The Doolittle Raid and the Courage That Followed Pearl Harbor
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in April 1942, just four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sixteen B-25 bombers lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet in a daring gamble led by James Doolittle. Their mission: to strike Tokyo and remind the world that America would not stay on its knees.
Weeks later came the Battle of the Coral Sea, a brutal contest fought entirely by aircraft, where courage, coordination, and sheer will stopped the Japanese advance for the first time. Our regular contributor, Anne Clare, revisits these twin moments of resilience, when a wounded nation began to rediscover its strength.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:15.9 | And we return to our American stories, |
| 0:18.8 | and we love to tell stories about history on this show. And all of |
| 0:22.6 | our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to |
| 0:27.1 | learn all the things that matter in life, all the things that are beautiful in life, a classical |
| 0:31.5 | liberal arts college. And there are so few of them left in this great country. And if you can't |
| 0:36.6 | get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online |
| 0:41.1 | courses. I learned more watching the Constitution 101 course their free offering than I did in |
| 0:47.1 | three years studying law at the University of Virginia School of Law. |
| 0:52.2 | Up next, a story from writer Anne Claire on two of America's first responses to the attack |
| 0:58.8 | on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raids, and the Battle of the Coral Sea. |
| 1:04.2 | Take it away, Anne. |
| 1:08.7 | The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and other Allied strongholds on December 7th, 1941, |
| 1:16.8 | had far-reaching consequences. |
| 1:19.8 | Shocked and angered, the United States officially entered the Second World War. |
| 1:24.3 | On the home front, people of Japanese descent living in the U.S. |
| 1:28.9 | faced suspicion and in some cases internment. Abroad, the U.S. Navy, damaged but not destroyed, |
| 1:35.3 | looked for chances to strike back. |
| 1:43.3 | Now, as the U.S. was looking for a chance to strike back, one of the goals was Tokyo itself. |
| 1:51.3 | The new commander in the Pacific, World War I veteran, Admiral Chester Nimitz, definitely knew that striking Tokyo was no mean feat. |
| 2:00.3 | His ships were pretty severely outnumbered in the Pacific, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.