, he gets depressed and he gets very frustrated and he feels like he's spinning his wheels.
Uncovering Carlson's China Experiences
00:12:28
Stephen Platt
um So he was prone to depression at times.
00:12:29
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:12:31
Stephen Platt
um And he was also prone to terrific fits of of of energy and action at other times.
00:12:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And um as you just said, so you are so I've been told you're the first historian to have gotten access to his letters. And I really loved drawing on those letters in your book. I thought you did a really good job because it it really painted this this portrait. You know, when we write things, when we write letters, you know, you have modern day, we write things online.
00:12:57
A.J. Woodhams
Like sometimes we don't we don't even realize like what we actually mean by what we're writing until like years later, we we read those again. We're like, oh, you know, what was I actually, what was I really trying to say? And I really got a sense like the letters to his parents, you know, i got a sense he was trying to impress his parents. He was trying to, you know, make them think that, you know, he was doing really good, big things with his life, even though a lot of times, like things weren't going so great in his life.
00:13:25
A.J. Woodhams
He had a marriage that fell apart.
00:13:25
Stephen Platt
No, I mean, there's this, yeah, there's this period after World War I where he's a canned fruit salesman in Montana and sort of like driving around between these, you know, between these like mining outposts.
00:13:37
Stephen Platt
um Yeah, I mean, there there are a lot of points in his life where he sort of hits a wall And he's spinning his wheels and he doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. And, you know sometimes those lead him into pits of depression. Other times they lead him to just sort of like completely overturn the table of his life and like leave his wife, leave his job, run in a different direction.
00:13:56
Stephen Platt
um But yeah I mean, the letters and the diaries that I had, like, this is really what made the book possible. And this is what, and this is, I mean, this is, I'm not the first person to write about Evans Carlson, but I'm the first person to write a real biography of him because other historians just didn't have the sources to be able to do that.
00:14:14
Stephen Platt
um There are some good books about him in World War II based on yeah you know interviews with the raiders who served with him and Marine Corps sources and whatnot.
00:14:14
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:14:23
Stephen Platt
But as far as the bigger picture of sort of what made him tick or his whole the the entirety of his experience in China, which I think was just a sort of a mystery and an en enigma, So he's somebody who's like, he's known to Marines today.
00:14:37
Stephen Platt
um and yeah, and he's sort of on the one hand, I mean, if they if they've heard of him, they know that he's sort of like the OG badass, you know, Raider commander. guy um or that, yeah, he was probably a communist. yeah and And these kind of coexist. like He's sort of both of these things at the same time. i think
00:14:54
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:14:54
Stephen Platt
think the line that always gets trotted out about him, and I haven't been able to trace it to an original source, but it's just everywhere you like. and The line about Carlson is, um it's attributed to David Shoup at the Tarot Landing.
00:15:07
Stephen Platt
um where he sees you know Carlson running back across the beach with you mortar shells exploding all around him and bullets you know flying through the air. um and he's and he sort of sees me And he says, yeah Carlson may be red, but he's not yellow.
00:15:20
Stephen Platt
And that's
Carlson's Combat Prowess in Nicaragua
00:15:20
Stephen Platt
sort of the essence of him, that nobody questions his courage.
00:15:20
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:15:24
Stephen Platt
Everyone questions his politics. And i think this, because I was able to get at his really personal sources, his diaries, his personal letters and things like that, um I think I was able to grapple with with his the deeper parts of his mind and what what really made him tick.
00:15:26
A.J. Woodhams
Sure. Yeah.
00:15:38
A.J. Woodhams
yeah So he actually, he becomes, if I remember correctly, like his first big um you know announcement of himself as a Marine who can lead troops is, um I believe in Central America, ah Central or South America.
00:15:56
A.J. Woodhams
um i think he's chasing bandits. Is that right?
00:16:00
Stephen Platt
Yeah, it's in Nicaragua. um And so he's so he's got a tour of duty in Nicaragua as um in yeah around 1930.
00:16:01
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:16:08
Stephen Platt
And he is an officer in the Guardia Nacional, which is the sort of the Nicaraguan National Guard that was created by the American Marines. So the time that he's...
00:16:16
A.J. Woodhams
Because he's been abroad and before this. He's been abroad, but they were like, he was like ah like taking care of cavalry horses and stuff like that.
00:16:22
Stephen Platt
He wanted...
00:16:24
Stephen Platt
He wanted to make some money. that so i mean, he'd been living in Shanghai as a Marine intelligence officer there and it really expensive.
00:16:26
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:16:31
Stephen Platt
And yeah he was he'd never he never had much money in his life, even after he retired after at the end of World War two He didn't have him enough money even to buy a house. um But yeah, so he did this tour in Nicaragua in order to come up with more money because it was really cheap to live there.
00:16:45
Stephen Platt
And he'd get um sort of two salaries, one paid by the Marines and one paid by the Guardian Asenel. But in any case, so the ah the Guardia at that point, it had all American officers and Nicaraguan enlisted men, and there was a lot of tension between them.
00:17:00
Stephen Platt
um Actually, when when Carlson was initially on his way to his post, which was up in the northern part of Nicaragua, right near the Honduras border, um he stayed overnight in one house that still had like holes and you know holes in the wall from where a Guardia soldier had machine gunned his American officers a few weeks earlier.
00:17:18
Stephen Platt
But yeah, this is i mean this is going to be the watershed for him because you know after you know he had spent about a decade in the in the army, never saw combat. He was always in sort of an an administrative or training position.
00:17:26
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:17:29
Stephen Platt
um He'd been in the Marines in China, but not fighting in any way. So Nicaragua was the first time that he was actually like on the ground with weapons, with yeah with a war going on.
00:17:40
Stephen Platt
And he was fighting the Sandinistas. This is um Sandino, the ah the revolutionary in Nicaragua, who was fighting the US forces. um And it's in the middle of this that he's going to, there's this point where he takes this, you know small band of 12 Nicaraguan soldiers and himself on horseback and they chase down a band of guerrillas that's about 90 or 100 guys. um you know They track them through the night into the mountains and they launch a surprise attack with Thompson submachine guns um firing on the camp for like 10 minutes solid, um kill a whole number of them.
00:18:18
Stephen Platt
And this is going to get Carlson the Navy Cross. um And it's going to mark him for the first time as as a battlefield commander. And yeah at the time, the Navy Cross is the second highest combat decoration you could get if you were a Marine.
