00:05:55.500It was part of a strategic question about how to liberate Philippines and whether it was essential to take out the specific Japanese airfield.
00:06:08.440and the one in the neighboring island of Angar,
00:06:11.580or whether the Japanese defenses were weak enough
00:06:15.860that you could hop over them and go straight to Leyte, for example.
00:06:20.600So it's a question of sort of how to do it, but not why.
00:06:28.000It needed to be done, and I think that needs to be remembered.
00:06:34.760This fight, unfortunately, wasn't started by the U.S., but it needed to be won.
00:06:41.600And the men who died, and you can read about it with the old breed, that classic, and look at the videos and see the look in the eyes of the men during the battle.
00:12:37.400This was just a killing field. And when you when you go today, and I think you'll be getting to it later on about bringing the boys, bringing the men home.
00:12:48.020Yes. You know, there's still there's like a caves there where 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.
00:13:04.780And many haven't been properly excavated
00:13:09.920They just found a mass Japanese grave on Angar
00:13:14.440So there is something soaked into the soil and the rocks of these islands1.00
00:13:24.700That is not of the people of the islands
00:13:28.340It's what was brought to these islands by other winds that were blowing
00:13:33.080But today it's the people of these islands that are making incredibly courageous stands for freedom
00:13:40.620So Palau, Peleliu is in Palau, is a country that recognizes Taiwan
00:13:45.720It's one of less than a dozen that still recognizes Taiwan
00:16:53.100There'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, sir.
00:17:02.000I saw that firsthand with the Marine Corps in the Battle of Fallujah, where 18- and 19-year-olds, private first classes, lands corporals, would take the lead.
00:17:17.440And like the Pacific War, it was a war of annihilation.
00:17:20.380fallujah was a fight to the death um the the place was kind of a star wars bar0.79
00:17:28.740of international terrorists from 17 different countries including chechens
00:17:34.480they were in bunkered positions and they had to be rooted out with um in many cases world war ii
00:17:42.940weapons, everything from satchel charges to Bangalore torpedoes, which are long tubes of TNT
00:17:51.300that could detonate an entire house, to small rockets, to small arms, to hand grenades.
00:18:00.560And I went with a rifle platoon, house to house, clearing those houses with them, of an enemy that
00:18:08.980was there to fight to the death. In many cases, they were on liquid adrenaline or other drugs.
00:18:17.240You know, I witnessed where an entire house would fall down on these individuals. They'd still be
00:18:22.220firing from the rubble. That's how determined they were. A very determined and tough enemy.
00:18:29.140But what really impressed me the most was the 18 and 19-year-olds that I saw that just were indomitable, intrepid.
00:18:41.320After the death of Michael Hanks, who was mortally wounded in front of me, I just saw the squad get back together.
00:18:52.760I remember looking back at these guys, and they were just on one knee, and his best friend just said, okay, go to the next house, and they just moved forward.
00:19:05.580Just an incredible, like I said, next great generation of Americans that were fighting.
00:19:14.540um you talk about this intrepid nature and the in the great uh courage and valor of the american
00:19:21.840fighting man and woman um at tarawa and pelelu it reached in in the stories i don't think they've
00:19:29.880been told in book there are many great books about these two battles it's never really gotten uh
00:19:34.240the the popular media like uh tom hanks's uh uh and steven spielberg's great film
00:19:40.760about normandy uh and all the films have been you know longest day all the films about normandy
00:19:45.740but the second and that's why i think in ken burns is the war the documentary and and particularly
00:19:50.980the pacific they tried to to make up for that but i don't think people realize the carnage and the
00:19:56.380intensity of the fight that the marines had in the valor that was displayed over if you look at it
00:20:02.900geo strategically you can actually understand the island hopping and why you need to go here
00:20:08.520You need to take Saipan because you need an air-based, basically an aircraft carrier-type island to do the air assaults in Japan to try to make sure we don't have to invade.
00:20:19.620But I think it gets lost in me, particularly when you see the isolated or the desolate nature of these, essentially.
00:20:25.760I guess they're not atolls, but they're not vibrant, robust islands either.
00:20:32.380Talk to me about that for a minute, about the brutality of the amphibious warfare in the Pacific.
00:20:37.840Like I said, Normandy gets a lot, as it should, because Normandy, I think, was even bloodier than people realize.
00:20:44.520This is why the Tom Hanks movie, the Steven Spielberg movie, Saving Private Ryan, although it's 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.
