All language subtitles for PBS.Ken.Burns.The.War.7of7.A.World.Without.War_track3_[eng]-eng

(bird singing)

§§ §§

SAM HYNES:
The world contains evil.

And if it didn't contain evil,

we probably wouldn't need to try
to construct religions.

No evil, no God, I think.

No, of course no evil, no war.

But this is not
a human possibility

that we need to entertain.

There will always be
plenty of evil.

And there'll always be wars.

Because human beings
are aggressive animals.

NARRATOR:
When the people
of Luverne, Minnesota,

and Sacramento, California;
Waterbury, Connecticut,

and Mobile, Alabama, went
to the movies in March of 1945,

they saw and heard
a sick and weary

President Franklin Roosevelt--
so sick and so weary

that for the first time
in his career,

he referred directly
to the paralysis

that kept him from standing
without braces.

ROOSEVELT:
I hope that you will pardon me
for an unusual posture

of sitting down

during the presentation
of what I want to say,

but I know that you will realize

that it makes it
a lot easier for me

in not having to carry

about ten pounds of steel around
on the bottom of my legs;

and also because of the fact

that I have just completed
a 14,000-mile trip.

(applause)

NARRATOR:
Roosevelt's strength was waning,
but his message

was undimmed.

The war was still to be won.

It's a long, tough road
to Tokyo.

It is longer to go to Tokyo
than it is to Berlin,

in every sense of the word.

The defeat of Germany will
not mean the end

of the war against Japan.

On the contrary,
we must be prepared

for a long and costly struggle
in the Pacific.

NARRATOR:
Americans had been fighting
for more than three years now,

and the number of dead
and wounded and missing

had more than doubled
just since D-Day.

The Nazis seemed at last to be
on the verge of collapse,

but American men were still
dying in the struggle

to eradicate them,
and Allied planners feared

the final battle with Japan
would stretch on for years.

In the coming weeks,
two men from Mobile

would fight simply to survive:

Eugene Sledge, who had endured

the horrors of the battle
for Peleliu,

would once again
be forced to enter

what he called "the abyss."

Maurice Bell, who had witnessed
much of the Pacific war

aboard the USS Indianapolis,

would find himself hurled
into the center of history.

Daniel Inouye from Honolulu
would lead his men in an attack

so furious that afterwards

even he could no longer quite
comprehend it.

And Glenn Frazier,
from Fort Deposit, Alabama,

who had survived three and a
half years of brutal captivity,

would find that the Japanese
were not his only enemy.

The people of Sacramento and
Luverne, Waterbury and Mobile,

and every other American town

knew that there would be more
bad news from the battlefield

before they could dare hope
to know what it would be like

to live once again in a world
without war.

(tool clacking)

EMMA BELLE PETCHER:
I remember going to New York
on the train.

And at the station
at St. Louis, Missouri,

the platform was
lined with caskets.

With American flags.

I could cry now.

It was just as far
as you could see them

on the platform
at the train station.

And I went down reading
the name in brass plaque

that was all the names.

And I cried and cried.

How could you not cry?

§§ §§

HYNES:
The Pacific, as one experienced
it, began at San Diego.

And you got a sense of what a
huge space you were going into.

That this was not going to be
like Europe,

where there was land all around
and it had names.

This was going to be nameless,
empty space.

Almost all of it with little
dots of land in between.

NARRATOR:
In March of 1945, Marine pilot
Sam Hynes was 20 years old,

a former University
of Minnesota student

who, like thousands
of other young men,

had been made to grow up fast
during the war,

passing test after test
on the way to manhood.

He had learned
to live on his own, had married,

mastered the dangerous art
of flying torpedo bombers

and had now received his orders

to proceed 6,000 miles
across the Pacific

to face his final trial: combat.

Hynes landed at Ulithi,
the sprawling coral atoll

the U.S. Navy had turned
into the advance staging area

for the assault
that was about to begin

on the Japanese island
of Okinawa.

HYNES:
It was awesome.

It was huge.

The anchorage was miles across,

and it was covered with ships

of all sizes-- carriers,
battleships,

destroyers, cruisers.

I'd never seen so many ships.

It was like seeing
all the power in your corner.

(laughing):
And there wasn't any power
in the other corner.

NARRATOR:
Okinawa, 60 miles long

and home to almost
half a million civilians,

was the gateway to Japan.

The Allies knew they had to take
it before they could move on

to the home islands,
and were gathering

the largest invasion force since
D-Day-- almost 1,500 ships

and more than
half a million men.

(fierce explosion)

Day after day, in March of 1945,

American and British warships

fired shells and rockets
at Okinawa.

There was little evidence
of the island's defenders.

Allied planners were not sure
just where they were dug in.

But they knew they were
somewhere on the island--

more than 100,000 of them,
well entrenched

and prepared to die
for their Emperor.

The Japanese kamikaze
pilots overhead

were willing to die
for him, too.

There were nearly
100 Japanese airfields

within flying distance
of Okinawa--

and the pilots of some 5,000
warplanes were preparing

to sacrifice their own lives
in order to take those

of as many American sailors
as possible.

MAURICE BELL:
They was trained to fly their
planes one way and no return.

And when they went out
after a ship or something,

they had their funeral before
they actually left.

And they knew they was
never coming back.

They was under the impression
that if they gave their life

that way for their country,

they had a special place in
heaven for them, automatically.

Which wasn't true.

NARRATOR:
Seaman First Class Maurice Bell
of Mobile, Alabama,

was serving as a gunner

aboard the heavy cruiser
USS Indianapolis off Okinawa.

On March 31, kamikazes targeted
her for destruction.

(alarm sounding)
BELL:
I looked up to my right,

and there was one small cloud up
there and just as I looked up,

I saw a plane
come out of this cloud

and it was a Japanese
kamikaze plane.

The very instant
I saw him up there,

he must have spotted our ship,
because he turned into a dive,

instantly, and was coming
straight down.

It looked like he was coming
just as straight

to the very spot
where I was sitting.

A man back there started firing
at it with a 20-millimeters,

and you could see
the tracers hit it.

The plane actually bounced off
the ship,

but the motor and the bomb
went through the deck.

Went through
number three mess hall

and right down there was
three or four or five men

sitting at a table eating.

It killed all of them.

The bomb went all the way
through the ship

into the water and exploded
back up through.

They said that hole
all the way through

was large enough to drive
a 18-wheeler through.

NARRATOR:
Nine sailors died.

29 were wounded.

The Indianapolis was sent to
Ulithi to have its hull mended

and eventually dispatched
all the way across the Pacific

to Mare Island, near San
Francisco, for further repairs.

Meanwhile, the bombardment
of Okinawa continued.

The invasion was to begin
on April 1.

This was the night before Easter
Sunday, the first of April.

And Tokyo Rose, who was the
spokesperson for the Japanese,

was on the radio.

TOKYO ROSE:
Japanese special attack planes
launched late Thursday night...

VAGHI:
And having been
through Normandy,

and they didn't know
we were coming,

and here we are going
into Okinawa,

and Tokyo Rose is telling us

"Okay, G.I. Joes,
we know you're coming,

"we're gonna give you a Easter
party, when you land,

and we'll be there
waiting for you."

Well, that really sent shivers
up and down one's spine.

(artillery fire continues)

NARRATOR:
Navy ensign Joseph Vaghi
from Connecticut,

who had been wounded
on Omaha Beach,

was among
the 60,000 soldiers and Marines

moving toward the island
that morning.

He had volunteered
to return to combat.

VAGHI:
When we finally began unloading,
it was quiet.

As the landing crafts went in,
you just walked ashore.

Couldn't believe this.

(Glenn Miller's band
playing "Little Brown Jug")

NARRATOR:
The Japanese
mostly held their fire.

