Bannon's War Room - Episode 5394： 250 Years Remembering The Ultimate Sacrifice

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 it's saturday 23 may in the year of our lord 2026. we are here in the war room before our

00:00:47.280 kickoff of our special memorial day weekend through this uh every year patrick k o'donnell

00:00:54.420 will be my co-host, the finest combat historian of his generation. We're going to cover a lot

00:01:00.820 of territory today. I'm going to announce that on Monday during the actual Memorial Day

00:01:07.140 commemoration. Patrick K. O'Donnell will also join me. We're going to start at 10 o'clock in the

00:01:11.660 morning to do War Room every day. We're going to go to two o'clock in the afternoon, attend

00:01:15.740 to a four-hour special War Room covering live everything to do with Memorial Day, the parade

00:01:21.660 up on Capitol Hill, the president's remarks, laying a wreath in the remarks, appropriate

00:01:27.320 remarks at Arlington National Cemetery Hall. Today, I want to kick off our very special

00:01:33.160 coverage by getting one of the most beloved of our contributors, Cleo Pascal, joins us.

00:01:40.240 Cleo, you are out in the Pacific as we find you often. You were at Peleliu, I guess yesterday,

00:01:47.660 the day before when there was historic battles of World War II.

00:01:51.520 And your fight today is to make sure that we don't ever have to do that again,

00:01:55.440 but making sure that the American territory out there is kept safe and free.

00:02:00.420 Might want to add also the reason we start with Cleo,

00:02:02.660 we're going to get Mark Noah up for a minute from History Flights.

00:02:08.020 Our Memorial Day specials very much focus on the honored dead.

00:02:12.600 Memorial Day is not Veterans Day.

00:02:14.060 This is not for service to your country.

00:02:15.860 There's so many great veterans. Obviously, so many people have volunteered and pitched in to help defend this country.

00:02:21.640 It's not Veterans Day, and I think the veterans will be the first to tell you, Memorial Day.

00:02:25.420 We are focused on the honored dead that gave the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this republic.

00:02:32.460 Peleliu, why are we out there, and why should Peleliu still be a central memory in the people of the United States, ma'am?

00:02:42.120 thank you for doing this uh it it was a horrific uh battle i mean all battles are obviously

00:02:51.100 horrific but this was just awful and when you go there and see the size of the island and feel the 0.84

00:02:58.360 heat and see the caves where the japanese had dug in and the the tiny beach uh that so many

00:03:07.160 Americans threw their bodies up against in order to try to dislodge them. And of course, 0.98

00:03:14.920 the questions about whether the battle was even necessary, but just the human cost and the courage

00:03:23.980 and the grit and the fight and the loss resonates in a way that is very difficult to describe

00:03:33.680 uh if you don't go to the battle sites um so we were there as part actually of a sasakawa usa

00:03:43.580 foundation meeting that was being held here in palau and so to visit the sites along with

00:03:50.160 japanese colleagues who were feeling it all in a in a very different way but uh with everybody

00:03:56.700 combined in in the wish because there were there were also Taiwanese as part of the visit that

00:04:04.400 this doesn't happen again was a very powerful moving experience and I very much hope that

00:04:13.500 the spirits of those who are who are there will find some peace on both sides knowing that

00:04:23.320 they're more willing to carry on the fight to try to keep this region free.

00:04:31.800 Why Normandy is obviously so well-known, but in the teaching of the history of World

00:04:39.100 War II, we often forget or overlook the Pacific War, which was horrific, and based upon a

00:04:47.880 strategic predicates set by the giants of the late 19th century in the United States

00:04:54.320 strategically, that we are a Pacific nation and manifest destiny, grows all the way through

00:04:59.580 the three island chains, that because we are a Pacific nation, and quite frankly, the

00:05:04.580 Central Pacific, that vast ocean, is our Central Asia, so to speak, our strategic pivot.

00:05:11.740 Yes.

00:05:12.260 In the strategy to to win there, you know, you had MacArthur strategy, you had Nimitz, but you also had the Marines had a part of this.

00:05:21.300 They had continuous amphibious assaults, every bit as bloody and maybe even bloodier than Normandy in the Pacific.

00:05:29.540 In Peleliu, you said it's even questioned.

00:05:32.280 There was so much finger pointing afterwards of the of the the horrific nature of the fight.

00:05:40.520 And exactly when you look at it, what are we exactly fighting for on this one?

00:05:44.460 That there was a lot of questioning, a lot of questioning in the Marine Corps, a lot of questioning of senior command.

00:05:50.100 And it's only gotten worse in history.