00:18:25
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:18:31
A.J. Woodhams
And, you know, I was struck, too, that it it seemed like up until this point, so, you know, he's by 19, by the 1930s, he's, how old is he? He's like in his 30s at this point, 30s or 40s, something like that.
00:18:42
Stephen Platt
Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:44
A.J. Woodhams
And it struck me that up until this point, you know, he's not had
00:18:44
Stephen Platt
Yep.
00:18:48
A.J. Woodhams
any of, you know, he's not been in combat. He's not had these moments. um I don't want if I don't want to use the phrase gung ho quite yet, but um you know, he's all of a sudden just kind of charging into battle, so to speak.
00:19:01
A.J. Woodhams
What do you think it was that made something just kind of switch? Was it the opportunity itself that he was presented? Was he frustrated that he wasn't advancing like he thought he should be advancing?
00:19:12
Stephen Platt
it was It was the opportunity. I mean, this, like fighting in Nicaragua, this is what he had signed up for all the way back when he was 16 years old and lied his way into the army.
00:19:25
Stephen Platt
And he just never got it. um There's so much misinformation about Carlson out there, including in like the official Marine Corps biographies of him. um You know, it's have him, you know, being like he got a Purple Heart in World War One. So it's like, oh, yeah, he was wounded in action in World War One. And like, no, actually, um that when the Purple Heart was created, it was also given for bureaucratic service.
00:19:48
Stephen Platt
And so he had like gotten this like service citation in World War One, but he never got near the trenches. um They, you know, there are biographies of that him out there about how he like helped to chase down Pancho Villa after his raid into the United States. and No, actually, if you look at his letters, he got called back into the National Guard at that point and they sent him to El Paso, Texas to be a training officer.
00:20:12
Stephen Platt
So he's always on the sidelines as a military officer, you got um you know, all the way through, again, like up through his 30s. He's just on the sidelines. He's watching from a distance. And Nick Rogway, he finally gets a chance to be under fire and learn something about himself, which is that he really likes that experience.
The Sino-Japanese War's Impact on WWII
00:20:33
Stephen Platt
There's something about it. like he One of the things that's going to distinguish him in World War two to his men is just his absolute fearlessness under fire.
00:20:42
Stephen Platt
And there are these descriptions of him in you know island fighting and in in the Pacific, where you know the bullets are flying all around him and he's just like standing there smoking his pipe, walking around, pointing out targets to his men, pointing out where the snipers are.
00:20:57
Stephen Platt
And yeah his his men were just like aghast and agog and worshiped the ground he walked on. And it was you know it was it was quite inspiring. But this is something he learns for the first time in Nicaragua.
00:21:08
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, um, I want I want to pivot to china um because obviously um big deal in his life. ah Let's actually start off, if you wouldn't mind, um could you just give the audience a brief overview of the Sino-Japanese War, um its causes, ah the the major players?
00:21:33
A.J. Woodhams
I don't know if you would actually, is it is it common to consider it part of World War two I'm not actually sure if it's, okay.
00:21:39
Stephen Platt
It is. And I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, you you can start World War II with Hitler invading Poland, or you can start it with Pearl Harbor, or you can start it with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
00:21:50
Stephen Platt
um So anyone with a more Asian orientation would put the beginning of World War II in 1937. There are people in China who would argue for it to begin in 1931 when Japan invades Manchuria.
00:22:01
Stephen Platt
um But it's ah it's a very complex situation and in China um at the time. And actually, to to understand the China that Carlson was engaging with,
00:22:14
Stephen Platt
The first step is to get the rivalry between the communists and the KMT. um The KMT are the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, the communists under Mao Zedong. And they're going to be in a civil war starting in 1927, right about the time that Carlson first arrives in China.
00:22:31
Stephen Platt
And this civil war is going to, you know it'll it'll quiet down, it'll it'll kindle back to life. um They're actually going to be allies for a while during World War II. But that's the situation in China that is most interesting to him and which is going to be most important in terms of his own life.
FDR and Carlson's China Mission
00:22:48
Stephen Platt
So while Chiang Kai-shek is fighting the communists, the Japanese are sharpening their knives um And, you know, Japan's imperial expansion begins in the late 19th century.
00:23:00
Stephen Platt
um you know, there's a famous line from a Japanese politician saying that, um you know, in the grand feast of imperialism in the world, um Japan can either take its seat at the table or it can be served up as a main course.
00:23:14
Stephen Platt
um So the the rise of Japanese imperialism was driven initially as a way of sort of carving out a sphere for Japan and independently of the Western imperial powers. um They take Taiwan from China. They take Korea. They annexed Korea in 1910.
00:23:29
Stephen Platt
And then the next major territory beyond Korea, if you're looking from a Japanese perspective, is Manchuria, this huge northeastern area of China, which...
00:23:40
Stephen Platt
by yeah By the early 1930s, which is when Japan invades Manchuria, um this is a territory that's full of natural resources that have not been exploited. um This was the homeland of the Manchus who ruled the Qing dynasty, and they had largely kept it free of of Han Chinese immigration. So it was this underpopulated...
00:23:59
Stephen Platt
Andrew Bickford, with with lots of lots of ah material resources. So the Japanese invade Manchuria. um They they take power there in 1932. They set it up as a puppet state called Manchukuo, which is supposed to be independent, but it really answers to the Japanese And by the time Carlson comes back for his, actually his third tour in China, the one where he has the mission from Roosevelt, he's going to arrive in August of 1937, which is just after the Sino-Japanese War has broken out, you know full scale.
00:24:29
Stephen Platt
And there's a massive Japanese invasion of the East Coast going on. So this, I mean, this this is one anchor for the beginning of World War II. I mean, you know you can make little technical arguments like, well, it's not going to be a world world war until all of Europe is engulfed as well. or whatever But as far as China is concerned, this is the beginning of World War II.
00:24:46
A.J. Woodhams
Well, let's then talk about um ah Carlson. So you just mentioned Roosevelt. He actually, i guess to come back to timing, he ends up being a Marine um guarding Roosevelt. You know, tell the tell the story actually. Yeah.
00:25:03
Stephen Platt
It's crazy. These are the kinds of things that you can't make up. Or if you did make them up, people would be like, yeah, right. As if that would ever happen. Yeah. So he's you know Carlson, he's this mid-career China intelligence officer for the Marines who's done a stint in Nicaragua.
00:25:22
Stephen Platt
um He's home in 1936. um He's going to do some foreign affairs coursework at George Washington University. He's taking classes at the Marine Corps schools in Quantico.