Four divisions-- 75,000 men--
would land that day.

The veterans
couldn't believe their luck.

("Little Brown Jug" continues)

Marine Private Eugene Sledge
of Mobile and his outfit

were at the landing, too,

and so relieved,
they began to sing

the popular hit
"Little Brown Jug"

as they unloaded their gear
and started inland.

They had been warned

that they would be likely
to lose eight out of ten men

before they could make it
off the beach.

They lost none.

("Little Brown Jug" continues)

They were pleasantly surprised
by the terrain as well.

It was "pastoral
and handsomely terraced,"

Sledge remembered,

"like a picture postcard
of an Oriental landscape."

EUGENE SLEDGE (dramatized):
"The weather was cool,

"and there was
the wonderful smell of pines,

"which reminded me of home.

"It was such a beautiful island.

"You really could not believe

that there was going to be
a battle there."

("Little Brown Jug" continues)

NARRATOR:
American infantry and tanks

raced across the island,
cutting it in two.

Then, as Sledge and the Marines
moved north

to clear the central and
northern parts of the island,

the Army turned south, toward
the main Japanese defenses...

(song ends)

...where they began to face
increasingly strong opposition.

(bullets ricocheting)

Go, go, go!

Offshore, the Navy continued
to have its hands full.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Sky full of flak
as the Japs attack warships

supporting the invasion
of Okinawa.

Scenes of plunging planes

and enemy bombs land
perilously near.

A low-flying enemy speeds
toward a warship target.

Will the guns bring it down
before it gets to its mark?

(artillery fire)

Yes, it's hit, on fire,
and crashes!

(explosion)

NARRATOR:
On April 6,

Japan loosed a new tactic
against the Allied ships.

Not single kamikazes now--
but flights

of hundreds of them at a time,

dropping out of the sky
to attack the fleet.

(explosion)

The Japanese called
these deadly flights

"Floating Chrysanthemums."

(alarm blaring)

(whistle blowing)

By the end of the day,

they had seriously damaged
17 American vessels

and killed 367 sailors.

VAGHI:
We lost more ships,

we lost more sailors,
we lost more men,

and it was a horror.

It was one of the worst part...
battles of the Pacific, really.

NARRATOR:
As the land battle
for Okinawa intensified,

the Floating Chrysanthemums
would return again and again,

taking a terrible toll
on the men...

and ships.

§§ §§

GLENN FRAZIER:
If we had an invasion of Japan,
we knew we were dead.

(distant explosions)

They issued orders later
that if, uh,

the minute American or Allied
forces landed on their homeland,

to shoot all prisoners of war.

So we had basically
accepted our fate.

NARRATOR:
Glenn Frazier was one of
168,000 Allied prisoners of war

still in Japanese hands.

He had been a captive
since the surrender on Bataan

in the spring of 1942.

He was now in his fourth
POW camp in Japan, at Tsuruga,

southwest of Tokyo,
on the Sea of Japan.

(gunfire)

One day, their captors
permitted 50 prisoners

to wash their own filthy clothes
in the ocean.

They were sitting around
waiting for their clothes to dry

when carrier-based
American bombers

roared in to attack the port.

FRAZIER:
We run out of the warehouse,

or at the end of the dock, and
were across the railroad tracks

and was waving,
and we knew then

that the aircraft carrier planes
were close.

And we knew that
the end was coming close.

But that did not help
our feelings

as to what was about to happen.

Our lives were
going to be sacrificed.

(insects chirping)

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
We interrupt this program
to bring you

a special news bulletin
from CBS World News.

A press association
has just announced

that President Roosevelt
is dead.

The president died
of a cerebral hemorrhage.

All we know so far
is that the president died

at Warm Springs in Georgia.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
We can all tell you
where we were

when we heard
that Roosevelt had died.

President Roosevelt
was really...

the binding force

for the United States.

When he would come on
and give his fireside chats,

we all gathered
around the radio,

and everyone looked to him
for leadership.

He had led us
out of the Depression,

so we felt that...

certainly he could lead us
through a war.

§§ §§

And when the news came in April
that he had died,

it was a terrible blow
to the entire country.

BURT WILSON:
It was catastrophic,

because he was
the only president we knew

for the first 12, 13 years
of our life.

Now, the thing was,
my parents were Republicans

and hated Roosevelt,
but I loved him.

And most of us kids
loved him, too.

Because he was
the face of America

that was saying,
"Hey, things are gonna be okay."

§§ §§

HYNES:
I was standing
outside a Quonset hut

looking across the little strait

between Saipan and Tinian,
the next island,

and... I felt
a great sense of loss.

More than that, I think, "How
will we go on fighting the war

when our commander in chief
is dead?"

PAUL FUSSELL:
We were all very sad about it.

Less about his leaving...

than about irony of it.

If he'd died
a few months, uh, later,

he could have seen the success
of what he had done.

NARRATOR:
The men of the 100th
442nd Combat Team--

the Japanese-American unit that
had already distinguished itself

in the fighting
for Italy and France--

were back in the mountains
of Northern Italy

when they got word
of Roosevelt's death.

He had signed the order
that sent to internment camps

the families from which
many of them had come,

but he had also provided them
with the opportunity

to prove their loyalty
on the battlefield.

It was that FDR
they chose to remember.

DANIEL INOUYE:
I remember that day,

because when we got the word,
suddenly men in my platoon

took out their bayonets
and put it on.

(gunfire)
And I said,
"What's happening here?"

He says, "Well, I think we got
to do this one for the old man."

They just stood up
and started attacking.

(gunfire continues)

Radio calls coming in
from the company commander,

"What in the hell
are you doing?" you know.

"You're not supposed
to be attacking."

I says, "Captain,
you can't stop 'em."

(laughing)

And so they're all
moving forward for the old man,

a man they had never met.

(bugle playing taps)

NARRATOR:
Many Americans,
overseas as well as at home,

couldn't even remember
the name of the man

who was now
their commander in chief...

...Harry Truman.

MAN:
All aboard!

§§ I guess I had
a million dolls or more... §§

§§ I guess I've played
the doll game o'er and o'er... §

QUENTIN AANENSON:
I had great difficulty
adjusting to the fact

that I was going home.

§§ That's why I'm blue... §§

Landed at Washington, D.C.,

was processed
through some paperwork there,

caught a train at Union Station
taking me down to Louisiana,

where Jackie was.

§§ To love a doll
that's not your own... §§

§§ I'm through with all of them§

§§ I'll never fall again §§

§§ Say, boy §§

§§ Whatcha gonna do? §§

NARRATOR:
Fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson
of Luverne, Minnesota,

was home on leave that April.

He had been in more-or-less
continuous combat in Europe

since D-Day--
ten ghastly months

during which he'd killed men
and seen friends killed

and come very close
to collapsing from despair.

He expected soon to be ordered
into action again,

in the Pacific this time,

and he desperately wanted
to see Jackie Greer,

the Louisiana girl
with whom he'd fallen in love

before going overseas.

Her letters had been
Aanenson's anchor to sanity.

GREER:
I-1 prayed for him to come back,

and I just felt like my prayers
would be answered.

I was walking down the street

and I saw the wedding dress
in a window.

So I went right in and I bought
that dress

and shipped it to my mother and
I said, "Have this ready for me.

I'm gonna need it."

NARRATOR:
Now the two were to meet again.

AANENSON:
And I had to adjust to being
away from the war.

The silence was difficult
to get used to.

But it was such a... an exciting
and unbelievable moment.

I was alive,
and this was Jackie.

GREER:
The first night,
we were in the living room

and he formally proposed to me.

And for some reason, I got shy.

And I couldn't quite
make myself say, "Yes."

