(musical sting) - [Announcer] On this episode of Postcards.

- I like being a member of Bluenose because you have just the support from each other, and you see action.

There's a lot of go-getters that make things happen here.

- The journey of this book has been such an incredible experience, not just from meeting the old gentlemen of today, but also as young boys, and how reckless, and crazy, and fearless they were.

(quirky music) - [Announcer] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in west central Minnesota, on the we at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music, plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram, online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music) - What makes Bluenose Gopher Public House really special is the fact that it's a cooperative.

So we're member owned, so there isn't one owner who has these certain ideas in their head.

(upbeat music) Bluenose can be whatever the community wants it to be, because we own Bluenose.

The community is Bluenose.

(upbeat music) - Bluenose Gopher Public House, actually previously it was Bluenose Gopher Brewery, got started back in late 2013.

I had a conversation with a friend where this idea came up of starting a brewery in town.

And then I learned from this friend that he actually just became a member of a cooperative brewery in another state, and I had never thought of, you know, marrying both ideas together.

And so when I heard that news, we and a group of friends all got together and decided to do this, and to start a cooperative brewery.

(upbeat music) We especially thought it would be amazing to do in Granite Falls because of the history that we have here related to Andrew Volstead.

Andrew Volstead was the author of the Prohibition Act, and author of the Capper-Volstead Act, which is known as the Magna Carta of cooperatives.

(lively music) - [Announcer] Government agents fight hopelessly against illegal liquor.

These homemade stills are but a few of thousands seized and destroyed.

Other thousands produce millions of gallons, and countless hundreds prosper in business of bootlegging.

(lively music) It's against the law to drink, so drinking is suddenly smart.

There's bootleg liquor on every American lip, shiny flasks on every hip.

(lively music) - Also, another reason we wanted to go, to use the cooperative model is no one individual had enough resources or capacity to start this business, though it is returning back to my community, and then wanting to start a place that I wanted to also be, and that I know my friends and my family, that we'd all love to be in.

Hey, everyone, I'm Serena here at the Bluenose building in downtown Granite Falls.

- I'm Kyle.

- We are so excited to share with you all and update on our progress.

Come on over here.

- We have walls.

- Yeah.

I wanted to make this idea possible so that I could replicate it, and help other communities replicate it in their own downtown districts, because a lot of times when you have an anchor business that can really drive enthusiasm, and motivation, and other people to love their community.

That's the power of this place.

Also, I see this place as producing leaders for the community.

The current COO, Luwaina Al-Otaibi, if you would've met her five, six years ago, she would've said, "No, I'm not gonna get involved in the community."

And she was protecting her time, or didn't see, didn't you know, I wasn't motivated in that way, but now I see her as a amazing leader within the community.

It's because the space has connected to her, connected her with, and have been able to see all that possibility.

(upbeat music) - Generally on a normal day, our taproom's always open, so we're always serving Minnesota made craft beer and Minnesota made wine.

We also have different soups each week that we make from scratch, and we also have some non-alcoholic beverages too, but those are also Minnesota made.

And eventually, I would like to really be a place within Granite that has one of the largest varieties of beer, of craft beer that are Minnesota made.

Our taps are always rotating.

And then we serve panini sandwiches, as well as some different wraps.

And then we do, like I said, we do try and keep everything as local as possible, so we get some of our ham from Fertile Acreage Farm, which is a local place here, and then we get our bread from our favorite local bakery, Carl's Bakery.

We just try as much as possible to stick with our local products.

♪ I hope someday ♪ ♪ When I see you ♪ ♪ I will fall in love again ♪ ♪ Like the first time ♪ We've hosted several Imbibe Sessions, so that is where we bring in different genres of music, and really have the musicians talk about their art form, so talk about the history of their genre of music, and really just talk about why they've chosen that genre, what love about it.

So it's more of an educational series, as well as a concert that's bringing different musicians to the area that we wouldn't normally see here in Granite Falls.

With each in Imbibe Session, we would contract a local artist to create a poster for that concert, and then we'd sell those posters during the show, and they'd be signed by the artist as well as the musician for each session.

(blues guitar playing) - My favorite thing at Bluenose, of course, is going to be music.

They've hosted so many really great events, musicians from all over the place, and of course, the beer.

The beer's very good.

I love that I can come in here and drink a dark beer, and drink a proper dark beer.

And the friends, you see your friends.

You walk into Bluenose thinking, "Oh, it's gonna be just a Wednesday.

It's not going to be busy," and you walk in, and literally every single one of your friends happens to be there on a Wednesday too.

So it's just the sense of community friendship, just a space that you can be creative.

I like being a member of Bluenose, because you have just the support from each other, and you see action.

There's a lot of go-getters that make things happen here, so it makes it fun to be a part of that.