00:25:33
Stephen Platt
And just you know completely randomly, he gets assigned to be second in command of a Marine detachment protecting the president at his alternate residence down in Georgia. um his his warm springs residence which was known as the little white house and it's you know it's this little estate that that roosevelt had um in georgia um it was an area that had these hot springs that were thought to be therapeutic for polio patients and so there was a there was a foundation there that that um you know actually i mean roosevelt spent a substantial amount of his family fortune
00:26:07
Stephen Platt
on on buying the buildings and the grounds and setting up the foundation there for polio patients. So Roosevelt would go there at holiday times with his family. um he would you know He would float around in the pools and there was Carlson like by the side of the pool watching over him to keep him safe. you know there's There's no threats to the president in Georgia at this time.
00:26:25
Stephen Platt
um But through this completely random assignment that he has, ah you know he strikes up a friendship with the president. And in one thing about Carlson is that he was a very, very charming guy um that people, for the most part, really liked him.
00:26:38
Stephen Platt
um He was fun to talk to and whatnot. So he strikes up a friendship with James Roosevelt, the president's oldest son. and also gets to know the ro ah the president himself. And it becomes almost a little bit embarrassing for Carlson because FDR starts singling him out from the other Marine officers there. And Carlson's just second in command. He doesn't want to you know step on the toes of the senior commander there.
00:27:01
Stephen Platt
But you know as they come and go and whatnot, like Roosevelt's inviting Carlson and his wife to come have lunch at the White House when nobody else in Quantico got an invitation like that. And then right before Carlson was set to go back to China for his third tour, um Roosevelt brings him back to Warm Springs, keeps him for dinner, pulls him aside at the end of the dinner, and is like, I want to meet with you before you leave. And so they meet at the White House.
00:27:28
Stephen Platt
And Roosevelt, basically, that we don't have a direct transcript of their conversation, but from yeah from other, like you we we can piece ah together what that what really happened here. um Roosevelt had decided that that he wanted to know what was really happening in China, and especially whether the Chinese were going to be able to stand up to the Japanese invasion.
00:27:49
Stephen Platt
Because you have China, this poor agricultural country, um Japan with one of the most powerful and modern military forces on earth at that point. um And FDR decided that Carlson was the guy that he trusted to get the information for him.
00:28:03
Stephen Platt
So he told him, you when you go back to China, I want you to report directly to me. um So they set up a secret path of communication. Carlson would write all of his letters to Missy LeHand, FDR's secretary, um you know you know, dear Miss LeHand.
00:28:18
Stephen Platt
um And then she would relay them to to the president. um And so it sets up...
00:28:23
A.J. Woodhams
And only the three of them knew about this arrangement too, right?
00:28:25
Stephen Platt
Only the three of them knew about this.
00:28:26
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:28:28
Stephen Platt
It's the secret arrangement. There's yeah there's a couple of folders of their correspondence at the FDR library. And it's this sort of wonderful end run around the entire military chain of command to have this One Marine officer who has a direct line of communication straight to the commander in chief.
00:28:45
Stephen Platt
And this is this is the mission that Carlson's always been waiting for. And he so he goes back to China, arrives just as the war is breaking out.
00:28:50
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:28:55
Stephen Platt
And now he's the eyes and ears of the U.S. s president, trying to help him understand what's happening and what America's role might be.
00:28:58
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:29:02
A.J. Woodhams
And for somebody who's like really just wanted to do something with his life, I feel like I can imagine him going to China and feeling like, you know, I'm on a mission from the president of the United States, ah just feeling very um you're stepping into himself, if you want to call it that.
00:29:20
Stephen Platt
Yeah, I mean, when when when Roosevelt dies, Carlson is just utterly heartbroken.
00:29:20
A.J. Woodhams
and
00:29:26
Stephen Platt
I mean, many, many people were heart utterly heartbroken. But and there's this letter that he writes to to Roosevelt's son the next day. And yeah he says, yeah yeah yeah, my relationship with your father was the greatest honor of my life.
00:29:37
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:29:38
Stephen Platt
And it was something that he couldn't tell people about at the time.
00:29:41
A.J. Woodhams
Well, talk about ah when when Carlson gets to China shortly after he arrives. ah Correct me if I'm wrong, but he really witnesses some some terrible, intense fighting. I believe he's present for the massacre at Nanking, if I'm saying that right.
00:29:59
A.J. Woodhams
um he He really sees a lot of suffering. Talk a little bit about that. Talk about how that how he reacted to that and and how that changes him.
00:30:08
Stephen Platt
Sure. um He just skirted the massacre at Nanjing. um he He left for the north just before it happened.
00:30:13
A.J. Woodhams
Okay.
00:30:16
Stephen Platt
um But on his final day, he spent his final day visiting with the KMT general who was in charge of the defense of Nanjing, who told him that He was going to make the Japanese pay dearly for the city.
00:30:27
Stephen Platt
But Carlson gets there um when he arrives in August of 1937. He's in Shanghai in the very center of the of the most major battle of the Sino-Japanese War and its outbreak.
00:30:39
Stephen Platt
um This is just a horrific three-month battle for the city of Shanghai. um You're seeing for the first time just wide-scale, incessant bombing of civilian districts by the Japanese.
00:30:52
Stephen Platt
um Chiang Kai-shek, who is making his stand at Shanghai in order to protect his capital of Nanjing, which is about 200 miles inland from there, up the Yangtze River. Chiang Kai-shek sends 300,000 of his very best troops um trained by German and and german military advisors.
00:31:10
Stephen Platt
He concentrates them and in Shanghai, and it's going to be an absolute bloodbath. Their casualty rates are about two-thirds. um So somewhere between 150, 180,000 of them um are killed or wounded.
00:31:20
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:31:27
Stephen Platt
And Carlson is in the middle of all this, and he's getting up to within a few yards of the fighting in the trenches. he's like this is This is one of the points where where sort of his his fearlessness on the battlefield, like like he he like runs into wherever the action is and This is, I should say, in terms of Carlson, there's also a religious aspect to this, um which is that he was very much a fatalist.
00:31:51
Stephen Platt
And he believed that if there was a bullet with his name on it, it was going to hit him no matter what. And if God meant for him to die, you know if he tries to dodge, he's probably just as likely to dodge into the bullet as away from it He said, but if god if God does not intend for me to die right now, I should just go about my business.
