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.

Thank you. James Early. Greetings and welcome to another special episode of Key Battles, the Pacific Theater

of World War II.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

And I am really excited to bring to you this episode and next episode, a special two-part series that I've been working on for a while.

On the presidents. We're going to talk about presidents in the Pacific, at least mostly in the Pacific.

As you may know, there are several U.S. presidents that served in World War II.

Obviously, you could argue that Roosevelt and Truman served in World War II in the sense that they were the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

And, of course, you had General Eisenhower,

who was in a very high position in the European theater. He was the overall commander of Operation

Torch, and then Operation Overlord, as well as the Supreme Allied commander in Europe. But I don't

want to talk about them, because, one, they had no connection to the

Pacific and two, they were in such high up positions. I want to focus on the later presidents

who were more junior officers. They were lieutenants, you know, or ensigns even, and almost all of them

were in the Navy, except for one.

I was inspired to do this series by a recent trip I made to the National Museum of the Pacific War in

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