James Buckley was born in March 1923 in Sharon, Connecticut. He attended school in his house until high school. He went to college at Yale [Annotator's Note: Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut] after high school. Back then you only had to get decent marks to get in. Buckley was driving and listening to the New York Philharmonic [Annotator's Note: Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Incorporated, also known as the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in New York, New York] on the radio and there was an interruption about the attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was a member of the Yale News Board [Annotator's Note: Yale Daily News]. They already had plans for "the war issue" as it was inevitable that it was coming. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the video at 0:02:38.000. When the interview resumes, Buckley is explaining about an organization whose name must have been said during the break, that was working to keep America out of foreign wars.] The Navy let him finish his schooling. He was 19 and the military started building up. Being in college, he could sign up for the V-12 Program [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946]. He signed up in June 1942 and got into uniform on 1 July 1943. He was one of the few members of his class who actually graduated. Many were being called up. Buckley chose the Navy because it seemed to be a cleaner service. He tried for the Navy Air Force because if you had to go, that was the cleanest way to go. He did not make it through the exams. He went to pre-midshipmen school in Norfolk, Virginia learning to march. He reported for duty in mid-November 1943. He was in midshipmen school until April 1944. He had been assigned to Quincy, Massachusetts where LST-1013 [Annotator's Note: the USS LST-1013] was being built. He got there just before it was commissioned.

James Buckley was assigned to the USS LST-1013, a Landing Ship, Tank. It was as long as football field and 50 feet wide. He was on the ship for two years and eight days. He was only off the ship for five nights, two of those were in Peking [Annotator's Note: now Beijing, China]. He was the Deck Officer and was the Stores Officer too. He made sure the spare parts, food, and more were procured. He had an extraordinarily competent Chief Petty Officer that made his job easy. They would go to a port, and he would be given a list of what was needed. He get them and would then deliver them to the ship. There were long periods where you could not get what you needed. They once existed for a long period on canned, Australian beef necks. They also went a long time without anything fresh to eat. They did not go hungry though. Life on the ship was very dull for long stretches, and then for moments it was incredibly exciting. There is book written about being on a supply ship and its monotony. Most of the time they were bringing supplies and sometimes sailors and soldiers from one port to another one. They also participated in the three largest invasions in the Pacific war. They trained for the landings. They also got soldiers and Marines on board who told them stories of pretty hairy times they had. They got general news that was broadcast to the ships. They knew about D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] right away. They did not know what the Japanese were not supposed to know. They did get war stories from their passengers.

James Buckley's first landing [Annotator's Note: as a Deck Officer on the USS LST-1013] was on Leyte during the return to the Philippines in October 1944 [Annotator's Note: Battle of Leyte, 17 October to 26 December 1944 at Leyte, Philippines]. Then they went to Lingayen on the north coast of Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines] in January [Annotator's Note: Invasion of Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, 6 January 1945]. On April Fool's Day [Annotator's Note: 1 April 1945], which was also Easter Sunday then, they landed on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945 at Okinawa, Japan]. Okinawa was a huge armada. First was the softening-up process. The night before the initial landing was eerie. The moon was out, and a Japanese plane flew right over the convoy. He was not firing, and no one was firing at him. Buckley could see the pilot. He knew they were not surprising the Japanese. At dawn, the battleships and cruisers started bombarding the shoreline. Bombers came in. There was no resistance. None of his three landings had real resistance. He saw a kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese Special Attack Units, also called shimbu-tai, who flew suicide missions in aircraft] hit a cruiser off Okinawa. He had seen one earlier in the Philippines too. The troops were being loaded into the amphibious boats and amphibious tanks. They went into shore and landed. Another name for LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] was "large, slow, target". LSTs had begun to unload the soldiers well offshore instead of beaching. They would later go into the beach to unload the supplies and heavy equipment. Buckley's feeling during these landings was that he had a seat on the 50-yard line of one of the most spectacular scrimmages [Annotator's Note: a reference to viewing a football game] one could possibly imagine. He never once felt personally threatened. That was true of the bachelors onboard and not necessarily of the married men. He knows that because one of his duties as an officer was to censor the mail. He would read that the married men were uneasy. He feels he was never tested in World War 2. A number of them would not have wanted to go home if they did not get to Japan. They wanted to feel tested. His job was essential to the war. At some of the smaller landings, a number of LSTs got damaged, but not his.

