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Episode 5394: 250 Years Remembering The Ultimate Sacrifice
Episode 5394: 250 Years Remembering The Ultimate Sacrifice ...
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- [00:00]
A
Sam. It's Saturday 23rd, May in the year of our Lord 2026. We are here in the war room for our kickoff of our special Memorial Day weekend. Through this every year, Patrick K. O' Donnell will be my co host, the finest combat historian of his generation. We're going to cover a lot of territory today. Want to announce that during the actual Memorial Day commemoration, Patrick K. O' Donnell will also join me. We're going to start at 10 o' clock in the morning. If you do war room every day we're going to go to two o' clock in the afternoon tended to a four hour special war room covering live everything to do with Memorial Day, the parade up on Capitol Hill, the President's remarks laying a wreath and the remarks appropriate remarks at Orington National Cemetery in Hollow. Today I want to kick off our very special coverage by getting one of the most beloved of our contributors. Cleo Pascal joins us. Cleo, you were out in the in the Pacific as we find you often. You were at Peleliu, I guess yesterday, the day before one of those historic battles of World War II. And your fight today is to make sure that we don't ever have to do that again by making sure that the American territory out there is kept safe and free. Might want to add also the reason we start with Clio and we're going to get Mark Noah up for a minute from history flights, the Arbo Memorial Day specials very much focus on the honored dead. Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. This is not for service to your country. There's so many great veterans. Obviously so many people have volunteered and pitched in to help defend this country. It's not Veterans Day and I think the veterans will be the first to tell you Memorial Day we are focused on the honored dead that gave the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this republic. Peleliu, why were you out there and why should Peleliu still be a central memory in the people of the United States? Ma', am,
- [02:45]
B
thank you for doing this. It was a horrific battle. I mean all battles are obviously horrific, but this was just awful. And when you go there and see the size of the island and feel the heat and see the caves where the Japanese had dug in and the tiny beach that so many Americans threw their bodies up against in order to try to dislodge them and of course, the questions about whether the battle was even necessary, but just the human cost and the courage and the grit and the fight and the, the loss resonates in a way that is very Difficult to describe if you don't go to the battle sites. So we were there as part actually of a Sasakawa USA foundation meeting that was being held here in Palau. And so to visit the sites along with Japanese colleagues who were feeling it all in a very different way, but with everybody combined in the wish, because there were also Taiwanese as part of the visit, that this doesn't happen again was a very powerful, moving experience. And I very much hope that the spirits of those who are there will find some peace on both sides, knowing that they're more willing to carry on the fight to try to keep this region free.
- [04:32]
A
Why Normandy's obviously so well known, but in the teaching of the history of World War II, we often forget or overlook the Pacific War, which was horrific and based upon a strategic predicate set by the giants of the late 19th century in the United States, strategically, that we are a Pacific nation and manifest destiny grows all the way through the three island chains. That because we are a Pacific nation and quite frankly, the central Pacific, that vast ocean is our Central Asia, so to speak, our strategic pivot in the strategy to win. You had MacArthur's strategy, you had Nimitz, but you also had. The Marines had a part of this. They had continuous amphibious assaults, every bit as bloody and maybe even bloodier than Normandy in the Pacific. In Peleliu, you said. It's even questioned today. There was so much finger pointing afterwards of the horrific nature of the fight. And exactly when you look at it, what are we exactly fighting for on this one, that there was a lot of. A lot of questioning, a lot of question in the Marine Corps, a lot of questioning of senior command, and it's only gotten worse in history. Why is that? Cleopascal.
- [05:57]
B
It was part of a strategic question about how to liberate Philippines and whether it was essential to take out the specific Japanese airfield and the one in the neighboring island of Angor, or whether you could. Whether the Japanese defenses were weak enough that you could hop over them and go straight to Leyte, for example. So it was attacked. It's a question of sort of how to do it, but not why it needed to be done. And I think that needs to be remembered. This fight, unfortunately, wasn't started by the US but it needed to be won. And the men who died, and you can read about it with the old breed, that classic, and look at the videos and see the. The look in the eyes of the men during the battle. You know, they gave everything, even the ones who came home gave a. Gave a Lot of themselves and left it on that island. And then many of them had to continue on. The fight wasn't over moving up the Marianas, Saipan and then obviously Okinawa. But it needed to be done. Peleliu was 1st Marine Division and 81st Infantry Division. The Japanese had changed tactics. Originally they were trying to fight the US on the beaches, but in this case they had sort of withdrawn. So they pulled the forces up into the island, killed a lot on the beach, but then had embedded into the caves and could really get at them in that way. And there's a ridge, bloody nose ridge that goes through the island that the US military had to crawl up and fight hand to hand with soldiers, Japanese soldiers who knew reinforcements weren't coming and who had had 30 years to embed themselves into this very hostile terrain. So, yes, we can discuss whether this particular part of the strategy of forager was worth it or not. Stalemate 2 is what this was called. But whether this had to be fought because exactly as you said, the Central Pacific has been and has been known at least since the 19th century to be America's geographical pivot of history. If a hostile foreign power can set up in the central Pacific, mainland US Isn't safe. It had to be fought and it had to be won.
- [08:52]
A
We learned a very disturbing lesson in the 1930s and 1940s and the sacrifice to come back. You mentioned a book before I go to. And I'm going to ask Patrick K. O' Donnell why the Marines were not in Normandy and they were in the Pacific. Because that's always a question that has an interesting answer. Eugene Sledge was a. I believe it was University of Alabama. It might have been Auburn, but I think it was University of Alabama. He was a professor there and it was, I guess, taught history. I know, but he wrote. He had written a memoir, but it wasn't published until later with the Old Breed. If you ever want to read a book that will shake you to your core and take away all the glamour of warfare, it is that book. In fact, it was the predicate after they made Band of Brothers, Guess, Tom Hanks and HBO that was so successful. They did the Pacific War and they took two books. I think it was Lecky's My Helmet for a Pillow and then Eugene Sledge with the Old Breed. Spielberg and these guys had optioned the book. Pascal. One of the reasons the book is so disturbing at the very beginning, Sledge and he's writing this as an old man looking back over when he was a Marine, when he was with the, at the very beginning, I think he was 17 or 18 years old, he made a statement. There's nothing more vicious or harder in the world than an 18 year old American that's been trained to fight. And you read the memoir and you understand why was that? Why were. These were 17, 18, 19 year old kids. A lot of them that hit that beach and they were, they were trained. But you know, in the draft it was a modicum of training before you hit it. Why, why was this fight so vicious?
- [10:50]
B
There, there, there were many. If you, if you. I would defer obviously to, to military people, but what you hear a lot is they were, they were fighting for each other and they, they weren't going to let each other down and they knew the weight that they were carrying and they were just going to go forward with it. Also there are a lot of other, I've heard emotions involved in it. I would really defer to the book. The power of the description of the emotions and of the viciousness and of what had to be done is something that I'm not qualified. It's not right for me to tell that story. You should hear it from the people who live through it. Yeah, yep.
- [11:49]
A
Hang on. And you can, because a documentary has also made Ken Burns the War about World War II. I think you actually see the actual. And then they did the miniseries called the Pacific in 2010, also based upon the old brief. Continue on Pascal.
- [12:05]
B
Yeah, and I don't think it would be very different from the sort of things from your documentary about more recent conflicts. I think that sentiment is similar. Just one thing that I would bring up is where were the Palauins? Because this is very relevant for today. So the Japanese had taken the local population off of Peleliu and had moved them onto the main island. So this was just a battlefield, this was just a killing field. And when you go today, and I think you'll be getting to it later on about bringing the boys, bringing the men home, you know, there's still, there's like a caves there where the, in the US had to use flamethrowers to try to clear out the caves and in many cases then just sealed the caves up and many haven't been properly excavated. They just found a mass Japanese grave on Angar. So there is something soaked into the soil and the rocks of these islands that, that is not of the people of the islands. It's what was brought to these islands by other winds that were blowing. But today it's the people of these islands that are making incredibly courageous stands for freedom. So Palau is a country that recognizes Taiwan. It's one of less than a dozen that still recognizes Taiwan and it doesn't on principle. And it's an independent country in free association with the U.S. and the Marines are back on Peleliu. One of the things that we did in Peleliu was get a briefing from the Marines about the plans for rebuilding the airfield and for putting in a joint operations center. And it's coming back to life again, not because of what the US Wants, but because what another aggressive, expansionist Asian power wants. And this time the locals are very much in the fight.