00:32:07
Stephen Platt
And so he goes about his business. um So he sees absolutely brutal fighting with just unthinkable casualties on the Chinese side. um They are completely outmatched by a Japanese artillery, by Japanese naval cannons, um but any yeah and and the Japanese are just better trained and better equipped.
00:32:26
Stephen Platt
But this is going to be the beginning of something that's going to really grow for Carlson, especially after he goes north with the communists, which is that he's going to develop an absolutely profound sympathy for the people of China.
00:32:39
Stephen Platt
um He is going to take sides in this war. And his heart by, you know, by 1939, his heart is entirely with the Chinese.
The Brutality of the Sino-Japanese War
00:32:47
Stephen Platt
And he wants to, there's actually a point where he's considering like finding way to like quit the Marines in order to volunteer in China as an officer and help them fight Japan.
00:32:47
A.J. Woodhams
yeah. Yeah.
00:32:57
Stephen Platt
They don't want him, but, you know, but in the end, he's actually going to quit the Marines in order to be able to come home and speak on behalf of China to the to American audiences and try to her drum up support to help support them.
00:33:09
A.J. Woodhams
Now, here's a a question for you, just kind of an in general question, because i had to I had to Google this and I had to find out for myself. um Because again, I feel like really with our for how many books are out there about World War II, my understanding of what took place in China is just completely lacking.
00:33:29
A.J. Woodhams
And I feel like a lot of people maybe might might be similar, like we were talking about. But why why why was the fighting itself so intense? And it's not just like normal, um ah what we might think of in the Western theater fighting. It's the the massacre of civilians,
00:33:49
A.J. Woodhams
the rape, ah of tens of thousands of of women and um and like ah just like really grotesque. I think like babies like killed. and what What was it that made this fighting so different than what was going on in the Western theater?
00:34:07
Stephen Platt
I can't myself explain the monstrosity of the Japanese military um in World War II. It was absolutely ghastly. there I mean, there are scholars of Japanese history who are who are better able to to describe it. i'm John Dower being one of them in terms of the Pacific War.
00:34:22
Stephen Platt
um Just, I mean, for the Pacific War, they they absolutely, like, viewing the other side as being absolutely subhuman, you know, not the same level. And the Japanese very much viewed the Chinese as being is being, like, inferior beings to them.
00:34:37
Stephen Platt
And i I have not yet seen myself, like, a convincing explanation of how the rape of Nanjing could happen when you could have...
00:34:50
Stephen Platt
you know Hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed soldiers being massacred when they're raping tens of thousands of women. They're setting fire to elderly people. um Just these these unthinkable atrocities.
00:35:02
Stephen Platt
um But some of the explanations that come close have to do with the way that the Japanese were convinced that the Chinese should welcome them. um And that they should welcome their leadership. and And why are they standing in the way of this?
00:35:15
Stephen Platt
And it took them so long to capture Shanghai, which they were expecting to take basically overnight. Actually, I mean, backing up a little bit, the the the con the their conquest of Manchuria was and very easy matter um because Chiang Kai-shek basically didn't try to fight back against them.
00:35:32
Stephen Platt
um you know He sat back and let Manchuria go because at that time he was concentrating all of his forces on trying to fight the communists inside China.
Influence of Chinese Guerrilla Tactics on Carlson
00:35:41
Stephen Platt
So part of the explanation may have to do with how hard it was for the Japanese to take Shanghai and they and Nanjing was the capital of the Republic.
00:35:53
Stephen Platt
And if they could break the hearts of the, break the spirits of the Chinese people, then the country would collapse. But China would put up a much, much, much stronger resistance than the Japanese expected.
00:36:04
A.J. Woodhams
yeah Yeah. Well, um talk talk about, we'll go back to Carlson, but um you know talk about then, you know he's he's embedded with Mao. um you know he's He's meeting these leaders.
00:36:17
A.J. Woodhams
Talk about how the rest of his time in China unfolds.
00:36:21
Stephen Platt
Sure. So in the middle of all this, um he makes his way up north to where the communists are. So by 1937, when he arrives, the communists and the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek have formed an alliance.
00:36:37
Stephen Platt
they are They are a united front at this point, and they're both going to fight the Japanese instead of fighting each other. um This alliance is not going to last all the way through World War II. Chiang Kai-shek is going to go right back to blockading the communists.
00:36:49
Stephen Platt
um But Carlson wants to find out what's going on up in the north. And so he makes his way up there. um And he will meet Mao and comes away with a sort of a dizzying feeling about Mao, sees him as being sort of this dreamy genius figure and whatnot.
00:37:04
Stephen Platt
um But the communist leader who really makes the deepest impression on him is Zhu De, who was the military commander of the Red Army. um I should say here that Carlson's entree to the communists comes because he's um since he's been in China, he's been friends with a an American journalist named Edgar Snowe.
00:37:26
Stephen Platt
who wrote you know the single famous book, most famous book about China of the 20th century, Red Star over China, um which was his account of that. He he was the first foreign journalist to make it to Yan'an, to the capital, well, Dao'an, actually, at that point.
00:37:42
Stephen Platt
um But the capital of the Chinese communists and interview Mao and the other leaders. Carlson wasn't so interested in the politics of the Chinese communists. What he wanted to know is how have they managed to survive against Chiang Kai-shek for 10 years of civil war, um even though they have almost no supplies and no weapons.
00:37:59
Stephen Platt
And sort of pursuant to that, what resources can they bring to bear against the Japanese? So Zhu De is the key here. he's the He's the tactical mastermind of the Chinese communists. he's He and Mao together created the Red Army.
00:38:13
Stephen Platt
Mao is sort of more of a strategic leader. Zhu De is the top field commander, and he's the one who sets the tone for the whole Red Army and for its methods. And Carlson just is absolutely smitten by him.
00:38:28
Stephen Platt
um He's, you know compared to Chiang Kai-shek, who Carlson had met on various occasions, who's this sort of authoritarian strutting around huge epaulettes and, you know, these grand uniforms that he wears and stuff and whatnot. Like here's Judah who just basically comes across like this humble peasant, not wearing any insignia or any special uniform or anything.
00:38:50
Stephen Platt
He's incredibly friendly, has this big grin on his face and sort of sweet eyes. um And he's very, very frank and forthcoming. and so Carlson spends a couple of weeks with Judah at his headquarters up in Shanxi province.
00:39:02
Stephen Platt
um And Judah walks him through the whole like civil war with the with the KMT, recreating little battles for him, talking about the tactics they use. um Carlson is amazed by this.
