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 World War II.

This is your host, James, as always.

In our last episode, last two episodes, we took some time to talk about what it was like to be a common soldier on the Japanese side as well as on the American side.

We also did the same thing for pilots. We did the same thing for Marines to a lesser extent. And then we spent a whole episode, which was our last one, talking about the life of a

common sailor.

What was it like to be on these submarines and these battleships and these carriers?

And we found that it was a life characterized by long periods of inactivity, not inactivity, but lack of combat, long periods

of tedium and boredom, punctuated by brief periods of terror, which is pretty similar to what

ground soldiers and pilots also experienced.

So having done that, and again, we hope that you, as we go through these battles, that you'll keep in mind the common people that are on the ships,

the ones firing the guns, the ones that are hosing down the decks,

the ones that are cleaning things, the ones that are doing damage control,

even the cooks that are preparing the food.

Remember that these wrong beings that had, it sounds like a

cliche, but they had dreams, they had life ambitions and goals. A lot of them had, well, they all

had loved ones back home. And here they are in this not really great fun situation, although I think some did enjoy it, but for the most part,

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