James Buckley's LST [Annotator's Note: the USS LST-1013, a Landing Ship, Tank] had 40mm [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] and 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] antiaircraft guns. The crew was about 100 men and eight officers. You did not need that many people to run it. You needed that many to man the battle stations when the time came. It was easy duty compared to other ships. The crew got along pretty well. Buckley was on a resupply mission to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] from the Philippines along the coast of Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines] when the first atomic bomb dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945]. They heard about it right away. He thought it was wonderful and the war would be over faster. That triggered rumors of the end of the war, especially after the second bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945]. The rumor was that the Japanese were suing for peace. The next morning they landed in Okinawa and a speedboat from Harbor Patrol rushed out. They gave a message that said they were not to celebrate a peace by shooting bullets into the sky. The night before, the harbor went wild with 20mm and 40mm sent wonderful streaks into the sky. 40mm explode when they reach a certain height. 20mm only explode when they come down. About 40 or 50 Army people got killed by them. While that was going on, a Japanese plane flew in and sank a ship too.

In the whole time James Buckley was on duty in the Pacific [Annotator's Note: as Deck Officer on the USS LST-1013], he saw six to eight natives. All the rest were military personnel. There was nothing native in the ports they visited. They could just walk onshore and poke around. They played softball and had beer parties. There was always an officer's club, and he would go there. He ran into a lot of college classmates in those. One time, they had picked up troops for Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945 at Okinawa, Japan] on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. He was at the officer's club there and was asked where he went to college. He said Yale [Annotator's Note: Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut] and a person who overhead him told him some Marines were there who went to Yale. He heard someone singing the Yale football song. They were in a tent and there were friends there from Yale with an illicit bottle of whiskey. Three months later, two of those people were dead and another was badly wounded. Okinawa was one of the bloodiest engagements in the war. After the war, his ship started moving troops to Korea to establish an airbase. In Korea, they picked up Japanese soldiers and took them back to Japan. They also picked up some Korean slave laborers from Japan and returned them to Korea. Over the next months, they moved displaced Asians around, including up and down the China coast. The longest trip there was from Haiphong, Vietnam to Manchuria [Annotator's Note: historical and geographic region of China]. On several occasions, they went to Hong Kong [Annotator's Note: now Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China]. Unlike when the war was going on, he got to see people. It was great. The first time he got to a town was in the Philippines. He got food that did not come out of a can then. Hong Kong was romantic and still colonial. The harbor was filled with junks [Annotator's Note: a type of Chinese sailing vessel]. They all loved Americans because they had freed them. The day after the Lingayen landing [Annotator's Note: Invasion of Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, 6 January 1945], he caught a broadcast from a Filipino radio station. They said they were transmitting from Tacloban, Philippines, the United States of America. That was a great feeling. A lot of adjusting was required in dealing with the Japanese. These people [Annotator's Note: the Japanese military] had fought in the bloodiest possible style. They did such things as pour gasoline into tunnels with American prisoners in them and light them on fire. Now they were bowing and scraping [Annotator's Note: term for showing obedience]. Buckley brought some Japanese civilians to Kagoshima [Annotator's Note: ion Kyushu Island, Japan]. Stuck in the rubble was a sign saying that the Kagoshima Chamber of Commerce welcomed American servicemen. He wondered what kind of loathsome people these were. He read a book called, "The Chrysanthemum and The Rose" [Annotator's Note: by Russell Watson]. It totally changed his attitude towards the Japanese. They had been indoctrinated to accept authority established by the emperor. Once the emperor said the Americans were in charge, they were entitled to every courtesy. It was mind-boggling, but he no longer despised them.

After the war ended, James Buckley got off the ship [Annotator's Note: the USS LST-1013] five times. One was in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. The others were when his ship was drydocked in Shanghai [Annotator's Note: Shanghai, China]. He took a trip to Peking [Annotator's Note: now Beijing, China]. It was a real immersion into Chinese culture and history. The problem with Shanghai and other cities was that they looked like European cities having been built by colonialists. Buckley's ship was in Hong Kong [Annotator's Note: now Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China] when he found out that his orders home for leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] had not reached him. He then got another set of orders for going home to be discharged. The leave entitled him to air transportation on a PBY [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PBY Catalina amphibious aircraft] from Hong Kong to Shanghai. He then took a troopship home. He had to waive his officer's privileges on the ship. It took ten days to get home. After the war he used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. He went to Yale [Annotator's Note: Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut] and became a special student taking course he had always wanted to take that he had not been able to. After that, he went to law school at Columbia [Annotator's Note: Columbia University in New York, New York] in January [Annotator's Note: January 1946]. After one semester there, he transferred to Yale and got his law degree.

James Buckley had no interest in politics. Floating around in the Pacific [Annotator's Note: as a Deck Officer aboard the USS LST-1013], he thought he wanted to become a country lawyer. A guy he admired, started out with a big New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] law firm and then moved into the country. He had a successful practice that Buckley wanted to emulate. After law school, he worked for a New Haven [Annotator's Note: New Haven, Connecticut] firm to learn the trade. He got seduced by his older brother to work for a small family company out of New York City. He had not yet gotten immersed in the law to have his own clients. He had an entrepreneurial bent that was not being satisfied. He ended up in the next 17 years doing a huge amount of traveling. He has a precocious younger brother called William F. Buckley Junior [Annotator's Note: William Frank (born Francis) Buckley Junior, American author and political commentator] who made a large splash in the political world. He accepted the Conservative party's [Annotator's Note: Conservative Party of New York State, founded 1962] nomination for Mayor of New York City with the understanding he could not possibly win. He thought it would be interesting. This was in 1965. Buckley and his family were visiting his wife's parents in California when he got the call that his brother wanted him to be his campaign manager. Buckley did it. His brother did well in the election and made a great stir. They had gotten involved more out of curiosity. They believed in the philosophy of the Conservative Party. There were four parties then in New York. There was a serious purpose to get the political philosophy out even if they knew they could not win. It fit in well, with what his brother wanted to do, which was to talk about political issues. John Lindsay [Annotator's Note: John Vliet Lindsay, American politician and lawyer] won the election that year. In the summer of 1968, Buckley was in a military hospital in Libya. He was there on business. His brother called him and told him that Dan Mahoney [Annotator's Note: John Daniel Mahoney, American judge and founder of the Conservative Party of New York State] said they wanted Buckley to run for the Senate. He told his brother that was absurd. He had no interest and was happy doing what he was doing. He got back to the States and Mahoney started piquing his curiosity. They turned to him due to how they leveraged getting voters, knowing he could not win the election. The leading people had already run two or three times and needed someone new. He was intrigued and decided to do it. He would automatically get an outlet for the views of the party to be broadcast. This is when things were falling apart culturally in the United States. His message would get particular resonance among Social Democrats [Annotator's Note: American political association founded in 1972] who rejected seeing the American flag burned by spoiled college kids. Buckley ended up getting 14 percent of the vote.

James Buckley went back to his normal work [Annotator's Note: after running and not getting a political seat in New York, New York in 1968] which took him to different parts of the world. As the turmoil continued, his Boy Scout [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America, scouting and youth organization founded in 1910] instinct came to the fore. In the Philippines, he saw a report wondering what was wrong with America. He knew people who had moved to Australia because of it. He decided to run, if he could make it, in 1970. His purpose was to enter the Republican [Annotator's Note: Republican Party, American conservative political party] primary. He was running against a guy who had been appointed to fill Robert Kennedy's [Annotator's Note: Robert Francis Kennedy, US Attorney General, 1961-1964; US Senator New York, 1965-1968] seat after he was assassinated. Charlie Goodell [Annotator's Note: Charles Ellsworth Goodell Junior, American politician] had been a conservative upstate Congressman who had become liberal as a Senator. Under the context of the times, the conclusion was that he had a chance. He won the election and served his six-year term. Patrick Moynihan [Annotator's Note: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, American politician, diplomat, and sociologist] unseated him in the next election. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Buckley what his position was regarding Watergate, a major political scandal in the United States from 1972 to 1974] It was an awful, sleazy period. For better or worse, Buckley felt that it had become so absorbing that Nixon [Annotator's Note: Richard Milhouse Nixon, 37th president of the United States, 1969-1974] could no longer govern. There were not many Republicans in the Senate in those days and if Watergate continued it would threaten their chances to increase their numbers. Buckley publicly called for Nixon's resignation. He got a lot of bad mail then. He did so because the political process was paralyzed. Buckley had tremendous interest in environmental issues. The public-at-large does not realize what can be accomplished at committee level. You can formulate legislation and he was extremely active in that. He introduced things like indexing income tax rates. It did not happen until after he left office. He was credited with being a serious workman on legislation. He returned to his law practice. When Reagan [Annotator's Note: Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States] was elected, he was made an undersecretary of state. He worked with Radio Free Europe [Annotator's Note: a US government funded organization that broadcasts news, information and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East] and Radio Liberty [Annotator's Note: part of Radio Free Europe] in Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany]. He then became a federal judge. Buckley gathers that people in high school and college today have little understanding of World War 2. However, a huge amount of time has passed. Buckley has very little understanding of the Spanish-American War for example Annotator's Note: Spanish-American War, April 21 to August 13, 1898].