I don't know why because
I'd been saying yes

for 11 months, you know.

And when I hesitated and,
and couldn't quite say yes,

he said, "Well, now,
just make up your mind."

The funny part was, the door
right near my chair was closed,

and on the other side
of that door was my bed

with that gorgeous wedding dress
spread out all over it.

AANENSON:
I was going to be going back
to the war.

I didn't want to face the idea
that she could end up

being a widow in a couple
of months.

But it... the more we talked
about it,

the more we decided,
"Let's get married now."

So we got married on April 17,

two and a half weeks
after I got home,

in the First Methodist Church
in Baton Rouge.

As I saw her coming down
that aisle,

it was just a thrill
beyond belief.

(dramatic music playing)

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
In their stupendous advances,
the Russian armies

feature massed artillery.

The kind of warfare the Russians
wage on the road to Berlin.

NARRATOR:
By the middle of April 1945,

Soviet troops were just
30 miles from Berlin

and bent on revenge

for the horrors the Nazis had
inflicted on their homeland.

General Dwight Eisenhower
decreed

that the armies
under his command

would not drive directly
toward the German capital.

(horse neighs)

The deadly task of capturing the
city would go to the Red Army.

Hitler called upon his people
to resist to the end.

"Every village and every town
will be defended and held

by every possible man," he said.

For the Americans in Europe,

the fighting and the killing
sputtered on.

DANIEL INOUYE:
And that's a horrible thing,

knowing that the war is
going to end,

and you have to keep urging
your men to go forward.

NARRATOR:
The 100th 442nd Combat Team

was still in the mountains
of Northern Italy

hammering away at the last
German positions there.

INOUYE:
We had this objective,
a high mountain.

As I was going up,

I suddenly felt someone punching
me on the side.

That's what I thought it was.

I fell down and I got up
and kept on moving.

I had a bullet going right
through my abdomen.

Came out just about a quarter
inch from my spine.

NARRATOR:
Three machine gun nests
were firing down at Inouye

as he continued
to lead his men up the slope.

He hurled a grenade
to knock out the first one,

then killed its crew
with his tommy gun.

He silenced the next gun
with two more grenades.

As he pulled the pin
on yet another

and got ready to throw it
into the third machine gun nest,

German shrapnel nearly severed
Inouye's right arm.

Somehow, with his left hand,
he pried his dead fingers

from the live grenade
and threw it,

then started up the hill again.

INOUYE:
According to the men

and according to my company
commander, he says,

"For a moment,
you went berserk.

You picked up your gun."

I had a Thompson sub-machine gun

and with my left hand
started approaching

the last machine gun nest,
just firing

and with the blood
splattering out.

It was a horrible sight,
I think.

Finally, I got hit again
on my leg,

and I kept rolling down the hill
and that was the end.

NARRATOR:
German prisoners of war
were pressed into service

to carry Inouye
back down the hill.

He was given morphine
at the aid station--

so much morphine that when
surgeons at the field hospital

began to amputate
his shattered arm,

he had to endure it
without anesthetic.

The pain was so intense,
he remembered,

"that dying didn't seem
like such an awful idea."

INOUYE:
I ended up receiving
17 whole blood transfusions.

Before they gave you the blood,
they showed you the bottle,

and on that bottle was a label

that had the name, rank,
serial number and the unit.

And so, here is someone
with some fancy name,

Thomas Jefferson Lee,
a serial number, 92nd Division.

Now, 92nd Division

was a unit that we were
attached to in the last battle,

and they're all made up
of African-Americans.

And all the bottles I saw
were from the 92nd Division.

So I must have had 17 bottles
of good African-American blood.

And so here I am.

NARRATOR:
For his heroism under fire,

Daniel Inouye would receive
the Medal of Honor.

It was granted to him
55 years later,

during his sixth term

as a United States senator
from Hawaii.

§§ §§

Meanwhile, events in Europe
were moving so fast

it was hard for the people
back home to keep track.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
On the final lap
of their drive on Berlin,

Russian troops send
the Germans reeling.

NARRATOR:
On April 25, American
and Soviet forces linked up

at Torgau on the Elbe River.

Germany had been cut in half.

The next day, Soviet troops
began assaulting Berlin itself.

(distant shouting)

On the morning of April 30,

Russian troops fought their way
into the Reichstag,

the symbol of German power.

Less than half a mile away,
beneath the rubble,

Adolf Hitler and his closest
aides huddled in their bunker.

That afternoon,
Hitler named Admiral Karl Donitz

to succeed him,
then shot himself in the mouth.

Only his most fanatical
followers

now continued to fight on.

PAUL FUSSELL:
Eisenhower, on D-Day morning,
distributed to the troops

a general order, which is like a
handbill, and everybody read it

and he said, "We are about to
embark upon the great crusade,"

which we'd been preparing
for for many months, etc.

Now, at first none of us
could believe

it was anything like a crusade,
because we were playing dice

and we were thinking about girls
all the time

and getting as drunk
as possible and so forth.

It wasn't like a crusade.

There was no religious
dimension to it whatever.

When they finally got across
France and into Germany

and saw the German
death camps...

(voice breaking):
they realized that they had...

been engaged
in something like a crusade,

although none of them
called it that.

And it all began to make
a kind of sense to us.

I'm not sure
that made it any better.

It may have made it worse.

To see that it was
actually conducted

in defense of some noble idea.

NARRATOR:
As the Red Army had moved
through Eastern Europe

the previous summer,

it had uncovered at Majdaneck,
in Poland,

the first evidence of the Nazis'
industrialized barbarism.

The ashes of thousands
of human beings

were found in a crematorium.

The American and British press
played it down,

assuming the Soviets
were exaggerating.

Not even the Nazis
could be so murderous.

By the end of April 1945,

more than a hundred camps and
sub-camps would be liberated.

Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Ravensbriick,

Ohrdruf, Buchenwald,

Bergen-Belsen, Nordhausen,
Dachau.

On May 5, advance patrols of the
American 11th Armored Division

came upon Mauthausen in Austria.

There they found
more than 110,000

desperate so-called
"enemies of the Reich,"

men, women and children
confined behind barbed wire.

Many were too weak to stand.

Private Burnett Miller
of Sacramento was there

and saw it all.

And they had put some signs out,

"Welcome Americans,
you've saved us"

and things like this.

And we surrounded the camp

and then, uh,
there was a surge of people

who were in fairly good
condition begging for food,

and we were giving them
what food we had,

concentrated food,

and in some cases
it overwhelmed their systems

and actually killed them.

I'm sure we were responsible

for the deaths
of several hundred people

just by feeding them
concentrated food.

We went down in the basement and
there were these big furnaces,

and it looked like cordwood
piled around

and they were bodies in rigor
mortis that they were...

had been preparing to burn
in these big furnaces.

And the fellows that went
into the other barracks

came away just shocked,
some of them very, very sick.

The hospital there,
people dying just thick

and people couldn't get out
of their bunks

and people
in terrible condition.

And then later there was
a big trench,

and it was filled with bodies.

Some were dying,
some were trying to steal food

and, uh, the, the guards
were dispersed all over and we,

we actually saw a guard move
into a house

and we chased him in,
and he was an officer.

And the prisoners who were there
tore him apart,

just killed him right there.

We lived in Mauthausen,

which was an idyllic little
Austrian town on the river,

but you could smell the camp
in town.

And all the villagers of course
said they didn't know anything

about the camp,
and the local priest said

he didn't know anything
about the camp,

and I knew that was a lie,

because you could smell
the camp.

You could just smell,
uh, death.

So it was a horrible,
horrible experience.

And then we came,
at least I came to think,

"Well, you know, this effort
has been worthwhile.

There was a real reason
to do this."