- [14:25]
A
Yeah, hang on for one second. We're going to continue this. We're going to focus for the next couple days on the 250th commemoration of the birth of this republic and the Revolutionary war. Patrick K. ODonnell has written his third in a series about that, but he's also he was an in bed combat historian with the Marines in the Iraq War in some of our bloodiest battles. He knows about the camaraderie, the marriage rings, and he knows about Hel. Mark Noah also. Short break. Back in the warm. In a moment.
- [15:00]
C
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- [16:33]
A
Okay. Welcome back. Patrick K. O'. Donnell, you are an embedded combat historian with the Marines in some of our bloodiest battles in Iraq. Wrote a great book about it. You know about. With the old Breed. Why was, why is Professor Sledge correct? There's nothing more vicious or tough or a better killing machine than a young 18 year old American let loose on a battlefield properly trained.
- [17:02]
D
Sir, I saw that firsthand with the Marine Corps in the battle of Fallujah where 18 and 19 year olds, private first classes lance corporals would take the lead. And like the Pacific War, it was a war of annihilation. Fallujah was a fight to the death. The, the place was kind of a Star wars bar of international terrorists from 17 different countries, including Chechens. They were in bunkered positions and they had to be rooted out with, in many cases, World War II weapons. Everything from satchel charges to bangalore torpedoes, which are long tubes of TNT that could detonate an entire house, to small rockets, to small arms, to hand grenades. And I went with a rifle platoon, house to house, clearing those houses with them of an enemy that was there to fight to the death. In many cases they were on liquid adrenaline or other drugs. I witnessed where an entire house would fall down on these individuals. They'd still be firing from the rubble. That's how determined they were. A very determined and tough enemy. But what really impressed me the Most was the 18 and 19 year olds that I saw that just were indomitable, intrepid. After the death of Michael Hanks, who I was mortally wounded in front of me, I just saw the squad get back together. I remember looking back at these guys and they were just on one knee and they're. His best friend just said, okay, going to the next house. And they just moved forward. Just an incredible, just incredible, like I said, a next great generation of Americans that we're fighting.
- [19:17]
A
You talk about this intrepid nature and the great courage and valor of the American fighting man and woman at Tarawa and Peleliu, it reached. And the stories, I don't think they've been told in books. There are many great books about these two battles. It's never really gotten the popular media like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's great film about Normandy. And all the films have been Longest Day, all the films about Normandy. And that's why I think in Ken Burns, the war, the documentary and, and particularly the Pacific, they tried to make up for that. But I don't think people realize the carnage and the intensity of the fight that the Marines had in the valor that was displayed over. If you look at it geostrategically, you can actually understand the island hopping and why you need to go here or you need to take a. You need to take Saipan because you need an air based, basically aircraft carrier type island to do the air assaults into Japan to try to make sure we don't have to invade. But I think it gets lost in me particularly you see the isolated or the desolate nature of these essentially. I guess they're not atolls, but they're not vibrant, robust islands either. Talk to me about that for a minute about the brutality of the amphibious warfare in the Pacific. Like I said, Normandy gets a lot as it should because Normandy, I think was even bloodier than people realize. This is why the Tom Hanks movie, the Steven Spielberg movie, Saving Private Ryan, although it was a very contrived premise for the story, the actual first 30 minutes, which is mesmerizing, I think puts in perspective what Ernie Pyle and many others. Ernie Pyle wrote that great story. He walked the beach at Normandy on the evening after the first day. And the carnage he described was almost like looking at, I guess, 9 11. If you were down there at the very pit of 911 and seen those twisted buildings and the smell and the smoke and the fire that was still going on, that wouldn't be put out. Tarawa and Peleliu in Marine Corps history. The Marines will tell you in some of their bravest moments, some of the best fighting. When Mark Noah comes on in a minute and talks about some of these islands and really what's. What we have done in not remembering the remains of these great warriors, putting in perspective what they did is unbelievable. The Marines were not in Normandy. One of the reasons they were not in Normandy was a political thing. Because the Marines had done such a great job at Belleau wood that the U.S. army thought, hey, I think we got Europe. From now on, we're not going to need your help. Terrawan, Peleliu. Why do they stick out, particularly in the core? It's like the Chosin Reservoir. There's a handful of these fights, Fallujah being once, a handful of these fights that stick out in the combat memory. Maybe not the official histories, maybe not some of the ceremonies, but in the combat, in the. In the true warrior combat passed down generation to generation in an unbroken chain of stories. Why. Why terror? Why Terrawa and Pale Lou? Why do they stick out?
