This is Angela Odell and you are listening to real cool history for kids.

A podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical world view perspective.

Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 83 of real cool history for kids.

This episode is for the McCuller kids who wanted me to tell them the story of the

sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Hey, Raquel, Nate, Ethan and Ben, this one's for you.

Back in episode 40, I told you the story of the attack on the naval base on Pearl Harbor.

That attack, which happened on December 7, 1941, became known as the day that would live in infamy.

Those were the words of President Franklin Roosevelt when he declared war on the attackers.

Japan. You probably remember that this was how the United States got pulled into World War Two,

which up to this point had mostly just involved Europe. Well, our story today takes place at

the end of World War Two. It was after Germany had surrendered and Adolf Hitler had died.

V.E. Day, which stands for Victory in Europe Day, was on May 8, 1945. But that didn't mean

the war was over. It wasn't because Japan kept fighting. The Pacific Islands were the location

of many long, awful battles, as the Allied forces pushed back against the Japanese.

Well, earlier in the war, the Japanese had conquered and occupied many of these islands.

Now they were being forced into smaller and smaller areas. And the smaller those areas got,

the angerier they became. You know, war is a really messy thing. When we have the privilege of

looking back on it and seeing how all the pieces go together, it's a lot easier to make sense

of it, isn't it? But just imagine, when you're in the middle of something like that,

you have no idea who is going to win or what's going to happen. Well, let's just say it's not so

easy to see what decision to make. This is the situation in which the U.S. President Harry

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