00:05:52.940 Why is that, Cleo Pascal?

00:05:55.500 It was part of a strategic question about how to liberate Philippines and whether it was essential to take out the specific Japanese airfield.

00:06:08.440 and the one in the neighboring island of Angar,

00:06:11.580 or whether the Japanese defenses were weak enough

00:06:15.860 that you could hop over them and go straight to Leyte, for example.

00:06:20.600 So it's a question of sort of how to do it, but not why.

00:06:28.000 It needed to be done, and I think that needs to be remembered.

00:06:34.760 This fight, unfortunately, wasn't started by the U.S., but it needed to be won.

00:06:41.600 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 look in the eyes of the men during the battle.

00:06:56.840 You know, they gave everything.

00:06:58.760 Even the ones who came home gave a lot of themselves and left it on that island.

00:07:05.900 And then many of them had to continue on.

00:07:08.960 The fight wasn't over.

00:07:10.980 Moving up the Marianas, Saipan, and then obviously Okinawa.

00:07:17.140 But it needed to be done.

00:07:20.580 And Peleliu was 1st Marine Division and 81st Infantry Division.

00:07:24.720 um it it the japanese had changed tactics um and originally they were trying to fight uh the u.s

00:07:33.560 on the beaches but in this case they'd sort of withdrawn so they pulled the u.s the the forces

00:07:38.880 up into the island killed a lot on the beach but then um had had embedded into the caves and and

00:07:45.620 could really get it get at them and in that way um and there's a ridge bloody nose ridge that goes

00:07:52.700 through the island that the U.S. military had to crawl up and fight hand-to-hand with

00:08:01.940 soldiers, Japanese soldiers who knew reinforcements weren't coming and who had had

00:08:08.760 30 years to embed themselves into this very hostile terrain. So yes, we can discuss whether

00:08:19.540 this particular part of the of the strategy of forager was worth it or not um stalemate two is

00:08:25.960 what this was called but um whether this had to be fought because exactly as you said the central

00:08:33.040 pacific has be is has been and it's been known at least since the 19th century to be america's

00:08:39.140 geographical pivot of history if a hostile foreign power can set up in the central pacific

00:08:44.200 mainland U.S. isn't safe.

00:08:47.760 It had to be fought and it had to be won.

00:08:51.360 We learned a very disturbing lesson in the 1930s and 1940s

00:08:57.460 on the sacrifice to come back.

00:08:58.740 You mentioned a book before I go to, and I'm going to ask Patrick O'Donnell

00:09:02.600 why the Marines were not in Normandy and they were in the Pacific

00:09:06.600 because that's always a question that has an interesting answer.

00:09:09.920 eugene sledge was a i believe it was university alabama it might have been auburn but i think

00:09:16.520 it was university alabama he was a professor there and um it was i guess taught history

00:09:23.020 i don't know but he wrote he had written a memoir but it wasn't published until later with the old 0.99

00:09:28.440 breed if you ever want to read a book that will shake you to your core and take away all the 0.98

00:09:34.680 glamour of warfare it is that book in fact it was the predicate after they made um band of brothers

00:09:40.700 guess tom hanks and hbo that was so successful they did the pacific war and they took two books

00:09:46.380 i think it was lecky's a uh my helmet for a pillow and then uh and then eugene sledge with the old

00:09:53.640 breed spielberg and these guys had optioned the book pascal one of the reasons the book is so

00:09:58.720 disturbing at the very beginning sledge and he's writing this as a as a old man looking back over

00:10:05.660 when he was a marine when he was uh with the um at the very beginning i think he was 17 or 18 years

00:10:12.500 old he made a statement there's nothing more vicious or harder in the world than an 18 year

00:10:23.140 old american that's been trained to fight uh it was and you and you read the memoir and you

00:10:29.000 understand um why was that why were these were 18 17 18 19 year old kids a lot of them that hit that

00:10:37.860 beach uh and they were they were trained but you know in the draft it was a modicum of training

00:10:43.860 before you hit it why why was this fight so vicious

00:10:47.000 there there there when many of you if you i would defer obviously to to military people but

00:10:57.560 what you hear a lot is they were they were fighting for each other um and they they weren't

00:11:03.580 going to let each other down and um they they knew the the weight that they were carrying and

00:11:10.460 they were just going to go forward with it. Um, also, um, you know, there, there, there are a lot

00:11:16.780 of other, I, I've heard emotions involved in it. I would just, I would really defer to the, to the

00:11:22.320 book. Um, uh, the, the, the power of the description of the emotions and of the, uh, viciousness and

00:11:31.080 of what had to be done is, uh, something that, um, I, I, I'm not qualified. I, it's not right

00:11:39.360 for me to to take to tell that story you should hear it from the from the people who lived through

00:11:44.300 it um yeah yeah just one other hang on and you can because a documentary has also made

00:11:52.300 ken burns's uh the war about world war ii i think you actually see that actually and then they did

00:11:58.100 the mini series called the pacific in 2010 also based upon the old breed continue on pascal

00:12:03.880 yeah and i and i don't think it's i don't think it would be very different from the sort of things

00:12:08.740 from your documentary about more recent conflicts.