- [22:24]
D
Because of the bloody and. And just absolute nature of savage nature of the fighting. And it's here that the, you know, it's the lore of the Corps, so to speak. You know, looking at, for instance, Belleau Wood in, you know, on June 6, 1918, where they help stop the great German drive at Paris, where the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments, which are part of the 2nd Division, US Army Division, are, play a crucial role. And then it's. It's in that lore of the Corps. It's. It's the storied battles of the Marine Corps. And the Marine Corps is all about teaching its history to its recruits. And it's imbued within them the legacy of the Corps in these great battles and the Pacific is where the Marine Corps really has some of its finest hours. Peleliu, for me, is something that I experienced firsthand with the veterans that I interviewed. Forgive me tomorrow. And that was the Marines at the chosen reservoir. But the core members of George Company were Veterans of the 1st Marine Division. They fought on the Matanicau river at Guadalcanal. They fought near the airfield in the jungles of Guadalcanal and at Peleliu, for instance, the main character of that book, Rocco Zulo, is a veteran of Peleliu, and he fights at the airfield and is awarded the Silver Star for his bravery. You know, this is a savage contest. It even begins with the first submarine reconnaissance operation where the USS Burfish launches five men who are members of the OSS Maritime unit to conduct a reconnaissance of the island in rubber boats, the subsurfaces. And they make their way in. They're trying to get sounding and other type of data for the invasion. And three of those men are captured by the Japanese. They are interrogated and they are executed and never seen again. You know, this is kind of what Memorial Day is all about. It's about honoring those men that never came home.
- [24:49]
A
You're absolutely correct. And we're going to get to Mark Noah in a second about what's really being done on this, because it's a topic that I think is. Is urgent. The Cleo had mentioned the Japanese defenders, and I think it was Clint Eastwood later doing Flags of Our Fathers, who did. Who was so moved in doing. I think it was the battle of Iwo Jima that he did. He did the Japanese. He did American version, then he did the Japanese version. One of the things that hit me most powerfully when I was a young man, my destroyer, when we were called out of the Pacific, out of the Hawaiian OP area in the middle of the night to cruise to make all deliberate speed to the Persian Gulf, to the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in 1979, with the taking of the US embassy, we stopped in, we followed a carrier and we stopped in Guam for some repairs and some replenishing, but some repairs. And as we pull into Guam, and this is in 1979, I think it was November of 1979, pulling the Guam, we get there at that time, now it's revving back up. But back then it was a base that really had been a little bit forgotten. Everything had passed it by. You know, you had Subic Bay, you had we were much more in patrol in the, in the South China Sea. There was a story and the locals told us about it in 1972, just seven years before my destroyer pulled in. In 1972, the last Japanese soldier walked out of the jungle in Guam and surrendered. He didn't know the war was over, but he was told in his devotion to the emperor, his devotion to his religion, his devotion to his people and to his fellow soldiers, they were told, as Cleo just told you, you're not leaving. You're going to fight to the death right here. This is the last thing on earth you're ever going to see and you're going to stop the Americans, you're going to stop, you're going to stop the foreign devils and you're going to stop them right here. Whether that was Tarawa, Peleliu, Guam, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, the sacrifice of these 17 and 18 year old, 19 year old kids. And that's why if you get a chance, Eugene Sled's Sledge's book with the Old Breed is one of the most disturbing reads you will ever have because it is a grunt's eye view of what Mortal Kombat is really about without any of the, any of the the conventions of Hollywood, right? This is the way it really was as told first person by the guy that experienced it. We're going to find out what the reward was for that sacrifice. You would assume in a nation that has done as well as we've had, that is the greatest nation in the history of the Earth, that the warriors that gave all in those almost forgotten battles would somehow be remembered. Mark Noah is going to join us here in a moment. Mark Noah had on Breitbart Radio, I think it was a decade ago and some of the great work he has been doing. We'll take a short commercial break there. Cleo Pascal out in the Pacific, we've got our own Patrick K. O'. Donnell. Mark Noah is going to join us in a moment. Short break.