These were inhuman things
that were being done to people.

NARRATOR:
Other Americans were witnessing
similar horrors at other camps.

Ray Leopold, a medic
from Waterbury and a Jew,

was with the 28th
Infantry Division.

We were...

near the Hadamar
concentration camp.

At the same time we noticed
that up on the hill

there was a building

that the Blrgermeister
described as an insane asylum.

We went up there
and found that, true,

they did have
an insane asylum there,

at least initially,
but it was a place

where there was medical
experimentation going on humans.

I really can't tell you
what I saw there.

It affected me profoundly,

and I think all the men
who were with me at that time

were equally affected.

I, um, I felt that
it was too bad

that I was forbidden by the
Geneva Convention to Kill.

l... I felt that this was the
most horrible human experience

that had ever been visited
on the face of the earth.

I saw one of those terrible
places where they were...

where they had the people
that were dying and dead

and bodies stacked
like cordwood, cordwood.

That was the little town
of Ludwigslust.

And we made the German people
in that community

go get those bodies
and had a burial in the park

in front of the castle

so that they would never
forget it again.

And we gave them a Christian
and Jewish burial.

But the people did it.

I mean, we... we made
the German people do it.

These people in this country
who say it didn't happen...

It happened.

I saw it; I know.

It happened.

NARRATOR:
In 1933, there were
nine million Jews in Europe.

By 1945, two out of three
of them were dead.

Thousands of Jewish communities
were wiped

from the face of the earth.

Hitler's regime also slaughtered

nearly two million
non-Jewish Poles.

They murdered more than four
million Soviet prisoners of war,

as well as hundreds of thousands
of handicapped people

and political opponents,
homosexuals and gypsies

and Jehovah's Witnesses
and slave laborers

from all the countries
they'd conquered.

LEOPOLD:
How bad it was,
how wide it was...

We never really knew
how fully extensive

this horror that Hitler had
visited on Europe,

and in particular
on the Jews, how it was.

But here we began to see.

We had no idea

that there was going to be six
million dead Jews as a result.

l... I think the horror
is still with me.

I think there's no apology that
can ever atone for what I saw.

NARRATOR:
On May 8, three days

after Burnett Miller's unit
reached Mauthausen,

Germany finally surrendered.

The war in Europe
had come to an end.

The Reich that Hitler
had promised

would endure
for a thousand years

had lasted less than a dozen.

("Waiting for the Train"
playing)

(children shouting)

HARRY TRUMAN:
General Eisenhower informs me

that the flags of freedom fly
all over Europe.

This is a solemn
but glorious hour.

I wish that
Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived

to see this day.

§§ §§

MCINTOSH (dramatized):
Al Mcintosh, Rock County
Star-Herald.

"Unlike New Yorkers,
who whooped, hollered,

"and tore up tons of paper
to throw in the streets,

"the news here was greeted
with quiet dignity

"and reverent restraint.

"One by one, the flags blossomed
out on Main Street

"and store by store
the employees quietly filed out

"and the business places were
locked up for the day.

"But there was no shouting, no
hilarious display of any kind.

"Most everybody went home.

"There was quiet exultation
over the fact

"that a great victory
had been achieved,

"but that rejoicing was tempered
by the sobering knowledge

that there was another great war
yet to be won."

(machine gun fire, explosions)

SAM HYNES:
It didn't really make much
difference on Okinawa.

The Japanese were not going
to fight any less hard

because Hitler was out of it.

(machine gun fire)

I suppose there was
a certain satisfaction

that we'd beaten that lot

and could now turn our attention
entirely to this lot,

but aside from that,

I don't think
there was much excitement.

EUGENE SLEDGE (dramatized):
"Nazi Germany might as well
have been on the moon.

On Okinawa,
no one cared much."

"We were resigned
only to the fact

"that the Japanese would fight
to total extinction

"as they had elsewhere, and that
Japan would have to be invaded

with the same gruesome
prospects.”

Eugene Sledge.

NARRATOR:
The battle for Okinawa
was not going well.

The Marines had cleared
the northern and central parts

of the island by mid-April.

But in the south,
the Army had been unable

to blast the Japanese from
their main defensive positions,

a succession of limestone ridges
around the walled town of Shuri.

The Navy,
battered daily offshore

by kamikazes
and other Japanese warplanes,

demanded that the Army

undertake a landing behind
the Japanese lines

so that they could be attacked
from two sides simultaneously.

The Army commander refused.

And on the first of May,

the First Marine Division,
Eugene Sledge's oulffit,

was sent south

to shore up the center
of the American line.

SLEDGE (dramatized):
"A column of men approached us
on the other side of the road

"from the 106th Regiment,
27th Infantry Division,

"that we were relieving.

"Their tragic expressions
revealed where they had been.

"They were dead beat,
dirty and grisly,

"hollow-eyed and tight-faced.

"As they filed past us, one
tall, lanky fellow caught my eye

"and said in a weary voice,
'It's hell up there, Marine.'

"I said with some impatience,

"Yeah, I know.
I was at Peleliu.'

He looked at me blankly
and moved on."

NARRATOR:
Japanese shells shrieked down

as the Marines struggled
to find cover.

Friends died, old friends

who had fought alongside
Sledge on Peleliu.

"Replacement lieutenants
were killed or wounded

with such regularity,"
he remembered,

"that we rarely saw them
on their feet

"more than once or twice,

and never got to know
their names."

Get down, get down.

The Marines inched
their way toward Shuri,

blasting and burning the enemy
out of their hiding places

one ridge, one village,
one gulley at a time.

SLEDGE (dramatized):
"I found it more difficult
to go back

"each time we squared away
our gear to move forward.

"The increasing dread of going
back into action obsessed me.

"It became the subject of the
most tortuous and persistent

"of all the ghastly war
nightmares

that have haunted me
for many, many years."

"The dream is always the same,
going back up to the lines

during the bloody month
of May on Okinawa."

HYNES:
Terrible things happened
at Okinawa.

But a man in an airplane
above the battle

doesn't see the terrible things.

What I saw was drifting smoke,
explosions.

You see destruction.

You can imagine the devastation,
but you don't exactly see it.

You don't see the dead civilians
who died in their thousands.

You don't see the dead Japanese.

You don't even see
your own dead.

I dropped some bombs on
buildings that blew up.

If there was anybody in them,

I suppose I killed somebody.

I don't know.

I'd like to think I didn't...

but that's what I was being paid
for, was to kill people.

(indistinct shouting)

NARRATOR:
Eugene Sledge and his fellow
Marines were now pinned down,

just 20 yards from enemy lines
and under fire from three sides,

on the slope of Sugar Loaf Hill,
the key to the defense of Shuri.

Artillery shells uncovered
half-buried Japanese corpses

and tore dead Marines
into pieces.

Rain pounded down, more than
a foot of it in a week,

washing maggots and feces
into the Marines' foxholes.

The stench was overpowering.

There was no relief from
any of it, day after day.

SLEDGE (dramatized):
"If a Marine slipped and slid

"down the back slope
of the muddy ridge,

he was apt to reach
the bottom vomiting."

"I saw more than one man
stand up horror-stricken

"as fat maggots tumbled out
of his muddy dungaree pockets,

"cartridge belt, legging lacings
and the like.

"We didn't talk
about such things.

"They were too horrible
and obscene

"even for hardened veterans.

I believed we had been flung
into hell's own cesspool."

NARRATOR:
Nearly 3,000 Americans died
taking Sugar Loaf Hill--

more per square foot than
anywhere else in the war.

In late May, the Japanese began
a carefully staged withdrawal

from the Shuri Line,

slipping back ten miles or so
to their last redoubt,

another series of ridges
at the island's southern end.