00:12:13.620 I think that sentiment is similar.

00:12:16.000 Just one thing that I would bring up is where were the Palauans?

00:12:22.320 Because this is very relevant for today. 0.93

00:12:26.760 So the Japanese had taken the local population off of Peleliu 0.99

00:12:31.360 and had moved them onto the main island. 0.96

00:12:34.500 So this was just a battlefield.

00:12:37.400 This 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.

00:12:48.020 Yes. 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.

00:13:04.780 And many haven't been properly excavated

00:13:09.920 They just found a mass Japanese grave on Angar

00:13:14.440 So there is something soaked into the soil and the rocks of these islands 1.00

00:13:24.700 That is not of the people of the islands

00:13:28.340 It's what was brought to these islands by other winds that were blowing

00:13:33.080 But today it's the people of these islands that are making incredibly courageous stands for freedom

00:13:40.620 So Palau, Peleliu is in Palau, is a country that recognizes Taiwan

00:13:45.720 It's one of less than a dozen that still recognizes Taiwan

00:13:48.620 And it does it on principle

00:13:50.580 And it's an independent country in free association with the US

00:13:54.520 And the Marines are back on Peleliu

00:13:56.900 One of the things that we did in Peleliu was get a briefing from the Marines

00:14:01.160 about the plans for rebuilding the airfield

00:14:04.920 and for putting in a joint operations center.

00:14:07.680 And it's coming back to life.

00:14:12.700 Again, not because of what the U.S. wants, 0.98

00:14:15.080 but because what another aggressive expansionist Asian power wants. 0.91

00:14:20.640 And this time, the locals are very much in the fight. 0.80

00:14:24.900 Yeah. Hang on for one second.

00:14:26.720 We're going to continue this.

00:14:28.360 We're going to focus for the next couple of days on the 250th commemoration of the birth of this republic and the Revolutionary War.

00:14:36.600 Patrick K. O'Donnell has written his third in the series about that.

00:14:40.020 But he's also, he was an in-bed combat historian with the Marines in the Iraq War and some of our bloodiest battles.

00:14:47.620 He knows about the camaraderie of the Marines.

00:14:49.520 He knows about Peleli, Mark Noah also.

00:14:53.780 Short break. Back in the warm in a moment.

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00:16:24.620 Okay, welcome back.

00:16:36.400 Patrick K. O'Donnell, you were an embedded combat historian with the Marines in some of our bloodiest battles in Iraq.

00:16:44.420 We wrote a great book about it. 1.00

00:16:45.500 You know about with the old breed. 1.00

00:16:48.200 Why was Professor Sledge correct? 1.00

00:16:53.100 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, sir.

00:17:02.000 I 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.

00:17:17.440 And like the Pacific War, it was a war of annihilation.

00:17:20.380 fallujah was a fight to the death um the the place was kind of a star wars bar 0.79

00:17:28.740 of international terrorists from 17 different countries including chechens

00:17:34.480 they were in bunkered positions and they had to be rooted out with um in many cases world war ii

00:17:42.940 weapons, everything from satchel charges to Bangalore torpedoes, which are long tubes of TNT

00:17:51.300 that could detonate an entire house, to small rockets, to small arms, to hand grenades.

00:18:00.560 And I went with a rifle platoon, house to house, clearing those houses with them, of an enemy that

00:18:08.980 was there to fight to the death. In many cases, they were on liquid adrenaline or other drugs.

00:18:17.240 You know, I witnessed where an entire house would fall down on these individuals. They'd still be

00:18:22.220 firing from the rubble. That's how determined they were. A very determined and tough enemy.

00:18:29.140 But what really impressed me the most was the 18 and 19-year-olds that I saw that just were indomitable, intrepid.

00:18:41.320 After the death of Michael Hanks, who was mortally wounded in front of me, I just saw the squad get back together.

00:18:52.760 I 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.

00:19:05.580 Just an incredible, like I said, next great generation of Americans that were fighting.

