The Pacific War You Were Never Taught About
When we talk about World War II, the Pacific Theater is often reduced to dates, battles, and brief footnotes. But behind those summaries lies a scale of human suffering that remains largely undocumented and deeply misunderstood.
In Episode 162 of the Coming Home Well Podcast, Tyler sits down with historian and educator Jenny Chan to uncover the hidden history of the Pacific War. Drawing from her own family’s story and over one million preserved archival documents, Jenny sheds light on atrocities that still shape lives and human rights conversations today.
Together, they explore Japan’s secret biological warfare program Unit 731, the brutal realities of POW camps, Hell Ships, and the Bataan Death March, and the staggering truth that 35–40% of Allied POWs did not survive Japanese captivity. The conversation also examines the aftermath—how trauma travels across generations, why so many records were destroyed or ignored, and what it means when history is left untold.
Jenny also shares the mission behind Pacific Atrocities Education, an organization working urgently to preserve fragile records before they’re lost forever—and why confronting this history is essential to understanding modern human rights abuses.
This is not an easy episode, but it is a necessary one.
Topics include:
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Unit 731 and human experimentation
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POW camps, Hell Ships, and the Bataan Death March
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Civilian retaliation after the Doolittle Raid
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Why the Pacific War remains under-documented
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Intergenerational PTSD and its modern implications
Resources mentioned:
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The Rape of Nanking — Iris Chang
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Factories of Death — Sheldon Harris
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Unjust Enrichment — Linda Goetz Holmes
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Pacific Atrocities Education — pacificatrocities.org
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Podcast: Pacific Front Untold
🎧 Listen now to better understand the history we’ve avoided and why remembering it still matters.
