All language subtitles for Anatomy of the Pacific War

我哥在邦克山号航母上
My brother was on the Bunker Hill.

邦克山号被两架神风自杀飞机击中,死了500人
Ship got hit by two kamikazes, 500 guys died.

他们不要命了？
How can they do that?

开着飞机直接往船上撞？
Fly themselves into a ship?

天皇是神 向天皇尽忠
The emperor is God-- duty to God.

I think America had never before

faced this kind of fanatical enemy.

Young American boys
who went to the Pacific

were dumbfounded and shocked

at the tenacity, the ferocity
of the Japanese enemy they faced.

The Japanese had a very strong belief

in Bushido--
death before dishonor.

And they didn't respect
a soldier that surrendered.

Dr. Akira Iriye:
This is what made Japan unique:

that it would bring dishonor to yourself,

to your family to surrender.

Rather than being taken prisoner,
you're supposed to commit suicide.

The emperor is a god.

And you're taught and trained from
the time you're eight years old

that that's what you do
as a young man.

You fight to the death.

They were dedicated totally

to their cause.

And that's because they
followed the code of Bushido.

Richard Frank:
What Japan was seeking in going to war

was to secure an empire
throughout all of East Asia,

an empire that would be self-sufficient,

an empire that would permit Japan

to defend itself against all comers
now and forever.

We know that Japan
is willing to risk war

to have the economic empire it desires.

Roosevelt, however, wanted
to avoid a war in the Pacific.

He told his secretary of state Hull
one war at a time.

The Japanese looking at America
at the time of Pearl Harbor

said America is really fractured
and fragmented.

We can strike a decisive blow
that will crack their morale.

Miller:
Pearl Harbor gets us into a war.

An attack on American territory,

it turns a European conflict

into a true World War.

Japan would be facing enemies
who would have far more population

and far more industrial power
than they would.

How could they win
under such circumstances?

Well, Japanese leaders believed
that the one trump card they had

was what they called Japanese spirit.

Why was there any hope
that a country as small as Japan

could take on the big countries
such as the United States?

Well, they said there's one thing
that Japan does have

which the US does not have.

The emperor would worship
social cohesiveness and order,

a sense of unity.

The Japanese were socialized

to think of themselves
as a single unit.

So this is the propaganda.

It basically says 100 million
hearts beating as one.

I can remember a Japanese
soldier running at us full tilt.

And we fired into him
so many shells.

We must have hit him 60 times.

But he kept coming.
He didn't stop.

Then he got to about 40 or 50 feet
from us and collapsed.

It was amazing that this man
was actually dead on his feet

but something just kept him going.

Spielberg: The Japanese had
a different tactic in fighting.

With overwhelming strength
they would attack our lines.

And it was very hard to fight
that kind of a battle.

But that incurred great losses
on the side of the Japanese.

When the Japanese fight

they say
"Tenno heika banzai."

You know,
"Long live the emperor.”

But they're always
thinking about family.

I'm dying for my native place.

I must die to defend my family.

100 against 1200.

They're either incredibly brave
or incredibly stupid.

Tom Hanks:
The concept of the Japanese soldier,

it was as though war was being taken on

against this race of other beings.

The Japanese were seen
as grossly inferior,

caricatured as having
Coke bottle eyeglasses

and being incapable of inventing

or developing anything themselves.
Those copycats.

There's a portrayal of them
as monkeys, rats,

pillagers, rapists and barbarians.

Ambrose: The Japanese looked
at the Americans the same way.

They said, "Oh, these people are apes
and they're ignorant.

And they have no honor

and they have no courage.

The Japanese
were master propagandists.

The enemy is basically a demon
or a devil.

That is the major image of
the Anglo-American powers.

And they feel that their race,
the Yamato race,

has a destiny to fulfill,

a right to conquer.

Teachers told us that Japan
is a very special country

because of this unbroken line
of our imperial successions

and the emperor was divine.

The Japanese believed that in contrast
to the purity of their bloodline

that they'd maintained
for thousands of years,

the Americans had befouled
their bloodlines

by becoming a mongrel nation.

Those stereotypes
make killing easier

because I'm shooting beasts

or I'm killing monkeys.
I'm killing demons.

I'm exterminating the brutes
and the ogres and the devils.

The Japs are fighting
for their own turf now.

Every damn foot we go south

they'll get meaner and meaner.

The Japanese soldiers,

they were trained in what I would call
a culture of cruelty.

It was common
for Japanese commanders

to beat senselessly
their own troops.

And they're taught that to surrender
is ignominious.

So if you take a prisoner,

you're taking a soft,
materialistic American

who is not willing
to die for his country.

The Japanese culture was without mercy,

without compassion.

The Japanese would kill you

even if they were wounded.

And the corpsmen went to help
the wounded Japanese,

they would kill the corpsmen
with a grenade.

You soon learned
with the Japanese

that you had to meet brutality
with brutality.

In that environment
it was easy for some marines,

and some soldiers for that matter,

to succumb to behavior

whose brutality
revolts to this very day.

( Spits )

- ( Shouts )
- Out of the way, Hirohito.

- Move!
- Shoot him!

Sit down.

Hanks: The motivations
of the marines that went,

they weren't necessarily
there to do the right thing.

They were, but they were also there
to take vengeance,

to get retribution.

There's this feeling that the Japanese

are fighting in an inhuman fashion

and we've got to fight
in the same way to defeat them.

Marines quickly became
every bit as brutal

as the Japanese or more so.

They would just shoot them
again and again

to be sure they were dead.
You could not trust them.

This fury built up in you.

What's the matter with these people?

Their military code is such
that they're not gonna give up.

Here was a country
that was defeated.

They can't win.

So you have an enemy that has lost
but won't surrender

and will fight
with even greater desperation.

American marines as well as soldiers

had begun to ask themselves

whether ending the war with Japan
would literally involve killing

every last man,
woman and child in Japan.

Dower: The Japanese were dying in
the tens and tens and tens of thousands.

But the Americans were taking
enormous casualties also

that were unacceptable
by our standards.

We couldn't continue to go on.

That's why we push for the air raids

and for the nuclear weapons.

Hair used to come up
on the back of my neck

when I was around Japanese
for a long time after the war.

And then somewhere
up about 1970-something

I softened up a whole lot.

Those guys were doing
like we were doing--

What they had to, I guess.

That feeling towards Japanese

stayed with me for many years.

I've calmed down on that a lot.

But I had a different feeling

towards civilians than I did
to soldiers.

I never hated them.

There was no sense of animosity.

And the Americans didn't behave

as if they had been the winners

and they wanted to look down
upon the Japanese

or that they were going to enslave
the country or anything like that.

MacArthur stressed stability.

And he also insisted on the importance
of reforming the country.

It's a war of extraordinary hatred.

But when the war ends,
that hatred disappears

and the people
who were being socialized

to think of each other
as beasts on the one hand

and ogres and demons on the other,

suddenly are able to work together

and even to move
into respect for each other

and real deep friendships
in some cases.

You just step back and you say,

"This was madness, this war."