(upbeat music) - Just hearing the impact that Bluenose has had on people, whether it's people who've moved here recently, or people that have been in the community for a long time, that they feel like they have a space to come with an idea, and know that we're gonna try and make it work, like this space is here for them, nobody else.

We are here for the community.

(upbeat music) (dark, dramatic music) (weapons firing) - The 40 Thieves on Saipan is a book about an elite unit of Marines in the Pacific during World War II.

There were the 6th Marine Regiment Scout and Sniper Platoon, and the Scout and Sniper Platoons of World War II were very unique.

They were only two platoons like that that were deployed in the Pacific.

And they were trained to live and work behind enemy lines for days and weeks at a time.

Firing a weapon would be their last option, so they were trained in specific Black Death skills, as Sergeant Bill Knuppel told me, "to kill and cripple silently," as he put it, "in ways that you can't even imagine."

(dark music) The story of the 40 Thieves is true.

It's, my father led the platoon.

Through his actions during the Battle of Tarawa, the high command tagged him to lead, and organize, and train this unique group of Marines.

I discovered this all from a eulogy that was delivered at his funeral.

It spoke about some of his exploits on Saipan, which made me curious to do an online search, which turned up an article called Tachovsky's Terrors from the 1944 December Leatherneck Magazine, and beneath it was a little bit of text from the person who submitted it, and his name was Chris Tipton.

And the text said, "This is my father's platoon during World War II, and he said everything in the article is true, except we were never known as terrors.

We were known as the 40 Thieves."

So even before I thought about writing a book, the title was staring me in the face.

(melancholy music) - Frank Tachovsky, well, he come to my tent, and he said, "You're my Platoon Sergeant."

I said, "Frank, I'm only a buck sergeant."

He said, "You're gonna be my Platoon Sergeant."

So I was, and we went around, and he said are gonna get 30, I think, believe it was 32 men.

And so he put the word out to all the battalions he'd be coming around such and such a date, and he didn't wanna see them, and he just wanted look at their record books.

And I went with him, and he'd go in to the field officer, and say, "I wanna get the names of the guys that volunteered for the Scout Snipers."

He didn't wanna talk.

He just looked at the record book, brig time, brig time, "Eh, he's my man."

- [Interviewer] Oh really?

- Yeah, really.

He took the guys that had bad records, that they had spirit, you know?

- [Interviewer] He wanted spirit.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Marines of World War II, in general, were notorious thieves, and these guys obviously excelled at the craft, thusly, being named the 40 Thieves by the rest of their regiment.

Bill Knuppel always said that he had a buddy who wrote a book about their unit, and I didn't think anything of it until the buddy turned out to be Leon Uris, and his first book was Battle Cry.

In the book, Uris writes about this notorious band of thieves, and all of the exploits that they're doing in the 6th Regiment.

And one of the incidents involved an Army Colonel's Jeep, so I get really excited about thinking that what maybe these thieves are in my dad's platoon.

And so I go to all of the guys, "Did you ever ever steal an Army Colonel's Jeep?"

And Marvin Strombo looked at me a little curiously, and sort of said no.

And I asked Roscoe Mullins the same question, and he just laughed and shook his head.

And I finally got to Bob Smotts, and says, "Bob, did you guys ever steal an Army Colonel's Jeep?"

And he said, no, at which point I was just deflated, but he went on, "It was Army Captain's Jeep, and we beat the hell out of that thing."

(lively music) - [Passenger] Woo-hoo!

(jeep engine revving) (lively music continues) (tool snips) (sliding door rattles) (lively music continues) - I decided to write the book after many different trips to see these these men all over the United States.

And first attempt at writing the book resulted in oral history of over 600 pages.

It was very dry and unreadable, and all of the gold nuggets that these gentleman provided me were kind of lost through details that were a little unnecessary, and that's where my co-author Cynthia stepped in.

- When he asked me to actually start working with him, he started sending me things, and I would give him feedback about things like, you know, is there an arc to the story?

Is this really the order this happened in?

And finally, at some point, he just said, "Would you help me co-write this?"

And then we really got to work.

We worked hard to create a real sense of authenticity of the era by looking at detail.

What did Christmas cards look like?

What would people from home have been saying?

By listening to old clips of radio shows, or reading newspaper articles and such, so that the sound was right, that the words were correct, and that it didn't sound inadvertently like 2017, but it sounded like 1944.

(weapons firing) - The war in the Pacific was terribly bloody and brutal war, and casualties mounted from island, to island, to island.

And the Battle of Tarawa, which directly preceded the invasion of Saipan was known as Bloody Tarawa, because within 72 hours, over 5,000 Japanese were killed, and 5,000 Marines wounded or killed in an area the size of Central Park, and Saipan was even bloodier than that.