00:39:14
Stephen Platt
um He writes a letter to to Roosevelt and and bribes a British missionary to take it to a safe place in China to post it. um But he he says to Roosevelt, I've never seen a military force like this before. They're like um you know they're they're like ah yeah like ah i know, they're like eels squirming in and out from you know between the between the enemy, or they're like ah you know like they're like a cloud of hornets attacking an elephant or something like that when they fight.
00:39:43
Stephen Platt
you know But he tells f FDR, like there's only so much that I can know or believe just from being here at the headquarters and being told stuff. I want to see what's really going on in the field. And so leaving the day after Christmas, 1937, he heads off into the field with the Chinese Communist, with a communist patrol and is going to, ultimately he's going to spend months um behind yeah Japanese lines with the Chinese Communist patrols, learning about how they fight, especially learning about how they're organizing the peasant population, how they're training them for military action.
00:40:14
Stephen Platt
how they're training them for resistance and sabotage, how they're building up a sense of nationalism in Chinese peasants who never really have been asked or want or you know to care about the the nation of China.
00:40:27
Stephen Platt
um So that's i mean that's the the core of the first half of this book is his experience there, because that's really the crucible that he's going to come out of as a changed man
00:40:37
A.J. Woodhams
what are What are some examples of some of the, I know you just mentioned sabotage and training and things like that, but as far as guerrilla warfare goes, this you know this is where he learns guerrilla warfare that and he he later takes to the Pacific theater.
00:40:51
A.J. Woodhams
What are some examples of some of the the tactics that he takes away from this experience that he then introduces into the Marines?
00:40:58
Stephen Platt
um he is i mean He is absolutely fascinated by the kinds of subterfuge they use, by the their the ways of disguising their strength, um the ways that they use the the topography and the terrain, the way that they're able to find their areas geographically that give them an advantage over a much larger enemy.
00:41:19
Stephen Platt
um The ways in which they attack supply lines, they the ways in which they scout out weak points. And mean, part of the key to this, and this is also something that Carlson is gonna bring back, that the key to this for the communists is the way that they work with the local civilian population.
00:41:36
Stephen Platt
And when there isn't fighting going on, the soldiers in the army are like helping the peasants to plow their fields and bring in harvest and things like that. um That they expend a huge amount of effort to build up loyalty and support from peasants who then become this huge intelligence network for them.
00:41:52
Stephen Platt
And if you have a communist patrol, they're getting information from all different directions from these peasant groups who are transmitting information to them. So they are aware at any given time where the larger Japanese columns are located, which direction they're going.
00:42:07
Stephen Platt
And they can come around behind them or they can hit them from the side. um So partly girl Carlson was taken with how they're able to use the civilian population to create an advantage. And above all, though, he is amazed by their their willingness to suffer.
00:42:23
Stephen Platt
And these are communist soldiers who have very little food. They have few weapons. um Some of them are just armed with sticks and they're hoping to get weapons from dead Japanese.
00:42:36
Stephen Platt
um if they you know In the wintertime, if they have overcoats, it's because they took them from from Japanese that they'd killed or from raiding a camp and taking their supplies. And yet, he said, there are no complaints. And he's like with one patrol that you know covers about 50 miles in the course of a day secretly on foot through you know through the following night in order to cross one of the Japanese lines.
00:42:58
Stephen Platt
And I think it's the the cohesion of these units that he moves with, ah their loyalty to each other and their faith in each other, and their absolute willingness to suffer for the sake of ah sort of a political vision of a free China um and a better future.
Formation and Training of Carlson's Raiders
00:43:16
Stephen Platt
And that is the very essence of what he's going to bring back for his raiders. It's going to be like that willingness to to suffer, the willingness to work together, um the willingness to work with the people around you.
00:43:21
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:43:28
Stephen Platt
He thinks that that's really the key for the japanese i'm for the Chinese communists. That's how they've survived. That's how they've been able to avoid being extinguished by much larger military forces for years and years.
00:43:40
A.J. Woodhams
Well, let's fast forward a few years then and talk about the Raiders. So by this time, obviously Pearl Harbor happens in 1941. And um Evans Carlson, I believe, has actually been out of the service for a little bit now, but he um um along with many others, volunteers ah to fight in the Pacific.
00:44:05
A.J. Woodhams
Talk about his reintroduction into the Pacific theater and how the Raiders get formed.
00:44:11
Stephen Platt
Sure. um Carlson anticipates Pearl Harbor by the better part of a year. um By January of 1941, he's telling, so he's he's gone back to, he, I should backtrack here and say, so yeah, yeah so in 1939, he quits the Marines um in order to come back and to be able to write and speak freely um and trying to trying to drum up support.
00:44:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Let's be a writer.
00:44:35
Stephen Platt
Yeah, he's trying to drum up support for for China um with the American public.
00:44:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:44:40
Stephen Platt
And especially trying to to help um pass an embargo against selling selling war materials to Japan. that you know this is This is the isolationist phase of of u s foreign policy.
00:44:52
Stephen Platt
And the American public does not want to get involved in foreign wars. um But he thinks we could at least help to convince them that we shouldn't be selling you know airplane fuel and steel and et cetera to the Japanese that they can use to drop bombs on on China.
00:45:07
Stephen Platt
So he goes back to China and um in 1940 as a civilian. And it's while he's there that he just has this epiphany that Japan is on the verge of changing its war aims um and that it's going to involve an attack on American interests. He thinks the first step is going to be an attack on the Philippines.
00:45:26
Stephen Platt
um And he so he gets himself home as soon as he can, um puts in to re-enlist in the Marines. he writes um He's been in touch with the Marine Corps commandant after he resigned, um who told him, you know you're welcome to a position if you want one, if you want to come back.
00:45:42
Stephen Platt
And yeah there's this there's this correspondence between him and thomas between Carlson and Thomas Holcomb, the the commandant of the Marine Corps. and Carlson's telling him, me I think we're right on the verge of a war with Japan and I want to be i and be back in the service for that. Holcomb's not terribly concerned about this and tells him, take your time.
00:46:00
Stephen Platt
um but really i mean by By January of 1941, Carlson is back in the US s telling every reporter who will listen to him that the US needs to prepare for a war with Japan. So he's going to reenlist well before Pearl Harbor.
00:46:12
Stephen Platt
And there's sort of almost this sense of destiny about it for him that you know nobody's been listening to him. And then finally, yeah Pearl Harbor happens and the war is on. um Once the war has begun, um this is where his connection to Roosevelt comes back.
