"Pacific D-Days" with Ian W. Toll

Mr. Toll's presentation, titled Pacific D-Days, discusses amphibious warfare in the Pacific which required sustained and intricate cooperation between the U.S. military services and the lessons they learned that remain vital to meet the challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

Ian W. Toll is the author of Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944–1945 (Pacific War Trilogy, Volume 3). Other titles in the trilogy include Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (Volume 1) and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944 (Volume 2). Toll’s previous book was Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy (W.W. Norton, 2006). Six Frigates won broad critical acclaim and was selected for the Samuel Eliot Morison Award and the William E. Colby Award. Pacific Crucible received the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction in 2012. In 2019, Toll was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Award by the USS Constitution Museum.

Toll received his undergraduate degree in American History at Georgetown University (1989) and his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1995). He has also served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Humanities, a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, and a lecturer at the Naval War College.

The Haydn Williams World War II Memorial Legacy Lecture, a signature program of Friends, is an annual public lecture series that features preeminent historians and others speaking on the lasting significance and impact of World War II on America and the world.
Previous Legacy Lecturers have included New York Times best-selling author Alex Kershaw, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson; British author, historian, and broadcaster Sir Max Hastings; U.S. Naval Academy professor and author Dr. Craig Symonds; Stanford University professor and author Dr. David Kennedy; renowned journalist and author Tom Brokaw; Hoover Institution Fellow Victor Davis Hanson; University of Virginia professor and author William Hitchcock.

The annual Haydn Williams World War II Memorial Legacy Lecture is made possible through the generous endowment of the late Ambassador F. Haydn Williams, a WWII veteran, former chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission’s WWII Memorial Committee, and founder and former chairman emeritus of Friends of the National World War II Memorial.