00:19:14.540 um you talk about this intrepid nature and the in the great uh courage and valor of the american

00:19:21.840 fighting man and woman um at tarawa and pelelu it reached in in the stories i don't think they've

00:19:29.880 been told in book there are many great books about these two battles it's never really gotten uh

00:19:34.240 the the popular media like uh tom hanks's uh uh and steven spielberg's great film

00:19:40.760 about normandy uh and all the films have been you know longest day all the films about normandy

00:19:45.740 but the second and that's why i think in ken burns is the war the documentary and and particularly

00:19:50.980 the pacific they tried to to make up for that but i don't think people realize the carnage and the

00:19:56.380 intensity of the fight that the marines had in the valor that was displayed over if you look at it

00:20:02.900 geo strategically you can actually understand the island hopping and why you need to go here

00:20:08.520 You 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.

00:20:19.620 But I think it gets lost in me, particularly when you see the isolated or the desolate nature of these, essentially.

00:20:25.760 I guess they're not atolls, but they're not vibrant, robust islands either.

00:20:32.380 Talk to me about that for a minute, about the brutality of the amphibious warfare in the Pacific.

00:20:37.840 Like I said, Normandy gets a lot, as it should, because Normandy, I think, was even bloodier than people realize.

00:20:44.520 This 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.

00:21:00.360 As Ernie Powell wrote that great story, he walked the beach at Normandy on the evening after the first day.

00:21:06.040 And 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

00:21:14.200 and seeing those twisted buildings and the smell and the smoke and the fire that was still going on that wouldn't be put out.

00:21:21.960 Terawa and Peleliu in Marine Corps history.

00:21:25.160 The Marines will tell you in some of their bravest moments, some of the best fighting.

00:21:29.120 When 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.

00:21:42.740 The Marines were not in Normandy.

00:21:44.700 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.

00:21:52.860 We're not going to need your help.

00:21:54.920 So Terawa and Peleliu, why do they stick out, particularly in the core?

00:22:00.300 It's like the Chosin Reservoir.

00:22:01.660 There's a handful of these fights, Fallujah being once,

00:22:03.820 a handful of these fights that stick out in the combat memory.

00:22:07.900 Maybe not the official histories, maybe not some of the ceremonies,

00:22:11.680 but in the combat, in the true warrior combat passed down generation to generation

00:22:16.600 in an unbroken chain of stories.

00:22:19.080 Why Terawa and Peleliu? Why do they stick out?

00:22:22.360 because of the bloody and just absolute nature of a savage nature of the fighting.

00:22:30.240 And it's here that the, you know, it's the lore of the core, so to speak, you know, looking at,

00:22:35.760 for instance, Bella Wood in, you know, on June 6th, 1918, where they helped stop

00:22:42.960 the great German drive at Paris for the fifth and sixth Marine regiments,

00:22:47.380 which are part of the 2nd Division, U.S. Army Division, play a crucial role.

00:22:53.320 And then it's in that lore of the Corps.

00:22:55.480 It's the storied battles of the Marine Corps.

00:22:58.560 And the Marine Corps is all about teaching its history to its recruits,

00:23:04.660 and it's imbued within them, the legacy of the Corps in these great battles.

00:23:09.820 And the Pacific is where the Marine Corps really has some of its finest hours.

00:23:16.220 Peleliu, 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.

00:23:38.100 They fought on the Matanakao River at Guadalcanal.

00:23:42.700 They fought near the airfield in the jungles of Guadalcanal and at Peleliu.

00:23:47.860 For instance, the main character of that book, Rocco Zulo, is a veteran of Peleliu,

00:23:54.820 and he fights at the airfield and is awarded the Silver Star for his bravery.

00:24:00.740 This is a savage contest.

00:24:02.780 um it even begins with the first submarine reconnaissance operation where the uss burfish

00:24:11.820 launches five men who are members of the oss maritime unit to conduct a reconnaissance of the

00:24:19.200 island in rubber boats the the subsurfaces and they they make their way in they're trying to

00:24:25.600 get sounding um and other type of data for the invasion and three of those men are captured

00:24:32.580 by the Japanese. They are interrogated and they are executed and never seen again.

00:24:38.200 You know, this is kind of what Memorial Day is all about. It's about honoring those men

00:24:42.140 that never came home.