00:46:29
Stephen Platt
that he's, with the direct patronage of the president, he's gonna be given carte blanche to create a fighting unit, sort of a commando unit is how the there higher ups see it.
00:46:42
Stephen Platt
um Really, and and to form them and train them however he sees fit. um He's gonna have James Roosevelt, the president's oldest son as his executive officer, his second in command.
00:46:53
Stephen Platt
And at Camp Elliott in California, By February of 1942, they're going to be recruiting for this new battalion. um So the Marine Corps created two raider but battalions initially. The first raiders were on the East Coast with Merritt Edson.
00:47:09
Stephen Platt
Second raiders were on the West Coast with Evans Carlson. um They are going to be very, very, very different units, and they're going to be rivals. and Edson and Carlson are going to hate each other. um But yeah the the focus of this book is on the second Raiders.
00:47:23
Stephen Platt
And this becomes Carlson's chance to try to take everything that he learned from Judah and or put it into practice in the Marine Corps with this but battalion of initially about 100 men.
00:47:35
Stephen Platt
And he's going to try it. So he's going to yeah they have these. Crazy recruitment process. He's going to pull 600 ultimately out of about 6,000 candidates. I mean, it was not hard to find volunteers after Pearl Harbor.
00:47:49
Stephen Platt
And he's going to take the men that he thinks are you they're the toughest, they are the strongest, they are the most you know the most able to suffer, and also the ones that seem to have a little bit of idealism to them.
00:47:59
Stephen Platt
um who can be trained to think of themselves not just as like warriors, but as people who are fighting for democracy, democracy with a capital D. um And the the politics that he brought back from the communists, he wasn't training his Marines to be communist.
00:48:16
Stephen Platt
He was indoctrinating them with democracy. And this is this is one of the things that... that gets him a lot of fame in the press and a lot of interest from reporters and from the US public, that his argument is like, we're heading off into the Pacific in order to fight for democracy abroad. This is a war between democracy and fascism.
00:48:35
Stephen Platt
And if we want to fight it well, we need to have democracy in our ranks. And so his raider battalion was going to be a democratic military unit. He said, you know, the officers and men are basically going to be equals. The officers are going to suffer every single thing that the enlisted men do.
00:48:49
Stephen Platt
um The officers are going to lead by example, not by pulling rank. We are all going to be this in this together. We are all going to be brothers. um Enlisted men can call on their officers to explain decisions that they've made or why they ordered them to do certain things.
00:49:03
Stephen Platt
And this sort of democratic ethos for the raiders was He thought like this was you this it was his way of grasping the sort of the political ethos of the communists in China, um that this is the thing that made them willing to suffer and willing to willing to fight because they had a ah larger cause in mind.
00:49:22
Stephen Platt
So he's going to give these raiders these this absolutely grueling training. They're going to be doing 30 and 40 mile hikes. They're going to have 12 hours a day of intensive combat training.
00:49:33
Stephen Platt
um Unlike the Chinese communists who are you have these bare-bone weapons and are making 25-cent grenades in little arsenals in the hills, he's got the president in his pocket. um So he can have pretty much anything he wants
The Raiders' Missions and Media Perception
00:49:45
Stephen Platt
for his battalion. And so he's just like, they're going to be dripping with automatic weapons.
00:49:51
Stephen Platt
Incredible amounts of firepower for these small units that he's putting together. um he's goingnna He's going to pioneer the fire team concept. this is a He's going to be the first unit to use it. It's later going to be a standard for the Marines.
00:50:03
Stephen Platt
um So they're they're going to have sort of the all of the the skills and the tactics of the Chinese communists with all of the material resources that the unit that the United States can bring to bear.
00:50:15
A.J. Woodhams
Now, was he six success? Were the Raiders across the board successful?
00:50:19
Stephen Platt
No. i they're um Their first mission, on the raid on Mackin Island, that's the one that gets the movie made out of it in 1943.
00:50:31
Stephen Platt
And you know ah yeah as far as the American public knows, this is a just a runaway success. And this is basically the land version of Doolittle mission.
00:50:43
Stephen Platt
um The Doolittle raid on Tokyo, where they drop bombs on Tokyo and then go crash land on the mainland. you you know It doesn't accomplish anything strategically, but it's a huge boost to morale. um So a few days after the Marines landed at Guadalcanal, Carlson and a couple hundred of his raiders crammed into these two submarines, um get dropped off at Mackin Island in the Gilbert Islands chain, about 2,000 miles from Pearl Harbor.
00:51:08
Stephen Platt
um And they raid the island. And again, if all you read is the newspaper accounts, they, you know, they they go sailing on in these little rubber boats and they slaughter every Japanese on the island. you know, the newspapers say, you know, 350 killed in the course of a day.
00:51:23
Stephen Platt
And then they paddle back out to the submarines and head home victorious. The reality is anything but that. And it comes within a hair's breadth of being an absolute disaster.
00:51:37
Stephen Platt
um And for a number of the men involved in the raid, it it is a disaster, um including nine of them who get left behind and and are taken prisoner by the Japanese and then decapitated.
00:51:49
Stephen Platt
um So it's the whole thing is going to break apart. um But it's going to it's going to be enough of a victory that the Raiders keep getting getting getting to go forward and their next mission on Guadalcanal is going to be much more unquestionably a success.
00:52:02
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:52:06
A.J. Woodhams
Now, how responsible is Carlson for maybe if you want to call it spinning the success of his Raiders um is, you know, he's got the ear of the president.
00:52:17
A.J. Woodhams
and You know, is, is he at all telling people, oh, don't worry, you know, things are going okay. Nothing to see here. Or is he pretty, is he pretty honest with the fact that like, yeah, like things aren't going so good.
00:52:30
Stephen Platt
He's really honest. um I mean, i so there's ah there's a highly controversial um after action report that he writes after this. And I mean, the big controversy about the about the second graders on Mackinac Island is did they try to surrender?
00:52:48
Stephen Platt
um And yeah some of them say, no, nothing like that ever happened. and Others say, yeah um yeah yeah, there was an attempt at surrender. So I was able to confirm that, yeah, they did try to surrender. um And I was able to track down the note. um it it was The Japanese got it when they retook the the island and they brought it back and they published it back in Tokyo.
00:53:05
Stephen Platt
um So, I mean, things went badly enough that the men who, know, at the end of the first day, um they were stranded overnight. They couldn't get back to their submarines.
