to acknowledge the great help we got from jan herman, steve -- historian who is sitting here, and jerrod and kate michael who are in the back, cousins of ben steel. we will get started. >> thank you for coming to talk about years in the darkness but before we get to the details of the death march and amazing stories of the men from that era, let's talk about the first days of world war ii. 7:55 a.m. on december 7, 1941, japanese bombers and fighters appeared over the u.s. naval base in fort -- coral harbour and destroyed most of the pacific fleet, killing 3,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. must have heard of that moment of the attack on pearl harbor was only a series of attacks that began world war ii in the pacific. the next week hours they also struck other targets in the pacific, among them america's most important position in the area, the philippine islands. they bombed clark field, destroy the american air force. two weeks later on december 22nd, the imperial japanese fourteenth army invaded the philippine islands. the japanese landed 43,000 men. the americans and filipin