It would be three more weeks
before its last defenders

were killed and their commanders
committed suicide.

By then, 92,000
Japanese soldiers

and as many as 100,000 Okinawan
civilians were dead.

Of the 235 members
of Eugene Sledge's Company K

who landed on Okinawa,
just 26 emerged unhurt.

Of the 254 men brought in to
replace those who had fallen,

only 24 remained.

In the end,

more than 12,000 Americans died,

60,000 were wounded--

the worst losses
of the Pacific war.

Among the dead were Private
First Class J.J. McCarthy

of Waterbury; Sergeant
Jeff Fleming of Sacramento;

Private First Class Lowell Reu
of Luverne,

and Private Ernest Roy
of Mobile.

As the Allies prepared to move
on to Japan itself,

still more terrible losses
seemed inevitable.

HYNES:
We were told

that in the invasion of Japan,

we would be the first land-based
single engine bombing squadron.

To goin, be in on the invasion
of the Japanese home island.

That would be heroic stuff.

We all felt that.

But at the same time, by then,
our sense of the strangeness

of the Japanese opposition
had become stronger.

And I could imagine
every farmer with his...

with his pitchfork

coming at my guts;

every pretty girl
with a hand grenade

strapped to her bottom
or something...

That everyone would be an enemy.

NARRATOR:
The Allies planned to begin

with the island of Kyushu
on November 1, 1945.

More than 500,000
Japanese troops

were already in position
to repel them--

and another six million
were either under arms

or ready to be called up.

Women and schoolchildren
were drilling

with sharpened bamboo spears.

The Americans did not expect

to be able to move against
the larger island of Honshu

until April of 1946.

Former president Herbert Hoover
headed a commission

that suggested half a million
Americans might die

before the islands
could be taken--

along with perhaps
seven million more Japanese.

Military planners came up
with different estimates,

but all anyone knew

was that the cost in casualties
was likely to be astronomical.

The end of the war
in the Pacific

still seemed very far away.

G.l.'s who had once talked of
getting "Home Alive in '45"

began to coin new slogans:
"Back in the Sticks in '46,"

"Back to Heaven in '47 "...
even "Golden Gate in '48."

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The soviet premier,
the remaining member

of the original Roosevelt-
Churchill-Stalin Big Three.

Now President Truman greets
Prime Minister Attlee.

And the conference
of the Big Three at Potsdam

sets the policy
of the Allied powers.

NARRATOR:
In mid-July, the Allies met
in Germany, at Potsdam,

and set forth the terms

under which they would agree
to end the war.

Japan's leaders would have
to abandon

every inch of their empire,

face trial for war crimes,

submit to being disarmed, and
agree to American occupation

until a new, democratically
elected government

could be established.

Unless they agreed to all of it,

the declaration warned,
they could expect

"the utter devastation
of the Japanese homeland."

Japan chose not to respond
to the Allied ultimatum,

and tried instead
to persuade Russia,

which had never declared
war on Japan,

to broker more favorable
surrender terms.

For most of Japan's leaders--

despite the agony the Japanese
people were enduring,

despite the even greater agony
that seemed sure to come--

unconditional surrender
still remained unthinkable.

unconditional surrender
still remained unthinkable.

(Charlie Christian's
"Rose Room" playing)

MAN:
Yeah!

NARRATOR:
On July 15, 1945,

the USS Indianapolis,

her repairs now complete
and ready to go back to war,

received orders
to pick up special cargo

at Hunters Point, California.

MAURICE BELL:
'Course, we had no idea
what the cargo was.

Well, there was
all kind of rumors went on

aboard ship, uh,
what we was delivering.

There was one rumor that's
very outstanding in my mind,

and this rumor
just flew all over the ship

was that we was delivering
scented toilet paper

to General MacArthur.

And they picked certain men
on the ship

to load and unload this,

and they picked me.

So I helped load it.

§§ §§

(music ends)

NARRATOR:
On July 26,

the Indianapolis
delivered its mysterious cargo

to the B-29 base on Tinian.

§§ §§

Then she set out
for the Philippines.

Four days later,
in the middle of the night,

disaster struck.

BELL:
A few minutes after midnight,

there was a loud explosion
on there.

It knocked me out of my bunk.

I didn't know what had happened,

and the first thing that
passed... went through my mind

was that a...
a boiler had blown up.

(explosion)

NARRATOR:
A Japanese submarine

had sent two torpedoes

hissing into the hull
of the Indianapolis.

They cut it nearly in half.

1,196 men were aboard.

Within the first few minutes,

some 300 of them
were blown apart

or burned to death.

The captain ordered the rest--

nearly 900 men--
to abandon ship.

BELL:
I estimated I was about
25 to 30 feet up in the air

when I jumped.

I put my foot against
the side of the ship and pushed

and started swimming,
because I was told that, uh,

the best thing to do is
to get away from a ship--

as it went under, it would
create, uh, tremendous suction.

So as I pushed with my foot
and started swimming,

when I did,
the ship just shot away from me

as it was going under.

NARRATOR:
Within 12 minutes,

the Indianapolis
sank from sight.

The men were alone now,

scattered across miles
of dark, empty sea.

Many men were badly wounded.

Some had broken limbs.

Able-bodied survivors
did what they could in the dark

to fashion floats for them,

tying together life rafts
as floating beds.

Morning brought worse horrors.

BELL:
When daylight came,
you look around,

all you could see was just
the group that I was in.

There was probably
over a hundred men

in that group to start with.

Just shortly after daylight,
somebody yelled...

yelled out real loud, "Sharks!"

And sure enough, there were
sharks swimming all around us.

And, uh, those sharks
would swim around us,

and then, uh, all of a sudden,
they would dive in on us

and start attacking guys.

And, uh...

you'd see them attack somebody

over just a short...
just a few feet from you,

and, of course,
they'd grab them,

and down they'd go, and you'd
never see that... man again.

All you would see then

would be the water turning red
around them.

They attacked us every day,

several times a day.

Some of the sharks swimming
three or four feet of me,

but none ever touch me.

NARRATOR:
No one came to rescue them.

Distress signals
from the sinking ship

had been dismissed
as Japanese trickery.

BELL:
I stayed in the water
for four days and five nights--

a little over a hundred hours,
altogether--

with nothing to eat
or no fresh water to drink.

Some of the guys just went
completely out of their head.

Didn't even know
where they was at.

They would feel that fr...
cold water down at their feet,

and they'd dive down there
and drink it,

thinking they was
back aboard ship.

And they'd come back up
and describe...

that, uh, "Come on down below."

They thought
they was on the ship.

"Come on down--
at the officer's quarters,

there's water fountains up there
with ice water all the time."

NARRATOR:
When the Navy finally did
come upon them on August 2,

only 321 men remained alive.

Some 880 crewmen died.

BELL:
Some of the things

that I actually went through
out there,

it just seems more like
a dream... sometimes.

I wonder how I made it through.

I tell everybody now

that I was too sour
for the sharks to eat.

NARRATOR:
On August 5,

three days after the rescue
of the Indianapolis survivors,

the unknown object
they had delivered to Tinian

was placed aboard a B-29

named for the mother
of its pilot--

the Enola Gay.

It was an atomic bomb.

It had originally been intended
for use against the Germans,

who had been feverishly working
to make a bomb of their own,

but it had not been ready
for delivery

before they surrendered.

The American bomb
had been developed

under such strict secrecy
that the new president

had never heard of the project
before he assumed office.

But once he was told about it,

Truman approved the bomb's use
as soon as it was ready.

At 8:15 in the morning
on August 6, 1945,

the bomb tumbled
through the bomb-bay doors

of the Enola Gay.

43 seconds later,

six miles below

but still high above
the city of Hiroshima,

it detonated,
changing the world forever.

