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 Theater of World War II.

This is James Early, your host, as always.

And we are in the middle of a two-part mini-series of episodes in which we've once again paused the military and political narrative

to focus on some specific topics of interest. In our last episode, we talked about a very interesting subject, and that was kamikazis,

which were absolutely deadly to the Allied forces, particularly at the Battle of Okinawa,

and of course, particularly to the Navy. Now we're going to look at another subject, and this is a

very tough subject. This is not an easy subject to talk about. It's very depressing, very brutal,

even more so than the battles themselves. You all may be thinking, well, gee, whiz,

the battles are pretty bad as it is. But in some ways, this is even sadder and more tragic and

more hard to discuss. But I think we need to honor the people that went through this experience

by telling their story. And the topic, of course, is prisoners of war.

Scott is with me as always. Scott, are you ready to do this?

Yeah, I mean, you can't tell the story of World War II in the Pacific without this, so

got to get into it. Yes, we've got to, we can't avoid it. I just, it's always been an

interesting topic to me, even though it's very difficult.

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