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. Hello and welcome to a special episode of Guadalcanal Air, Land, and Sea, our survey of the

epic Guadalcanal campaign.

In this episode, Dave and I are going to discuss another movie. We've already

talked about the first two episodes of the TV series, The Pacific. This will be actually our only

full-length feature-length movie, and this is the movie, Guadalcanal Diary, from 1943. It is based

on the classic book of the same name, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tragaskus.

We've quoted from Turgascus several times in our series. And so let's talk about this movie.

And Dave will have a lot to say about the accuracy and what corresponds to real events.

They don't really talk, they don't say, like, oh, this was the

battle of this or the Battle of Henderson Appeal or anything like that. They don't really do that,

but it's an interesting movie. Of course, it's all black and white. This is a propaganda movie

that the government made or was made for the government to kind of get everybody fired up

about the war, to make everybody,

you know, support the war morally as well as financially, hopefully.

They started filming this movie not long after the Guadalcanal campaign ended.

It was shot from May 14th to late July, 1943, and it was mainly shot at Camp Pendleton, Marine Base near Oceanside,

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