- [28:21]
C
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- [30:23]
A
Okay. Welcome back. It's our beginning, although we always start on Friday with a little preliminary as we start our Memorial Day weekend commemoration, always on the Saturday show and always with Patrick K. O'. Donnell. Many of you have followed us for years. We did Breitbart News Radio Starting back in 2012, 2013 over at Sirius XM expanded it to a daily show. But we always have Saturday and Sunday effect. Matt Boyle still does the Saturday morning show. Mark Noah joins us. Mark, I had you on, I think a decade ago on the work you were doing then. I believe at the time it was the largest you guys had found. You and your organization, which I want you to describe, had basically found the largest numbers of remains of our warriors in the Pacific that had not been that up until that time, really, in what, 2015, 16 had not been found, you know, many decades after the war, sir.
- [31:30]
E
Yes. It's a little known fact that 19% of America's World War II casualties are still missing today. And so we started the History Flight project with the objective of trying to recover some of those individuals. And on the Pacific island of Tarawa, we did the three largest recoveries of MIAs since World War II in three different mass burial settings. And that's when I first chatted with you guys on Breitbart.
- [32:00]
A
Talk to me about Tarawa and Peleliuke. Tell me about the horrific nature of that. And here's I think people and I remember the time I did. How can there possibly be remains that we don't know? It's not in the military cemeteries. One of the most moving experiences you will have as an American going throughout the world, of which no other country in the history of the earth could ever do, is to go to these really understated, magnificent cemeteries. Whether it's on the cliffs overlooking Normandy, the beach, the magnificent one in the Philippines. I mean there's some that are just breathtaking in their simplicity and in their really understated elegance of just everything is so absolutely perfect, but so quiet. People would say that's impossible. All the remains were either buried in these cemeteries or the families were given options to bring the remains home. Isn't that, didn't we, didn't we go get all of our honor dead, sir?
- [33:01]
E
Well, that's the, the popular conundrum is that people would like to think that everything is neat entirely and elegant as you aptly describe the American cemeteries overseas and the ones that are, that are so well kept in America. But the, the, the simple fact is 19% of America's World War II casualties are still missing today. And that's a little over 80,000 people. And in the setting of Tarawa, the, the Marines fought a incredibly difficult and strenuous 76 hour battle in which 75% of the engaged units, the 8th, 6th and 2nd regiments of the, of the 2nd Marine Division, 75% of those individuals were killed, wounded or missing. And in the state of the Battle of Tarawa, they made all of the proper burial setups for all the deceased individuals. And then the Seabees came in and turned the island into a modern logistics center and an air base and removed all of the original cemetery markings and build infrastructure. And in doing so they lost 50% of the known buried on the island. And so using that information that we recovered from the National Archives, we conducted a 16 year old long project to recover the missing on, on the island of Tarawa. And today you see the Chinese Communist Party has pushed their influence throughout the Pacific Rim using the same footprint that the Japanese did in the 1920s and the 1930s. And the Chinese Communist Party is quite entrenched in the Republic of Kiribati, and they have sought and successfully been able to deny our work visas from being renewed. So we haven't been able to be out doing the work that we've done on Taroa for the last 16 years, for about a year and a half now.
- [35:07]
A
Hold it. The CCP used their influence with the local government to block the not for profit that was there to make sure that there's some reverential way that we can handle the remains that still exist.
- [35:22]
E
That is correct. We have an office out there that is in a building that's actually on top of Cemetery 27 that we recovered 52American individuals from underneath the parking lot and underneath the building. And by having a 247 presence out there, we were able to stop the accidental damage to the American graves on Taroa because the local police would come to us every time construction disturbed one of the graves, and we would recover it. And now we haven't been able to be out there in. In a year and a half. And I fear that there are numerous people that are being accidentally recovered and. And lost forever.
- [36:09]
A
I want to go back to the. To the 80,000, because I think I get this statistic from you when you first came on the show of the 80,000, 40 or half of them, 8th Air Army, 8th Air Corps that died in the. In the. In the skies over the bombing runs in Germany and Europe in World War II, is that half of those are missing pilots and crewmen that we have not been able to recover.
- [36:39]
E
I'm not sure if it's half, but it's a very substantial number. We have an office in Europe as well. We've recovered quite a few missing air crew from World War II in Europe, as well as over 300 Marines on Tarawa. But the number is a little over 80,000 that are still missing, and it's
- [36:58]
D
all over the world.
- [36:59]
E
And there's even missing American servicemen from training accidents in the United States. And, you know, I think in the tempo of World War II, the casualties were not treated in the same way as. As living people that could contribute to the war effort.
- [37:19]
A
Well, today, I mean, you know, Pete Hex, but. But for years, PTAG's the Secretary of War, but for years, the Department of Defense. Did you guys go to the Department of Defense and say, hey, look, you got 80,000 remains of American warriors that gave their lives in defense of this country? It seems like that would be, I would assume, particularly my daughter, you know, went to West Point and fought in Iraq. You assume as a parent that if, God forbid, they're wounded, they get taken care of, but if they're killed, you're going to get something more than a note that says a grateful nation, you know, wants to thank you, that one of the, one of the unwritten promises that are commitments is that they give their lives for their country, that we're going to take care of their earthly remains afterwards. Is that not an implicit contractual obligation of our Defense Department? And particularly in World War II, it
- [38:19]
E
is an obligation of the Defense Department, but it is not a fully funded or delivered promise. The, the simple fact is, is the casualty issue From World War II, Korea, Vietnam is chronically unfunded. And even the Department of Defense puts their money where they get a bang for their buck. And they don't put a lot of money into the MIA issue. In the case of World War II, after the, the armistice, the US spent five years and what is the then equivalent of about a billion dollars doing the recovery work. But after that they wrote a book that said, we've done it all and we did a great job. And then they put a bow on it and put it away into the safe. And so the end result is more than 80,000 are still missing today. And you know, we're doing. Last time you interviewed our CEO, Justin Lew, Sergeant Major Justin Lee, who, he was walking across America to raise funding in 5 and 10 and $20 increments to achieve this goal. It's, it's a chronically unfunded issue.
- [39:34]
A
Talk to me about, let's go back to World War II. After that victory, we were the only nation on Earth, or the one, I should say, of the major combatants that was not impacted physically in its terrain. So there was a celebratory nature of how we brought that, how we brought that war to a conclusion. Although we didn't by far have the highest casualties. You said they, they, they allocated a billion dollars at the time and put a five year time frame on it to essentially recover the remains of our warriors and to either appropriately bury them where they were or bring them home to their parents. That was a five year program and a billion dollars. Do you know, do you know how many were actually recovered at that time?
- [40:19]
E
It was a very large number. It was more than 320,000 individuals were recovered. So they did a very substantial amount of work and they tried their best to make it happen correctly. But I think, you know, when I went to Emory, a lot of my professors were World War II veterans and one of professors told me that the post war army was demoralized. And he basically said that all the people that had that were, you know, aptly trained and experienced had earned enough points to go home. So the people that did the recovery work after World War II were the draftees who had been intended to invade Japan. And the the quality of the work was was very poorly done. And and we have evidence that when we did the recovery of the graves on Tarawa, we would often find an entire person whose skull and legs and arms were missing and everything else was still there. And that's because when they did the recovery work, they grabbed the skull, the legs and the arms and left the feet and the boots and this you know, many of the ribs and and other parts of the people. And that's evidence of the quality lack of quality of the work that they did, but also it's evidence of the of what's out there still today. We were able to recover numerous individuals in a partial configuration like that who matched unknown burials in the punch bowl in Hawaii and also provided DNA to be individually identified. So it's a very complex situation in the 50s. They did a really good job, they worked really hard at it, but there were many shortcomings and there's still, you know, a lifetime of work to be done. I'll probably be doing this kind of work until I'm in a wheelchair.
- [42:17]
A
Talk to me about how because I When I interviewed 10 years ago, I mean, you guys were motor and then 10 years what is it that motivates you and your team to do this?
- [42:28]
E
Well, I like to use the term for the souls of the missing and the families they left behind. And and I think it's it shows you the the seriousness of this issue and and how, you know, life and death is a spiritual struggle. And so, yes, we go out there for the the individual missing servicemen and the families that they left behind.
- [42:54]
A
Of the families themselves, I take it there's it's their grandchildren and great grandchildren that today that you notify.
- [43:03]
E
Yes, and we have a close partnership with the Department of Defense and the different departments of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and they work directly with the families. But there's many of the individual missing servicemen still have living children and and there and there are and brothers and sisters, so it's not a long time away from them. Those people feel the loss like it was yesterday.
- [43:33]
A
Hang on one second. Mark Noah from History Flights, Cleo Pascal's with us, the incomparable Patrick K. Donald Short. Commercial break Back in.
- [44:14]
C
Everyone's focus on how the conflict in the middle east is raising oil prices. But there's another grim reality to this contention. Oil isn't the only resource being constrained. About one third of global fertilizer trade happens through this region. And with spring planting season on top of us, American farmers are sounding the alarm with some saying they can't afford to plant their fields. When one piece of the supply chain gets hit this hard, you know what comes next? Higher fruit prices, reduced availability, maybe even panic buying. That's why having an emergency food supply at home makes so much sense. And that's where our friends at my patriot supply come in. Right now@preparedwithbannon.com that is preparewithbannon.com we've set up an entire just site for the war room posse. You go to preparewithbannon.com that's all one word. Preparewithbannon.com you get a three month emergency food supply. They'll include a free mega protein Upgrade, an incredible $200 bonus you don't want to miss. It's a simple way to protect your family from whatever comes next. Go to preparewithbannon.com that is preparewithbannon.com to get your emergency food supply today. That's preparewithband.com do it today.
- [45:37]
A
Go check it out.
- [45:45]
B
Okay.
- [45:45]
A
Welcome back, mark noah. Your great efforts. How can we help you? First, either talking to congress or the administration and helping make sure that the groups themselves inside the apparatus of the department of war is properly funded. And then number two, how do we get more information about the great work you guys are doing and how our audience can help?
- [46:12]
E
Anyone can go to www.historyflight.com and they can check out, you know, the different things that the organization has done and they also can donate off of that page. Everything 100 goes to the actual work. And this picture you're showing right here is evidence of a mass grave that was discovered by a backhoe. And that's a pig that was living on top of the grave. And basically a backhoe had dug right through about 30 individuals. That's cemetery number 10. Those are u. S. Marine Corps uniform parts and bones that were also dug up by a backhoe. And it's. This is an american lvt that had three missing servicemen inside of it that was buried after the battle and also discovered during a construction project. It's evidence of the the fact that these graves are constantly being interrupted by local construction and we're not able to save them anymore because we've been effectively banned from the island.
- [47:23]
A
And this is. You're banned from the island because of the direct action of the Chinese Communist Party, correct?
