Yesterday Today Tomorrow

Inseong J Kim: Hello, this is Inseong Kim from Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. This program is in a Memorial Day program week and to every American who gave their life for this country, whether during the war or without the war, we are here today because you were there yesterday for us. You did not die for a slogan. You died so that strangers, generation after you like me, could live free. We will not forget, we will not waste it, and we will hand it forward.

Today's Memorial Day, and I want to talk about something we usually don't talk about plainly: the war itself. We have so many different opinions today about the war and why they had to fight and what was actually at stake and the question that every generation has to answer for itself. In my opinion, our history is definitely distorted in our time.

We were taught about the wars in school: dates, battles, and presidents. Somewhere in all that information, the real story gets lost. So here is the real story, the part that matters. Please stay with me and listen to our program all the way to the end. I personally think today's program is very important for all Americans to listen to.

We were told World War II was about defeating Hitler. That is true, but that is not the whole story. There was a family in Waterloo, Iowa, a working family, Irish Catholic, five brothers: George, Frank, Joe, Matt, and Al Sullivan. The youngest had a wife and a baby boy. They were not famous. They worked at the meatpacking plant and rode motorcycles together on the weekend—typical Americans.

Then came December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor. One of their friends, a boy named Bill, had been killed on the USS Arizona. The next morning, the five Sullivan brothers walked to the recruiting office together. They told the Navy that they would serve, but only if they could serve together on the same ship. The Navy had a policy against this, but the Sullivans insisted. The Navy made an exception.

All five of them boarded a light cruiser called USS Juneau. On November 13th, 1942, at the Battle of Guadalcanal, a Japanese torpedo split the Juneau in half. Six hundred eighty-seven sailors died. Among them, all five Sullivan brothers: three killed instantly, one drowned the next day. The oldest, George, lived for several days on a life raft, watching the others go before he, too, was lost at sea.

Their mother, Elta, in a small house in Iowa, kept writing letters to her sons. The letters came back. She wrote to the Navy; she wrote to the President. Finally, three men in uniform knocked on her door. Her husband, Tom, answered. "I have some news for you about your boys," the officer said. Tom looked at him and said, "Which one?" The officer said, "I am sorry. All five."

Tom Sullivan went to work that day. He had not missed a day of work in thirty-four years. As his train passed the water tower where his boys used to stand and wave at him, he saluted. That is what World War II cost one family, one mother, one small house in Iowa. And there were thousands of families like the Sullivans across this country.

Now, here is something most Americans have never been told. The story we usually hear is that World War II was a European war, a tragedy that happened over there to other people, mostly to the Jews, and that America was pulled into it almost by accident at Pearl Harbor. That is not what happened. If we really study what really happened—and sometimes what we hear today about the wars makes me really sad—unless you were in the near area where the war actually happened, we don't know the full story.

Hitler was after America from the very beginning. This is the historical record in his own writings, going back to 1928, fifteen years before Pearl Harbor. Hitler wrote that one of the tasks his movement was to prepare Germany for war with the United States. He believed America stood in the way of his global plan. Sounds familiar? He saw us as a decadent, weak, mongrelized country he could break.

He was building weapons to do that. The Germans were racing to build the long-range bomber called the America Bomber, designed to fly from Europe to New York City and back without refueling. They were developing rockets that could be launched from submarines off our coast. While Pearl Harbor was burning in the Pacific, Hitler was already coming for us in the Atlantic.

Five weeks after Pearl Harbor, in January 1942, German submarines arrived off the East Coast of the United States and began sinking American ships within sight of our own beaches. They called it Operation Drumbeat, and everybody can Google it and find out. The German submarine commanders called it the American Shooting Season.

For six months, from January to August 1942, Nazi U-boats hunted in our coastal waters off Long Island, off New Jersey, off Cape Hatteras, off Miami, and in the Gulf of Mexico. They sank nearly four hundred ships and killed about five thousand American merchant seamen and sailors. It was at our border. This was more than twice the number who died at Pearl Harbor. More than twice.