00:24:48.520 You're absolutely correct. And we're going to get to Mark Noah in a second about what's really

00:24:52.500 being done on this, because it's a topic that I think is urgent. Cleo had mentioned

00:24:59.180 the japanese defenders and i think it was clint eastwood later doing flags of our fathers who did

00:25:05.700 who was so moved in uh in doing i think it was a battle of iwo jima that he did he did the japanese

00:25:11.380 he did american version then he did the japanese version one of the things that hit me most

00:25:17.080 powerfully when i was a young man my destroyer when we were called out of the pacific out of

00:25:21.740 the hawaiian op area in the middle of the night to to cruise to to make all deliberate speed

00:25:28.280 to the Persian Gulf, to the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf in 1979

00:25:33.040 with the taking of the U.S. Embassy, we stopped in, we followed a

00:25:37.040 carrier, and we stopped in Guam for some repairs

00:25:40.820 and some replenishing, but some repairs. And as we pull into Guam,

00:25:44.860 and this is in 1979,

00:25:48.920 I think it was November of 1979, we pull into Guam,

00:25:52.720 we get there, and at that time, now it's

00:25:55.580 revving back up but back then it was a base that really had been a little bit forgotten

00:26:00.120 everything had passed it by you know you had subic bay you had we were much more on patrol

00:26:04.900 in the in the south china sea there was a story and and the locals told us about it in 1972

00:26:13.200 just seven years before my destroyer pulled in in 1972 the last japanese soldier walked out of the

00:26:21.700 jungle in Guam and surrendered. He didn't know the war was over, but he was told in his devotion

00:26:28.940 to the emperor, his devotion to his religion, his devotion to his people and to his fellow

00:26:33.500 soldiers, they were told, as Cleo just told you, you're not leaving, you're going to fight to the

00:26:40.320 death right here. This is the last thing on earth you're ever going to see, and you're going to stop

00:26:45.620 the Americans. You're going to stop the foreign devils, and you're going to stop them right here, 1.00

00:26:50.380 Whether that was Terawa, Peleliu, Guam, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, the sacrifice of these 17 and 18-year-old, 19-year-old kids. 0.99

00:27:03.720 And that's why, if you get a chance, Eugene Sledge's book, With the Old Breed, is one of the most disturbing reads you will ever have.

00:27:14.140 Because it is a grunt's eye view of what Mortal Kombat is really about.

00:27:20.380 without any of the conventions of Hollywood, right?

00:27:26.240 This is the way it really was, as told first person by the guy that experienced it.

00:27:34.460 We're going to find out what the reward was for that sacrifice.

00:27:39.720 You would assume in a nation that has done as well as we've had,

00:27:44.920 that is the greatest nation in the history of the earth,

00:27:47.320 that the warriors that gave all in those almost forgotten battles

00:27:54.820 would somehow be remembered.

00:27:58.420 Mark Noah is going to join us here in a moment.

00:28:00.580 Mark Noah I had on Breitbart Radio I think it was a decade ago

00:28:03.340 in some of the great work he has been doing.

00:28:05.540 We're going to take a short commercial break.

00:28:06.600 We have Cleo Pascal out in the Pacific.

00:28:09.840 We've got our own Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:28:12.200 Mark Noah is going to join us in a month short break.

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00:30:22.780 Okay, welcome back.

00:30:25.080 It's our beginning, although we always start on Friday with a little preliminary,

00:30:30.440 as we start our Memorial Day weekend commemoration,

00:30:35.040 always on the Saturday show and always with Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:30:39.720 many of you have followed us for years.

00:30:42.680 We did Breitbart News Radio starting back in 2012, 2013.

00:30:50.780 Over at SiriusXM, expanded it to a daily show,

00:30:53.080 but we always have Saturday and Sunday.

00:30:54.340 In fact, Matt Boyle still does the Saturday morning show.

00:30:59.520 Mark Nowat joins us.

00:31:00.800 Mark, I had you on, I think, a decade ago on the work you were doing then.

00:31:04.920 And 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.

00:31:28.180 Yes, it's a little known fact that 19% of America's World War II casualties are still

00:31:35.620 missing today. And so we started the History Flight Project with the objective of trying to

00:31:43.820 recover some of those individuals. And on the Pacific Island of Tarawa, we did the three

00:31:48.640 largest recoveries of MIAs since World War II in three different mass burial settings.

00:31:55.380 And that's when I first chatted with you guys on Breitbart.

00:31:59.560 Talk to me about Terawa and Peleliu.

00:32:01.360 Tell me about the horrific nature of that.

00:32:03.060 And here's, I think, people, and I remember the time I did,

00:32:06.760 how can there possibly be remains that we don't know?

00:32:11.340 It's not in the military cemeteries.

00:32:12.600 One of the most moving experiences you will have as an American going throughout the world,

00:32:17.400 of which no other country in the history of the earth could ever do,

00:32:20.820 is to go to these really understated, magnificent cemeteries,

00:32:26.740 whether it's on the cliffs overlooking Normandy, the beach,

00:32:31.820 the magnificent one in the Philippines.

00:32:34.160 I mean, there's some that are just breathtaking in their simplicity

00:32:37.040 and in their really understated elegance of just everything is so absolutely perfect,

00:32:43.080 but so quiet.

00:32:44.800 People would say that's impossible.

00:32:46.440 All the remains were either buried in these cemeteries or the families were given options to bring the remains home.

00:32:54.320 Isn't that – didn't we go get all of our honor dead, sir?

00:33:00.640 Well, 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.

00:33:13.120 But 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.

00:33:23.780 And 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.

00:33:48.760 And in the state of the Battle of Tarawa, they made all of the proper burial setups for all the deceased individuals.

00:33:59.880 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.

00:34:12.200 And in doing so, they lost 50 percent of the known buried on the island.

00:34:17.380 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 the island of Tarawa. 0.83

00:34:31.060 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.

00:34:44.780 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. 0.75

00:34:57.780 So 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.

00:35:05.120 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?

00:35:21.580 That is correct. We have an office out there that is in a building that's actually on top

00:35:28.820 of Cemetery 27 that we recovered 52 American individuals from underneath the parking lot

00:35:34.820 and underneath the building. And by having a 24-7 presence out there, we were able to

00:35:40.940 stop the accidental damage to the American graves on Tarawa because the local police would come to

00:35:49.720 us every time construction disturbed one of the graves, and we would recover it. And now we haven't

00:35:56.380 been able to be out there in a year and a half. And I fear that there are numerous people that

00:36:02.820 are being accidentally recovered and lost forever. I want to go back to the to the 80,000.

00:36:13.360 Because I think I get this statistic from you when you first came on the show of the 80,000.

00:36:19.720 Are half of them Army 8th Air Corps that died in the skies over the bombing runs in Germany and Europe in World War II?

00:36:32.280 Is that half of those are missing pilots and crewmen that we have not been able to recover?

00:36:38.600 I'm not sure if it's half, but it's a very substantial number.

00:36:41.820 We have an office in Europe as well.

00:36:43.900 we've recovered quite a few missing air crew from World War II in Europe, as well as over 300

00:36:50.880 Marines on Tarawa. But the number is a little over 80,000 that are still missing, and it's all

00:36:57.900 over the world. And there's even missing American servicemen from training accidents in the United

00:37:03.960 States. And I think in the tempo of World War II, the casualties were not treated in the same way

00:37:14.000 as living people that could contribute to the war effort. Well, today, I mean, Pete Hexas,

00:37:21.060 but for years, Pete Hexas, Secretary of War, but for years, the Department of Defense, did you guys

00:37:26.280 go to the Department of Defense and say, hey, look, you got 80,000 remains of American warriors that

00:37:32.240 that gave their lives in defense of this country. Um, it seems like that would be,

00:37:37.300 I would assume particularly my daughter, you know, went to West Point and fought in, uh, in,

00:37:41.900 in, um, Iraq. You assume as a parent that if, if God forbid they're wounded, uh, they get taken

00:37:51.120 care of, but if they're killed, uh, you're going to get something more than a note that says a

00:37:55.340 grateful nation, uh, you know, wants to thank you that one of the, one of the unwritten promises

00:38:01.860 that are commitments, is that they give their lives for their country, that we're going to

00:38:08.540 take care of their earthly remains afterwards. Is that not an implicit contractual obligation

00:38:14.020 of our Defense Department, and particularly in World War II?

00:38:18.300 It is an obligation of the Defense Department, but it is not a fully funded or delivered promise.

00:38:26.220 The simple fact is, is the casualty issue from World War II, Korea, Vietnam is chronically unfunded.

00:38:36.380 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.

00:38:43.720 In 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.

00:38:58.080 But after that, they wrote a book that said, we've done it all and we did a great job.

00:39:04.000 And then they put a bow on it and put it away into the safe.

00:39:07.780 And so the end result is more than 80,000 are still missing today.

00:39:12.500 And, 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.

00:39:28.300 It's it's a chronically unfunded issue.

00:39:31.300 talk to me about let's go back to world war ii after the that victory we were the only

00:39:38.820 nation on earth or the one of the i should say of the major combatants that was not

00:39:44.060 impacted physically in its terrain so there was a celebratory nature of how we brought that how we

00:39:51.180 brought that uh war to a conclusion although we didn't by far have the highest casualties

00:39:55.620 you said they they they allocated a billion dollars at the time and put a five-year time

00:40:00.780 frame on it to essentially recover the remains of our warriors and to either appropriately

00:40:06.180 bury them where they were or bring them home to their parents? That was a five-year program

00:40:14.480 and a billion dollars. Do you know how many were actually recovered at that time?