00:53:17
Stephen Platt
ah Half of them were on the island. Half of them had made it back to the subs. The other ones had no idea how many Japanese were left on the island. um They'd lost their weapons in the surf when their boats got overturned.
00:53:23
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:53:27
Stephen Platt
um This was just, yeah again, this was a disaster. um But he's going to, in his after action report, he's going to write about how he had to consider surrender. um And um Admiral Nimitz is going to just blow his top when he sees that in the in the report.
00:53:44
Stephen Platt
And we have the ah oral history testimony of Omar Pfeiffer, who is the the senior Marine on on Nimitz's staff, um who has Nimitz just shouting at him and say, you get a hold of this young man and you tell him that no report from my office is ever going to have the word surrender in it.
00:53:44
A.J. Woodhams
and
00:54:00
Stephen Platt
And so Pfeiffer calls in Carlson. He's like, you got to take this out. And Carlson said, no, it's true. And it's got to stay in. And then Pfeiffer tells him, like, it goes out or you go out. And so finally Carlson agrees.
00:54:12
A.J. Woodhams
Well, what go ahead.
00:54:12
Stephen Platt
um Yeah. ah But I was going to say, like, in terms of the press, though, like, I mean, here's sort of the irony of Carlson. Like, by the time he's removed from command, like I mean, he's like only only going to make it halfway through this war before the Marines effectively remove him from command and keep him away from the enlisted men because they get sick of him.
00:54:30
Stephen Platt
um One of the reasons they're so sick of him is because of how famous he's become with the press, um because there's just so much written about him. yeah he's this like yeah He's this Hollywood figure now and household name and whatnot. But the reason why he was so famous is because the Navy Department kept sending out these incredible press releases about him and about the Raiders. And just like he you know they got great propaganda value out of this unit.
00:54:54
Stephen Platt
So, I mean, it was the Navy Department that made him famous.
00:54:57
A.J. Woodhams
Mm-hmm.
00:54:57
Stephen Platt
He wasn't selling this himself, um but then he's going to be blamed for it by the other officers.
00:55:02
A.J. Woodhams
Well, what are some of the things that the Raiders are most well known for? but you know, there's as we've been talking, and you've mentioned this, there's a lot of mystique, a lot of misinformation about um Carlson and the Raiders and and but the things that actually happened.
00:55:21
A.J. Woodhams
Dispel some of those myths that you have found in your research. What did they actually do? And what did you find in your research? You're like, well, there's actually not a lot of evidence for that.
00:55:33
Stephen Platt
I think the place where there are the contradictions is really about the Mackin Island raid. um Because the reports of it in the US press and especially the depiction of it um in the Hollywood movie about the raid, depicted as this unquestionable success, that again, it was it was it was in many ways a disaster and they came out and sort of by the skin of their teeth.
Legacy of Carlson's Raiders and Influence on Future Warfare
00:55:57
Stephen Platt
um But that wasn't by any means an ideal kind of and ah of a mission for the kind of battalion that Carlson had created. Like there was no jungle for them to disappear into. There was yeah there was there were no fainting maneuvers.
00:56:12
Stephen Platt
um you know It was just sort of a free-for-all on this island on this very, very, very small island. um And it hadn't been Carlson's choice to go there and do the submarine-based raid. And like one mean one of the main reasons that it fell apart was because the logistics of getting the boats to and from shore from the submarines just didn't work. So i like that was not at all successful, um but not really for reasons having to do with how the raiders had been trained. And I think they really proved themselves in Guadalcanal. They had this famous, justifiably fit famous, ah long patrol on Guadalcanal where for a month,
00:56:46
Stephen Platt
they were but but you know They were moving through the jungle on Guadalcanal outside of the marine perimeter, fighting the Japanese in almost daily skirmishes. um there it was um It was a phenomenal operation.
00:57:00
Stephen Platt
And that one, I think they do to deserve the mystique that they generated by doing this, that they you know they had hardly anything to eat. um They were in constant danger. they were physically suffering from from disease and from mosquitoes and from sleeping outside in the drenching rain every night.
00:57:19
Stephen Platt
um And the kill ratio is 30 something to one for the number of Japanese they killed versus the number of of raiders who were killed in combat.
00:57:28
A.J. Woodhams
Well, thinking about the birth of the u s Special Forces, how then after um World War Two and the Raiders, how how then are the Special Forces born of Carlson in this group he's created? and
00:57:44
Stephen Platt
Well, the raiders, ah so you've got the second raiders. um They distinguish themselves at Mackin, even if it's controversial, and they definitely distinguish themselves on Guadalcanal. um You have Edson's raiders who distinguish themselves at Guadalcanal, Edson's Ridge.
00:58:01
Stephen Platt
um And so the so um by the fall of 1942, the Marines create two more raider battalions. um These are going to sort of be elites. They make a raider regiment out of them.
00:58:13
Stephen Platt
um So these are intended to be sort of an and and elite strike forces within the Marines. But there's a lot of resentment of them within the Marine Corps. um And, you know Thomas Holcomb, the commandant, had not wanted to create these in the first place because his argument was that the Marines are already elite.
00:58:30
Stephen Platt
Like we already have tougher standards than the Army. ah Marines, yeah every single Marine is already a commando. Why do we need to take another unit and say they're special and they're somehow better? um There was also resentment because these raider battalions got to take the best men and the best weapons from other units and leave the others.
00:58:47
Stephen Platt
um So they the raiders distinguished themselves going forward. Carlson's pulled from command um in yeah around November, December of 1942. They are going to distinguish themselves in many ways, but then the whole concept is going to be dissolved and they're going to be turned back into regular infantry.
00:59:07
A.J. Woodhams
Are they?
00:59:08
Stephen Platt
And it's actually not until about 2014 that the Raider designation is going to get revived again for the Marine Corps. So today's today's Marine Corps Special Forces are the Raiders once again.
00:59:19
Stephen Platt
um But the connection, the connection is one about sort of, it's a, yeah, it's a historical model.
00:59:19
A.J. Woodhams
are they
00:59:25
Stephen Platt
It's the the pride that the Marines were the first of those early special forces units. You know, there are lots of them in World War II, but, you know, but those raider battalions, they were, they were the first ones. um And it's sort of it's a, the connection is one of like esprit de corps and inspiration and whatnot.
00:59:40
Stephen Platt
It's not like today's raiders are using tactics from the World War II guys.