But we hear about Pearl Harbor, and we don't hear stories like this. Families on the Florida beaches watched the tankers burn at night. Oil and bodies washed ashore in the morning, and children found life jackets on the sand. In our coastal cities in those first months, we would not even turn off the lights. The boardwalks of Atlantic City and Miami Beach stayed lit. The lighthouse kept sweeping.

The Germans could not believe what they were seeing. One U-boat captain wrote that American ships were silhouetted against the glow like targets on a shooting range, presented to them on a plate. The war was already here. It was already on American soil. It was already killing Americans. But why don't we hear these stories?

If America had not entered, if the Sullivan boys and millions like them had stayed home, the next step was already planned. After Europe was finished, after the Jews were gone, after the Slavs were gone, it was our turn. Hitler said himself that America was the final target. What happened to the Jewish mothers in Warsaw and Berlin would have happened to American mothers in Iowa, Brooklyn, and Mississippi.

Our children, our neighbors, our towns—the trains were running on time and the ramps were at the end in smoke. That is what was coming for us. That is the world the Sullivans stopped: five young men from one small town in Iowa, and millions more like them. Their sacrifice stopped America from being the next target. That is the real story of World War II.

At the same time, on the other side of the world, Americans were dying in the Pacific to save China and also Korea. China was being slaughtered by Japan. Entire cities were massacred, and millions of civilians were killed. American sons from Iowa, from Brooklyn, or Mississippi crossed the ocean and gave their lives so that the Chinese nation would not be devoured.

China should not forget that. Whatever the Chinese government tells its people today, the historical record is the historical record. American boys died to save the Chinese nation as well when no one else would. That fact is permanent. It does not go away. We all have to know what the real, true story was.

If we did not know about World War II, if we did not know that Hitler was planning to defeat us in America from 1928, if we did not know the German submarines killed thousands of Americans off our border, then maybe we should ask quieter questions. What else don't we know? We live in a country swimming in stories: loud stories, angry stories, stories told to keep us scrolling and keep us divided.

The deeper truth and the boring ones in the dusty archives, in the old letters—those get lost. So before we condemn wars that were fought and before we tell the young that their grandfathers died for nothing, maybe we should stop and read the actual record and find out what was at stake. Maybe some of those wars were not as necessary as we now say, but just maybe, some were—more like World War II than we have been told.

The honest position in humanity is humility, acknowledging that we are not certain in either direction and we do not know everything we think we know as social media bombards us with stories. Yet, some of the wars we sent young Americans to, we probably should not have. But the young American who got on the plane did not write the policy. He kept his word.

He went where his country sent him. The failure then was ours: the failure of citizens, voters, and the leaders we choose. We owe him the honor, no matter what. We owe ourselves the reckoning. This brings us to today and the young people listening. If anyone is listening and you look at what the older generation did and you find things that frustrate you, you are not wrong.

Wars that should not have been fought, promises that were not kept, a country handed to you with real problems we should have fixed before now—we are all sorry. We are blaming the baby boomers who were probably busy surviving after World War II. Something slipped past us while we were not looking. But I want you to carry something with you.

Do not let misleading information or a half-story of history justify hopelessness in you. If we did not know the full story of World War II until today, what else has been kept from you? Go find it. Read the record. Look at the primary source. Information is there, just waiting for someone willing to look.

Here is what you find when you look. China has a plan. It is not a secret; they published it. The World Series Analysis, our own Department of Defense, the RAND Corporation, the US Army War College, and the Council on Foreign Relations have read it, and they all agree on one picture: that it is true of their plan against America. If that is true, then what are we going to do about it?

That is the answer that we have to ask. Even ten years ago, we didn't talk about China. Five years ago, we were beginning to talk about it a little bit. Now we all know what is going on behind the scenes. But for a long time, there was a message behind the scenes that we didn't know. Why don't we all find out, rather than depending on mainstream media?