00:21:00.360As Ernie Powell wrote that great story, he walked the beach at Normandy on the evening after the first day.
00:21:06.040And the carnage she described was almost like looking at, I guess, 9-11 if you were down there at the very pit of 9-11
00:21:14.200and seeing those twisted buildings and the smell and the smoke and the fire that was still going on that wouldn't be put out.
00:21:21.960Terawa and Peleliu in Marine Corps history.
00:21:25.160The Marines will tell you in some of their bravest moments, some of the best fighting.
00:21:29.120When Mark Noah comes on in a minute and talks about some of these islands and really what we have done in not remembering the remains of these great warriors, putting in perspective what they did is unbelievable.
00:21:44.700One 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.
00:22:19.080Why Terawa and Peleliu? Why do they stick out?
00:22:22.360because of the bloody and just absolute nature of a savage nature of the fighting.
00:22:30.240And it's here that the, you know, it's the lore of the core, so to speak, you know, looking at,
00:22:35.760for instance, Bella Wood in, you know, on June 6th, 1918, where they helped stop
00:22:42.960the great German drive at Paris for the fifth and sixth Marine regiments,
00:22:47.380which are part of the 2nd Division, U.S. Army Division, play a crucial role.
00:22:53.320And then it's in that lore of the Corps.
00:22:55.480It's the storied battles of the Marine Corps.
00:22:58.560And the Marine Corps is all about teaching its history to its recruits,
00:23:04.660and it's imbued within them, the legacy of the Corps in these great battles.
00:23:09.820And the Pacific is where the Marine Corps really has some of its finest hours.
00:23:16.220Peleliu, for me, is something that I experienced firsthand with the veterans that I interviewed for Give 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.
00:23:38.100They fought on the Matanakao River at Guadalcanal.
00:23:42.700They fought near the airfield in the jungles of Guadalcanal and at Peleliu.
00:23:47.860For instance, the main character of that book, Rocco Zulo, is a veteran of Peleliu,
00:23:54.820and he fights at the airfield and is awarded the Silver Star for his bravery.
00:31:00.800Mark, I had you on, I think, a decade ago on the work you were doing then.
00:31:04.920And 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 up until that time, really in 2015, 16 had not been found many decades after the war, sir.
00:31:28.180Yes, it's a little known fact that 19% of America's World War II casualties are still
00:31:35.620missing today. And so we started the History Flight Project with the objective of trying to
00:31:43.820recover some of those individuals. And on the Pacific Island of Tarawa, we did the three
00:31:48.640largest recoveries of MIAs since World War II in three different mass burial settings.
00:31:55.380And that's when I first chatted with you guys on Breitbart.
00:32:46.440All the remains were either buried in these cemeteries or the families were given options to bring the remains home.
00:32:54.320Isn't that – didn't we go get all of our honor dead, sir?
00:33:00.640Well, that's the popular conundrum is that people would like to think that everything is neat and tidy and elegant as you aptly describe the American cemeteries overseas and the ones that are so well kept in America.
00:33:13.120But 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.
00:33:23.780And in the setting of Tarawa, the Marines fought an incredibly difficult and strenuous 76-hour battle in which 75% of the engaged units, the 8th, 6th, and 2nd regiments of the 2nd Marine Division, 75% of those individuals were killed, wounded, or missing.
00:33:48.760And in the state of the Battle of Tarawa, they made all of the proper burial setups for all the deceased individuals.
00:33:59.880And 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.
00:34:12.200And in doing so, they lost 50 percent of the known buried on the island.
00:34:17.380And so using that information that we recovered from the National Archives, we conducted a 16-year-old long project to recover the missing on the island of Tarawa.0.83
00:34:31.060And 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.
00:34:44.780And 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.0.75
00:34:57.780So we haven't been able to be out doing the work that we've done on Tarawa for the last 16 years for about a year and a half now.
00:35:05.120Hold 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?
00:35:21.580That is correct. We have an office out there that is in a building that's actually on top
00:35:28.820of Cemetery 27 that we recovered 52 American individuals from underneath the parking lot
00:35:34.820and underneath the building. And by having a 24-7 presence out there, we were able to
00:35:40.940stop the accidental damage to the American graves on Tarawa because the local police would come to
00:35:49.720us every time construction disturbed one of the graves, and we would recover it. And now we haven't
00:35:56.380been able to be out there in a year and a half. And I fear that there are numerous people that
00:36:02.820are being accidentally recovered and lost forever. I want to go back to the to the 80,000.
