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 James Early. Welcome back to Key Battles of the Pacific War of World War II.

This is James Early, your host, as always.

And in our last episode, and for a while, we've been kind of bridging the

gap between our key battles. We've had key battles so far, including Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea,

the Battle of Midway, Guadalcanal. And we're building up to our next key battle, the fifth one,

which is going to be the Battle of Saipan.

That'll be next episode. But just like we are having to build up, the U.S. had to build up for that

invasion as well. In the U.S., as we've seen, has adopted a dual strategy in which one force

led by the Navy is going across the Central Pacific, sometimes hopping over islands,

other times taking islands as they move closer to the Marianas and especially the island of

Saipan. Also at the same time as this, in the South Pacific, the army led by General MacArthur

is leading a campaign across New Guinea and ultimately preparing

to invade and recapture the Philippines. So I don't have a great title for this episode.

I've just called it America moves closer to Japan or you could say America pushes further west

or the American juggernaut, whatever you want.

But we're going to get, and we're also going to talk about Japan's policy.

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