(explosion)

(rumbling continues)

(rumbling continues)

(rumbling fading out slowly)

With a single bomb,
40,000 men, women and children

were obliterated in an instant.

100,000 more would die
within days

of burns and radiation.

Another hundred thousand
would succumb

to radiation poisoning
over the next five years.

§§ §§

More than half a century later,

citizens of Hiroshima
would still be dying

from the bomb's
long-delayed side effects.

Despite the devastation,

the Japanese still
would not accept

the Allied surrender terms.

Then on August 8,

the Soviet Union
declared war on Japan.

The islands now faced invasion
on two fronts.

At 11:02 the following morning,

an American plane
dropped a second atomic bomb

on the city of Nagasaki.

Some 40,000 more civilians
died instantly.

The Americans
had no more such bombs

and would be unable to produce
another for several months.

But the Japanese had no way
of knowing that.

In Tokyo, the Supreme Council
for the Direction of the War

remained split between those
still determined to fight on

and those willing,
finally, to give up.

That evening,
all six members of the council

called upon the emperor,

who broke the deadlock.

Japan would surrender.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
Everything was set

for the landings in Japan.

So when the atomic bomb
was dropped

and it ended it so quickly,
we were stunned

but rejoiced.

Our boys would come home!

There wouldn't be
any more of them killed.

You can never convince
anyone of my generation

that the atomic bomb
was not the greatest thing

(laughs):
that they ever came up with,

because we'll defy you.

It was just finally
the end of that horrible war.

RAY LEOPOLD:
I had very mixed feelings
about it.

That the atom bomb...

could be blasted
on fellow humans

whose blood is as red as mine,

whose skin blisters
as readily as mine does...

was something I had hoped
could be avoided.

Of course,
there is the mathematical odds

that by killing some...

quarter million... Japanese,

we may have saved
half a million American lives.

Mathematically,
that's a good thing.

But it's hard
to give up someone else's life.

NARRATOR:
After Japan gave up, the guards
at Glenn Frazier's prison camp

had simply walked away.

He and his comrades wandered out

among a dazed
civilian population...

and took the train to Tokyo
and freedom.

EUGENE SLEDGE (dramatized):
"We thought the Japanese
would never surrender.

"Many refused to believe it.

"Sitting in stunned silence,
we remembered our dead.

"So many dead.

"Except for a few widely
scattered shouts of joy,

"the survivors of the abyss
sat hollow-eyed and silent,

trying to comprehend
a world without war."

Eugene Sledge.

("Every Tub" playing)

(cheering)

§§ §§

EARL BURKE:
V-J Day-- I was in San Francisco

and it just blew up!

People come out of everywhere:

out of every window,
out of every door.

They came out of the sewer.

You could cop a feel
going down the street

and nobody would say a word.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
Well, my dad was so excited
that he ran in the room

and he got his pistol from
World War I and he filled it

and we went out
of the front door,

and if you go dig around
that azalea bush,

I know the bullets
are still in the azalea bush.

He fired six rounds
into the azalea bush,

brought the pistol back
in the house

and said to my brother and I,
"Come on, gang,"

and "We're going downtown."

And he threw mother in the car

and we drove down
to Admiral Semmes' statue.

And daddy circled it three or
four times honking his horn.

So by the time we left downtown,

people were climbing up
Admiral Semmes' statue

and the celebration had begun.

But I've always said

my daddy started
the celebration for V-J day.

NARRATOR:
In Waterbury, Connecticut,

newsboys peddling a special
"War's Over" edition

of the Waterbury American
were on the street

within 60 seconds of the
president's formal announcement.

Every firehouse siren

and factory whistle in town
began to blow.

ANNE DeVICO:
We didn't even know the people.

We were hugging them
and kissing them.

We didn't know who they were and
they didn't know who we were.

It was just a joyous time.

It was a happy, happy time
‘cause we're thinking,

"Well, now all our boys
are going to come home."

(bell tolls)

NARRATOR:
That evening, special
services were held

at every Waterbury church
and synagogue.

As a sign of profound gratitude
for the good news,

some Italian-American women
climbed the hill

to Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Church on their knees.

OLGA CIARLO:
It was a happy time
for a lot of people.

It was a happy time for us, too,
to know that the war was over

for other boys, too,
that were there.

But it wasn't so happy for us

because we knew my brother
wasn't coming home.

NARRATOR:
Private Babe Ciarlo of Waterbury
had been killed in Italy

during the Anzio break-out
in late May of 1944.

His mother had refused
to believe it,

poring over newspaper
photographs

in hopes of glimpsing him,

insisting the Army
had made an error,

that somehow her son would still
be coming home to her.

Eventually,
long after the war, he did.

OLGA:
I think the worst day was when
they brought his body back.

And we went down
to the railroad station

and when they took his body off
the train and we were all there,

we all went to the cemetery,

when they handed
my mother the flag...

§§ §§

FRAZIER:
We sailed under
the Golden Gate Bridge

and into San Francisco Bay...

and as we approached the pier,

there-- I get
a little choked up--

there was the American flag

flying high in the breeze
over American soil,

and it was the most
gratifying thing

‘cause we never dreamed
we would ever get back.

And there was a bunch
of prisoners of war on there.

And we stood there--

couldn't even see anything--
with tears in our eyes.

And as we docked,
I was one of the...

I was the second one to get off.

And I get down on the ground,
I Kissed the ground.

And every one of the prisoners
of war that was on that ship

got off the gangplank
and kissed the ground.

And our audience out there

was just clapping their hands
every time

and welcomed us home.

And it was the greatest
feeling in the world.

NARRATOR:
Glenn Frazier's family back
in Fort Deposit, Alabama,

had officially been informed
that he had died

in the Philippines.

(phone ringing)

FRAZIER:
We were told we could make
a phone call home

at the expense
of the government.

So I made my phone call
to my home.

And the phone was answered
by my mother.

And I told her who it was,

and now I didn't know anything
about all these,

the... the letters

and the guy coming there,
you know,

telling them I was dead.

So she answered the phone

and then she fainted,
and the phone went dead.

And then her sister,
who was there visiting,

and she fainted
when I told her who it was.

And then my oldest sister came
to the phone and she fainted.

So then there was a long pause
and my daddy answered the phone.

He said, "Who in the world
is this?"

And so I told him

and I used my middle name
at home.

It was Dowling.

I said, "This is Dowling."

And he said, "Well," he said,
"I knew you weren't dead."

But he said, "Look like I've got
a bunch of dead women here."

He said, "I've got to get them
up off the floor."

So he said, "Now, you hold on.
Don't... don't go away now.

I'll be back in a minute."

So he goes
and gets a pitcher of water

and he's pouring some water
in their face.

Come back to the phone
and he said,

"I think they're waking up.
Their eyes are moving.

Some are moving a little bit."

He said, "They'll be able to
talk to you in a little bit."

And that's when they knew
I was in San Francisco.

NARRATOR:
By the fall of 1945,
750,000 service personnel

were returning
to civilian life every month.

("It's Been a Long, Long Time"
playing)

BING CROSBY:
§§ Kiss me once,
then kiss me twice §§

§§ Then kiss me once again §§

§§ It's been a long, long time§

§§ Haven't felt like this,
my dear §§

§§ Since I can't remember when§

§§ It's been a long, long time§

§§ You'll never know
how many dreams §§

§§ I dreamed about you §§

§§ Or just how empty
they all seemed without you §§

§§ So kiss me once,
then kiss me twice §§

§§ Then kiss me once again §§

§§ It's been a long,
long time... §§

§§ Long, long time. §§

TOM GALLOWAY:
Certainly when you come home,
it, uh, it's an occasion.