(dramatic music) (weapons exploding) (alarm blaring) (water flowing) (weapons firing) - [Soldier] Take cover!

(dramatic music continues) (weapons firing repeatedly) (melancholy music) - It explained a lot of Dad's idiosyncrasies growing up, how he'd never take me to see fireworks, and also how he'd rarely sleep in bed at night.

I mean, he might start out there, but inevitably, if I got up at two or three in the morning to get a glass of water, he'd be reading a book.

And I think it was just, God, it was just a year or two before Dad died when I asked him, "How come, why don't you sleep at night?"

He goes, "I don't know, it's old habit, I guess.

The Japanese were always active at night, so I'm really too restful at night."

(melancholy music) This is big Don Evans.

He was a truly larger than life fellow, the biggest guy in the outfit at six foot four, and to put it in vernacular of the day, he was built like Charles Atlas, so much so that he won the Mr. Kansas City contest not once, but twice.

Don died on Saipan on June 22nd, 1944 when his squad walked into an ambush, and four Japanese machine guns opened fire.

They called 'em woodpeckers, because of the staccato peck, peck, pecking sound of when they were fired.

And they were such a lethal weapon, that it could cut a man in two within a matter of seconds.

And Don's body just got chewed up on that day, as well as two other members of his squad.

(solemn music) Recently, I just got back from Hawaii, and I went there to specifically visit the graves of not only Don Evans, but there are five other fellows mentioned in the book who are buried there, Corporal Martin Dyer, Colonel McLeod, who was the Executive Officer of the 6th Marine Regiment, and someone that Dad served with from Iceland through Saipan, his best buddy Pappy Moorehead, who actually died on Tarawa.

The reason why so many boys are buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific was at the time, during World War II, if your child was killed overseas, and you wanted their body sent home, you'd have to pay for it.

And at the time, I think the cost was something like $500, which translates into about two year's salary before taxes, 'cause people only got paid maybe 20, $30 a month back in those days, and that's why there are tens of thousands of 19, 20 year old boys.

It's very impactful going there, and seeing grave after grave, just one after the other.

(solemn music) - There was a whole tradition of like, the bravado warrior World War II stories.

And then things changed, like Steven Spielberg with Saving Private Ryan, and The Pacific series, to looking at the humanity of looking at 19 year olds, or 20 year olds, young men put into these situations.

And that was when, that's where I came from, about approaching the men's stories, was to think in terms of my son, and his buddies.

(solemn music) - [Joseph] Back in 2017, there was a World War II Marine who returned a flag to a family in Japan.

That was Marvin Strombo.

That was one of my guys.

- We went on patrol in the (indistinct), ahead of the American lines, and we got to the Japanese lines, but what happened, we just about got ambushed on the way, but we did make it.

And then I got to looking around, and I lost contact with my squad.

There I was, I was on the Japanese line all by myself, I thought, but then I got to walking around, and I saw the soldier, Japanese soldier laying there, and I knew he was an officer, 'cause he had his sword on.

- He just tracked immediately to this dead Japanese captain, and he's going through his backpack.

Before he got up to leave, he saw the captain's yosegaki hinomaru, which is a good luck flag.

It was a custom for Japanese soldiers before they'd leave for war, their village would buy them a flag, a Rising Sun national flag, and sign it with well wishes and prayers for the soldier, and they'd carry it with them.

And at first he thought, "Well, I'll just leave it," because he knew it was sacred to the Japanese.

But then as he had a second thought, and said, "Well, if I don't take it, somebody else will, and if I take it, maybe I can return it to the family someday."

- I had a hard time taking that flag, 'cause you know means a lot to them, but I finally did, but I made a promise that I'd return it, and I'm here today.

That's the reason I'm here today.

- We were able to find the family of the Japanese captain, and in August of 2017, this 90 some year old guy made this arduous trip to Japan, and Marvin was finally able to return the flag.

When the younger brother received this family heirloom, he took it, held it to his face, and inhaled deeply, and said "You've taken good care of my brother."

(emotional music) The journey of this book has been such an incredible experience, not just from meeting the old gentlemen of today, but also as young boys, and how reckless, and crazy, and fearless they were.

There's stories that they never told while they were alive.

If Bill hadn't shared his memories and stories with me, that never would've opened the doors with the other men.

And Bill passed away in 2014.

To have Bob Smotts share so much of his experiences of stealing the Jeep, of how his buddy got killed on Saipan, that would have all been dust in the wind.

It became almost a duty on my part, and Cynthia's part to write this book as a dedication to their sacrifice, and what they had to do.

(dramatic music) (quirky music) - [Announcer] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage funded digital calendar, showcasing upcoming art events, and opportunities for artists in west central Minnesota, on the web at lrac4fcalendar.org.

Playing today's new music, plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram, online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music)