00:59:40
A.J. Woodhams
Are there, I was just about to ask, like, are there there, as far as, you know, any kind of still tactic tactics that are still being used that doesn't.
00:59:43
Stephen Platt
Yeah, no, no, no. this Yeah. Yeah.
00:59:49
Stephen Platt
No, and I mean, and I think especially in terms of Carlson's own tactics, like, you know, the Marines did not want to touch him with a 10-foot pole after the end of the war um because of his supposed communist leanings and all of that.
01:00:02
Stephen Platt
So, like, nobody would, in the Marines, would sort of consciously acknowledge using Carlson as a model. um But um one general who was quite sympathetic to him, Merrill Twining, who had been Vandegrift's information officer, our operations officer on that,
01:00:09
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:00:17
Stephen Platt
I to recheck that, um on Guadalcanal. He had been the point person at Vandegrift's headquarters during Carlson's operation on Guadalcanal. So he got his daily radio reports. um He was a big fan of Carlson.
01:00:29
Stephen Platt
And he, in later life, um attributed sort the US ah like the u military's use of helicopters in Korea and Vietnam as being inspired originally by what Carlson was able to do with his you know highly mobile battalion being supported by native personnel who were like yeah you know leaving food drops every four days at different places.
01:00:50
Stephen Platt
um So he he saw that as really being the beginning of that kind of warfare.
01:00:54
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:00:54
Stephen Platt
Meanwhile, you um yeah know but the Carlson finally yeah he finally gets his day, at least in the Marine Corps Gazette. um yeah In the late 1980s, there's a piece about him and how he was you know years ahead of his time and his vision for yeah he for jungle fighting, et cetera, et cetera.
01:01:13
Stephen Platt
And there are these wonderful letters back to the Marine Corps Gazette from various Marine officers. yeah know So I'm saying, like everything that went wrong in Vietnam is because we didn't pay enough attention to Carlson's idea of gung ho and like how you know that the North Vietnamese were using gung ho against us. And if we had learned better how guerrillas operate and how to counter that, we might have done better in that conflict.
U.S.-China Alliances in WWII
01:01:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:01:34
Stephen Platt
Make of that way, do you will.
01:01:36
A.J. Woodhams
Well, ah last question here, Steve. First, um you know, great interview. I love the answers to that you've got to my questions. um Really ah ah fascinated by this topic. I need to learn more about ah China ah in World War II. Last question here. What do you why do you think this story is important today? And what are you hoping that readers take away from your book?
01:02:00
Stephen Platt
Oh, that's a really good question. um There are a lot of things. I mean, even at the most basic level, i think it's good to remember that the United States and the Chinese communists were allies in World War II. I mean, it's hard to remember that at a time like right now when there are these incredible tensions between the US s and China, where the sort of the default is to see China this as an enemy power.
01:02:25
Stephen Platt
um Yeah, this is, I mean, this points back to a time when, know, Carlson did not have to hide his connection to the Chinese communists in World War II. The American public loved it. They were extremely positive about the Chinese communists and whatnot. So it's it's a reminder of another direction things might have gone at the end of World War II. I don't think there's any possibility that that the U.S. s and China came out of World War II, you know, sort of walking hand in hand happily into the future as good buddies.
01:02:52
Stephen Platt
You know, always leaned towards Stalin ideologically. But I do think that there were possibilities for a stronger alliance with the Chinese communists, for better connections with them that Carlson had tried to build um and failed to do in a sustained way um that might at least have allowed us to avoid the Korean War, um which was based on an absolute misunderstanding of what the communists were trying to do and of what we were trying to do.
01:03:19
Stephen Platt
um So i think there there was, Carlson opens this window into a period when the Chinese communists were proclaiming their willingness for an alliance with the US. Mao wanted to go to Washington and meet with FDR and sort of the sort of the last possibilities of that.
01:03:37
Stephen Platt
um But and more just, I mean, in terms of, you know, something like yeah Marine Corps history, I think it's just, I mean, it's it's it's wonderful to just see how tolerant the Marines actually were of somebody as unconventional as Evans Carlson.
01:03:53
Stephen Platt
I mean, because today we think of of the Marines as being sort of like lockstep conformists. yeah They have a very strong internal culture. Aaron O'Connell, who wrote Underdogs, and talks about how like and Marine recruits get like broken down and then rebuilt into Marines.
01:04:07
Stephen Platt
um you know Carlson, again, he rubbed everyone the wrong way, but they still loved him up until they removed him from command. um But for the longest time in his career, he was really able to sort of march to his own drum within the Marine Corps. And there's you know people like him, people like Smedley Butler, that the pre-World War II Marine Corps was actually quite tolerant of these very individualistic
Conclusion and Further Engagement with Stephen R. Platt
01:04:29
Stephen Platt
officers. Yeah.
01:04:31
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:04:32
Stephen Platt
Yeah.
01:04:33
A.J. Woodhams
Well, ah Steve, if people want to stay in touch with your work, if they want to ah follow, are you on social media? How can people stay in touch with what you're doing?
01:04:41
Stephen Platt
Yeah, I have a website now. um It's, yeah, Stephen R.
01:04:43
A.J. Woodhams
Okay.
01:04:45
Stephen Platt
Platt, all one word, StephenRPlatt.com.
01:04:47
A.J. Woodhams
And that's Steven with a PH too, correct?
01:04:47
Stephen Platt
um Oh yeah. Steven with the PH.
01:04:50
A.J. Woodhams
Yes.
01:04:50
Stephen Platt
Yeah.
01:04:50
A.J. Woodhams
Yes.
01:04:51
Stephen Platt
Steven R. Platt.com. Um, that has information about the books that I've written. I'm, I'm a social media wallflower. Um, I sort of technically have an account on blue sky.
01:04:59
A.J. Woodhams
Okay.
01:05:02
Stephen Platt
I did have an account on Twitter that I can no longer get back into.
01:05:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, well.
01:05:07
Stephen Platt
Um, but I would, I, there's a contact form on my website. Um, yeah, if you Google me, you can find my email on my UMass website. I love to hear from readers.
01:05:17
A.J. Woodhams
Wonderful. Well, Stephen R. Platt, the Raider, the untold story of a renegade Marine and the birth of the U.S. s Special Forces in World War II. Go buy a copy. Go check it out from your library.
01:05:28
A.J. Woodhams
a really fascinating story that you've told here. And Steve, thank you so much for your time today.
01:05:34
Stephen Platt
Thanks so much, AJ. really enjoyed this.