I didn't know how to really
react to it because...

you'd seen a lot of things that,

that, uh, you didn't ever think
you'd see.

But in any event,
it, other than, uh,

I'll never forget my mother
wanted to see.

For instance, I was just sitting
there with my shoes on.

And she wanted to see that I had
all my limbs and everything.

(laughs)

That I still had my feet.

And, uh, yeah,
she stayed with me a good while

till 1 showed her that I had...
had all my parts on me.

LEOPOLD:
No matter how great,
no matter how small,

no matter how indifferent,
no matter how stupendous,

regardless of the facts,
home has a unique quality

that just cannot be exceeded.

Home is the ultimate value
that humans venerate.

NARRATOR:
The war had rescued
Waterbury, Connecticut,

and the industries
that had provided

its nickname: "Brass City."

And at first,
its workers returned

to making the screws and washers
and buttons,

showerheads and alarm clocks,

toy airplanes
and lipstick holders

and cocktail shakers they'd been
making before Pearl Harbor.

But as the years went by,
the brass industry declined.

So did Brass City.

Ray Leopold came home for
a time, then moved away,

went into business

and eventually became
a fund-raiser for charity.

LEOPOLD:
I ran into a young man who was
the brother of a young man

I had known reasonably well.

He said, "What outfit
were you with, Ray?"

And I told him that I was
with the 28th Infantry.

"Really?"

He said, "My brother was
with that outfit."

And I said,
"Where is your brother?"

He said, "Oh, he didn't make it.

"He's dead.

He was killed in action."

And then he turned, he says,

"You were with the 28th, too,
and you are home and he isn't."

He couldn't get over the idea

that someone so dear to him as
his brother couldn't make it...

and someone who is more or less

an indifferent third person
made it.

AANENSON:
There are casualties in war

that... they never show up
as casualties.

They're internal casualties.

We all changed.

We went out as a bunch of kids.

Wars are fought by kids.

And we came back--

looked maybe the same, but
inside we were so different.

They thought we were
just odd, I guess.

"What's happened to Quent?

What's wrong?"

And I was wondering, "Nobody
knows, nobody understands,"

and I am not
good enough with words

to be able to tell 'em.

NARRATOR:
Quentin and Jackie Aanenson
did not return

to his father's farm
south of Luverne.

He went to Louisiana State
University instead

and eventually entered
the insurance business.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
"Luverne, Minnesota.

"October 25, 1945.

"A lad who was one
of the "living dead'

"has returned to his home--
very much alive

"and bubbling over
with high spirits.

"To look at Sergeant
Frank Lane with his 160 pounds,

"you'd never realize now

"that he was one of those
emaciated, tortured souls

"who survived by some miracle,

"the horror of that
'Death March' at Bataan.

"And in some ways, returning
to the States and to Luverne

"is like rising again
from the dead

"because he has to acquaint
himself with so many things

that have happened
in this changing world."

"He has a lot
of brushing up to do

because nearly four whole years
have gone out of his life..."

"Four years in which
he descended

"into a black hole of silence,

"knowing nothing about what
was going on in the world

"except that it was
a terrible struggle

to just barely survive."

Al Mcintosh, Rock County
Star-Herald.

NARRATOR:
More than 1,000 citizens
of Rock County, Minnesota,

served in uniform
during the war.

32 of them lost their lives.

The names of all those who
served were carefully painted

on a wooden roll of honor in
front of city hall in Luverne.

As the years passed, Minnesota
winters wore away the names.

One year, the monument
was taken down

to be repainted and repaired.

Somehow, it was lost.

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER:
Our hope was we were going
to have a new life,

and I remember driving up
on the day

that we drove through
to the ranch.

And it was like being
in Alice in Wonderland.

It was absolutely amazing.

NARRATOR:
Sascha Weinzheimer
and her family,

who had nearly starved to death
as prisoners of the Japanese

in Manila, settled on their
late grandfather's farm

in the Sacramento Valley.

WEINZHEIMER:
It was some sort of, um,
cultural shock coming back,

because your body's here,
but your mind isn't.

And to have to put up
with the stupidity

of some of the Americans
that have been living here.

They'd walk into a room

and say, "Oh, tell us
about your experience."

And then immediately
they'd say,

"Um, we had these coupons

"that had to be, you know,
uh, rationed,

and then we couldn't go here
because of the gasoline."

And so we just sort
of avoided everything.

And when people were talking
to us about our experience,

we just clammed up,

because it... they didn't want
to hear it, anyway.

NARRATOR:
Sacramento's wartime
transformation

from small-town state capital to
big city would prove permanent.

State government grew, too.

So did the military bases
on Sacramento's outskirts

as the world war was eventually
supplanted by the cold war.

Among the Sacramentans
returning home

were thousands of
Japanese-Americans

newly freed from
the inland camps

in which they had been
imprisoned

for no other reason
than their ancestry.

They struggled to recover
their property

and rebuild their lives.

The men of the 100th 442nd
Combat Team came home, too.

Robert Kashiwagi, wounded
four times in Italy and France,

got a job with the California
Highway Department.

KASHIWAGI:
When I showed up in the shop,

this one fellow from the floor
went to his foreman,

he says, "Hey, look," he says,

"Look, if that Jap is gonna work
here," he says, "I'm quitting."

And this foreman told me that.

And I says, "Well, you know,
I passed my test

"and I served overseas
and I think I did

"what I was supposed to do, so
I'm going to hold my position

and I'm going to remain here,
you know?"

And I did.

And so, as I remained
there, why, he quit.

And then everything turned
a little bit better

as time went on, and it got
easier and easier for me.

And so I was able to serve
32 years and retire.

EUGENE SLEDGE (dramatized):
"The train trip home was
a nostalgic one for me.

"I was a proud American,
of course,

but I was also a terribly
homesick Southerner."

"A porter came through our car

"calling, 'Next stop,
Mobile! Next stop, Mobile!'

"My buddies shouted,
"That's you, Sledgehammer.'

"A thrill ran through me.

"There were countless times
it looked as though

"I would never live to see
the next moment,

"much less live to make it.

"And now, here we were, rolling
into the L & N Station.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
When Eugene came back
from the war,

he came directly here to see us.

I remember him well,

coming in with his uniform
and all of his ribbons and all.

And I thought, my,
you certainly are handsome!

I do remember thinking that,
how he had grown up.

He was no longer
that little young friend

of my young brother Sidney.

I suddenly had these two men
in my presence,

and I had that feeling about
both of 'em.

Uh, it was written
on their faces.

Their faces changed.

They just no longer
looked like boys.

They looked like men,
which they were.

NARRATOR:
The war had made Mobile
into a boomtown.

But by the time
Eugene Sledge came home,

some 40,000 defense jobs
had already disappeared.

Some workers left the city
for the small towns

where they'd been living
when the war began.

Others moved north and west to
bigger cities in search of work.

Returning black veterans, who
had fought for freedom overseas,

found themselves facing
the same segregation

they had left behind.

JOHN GRAY:
It would be a matter of disgust
and distaste with you

when you found out

that the fruits of victory
were not yours.

I never did appreciate going
to work at night.

And the police officer would
stop you at night and say,

"Hey, boy, where you going?"

And you come up to, uh,
to answer him.

"You got your hat on.

Take your hat off
when you talk to a white man."

And that kind of stuff, uh...

And I'd worked all night,
just about, at the railroad.

And didn't have a car,
so I had to walk home.

I cried all the way home.

It was, it was hurt.

NARRATOR:
John Gray eventually went on
to college, became a teacher

and then a beloved school
principal and community leader

for 50 years in Mobile.

Katharine Phillips briefly
became an airline stewardess

and married a former Navy pilot.

