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. James Early. Welcome back to our series on key battles of the Pacific War World War II.

This is James again, of course, with you, and I've got Scott again.

How's it going, Scott?

Doing all right.

Things are starting to move.

Yes, things are going to get really ugly very quickly.

In our last couple of episodes, we talked about the rise of Imperial Japan.

That was our first episode.

We talked about how Japan kind of got rid of its

isolationist, mostly isolationist policy and re-engaged with the world at the same time as

building a modern day army and navy and a very powerful state. In the second episode, we talked

about how relations with the U.S. really went down the

tubes between World War I and the beginning of World War II. And we talked about Japan's

strategy for how it was going to become a great empire and a great power. Now, in this episode,

we are going to kind of back up a little and take a broader view of the history of the relationship between Japan and the United States.

And then we're going to talk about how Japan finally came to the decision to attack the United States.

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