Hello everyone. Welcome back to the history hit Warfare podcast. I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode

we're talking about the Coast Watchers. You might not have heard of the Coast Watchers and there's a reason for that

they were Allied military intelligence units specially trained and

secretive who were stationed on remote Pacific islands to observe enemy movements

and rescue stranded Allied personnel during the Second World War.

The intelligence they gathered is credited with turning the tide of the war in the Pacific.

Their radio reports were vital.

They gave the allies a decisive advantage, and they acted as a kind of early warning

network when the Japanese were spotted. In fact, they're officially credited with having been

crucial and decisive factors in the Allied victories at Guadalcanal and Tulagi.

This is an amazing history and to tell us more we have the honor of welcoming Second World War

veteran Jim Burrows onto the podcast. Jim served as a

Coast Watcher in the South Pacific during the Second World War. He spent 10 months

in occupied Japanese territory and he recounts the brutality of Imperial Japanese forces,

the comrades he lost, the little known role of indigenous troops in the Coast Watchers,

and in fact the overall litter known role of the Coast Watchers themselves.

To me Jim is a true war hero although he wouldn't say it himself so here is Jim Burrows on the Coast Watchers. Hey Jim, thank you so much for coming on to the warfare podcast. How you doing today?

Hi James, pretty well things under the circumstances of James and just lovely to hear from you.

Well it's great to have you on the podcast.

Let's get straight into it.

What were the Coast Watchers? The Coast Watchers were organized in September

1939 when the war started over in Europe and it was designed to collect all the expatriates and the people that

...