Spend some time and study about American history and learn from it. Some we take, some we reject. But at the end of the day, we all live here together. We have to read our history and today's policy with our perspective. Here is what no one tells you. While China planned this, they targeted our young generation to live the way the Maoist China lived: poverty and slavery.

We exported prosperity to their country; we are importing poverty to this country with ideology by exporting the ideology of communism to you, our young generation. Young person who is listening to this broadcast right now, do not ever think they will give you opportunity to succeed. They will not. They have one and a half billion people of their own, and they do not need you.

They do not want you to rise. They want you to be compliant, dependent, and small. They have enough population to boss you around for the rest of your life in the near future. Then there is the 2030 window. China has a stated goal to surpass the United States in the nominal gross domestic product around 2030. It is their plan.

While they are planning, what are we doing here? Scrolling the screens on the phone and complaining about our history and what we do? Then there is the long goal: 2049 and the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Their ultimate target is to be the great modern socialist country leading the world.

2030 is the midpoint where China consolidates the position from which it will dominate by 2049. That is the timeline. They have a plan. We all know it and have heard about it. So now, where are they right now? In May of 2026, that is the study that we have to study. China is running influence operations on the platform our children use every day: TikTok, social media, academic partnerships, and media.

All are aimed at shaping the view of younger Americans. That is where we are at. Now, the timeline is 2030. It is not the future future; it is four years from now. Now is the time that China intends to be dominant over our generation, your generation, the young people listening to our program. You have a choice to make. What are you going to do about it?

Rather than sitting and complaining about the government and what is going on, every generation had that situation given to them. But they all overcame. That is American victory history for 250 years. What are you going to do about it? To the ones we are remembering today, the ones who paid for this in full, you are not forgotten.

You will not be forgotten. We will tell our children who you were, and we will tell them what was at stake. We will tell them what you gave us: a free country. A free country. So rest in peace. You are home now. The country you gave your life for is still here. That is the good news. We survived, and it is still ours, and it is still worth what you paid for it.

So we really thank you. One more thing before I close. There is a cruelty in this country we do not talk about enough. It is quieter than the cruelty of war. It is the cruelty of corruption. When leaders lie, when the powerful take from the powerless and call it normal, corruption dishonors the soldiers who gave their lives for us.

It is not good that when somebody tells the truth, their life has to be taken away. That is not the America we came to, that is not the America that we have known, and it shouldn't be the America that we want to have. Every dollar stolen, every lie told from power, every institution that sells itself—every one of those things says to the boy on Normandy, "You should have stayed home," or to the Sullivan brothers in Guadalcanal, "You should not have gone."

It hollows us out. When people stop believing in their own country, they look for something else: a leader who promises to fix everything, a utopia that has been tried before and has never ended in anything but suffering. Corruption opens that door, and what comes through it is exactly what the dead gave their lives to stop. This is serious business we are in today in our time.

So I want to ask something of all of us gently, as someone in the same boat with you. Grandparents, I'm one of you, and our grandchildren need elders—elders who pray. They are starving for someone wise and humble to look up to. Let us become that. I am trying to be one. Parents, choose our children over the phone, over the noise, over the pleasure of the moment.

Children are not in the way of life; they are your life. Finish your responsibility until death departs you with a prayer. And to the young, you are smarter than we were at your age. The inheritance you have been given is both a blessing and a wound. You can be angry about the wound, and that is fair.

But the only question in the end is what you are going to do with what you have received. The people we are remembering today already answered. They answered with their lives. Now it is our turn, all of us together, to build this country strong and beautiful. Hard power and soft power—we both need that.

And this is the land of opportunity for those who appreciate it, work hard, and cherish our freedom. That is what we are all here for. That is what America stands for. So we heard about all the stories: the real true story about World War II. We have to recapture the view of how we see this country and how we view World War II, and we have to be united when all other people outside of us want us to be destroyed.

So thank you for listening to Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. God bless our fallen, and God bless their families, and God bless the young who are about to surprise us, and God bless these United States of America. Thank you, and we will be back next week. Thank you.