- [47:28]
E
I believe that is correct. And we've been negotiating with the local government. But, you know, the Chinese Communist Party has done this all over the Pacific. You know, they made a. They bought off the government in Guadalcanal, and an American Coast Guard cutter came into Hanaria to buy provisions. And they basically said, you know, call us back tomorrow. And they said that for a month until the Coast Guard cutter left. And so it's like a diplomatic way of saying fu without saying that.
- [48:04]
A
Yep. And that's outrageous when you think of the sacrifice our Marines had at Guadalcanal. Mark Noah, where do people go? Social media. And where they go, the sites are.
- [48:15]
E
It's historyflight.com and it's also History Flight on Facebook. So you can check out all the different things we've done. It's a fascinating project.
- [48:28]
A
You were doing work. I said, you're doing God's work. And we want to thank you for joining us on our Memorial Day special.
- [48:38]
D
I would agree.
- [48:38]
E
Thanks for having us on. We appreciate it.
- [48:41]
A
Thank you, sir. Cleo, this story boggles my mind, given the work you're doing. And Mark Noah said it right there. The footprint that the Imperial Japan used to challenge the United States in its strategic heartland, which is the Pacific, is the exact playbook. The exact playbook that the Chinese come. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party may be doing a more sophisticated political operation. Your thoughts, ma'? Am?
- [49:10]
B
Absolutely. And it's down to the exact same location. So when they flipped Solomon Islands, where Guadalcanal is, from Taiwan to China in 2019, the first place they tried to buy was. Was Tulagi, which was the first place that the Japanese invaded. A lot of it comes down to geography. It's got a good port and it backs onto mountains. But the PLA has systematically studied World War II from both sides. There's a good study on this by Toshi Yoshihara. And they think that the US Is the Japanese Navy. They think it's brittle and stretched. It's big, but it can be beat. And they're trying to emplace in the same sorts of locations the Japanese did and to block the US Access to the places that were so pivotal for the US to be able to push back.
- [50:04]
A
Cleo, you're out there doing. You're also doing God's work. Where do people go to get all the information on your social media?
- [50:12]
B
I'm on X. Just my name. Cleopaskal C. L E O P A S K A L and Getter at Real Clio. And please consider your next holiday to come out to visit your fellow Americans out in Guam. Maybe not the Marianas at the moment because they're still recovering from a typhoon, but this is America. Americans died out here and this, this is where the front line is that's going to keep the mainland safe. Come and come and be a part of it.
- [50:45]
A
Cleo Pascal, thank you so much and for the work you're doing, doing God's work. We're coming at the top of the hour and we're going to take a short commercial break. We're going to come back. PATRICK K. O' donnell, what our focus was going to be on was on America 250, particularly the Revolutionary War. Patrick has now finished his third in his trilogy on the revolution. We're going to talk about those who gave off. I do remind people the reason I started here is so outrageous what is happening not just in the war against the Chinese Communist Party, but to think that 80,000 remains of these heroes have not been recovered. You just gotta, you know, you gotta think about that. When I talk about 12 o' clock high and show the which is based upon a true story, show you the footage of Gregory Peck and all those young pilots in the very first wave in 1942 of the of the American hitback on Nazi Germany. Think about it. 80,000 are gone, and I think the number's 40,000. I think I got that. I'll dig it up. 40,000 remains from the 8th Air Corps, 8th Air Force in Europe, just to Europe. So you talk about beating the Nazis and you talk to all these people, you know, Nazis, Nazis, hey, there was a generation of young men in this country that were 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, 22 years old. They gave all in the hardest days of World War II. That would be the beginning days right after Pearl harbor in 1942, over the skies of Europe. And I don't know, 40,000 or more of their remains. Now, many of those you're not going to find because either parachuted out or blown up, you know, evaporated in the in the hits. But remember the sacrifice. This is not Veterans Day weekend. This is Memorial Day weekend. This is about our honored dead. And that's all it's about. We're gonna take a short commercial break. We'll leave you with Minstrel Boy from Black Hawk Down. We'll be back with Patrick Kir Don in a moment.
- [53:38]
C
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A
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