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American Morning

Interview of Richard Stolley and Bob Sullivan

Aired December 11, 2001 - 09:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Just last week, the nation marked the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an anniversary now viewed from the perspective of September 11th, the "day of infamy" for a new generation.

The tragedies, in a way, mirror each other, and their images are reflected in two new "Life" books. "World War II," edited by Richard Stolley, and "One Nation," edited by Bob Sullivan. They've stopped by this morning, and if you heard me congratulating Bob, it's because his book is going to be number one on the New York best seller list --

BOB SULLIVAN, EDITOR, "ONE NATION": On Sunday Morning.

ZAHN: -- on Sunday morning. Thanks for the warning. Congratulations. Let's talk a little bit about America's war in World War II, and the war on terror, both beginning with surprise attacks. Dick, we're going to look at a picture now, and I want you to describe what it is communicating to us.

RICHARD STOLLEY, EDITOR, "WORLD WAR II": Well, this is the battleship sinking after they have been attacked by Japanese forces. Total surprise of shock, anger, no compromise after this attack. No sense that we were going to ever negotiate with the Japanese. We wanted total victory after that attack.

ZAHN: And I think we have a series of pictures that were taken at about the same time that picture was taken. We'll continue to roll that -- actually, we've moved on to the Trade Center, shortly after it was hit.

SULLIVAN: September 11th. You know, another attack on our soil, an attack from the air, and the attack was a total surprise. Of course, the saline difference is the civilians were the targets here. The others were -- you know, on December 6th, 1941, the world was all but globally at war already. Here, we were complacent. We felt we were at peace, and then this happens, and civilians are killed. But the uptick, in earnestness about going after the enemy, that Dick talked about, was quite the same. I mean, the resolve that day, the resolve the next morning was, I presume, precisely like December 8th, 1941.

ZAHN: There's a picture, I think, that is permanently etched into a lot of Americans' consciousness, and it was the picture taken at Iwo Jima. And, Dick, I want you to talk about the poignant of this shot.

STOLLEY: Well, this is the famous flag raising. Five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who put this big flag up on the highest point in Iwo Jima. Bitter, bitter battle. Three of the six people who put that flag up, three did not survive Iwo Jima, and then, that picture was mirrored in -- when the three firefighters put up the picture at the World -- in the ruins of the World Trade Center with even worse casualties surrounding them.

ZAHN: And we're going to look at that picture now, Bob, and you wonder if this picture will have the same degree of resonance that the Iwo Jima image had.

SULLIVAN: I think it has had, in the last several weeks. It was taken by a reporter for the Bergen newspaper, New Jersey. It's very eerie, you know, how much it mirrors the Iwo Jima shot. For the book, we got James Bradley, who wrote "Flags of Our Fathers" to talk about his father, who was an Iwo Jima flag raiser in that picture, and to talk about the similarities about the two shots, because he went down to ground zero to see this, and he wrote a very reflective and -- I think, quite emotional essay about it. It's very beautiful.

ZAHN: I want to go back in time, now, to pictures of American troops guarding the Washington Monument during World War II.

STOLLEY: Well, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, we had no idea what was going to happen to the continental U.S., whether it would be sabotage, would it be attack on us, so that -- that's the Washington Monument, as we can see, and those things over to one side, that is an anti-aircraft battery that was put up all over national monuments in Washington until we could be sure that we were not going to be attacked by the -- by Japanese or by Germans.

ZAHN: And, of course, in the wake of September 11th, this is what we saw. Surrounding the Washington Monument, many candlelight vigils being held in honor of those killed all over the country.

SULLIVAN: That's right. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's the power of symbolic, iconic architecture, you know, a sculpture, a building, the Trade Centers themselves, of course, were highly symbolic. The power that they have over people, so, of course, the vigil went to the Washington Monument, went back to this iconic place.

This, of course, is the Pentagon shortly after it was hit. In this city, we have to keep reminding ourselves that the attack was not just in New York, that it was in Washington, that people were killed in Pennsylvania. That this was widespread, and it was an attack on -- not on a city, but on a nation, and so, I think the response -- the national response, again, quite mirrors that that you saw in World War II.

ZAHN: I'd like to close with some images that were captured of the sense of patriotism, as exhibited by Americans displaying the flag. Dick, what --

STOLLEY: Well, this is a burial. This, rather spookily, looks like the firefighters' funerals. This is the burial of sailors in Hawaii. This is children, schoolchildren, in Chicago celebrating the end of the war in Europe, waiving the flags. Again, it could have happened in the last month or so.

ZAHN: And we'll fast forward, Bob, to some images taken more recently.

SULLIVAN: This -- this is on the Teddy Roosevelt. They are getting ready to ship out to Middle East. This is in a football stadium in Lexington, Kentucky. Obviously, the country ran out of flags that next week after September 11th, as they did after December 7th. It's the power of the flag, I think, was something that was really brought home to us this autumn and continues, you know, as we press the campaign in Afghanistan.

ZAHN: Once again, Bob Sullivan edited the book called "One Nation." Richard Stolley edited "World War II." Both of those published by Life. We all work for the same parent company. We should, in the interest of full disclosure, tell that to our audience, but the fact remains that your books are selling very well on their own without our even looking at them.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us as we sit here three months after those attacks on our nation, and as we've been showing you memorials for the 9-11 terror attacks have been held all over the country, all over the world, and even in outer space this morning.

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