Her younger brother Sid,

who had encountered
terrible suffering

while serving with
the First Marine Division

and vowed to find a way
to do something about it,

went on to medical school
and became a doctor.

But there was one person
for whom he could do nothing.

SID PHILLIPS:
My friend Eugene was probably
as good a friend

as I've ever had
in my whole life,

but, uh, he could not
throw off the war.

He could not forget it.

It seemed to, uh, uh,
to haunt him.

SLEDGE (dramatized):
"As I strolled the streets
of Mobile,

"civilian life
seemed so strange.

"People rushed around in a hurry

"about seemingly
insignificant things.

"Few seemed to realize how
blessed they were to be free

and untouched
by the horrors of war."

"To them, a veteran was
a veteran; all were the same,

"whether one man had survived
the deadliest combat

or another had pounded
a typewriter while in uniform."

NARRATOR:
Eugene Sledge had been
an enthusiastic hunter

before the war.

Now he found he no longer
had the heart for it.

In combat, he had felt the same
terror his targets felt

when he fired at them, he said,

and he couldn't bear it that
they could not shoot back.

Nightmares plagued him.

He earned a business degree
under the G.I. Bill,

tried the insurance business
and abandoned it,

eventually became a biologist
and teacher.

"Science was my salvation,"
he remembered.

"It helped keep at bay
the flashbacks

from Peleliu and Okinawa."

"Close, constant study
of nature," his wife said,

"kept him from going mad."

But the war remained
with him nonetheless.

He still had
the tiny sheets of paper

on which he'd kept a journal
in the Pacific,

and finally,
at his wife's urging,

he turned it into
a combat memoir called

With the Old Breed.

Describing the horrors
he had endured

eventually allowed him to begin
to put them behind him.

Eugene Sledge died in 2001.

SLEDGE (dramatized):
"Until the millennium arrives

"and countries cease to enslave
others, it will be necessary

"to accept
one's responsibility to,

"and to be willing

to make sacrifices for, one's
country as my comrades did."

"War is brutish, inglorious
and a terrible waste.

"Combat leaves an indelible mark

"on those who are forced
to endure it.

"The only redeeming factors were
my comrades' incredible bravery

and their devotion
to each other."

Eugene Sledge.

FRAZIER:
My hometown just gave me
a hero's welcome.

Couldn't ask for anybody
to be any nicer to you.

But, uh, little did you know
what was ahead.

And, uh, I didn't until it
started happening to me.

NARRATOR:
Glenn Frazier and his brother
O'Vaughn, who had served

with the Army in North Africa
and ltaly,

happened to arrive home in Fort
Deposit, Alabama, the same day.

Their mother, Frazier recalled,
seemed "dazed"

to have both her boys back,
but she remembered

to give each of them the little
pile of Christmas packages

she'd bought and wrapped

but had been unable to send them
during the war.

When the boys stepped out
into the street,

they were mobbed
by friends and neighbors

happy to have them home.

Before Frazier joined
the Army in 1941,

he had confessed
to a high-school classmate

that he loved her.

She had waited patiently for him
for over three years,

until the Army formally told
his family Glenn was dead.

Frazier now eagerly asked
after her.

Hope that he and she
would one day marry

had helped sustain him
in captivity.

"I hate to tell you this,"
a friend told him,

"but she's getting married
this coming Sunday."

That night,
the nightmares began.

FRAZIER:
It was just like
real life again.

It was just so real.

It sort of kept me
from sleeping.

I got to the point where I
didn't even want to go to sleep.

My nerves were bothering me.

You couldn't tell anybody.

You couldn't tell...

In those days, if you were
seeing a psychiatrist,

it didn't make any difference
whether it was military or what,

nobody'd give you a job.

NARRATOR:
Psychiatrists working
for the Veterans Administration

were of little help.

"Just act normal and you'll feel
normal," they told him.

Frazier eventually married,
had two children,

ran his own trucking business.

But the war would not go away.

FRAZIER:
I hated the Japanese
as hard as anybody,

I believe,
could ever hate for so long.

And mine was as deep.

I think I was justified
in the hate that I had.

But it come a time
when it wasn't,

it wasn't affecting them.

They didn't even know I existed.

They were over there
and having their fun

and getting their things,
their country straightened out.

And here I am over here, I'm
hating and hating and hating

and having the nightmares
and so forth.

And it, it...
I had to get rid of it.

I had to throw it off

because it was just completely
destroying me.

And I prayed and...
and with the preacher's help,

I got to the point to where
I woke up one morning

and I felt a little bit of...
more rested.

But my war lasted actually
another 30 years.

PAUL FUSSELL:
To forget the war would be,
not just impossible,

it would be immoral.

It doesn't get to me very often

except when I talk about it
like this

and I seldom do that, actually.

It's just something,
it never goes away.

It's something you have
to endure

the way you endured
the war itself.

There's no alternative.

You can't wipe out
these memories.

You can't wipe out what
you felt at that time

or what you knew
other people felt.

It's just part of, it's part of
your whole possession of life.

And I suppose it does some good.

NARRATOR:
For all those Americans

who lived through
the terrible conflict,

for those whose fathers and sons

and brothers
were lost or maimed,

as well as for those
whose only contact with combat

was listening to the radio
and reading the local paper,

it remains to this day,
simply, "The War."

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
The young men that came home
from the war were my neighbors

when I was a young married
woman, and they lived the war.

They married,
they established homes.

We all lived in a wonderful
little neighborhood

where the homes were built
for the G.l.'s.

And every night after we would
get the children to bed,

we would all gather and the boys
would exchange stories.

That was the great way
of entertaining ourselves.

The boy next door to me

had ridden with Patton
across Europe.

The boy across the street
went in on D-Day plus four,

hanging on to a machine gun
on a half-track,

and he said
he was four miles inland

before he could pry his hands
off the half-track.

He was scared out of his wits.

The boy catty-cornered
had been a medic

and had survived
battles in Europe.

And we would just sit
and listen, we wives.

We learned more about our
husbands and what they did

by listening
to them exchange stories.

But I realize,
as I've gotten older,

this was a healing for them.

AANENSON:
The dynamics of war are
so absolutely intense,

the drama of war
is so absolutely,

emotionally spellbinding,

that it's hard for you to go on
with a normal life

without feeling
something is missing.

Now, I have had
a wonderful life.

I have a family
that just is ideal,

and, uh, I've enjoyed my life.

But I find there are times

when I am pulled back
into the whirlpool.

I find that
the intensity of that experience

was so overwhelming

and almost intimidating,

that you can't quite
let go of it.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
"Luverne, Minnesota.

"All week long,
with 'Silent Night'

"running through my head,

I've been groping
for a Christmas story."

"Somehow, the story
always eluded me."

"A lot of servicemen
have been in.

"They told us where they spent
last Christmas overseas.

But you didn't need to write
a story about them."

"The story of their happiness
about being home

was written all over their faces
for the world to see."

"And now comes the time
when it comes our turn

"to extend our Christmas
greetings

to each and every one of you."

"May the joy of Christmas,
and a big share of its peace

"and beauty, be with you all,

every single day
of the new year to come."

Al Mcintosh,
Rock County Star-Herald.

NORAH JONES:
§§ For those who think
they have nothing to share §§

§§ Who fear in their hearts
there is no hero there §§

§§ Know each quiet act
of dignity §§

§§ Is that which fortifies §§

§§ The soul of a nation §§

§§ That will never die §§

§§ Let them say of me §§

§§ I was one who believed §§

§§ In sharing the blessings §§

§§ I received §§

§§ Let me know in my heart §§

§§ When my days are through §§

§§ America, America §§

§§ I gave my best to you... §§

§§ America... §§

§§ I gave my best to you. §§