Episode

WWII - Spring Break Special Episode: Japanese History

Podcast: The Blue Collar Scholar
Published: Mar 16, 2026
Duration seconds: 5600
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Summary

This week is Spring Break in Southeast Kansas, so our classes are taking a break. Instead of the regularly scheduled World War II lecture, I decided to dust off (and re-edit) an old lecture from April 4, 2023. When I taught this class previously, it was called "The World Wars" and I devoted the last quarter of the class to the Pacific Theatre in WWII. To kick off this section of the class, I went far back into Japanese (and a bit of Chinese) history to provide more background than I chose to do this semester. So, enjoy this throwback episode, as we build a bit of historic background in order to better understand Imperial Japan.