00:40:19.080 It was a very large number. It was more than 320,000 individuals were recovered. So they did

00:40:27.140 a very substantial amount of work. And they tried their best to make it happen correctly. But I

00:40:33.920 think, you know, when I went to Emory, a lot of my professors were World War II veterans. And

00:40:41.080 one of my professors told me that the post-war army was demoralized. And he basically said that

00:40:48.740 all the people that were, you know, aptly trained and experienced had earned enough points to go

00:40:55.720 home. So the people that did the recovery work after World War II were the draftees who had been 0.98

00:41:01.860 intended to invade Japan. And the quality of the work was very poorly done. And we have announced

00:41:11.160 that when we did the recovery of the graves on Tarawa, we would often find an entire person

00:41:17.280 whose skull and legs and arms were missing and everything else was still there. And that's

00:41:24.120 because when they did the recovery work, they grabbed the skull, the legs, and the arms and

00:41:27.940 left the feet and the boots and many of the ribs and other parts of the people. And that's evidence

00:41:35.680 of the lack of quality of the work that they did, but also it's evidence of the value of what's out

00:41:41.720 there till today. We were able to recover numerous individuals in a partial configuration like that

00:41:49.380 who matched unknown burials in the Punchbowl in Hawaii and also provided DNA to be individually

00:41:57.780 identified. So it's a very complex situation. In the 50s, they did a really good job. They

00:42:04.180 worked really hard at it, but there were many shortcomings. And there's still a lifetime of

00:42:10.280 work to be done. I'll probably be doing this kind of work until I'm in a wheelchair.

00:42:14.840 Talk to me about how, because when I interviewed 10 years ago, I mean, you guys were motivated in 10 years.

00:42:23.280 What is it that motivates you and your team to do this?

00:42:28.200 Well, I like to use the term for the souls of the missing and the families they left behind.

00:42:34.320 And I think it shows you the seriousness of this issue and how, you know, life and death is a spiritual struggle.

00:42:43.400 And so, yes, we go out there for the individual missing servicemen and the families that they left behind.

00:42:53.540 Of the families themselves, I take it it's their grandchildren and great-grandchildren that today that you notify?

00:43:03.000 Yes, and we have a close partnership with the Department of Defense and the different departments of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.

00:43:10.140 And they work directly with the families.

00:43:14.080 But there's many of the individual missing servicemen still have living children and brothers and sisters.

00:43:25.360 So it's not a long time away from then.

00:43:29.180 Those people feel the loss like it was yesterday.

00:43:32.800 Hang on one second.

00:43:34.160 Mark Noah from History Flights.

00:43:36.240 Cleo Pascal is with us.

00:43:37.480 The Incomparable Patrick O'Donnell. Short commercial break. Back in the morning.

00:44:07.480 everyone's focused on how the conflict in the middle east is raising oil prices but there's

00:44:17.940 another grim reality to this contention oil isn't the only resource being constrained about one

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00:44:31.060 top of us american farmers are sounding the alarm with some saying they can't afford to plant their

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00:45:44.760 Okay, welcome back.

00:45:48.280 Mark, Noah, your great efforts.

00:45:50.900 How can we help you first,

00:45:53.200 either talking to Congress or the administration

00:45:55.480 and helping make sure that the groups themselves

00:45:58.720 as inside the apparatus of the Department of War is properly funded?

00:46:05.140 And then number two, how do we get more information about the great work you guys are doing and

00:46:09.520 how our audience can help?

00:46:11.960 Anyone can go to www.historyflight.com and they can check out the different things that

00:46:21.820 the organization has done and they also can donate off of that page.

00:46:26.060 Everything 100% goes to the actual work.

00:46:31.120 And this picture you're showing right here is evidence of a mass grave that was discovered by a backhoe.

00:46:41.800 And that's a pig that was living on top of the grave.

00:46:44.660 And basically a backhoe had dug right through about 30 individuals.

00:46:49.420 That's cemetery number 10.

00:46:51.420 Those are U.S. Marine Corps uniform parts and bones that were also dug up by a backhoe.

00:46:58.720 And 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.

00:47:08.180 It'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.

00:47:22.760 And this is, you're banned from the island because of the direct action of the Chinese Communist Party, correct? 0.84

00:47:28.340 I believe that is correct.