00:36:13.360Because I think I get this statistic from you when you first came on the show of the 80,000.
00:36:19.720Are half of them Army 8th Air Corps that died in the skies over the bombing runs in Germany and Europe in World War II?
00:36:32.280Is that half of those are missing pilots and crewmen that we have not been able to recover?
00:36:38.600I'm not sure if it's half, but it's a very substantial number.
00:36:43.900we've recovered quite a few missing air crew from World War II in Europe, as well as over 300
00:36:50.880Marines on Tarawa. But the number is a little over 80,000 that are still missing, and it's all
00:36:57.900over the world. And there's even missing American servicemen from training accidents in the United
00:37:03.960States. And I think in the tempo of World War II, the casualties were not treated in the same way
00:37:14.000as living people that could contribute to the war effort. Well, today, I mean, Pete Hexas,
00:37:21.060but for years, Pete Hexas, Secretary of War, but for years, the Department of Defense, did you guys
00:37:26.280go to the Department of Defense and say, hey, look, you got 80,000 remains of American warriors that
00:37:32.240that gave their lives in defense of this country. Um, it seems like that would be,
00:37:37.300I would assume particularly my daughter, you know, went to West Point and fought in, uh, in,
00:37:41.900in, um, Iraq. You assume as a parent that if, if God forbid they're wounded, uh, they get taken
00:37:51.120care of, but if they're killed, uh, you're going to get something more than a note that says a
00:37:55.340grateful nation, uh, you know, wants to thank you that one of the, one of the unwritten promises
00:38:01.860that are commitments, is that they give their lives for their country, that we're going to
00:38:08.540take care of their earthly remains afterwards. Is that not an implicit contractual obligation
00:38:14.020of our Defense Department, and particularly in World War II?
00:38:18.300It is an obligation of the Defense Department, but it is not a fully funded or delivered promise.
00:38:26.220The simple fact is, is the casualty issue from World War II, Korea, Vietnam is chronically unfunded.
00:38:36.380And 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.
00:38:43.720In the case of World War II, after the armistice, the U.S. spent five years in what is the then equivalent of about a billion dollars doing the recovery work.
00:38:58.080But after that, they wrote a book that said, we've done it all and we did a great job.
00:39:04.000And then they put a bow on it and put it away into the safe.
00:39:07.780And so the end result is more than 80,000 are still missing today.
00:39:12.500And, you know, we're doing things like the last time you interviewed our CEO, Justin Lee, who Sergeant Major Justin Lee, who he was walking across America to raise funding in five and 10 and $20 increments to achieve this goal.
00:39:28.300It's it's a chronically unfunded issue.
00:39:31.300talk to me about let's go back to world war ii after the that victory we were the only
00:39:38.820nation on earth or the one of the i should say of the major combatants that was not
00:39:44.060impacted physically in its terrain so there was a celebratory nature of how we brought that how we
00:39:51.180brought that uh war to a conclusion although we didn't by far have the highest casualties
00:39:55.620you said they they they allocated a billion dollars at the time and put a five-year time
00:40:00.780frame on it to essentially recover the remains of our warriors and to either appropriately
00:40:06.180bury them where they were or bring them home to their parents? That was a five-year program
00:40:14.480and a billion dollars. Do you know how many were actually recovered at that time?
00:40:19.080It was a very large number. It was more than 320,000 individuals were recovered. So they did
00:40:27.140a very substantial amount of work. And they tried their best to make it happen correctly. But I
00:40:33.920think, you know, when I went to Emory, a lot of my professors were World War II veterans. And
00:40:41.080one of my professors told me that the post-war army was demoralized. And he basically said that
00:40:48.740all the people that were, you know, aptly trained and experienced had earned enough points to go
00:40:55.720home. So the people that did the recovery work after World War II were the draftees who had been0.98
00:41:01.860intended to invade Japan. And the quality of the work was very poorly done. And we have announced
00:41:11.160that when we did the recovery of the graves on Tarawa, we would often find an entire person
00:41:17.280whose skull and legs and arms were missing and everything else was still there. And that's
00:41:24.120because when they did the recovery work, they grabbed the skull, the legs, and the arms and
00:41:27.940left the feet and the boots and many of the ribs and other parts of the people. And that's evidence
00:41:35.680of the lack of quality of the work that they did, but also it's evidence of the value of what's out
00:41:41.720there till today. We were able to recover numerous individuals in a partial configuration like that
00:41:49.380who matched unknown burials in the Punchbowl in Hawaii and also provided DNA to be individually
00:41:57.780identified. So it's a very complex situation. In the 50s, they did a really good job. They
00:42:04.180worked really hard at it, but there were many shortcomings. And there's still a lifetime of
00:42:10.280work to be done. I'll probably be doing this kind of work until I'm in a wheelchair.
