We recently passed the 84th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack that finally dragged the United States into the second world war. When I was a kid, I remember it being something that most people observed every December 7th, much like the media still takes note each September 11th to mark the anniversary of the terrorist attacks against the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

When we look back on World War II in the Pacific, we tend to remember it in shorthand. Pearl Harbor. Then—almost immediately—Midway. But for the Americans who were already in the Pacific when the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, history did not move that quickly.

While Americans at home marked a somber Christmas and began preparing for a global conflict against both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, Americans in the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and other U.S. territories in the Pacific faced something far more immediate.

They were fighting for survival.

Research: Elena, the Roots of Today archivist

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

The United States Marine Corps originates in a congressional decision taken amid crisis and improvisation. In November 1775—months after Lexington and Concord, and with the siege of Boston grinding on—the Second Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of “American Marines.” Their creation was not an abstract institutional design exercise; it was a response to urgent strategic needs: securing powder and ordnance, protecting nascent Continental warships, and enabling amphibious action against British positions.

From their first major operation at New Providence in the Bahamas (March 1776) to service with the Continental Army in New Jersey, the Continental Marines defined themselves as adaptable naval infantry. Disbanded with the end of the Revolution, they were re-established by statute in 1798 as the United States Marine Corps, fought through the Quasi-War with France, and earned lasting renown “to the shores of Tripoli” during the First Barbary War.

Join us as we celebnrate the origins of the Devil Dogs, and their illustrious years early in their history.

Research: Elena, the Roots of Today archivist

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

Today we journey back to November 7, 1775, and a dramatic, startling document known as Dunmore’s Proclamation. We'll explore the life of its issuer, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the events that led him to issue it, and the astonishing—and tragic—fate of the men and women who answered its call.

The proclamation had immediate and longer-term impacts. In Virginia, the slave-owning class was galvanized into deeper resistance; the idea of armed Black men fighting for the Crown radicalized the social order. Across the wider war, it set a precedent for British policy—most notably the 1779 Philipsburg Proclamation which extended freedom to slaves of rebels more broadly.

The story of Dunmore’s Proclamation is both bold and heartbreaking. A Scottish nobleman sent to govern a fractious colony makes a sweeping offer of freedom to those he once ruled—yet the promise tangles swiftly with war, disease, betrayal, and death.

Research: Elena, the Roots of Today archivist

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog