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. host, James Early.

Hello and welcome back again to key battles of the Pacific War of World War II.

This is James, your host, as always.

And we are coming to the conclusion of our somewhat epic, I suppose, four-part mini-series on the Battle of Guadalcanal, which definitely is an epic battle, stretching over several months.

And as we'll see, arguably changing the course of the Pacific War. Before we get rolling into this last part, I thought it might not be a bad idea to recap some of what's been going on. If you haven't

listened to our other episodes on Guadalcanal, I recommend that you do that. There were three before

this. As I said, this is part four. but if you don't have the time to go back and

listen to those or you just don't want to, then I will go ahead and give you a quick recap.

Or even if you have it, it's probably been a week since you heard episode 12 or part three of Guadalcanal.

So here's what's been happening. So the Americans decided to go on the

offensive and they chose the Solomon Islands, in particular, the island of Guadalcanal. That was

their main target because the Japanese were building an airfield there and it would not do to have

a Japanese airfield where Japanese aircraft could threaten the critical

American supply line from Hawaii to Australia. So the landing occurred. The first Marine Division

landed on August 7, 1942. The landing was unopposed. And the Americans quickly took the airfield that the

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