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 again to Key Battles of the Pacific Theater of World War II.

This is James Early, your host, as always.

We are now up to episode 26.

And in this episode, we will be discussing the second part of the Battle of Iwo Jima and then the after effects. This is key battle number

eight and part two. There's so much to talk about in Iwo Jima, we just could not squeeze it

into one episode. So before we get

rolling, let me give a quick recap of what happened in our last episode, in case you've slept

since then. In fact, I hope you've slept since you last turn, unless you're binge watching,

or binge listening and you, maybe you just finished the last episode five minutes ago. But if you're

listening to these as they come out, it will have been

about a week or so, or at least several days. So the United States needed a base on which to land

and from which planes could take off that was closer to Japan than the Marianas. We talked about how great it was that

back when the U.S. captured Saipan and the other Marianas Islands that they now had a base

from which the B-29s could reach Japan. But that came to be not good enough. They needed a closer base

from which fighters could take off and fly over

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