00:47:29.600 And we've been negotiating with the local government, but, you know, the Chinese Communist Party has done this all over the Pacific. 0.56

00:47:37.280 You know, they made a they bought off the government in Guadalcanal and an American Coast Guard cutter came into Honoria to buy provisions.

00:47:48.360 And they basically said, you know, call us back tomorrow.

00:47:52.840 And they said that for a month until the Coast Guard cutter left.

00:47:56.800 And so it's like a diplomatic way of saying F you without saying that.

00:48:02.280 Yep. And that's outrageous when you think of the sacrifice our Marines had at Guadalcanal.

00:48:08.800 Mark Noah, where do people go, social media and where they go to the sites are?

00:48:14.780 It's historyflight.com and it's also History Flight on Facebook.

00:48:22.040 You can check out all the different things we've done. It's a fascinating project.

00:48:28.140 You were doing God's work.

00:48:30.380 I said you're doing God's work, and we want to thank you for joining us on our Memorial Day special.

00:48:37.300 I would agree. Thanks for having us on. We appreciate it.

00:48:40.540 Thank you, sir.

00:48:41.700 Cleo, this story boggles my mind, given the work you're doing.

00:48:46.560 And Mark Noah said it right there. 0.71

00:48:48.780 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 counter. 0.78

00:49:03.380 In fact, the Chinese counter is probably maybe doing a more sophisticated political operation. 0.75

00:49:07.420 Your thoughts, ma'am?

00:49:09.720 Absolutely.

00:49:10.720 And it's down to the exact same location. 0.67

00:49:13.120 So 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

00:49:24.500 A lot of it comes down to geography.

00:49:26.980 It's got a good port and it backs onto mountains.

00:49:30.700 But the PLA has systematically studied World War II from both sides.

00:49:36.260 There's a good study on this by Toshi Yoshihara.

00:49:38.360 And 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.

00:50:02.100 cleo uh you're out there doing you're also doing god's work where do people go 0.88

00:50:08.000 uh 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

00:50:17.640 and getter at real cleo and um please um consider your next holiday to come out to visit your

00:50:25.840 fellow americans out in guam maybe not uh the mariannas at the moment because they're still

00:50:31.020 recovering from a typhoon. But this is America. Americans died out here. And this this is where

00:50:38.580 the front line is that's going to keep the mainland safe. Come and come and be a part of it.

00:50:45.140 Cleo Pascal, thank you so much for the work you're doing, doing God's work.

00:50:52.720 We're coming at the top of the hour and we're going to take a short commercial break. We're

00:50:55.900 going to come back. Patrick O'Donnell, what our focus was going to be on was on America 250.

00:51:01.020 Particularly the Revolutionary War, Patrick has now finished his third in his trilogy on the revolution.

00:51:07.560 We're going to talk about those who gave all.

00:51:10.460 I do remind people the reason I started here is so outrageous what is happening,

00:51:14.300 not just in the war against the Chinese Communist Party,

00:51:16.600 but to think that 80,000 remains of these heroes have not been recovered.

00:51:26.080 You just got to, you know, you got to think about that.

00:51:28.240 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 American hit back on Nazi Germany.

00:51:47.040 Think about it.

00:51:47.700 80,000 are gone.

00:51:49.440 And I think the number is 40,000.

00:51:51.680 I think I got that.

00:51:52.460 I'll dig it up.

00:51:52.860 40,000 remains from the 8th Air Corps, 8th Air Force in Europe, just in Europe.

00:52:00.080 So you talk about beating the Nazis, and you talk to all these people,

00:52:04.440 a lot of Nazis, Nazis, hey, there was a generation of young men in this country

00:52:10.500 that were 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, 22 years old.

00:52:14.500 They gave all in the hardest days of World War II.

00:52:18.360 That would be the beginning days, right after Pearl Harbor in 1942, over the skies of Europe.

00:52:27.580 And I don't know, 40,000 or more of their remains.

00:52:32.580 Many of those you're not going to find because either parachuted out or blown up, you know, evaporated in the hits.

00:52:40.820 But remember the sacrifice.

00:52:42.820 This is not Veterans Day weekend.

00:52:45.120 This is Memorial Day weekend.

00:52:47.260 This is about our honored dead, and that's all it's about.

00:52:51.960 We're going to take a short commercial break.

00:52:53.720 We're going to leave you with Minstrel Boy from Black Hawk Down.

00:52:56.380 We'll be back with Patrick K. O'Donnell in a moment.

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Bannon's War Room - May 23, 2026

Episode 5394： 250 Years Remembering The Ultimate Sacrifice

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