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Nicholas Evan Sarantakes is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. He holds a BA from the University of Texas, a MA from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He has written seven books. His most recent is The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War (2025). He is currently writing a book on the home front in World War II.

He has written a number of articles in journals and publications such as Diplomatic History, English Historical Review, The Journal of Military History, Joint Forces Quarterly, and ESPN.com. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has received five writing awards and three teaching awards. He previously taught at Texas A&M University—Commerce, the Air War College, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Topic: Manila: A City Caught in Between

In 1945 the city of Manila was the site of the largest urban battle in the history of the United States Army. It was the only urban battle of the Pacific War. Urban warfare is a major concern for defense analysts these days. There is a great concern that the terrain in a city fight inherently favors the defender. Manila shows that nothing could be further from the truth. The landscape and terrain is the landscape and the terrain. It is the same for both sides. The people of the city, though, are something different. The Manileños, the Filipino citizens of Manila, were caught in between the defending Japanese and the attacking Americans. They were caught in between, but were hardly neutral, picking to seek refuge from the Americans and trying to help their effort in whatever small way they could.

John C. McManus is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. military history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). This professorship is bestowed by the University of Missouri Board of Curators on the most outstanding scholars in the University of Missouri system. McManus is the first ever Missouri S&T faculty member in the humanities to be named Curators’ Distinguished Professor. As one of the nation’s leading military historians, and the author of fifteen well received books on the topic, he is in frequent demand as a speaker and expert commentator. In addition to dozens of local and national radio programs, and podcasts, he has appeared on Cnn.com, C-Span, the Military Channel, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, Netflix, the Smithsonian Network, the History Channel and PBS, among many others.

He recently completed a major three volume history of the U.S. Army in the Pacific/Asia theater during World War II.The first volume in the series, Fire and Fortitude, received the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History. His current project is a major new biography of General Matthew Ridgway. McManus is the host of three podcasts, Someone Talked! in tandem with the National D-Day Memorial, World War II Live alongside Kevin Hymel, and We Have Ways of Making You Talk in the USA with Al Murray and James Holland. McManus also serves as the official historian for the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Regiment (Cottonbalers).

Topic: Brilliant but Anonymous: General Robert Eichelberger and the Pacific War

Robert Eichelberger won the first American ground victory in World War II, and several battles thereafter as both a corps and army commander. He was, without much question, the finest American ground commander in the war against Japan. And yet, to this day, he remains relatively unknown. Why?

Ann Todd has been a contributing author and consultant for the National Geographic Society and given presentations on OSS operations for the National Park Service. She worked as a historian for the National Museum of the Marine Corps for six years and for the CIA Museum for five years. Prior to that she served in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Ann’s publications include a book on the Communist Youth League in Stalin’s First Five Year Plan and her most recent, OSS Operation Black Mail: One Woman’s Covert War Against the Imperial Japanese Army. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Council on America’s Military Past and the Hill Country Animal Rescue, and lives in Dripping Springs, TX with her four dogs, Nyla, Summer, Loki, and Angel.

Topic: Psychological Warfare in the China Burma India Theater of Operations: the OSS Adventures of Elizabeth P. McIntosh

China Burma India (CBI) was a theater of operations relatively unknown to Americans during WWII, and remains that today. In 1943 an intrepid young reporter, Elizabeth P. McDonald, was recruited to serve in a quirky, shadowy agency of the US Government, the Office of Strategic Services. She was trained in the art of Black Propaganda and sent to CBI to wage psychological warfare against the Japanese Imperial Army. Her mission was to demoralize the enemy through prevarication and deceit and, ultimately, convince him to surrender. Betty and her crew ingeniously obtained and altered personal correspondence between Japanese soldiers and their families on the home islands of Japan. She also ordered the killing of Japanese couriers in the jungles of Burma to plant false surrender orders in their mailbags. By the time she flew the Hump between Calcutta and China, she was Acting Head of the Morale Operations Branch of the entire theater, overseeing the production of thousands of pamphlets and radio scripts, the generations of fiendishly clever rumors, and the printing of a variety of faked Japanese, Burmese, and Chinese newspapers. She served for eighteen months, a time she credits with being the very best of her long life.

Jon Parshall is an independent WWII scholar. He is co-author of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, which is widely acclaimed as the definitive account of that crucial battle. He is also a co-author of Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night, 1904-1944, and author of 1942: Crux of War, which will be published by Oxford University Press in June 2026.

Parshall has been widely published in the Naval War College Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval History magazine, WWII magazine, Wartime (the journal of the Australian War Memorial), and others. He is a lecturer for the U.S. Naval War College, and a frequent speaker at the National WWII Museum, the National Museum of the Pacific War, the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, and others. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, History Channel, Smithsonian, the BBC, and most recently on NetFlix’s “Road to Victory” series. He lives in Minneapolis.

Topic: Malaya and the Fall of Singapore: End of the British Empire

Jon Parshall takes a look at the disastrous 1941-1942 Malayan campaign that culminated with the fall of Singapore, Britain’s “Gibraltar of the East.” British and Commonwealth forces under General Arthur Percival were routed by General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s Japanese forces, resulting in the most humiliating defeat in British military history. The reasons for the campaign’s disastrous outcome are explored in depth, along with the longer-term implications for the British Empire in its wake.