00:42:14.840Talk to me about how, because when I interviewed 10 years ago, I mean, you guys were motivated in 10 years.
00:42:23.280What is it that motivates you and your team to do this?
00:42:28.200Well, I like to use the term for the souls of the missing and the families they left behind.
00:42:34.320And I think it shows you the seriousness of this issue and how, you know, life and death is a spiritual struggle.
00:42:43.400And so, yes, we go out there for the individual missing servicemen and the families that they left behind.
00:42:53.540Of the families themselves, I take it it's their grandchildren and great-grandchildren that today that you notify?
00:43:03.000Yes, and we have a close partnership with the Department of Defense and the different departments of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.
00:43:10.140And they work directly with the families.
00:43:14.080But there's many of the individual missing servicemen still have living children and brothers and sisters.
00:43:25.360So it's not a long time away from then.
00:43:29.180Those people feel the loss like it was yesterday.
00:46:51.420Those are U.S. Marine Corps uniform parts and bones that were also dug up by a backhoe.
00:46:58.720And 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.
00:47:08.180It's evidence of 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.
00:47:22.760And this is, you're banned from the island because of the direct action of the Chinese Communist Party, correct?0.84
00:47:29.600And we've been negotiating with the local government, but, you know, the Chinese Communist Party has done this all over the Pacific.0.56
00:47:37.280You know, they made a they bought off the government in Guadalcanal and an American Coast Guard cutter came into Honoria to buy provisions.
00:47:48.360And they basically said, you know, call us back tomorrow.
00:47:52.840And they said that for a month until the Coast Guard cutter left.
00:47:56.800And so it's like a diplomatic way of saying F you without saying that.
00:48:02.280Yep. And that's outrageous when you think of the sacrifice our Marines had at Guadalcanal.
00:48:08.800Mark Noah, where do people go, social media and where they go to the sites are?
00:48:14.780It's historyflight.com and it's also History Flight on Facebook.
00:48:22.040You can check out all the different things we've done. It's a fascinating project.
00:48:41.700Cleo, this story boggles my mind, given the work you're doing.
00:48:46.560And Mark Noah said it right there.0.71
00:48:48.780The 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 counter.0.78
00:49:03.380In fact, the Chinese counter is probably maybe doing a more sophisticated political operation.0.75
00:49:10.720And it's down to the exact same location.0.67
00:49:13.120So when they flipped Solomon Islands, where Guadalcanal is, from Taiwan to China in 2019, the first place they tried to buy was Tulagi, which was the first place that the Japanese invaded.0.69
00:49:26.980It's got a good port and it backs onto mountains.
00:49:30.700But the PLA has systematically studied World War II from both sides.
00:49:36.260There's a good study on this by Toshi Yoshihara.
00:49:38.360And they think that the U.S. 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 U.S. access to the places that were so pivotal for the U.S. to be able to push back.
00:50:02.100cleo uh you're out there doing you're also doing god's work where do people go0.88
00:50:08.000uh to get uh all the information on your social media i'm on uh x just my name cleo pascal c-l-e-o-p-a-s-k-a-l
00:50:17.640and getter at real cleo and um please um consider your next holiday to come out to visit your
00:50:25.840fellow americans out in guam maybe not uh the mariannas at the moment because they're still
00:50:31.020recovering from a typhoon. But this is America. Americans died out here. And this this is where
00:50:38.580the front line is that's going to keep the mainland safe. Come and come and be a part of it.
00:50:45.140Cleo Pascal, thank you so much for the work you're doing, doing God's work.
00:50:52.720We're coming at the top of the hour and we're going to take a short commercial break. We're
00:50:55.900going to come back. Patrick O'Donnell, what our focus was going to be on was on America 250.
00:51:01.020Particularly the Revolutionary War, Patrick has now finished his third in his trilogy on the revolution.
00:51:07.560We're going to talk about those who gave all.
00:51:10.460I do remind people the reason I started here is so outrageous what is happening,
00:51:14.300not just in the war against the Chinese Communist Party,
00:51:16.600but to think that 80,000 remains of these heroes have not been recovered.
00:51:26.080You just got to, you know, you got to think about that.
00:51:28.240When 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 American hit back on Nazi Germany.