War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its size,

and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history

through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Music host, James Early. Welcome back to Key Battles of the Pacific War.

This is James again, and I've got Scott with me.

How's it going, Scott?

Good all right.

Tell you what, things are heating up. The Pacific is not so Pacific anymore.

No, it's going to be very non-Pacific for quite some time. So in our last episode, we of course

talked about the infamous Japanese sneak attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor,

naval and air base at Pearl Harbor.

And now we're going to pause the military narrative for just a little bit,

and we're going to talk about how America reacts, not militarily, but what happens in the

home front? In particular, how is America going to gear up for war?

In December of 1941, the United States was not ready for war. We had a very small army, small Navy, and the economy just wasn't in a wartime state. But that is going to change really quickly. So that's what Scott and I are going to do. We'll talk about how the U.S. builds up the armed forces. We'll talk about building the arsenal of democracy,

rapid industrialization on a wartime footing. We'll talk about also the experience of Japanese

Americans in the war, which is a sad story, but it needs to be

told, of course. And we'll talk about what daily life was like in wartime America. What was it

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