Original subtitles

In Japan, a clandestine base converted into a deadly

training camp for a wartime mission of no return.

The weapons created here

would be turned against American sailors.

Hundreds would lose their lives.

An Italian town whose people were given lethal advice

by government officials.

They told the locals to stay inside.

This is what signed, tragically,

their own death warrants.

And a floating fortress in New Jersey

that became a sanctuary and a savior.

This marvel of engineering

played its part in some of America's biggest battles.

In southern Japan are the remains of a facility

that defined a desperate moment in the nation's history.

We're in Ozu Island, a really thin strip of land

just a few miles long.

This seems like a normal little harbor.

But along the cliff face,

there is a tunnel entrance.

When you come out the other side,

there is only the pier and then the open sea.

There's not a lot to tell us what this place is for.

And it makes you wonder how is this tunnel connected

to the other structures we see around here.

This site was devised to inflict mortal wounds

on Japan's rivals.

But as their empire crumbled,

it was given a horrifying new mission.

Their own culture would lead the Japanese armed forces

into a different way of engaging with their enemies.

These people are indoctrinated to sacrifice their lives

for their country.

This was the last shred of their homeland

that these men would ever see.

There were things you couldn't say,

things you would see or hear.

It made you realize that we were at war.

Kenichi Tanaka was born on Ozu Island.

He remembers when his peaceful home became a hive

of mysterious activity.

The Navy had their eyes on it.

It was the perfect place to test their top secret weapons.

The Japanese had good reason

to keep this site concealed.

In the late 1930s, when it was first operational,

Japan was hell-bent on expanding its empire.

At this point, Japan, having defeated Russia

in the Russo-Japanese War, sees itself as kind of

the overlord of East Asia.

They want the United States out of Asia.

And as tension ramps up, Japan needs a much sharper

naval weapon to counter what they see as inevitable

American pressure on them in the Pacific.

So the Japanese Navy starts to design

what becomes the Type 93 torpedo.

The Type 93 has got a top secret tank of oxygen inside

that is going to make it ever so slightly faster,

ever so slightly more powerful

than any other torpedo around.

The Navy now needed somewhere away from prying eyes

to trial run their deadly new technology.

In 1937, construction began on Ozu Island.

They test them here

because of the size of the Sado Sea,

and the fact that it is remote and there's not gonna be

any collateral damage.

After a year of development,

the Japanese Navy perfected their secret weapon

with the data they gathered here.

It was now the most advanced naval torpedo in the world.

The effective range of the Type 93 torpedo is 13 miles.

And the best American torpedoes in this period,

their effective range is eight miles.

So this gives the Japanese an immediate edge.

Although the American military

had no idea this new weapon even existed,

they would soon find out.

In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise

attack on Pearl Harbor.

And the Type 93 torpedo

would prove devastating against the Allies

in the Second World War.

During the Battle of the Java Sea alone,

the devastating weapon destroyed

multiple Allied ships.

But by mid-1942, it became clear Japan had seriously

underestimated the strength of the American military.

Over the next year,

the U.S. Navy Marine Corps start to conduct

the island-hopping campaign.

As island after island is taken away from the Japanese empire,

the Americans are getting closer and closer

to Japan itself.

So they start casting around for new ideas.

How does this outgunned, outnumbered,

out-industrialized power go toe to toe

with the United States. They have to find

new diabolical weapons.

This site is going to be developed into

something terrifying, something desperate.

The Japanese Navy would be inspired by a bloody

confrontation 1,500 miles south of Ozu Island.

At the Battle of Saipan in 1944,

the Japanese garrison launches a suicide charge

at the American invaders,

and 4,000 Japanese soldiers just run at the American lines,

and almost all of them are killed.

This Banzai charge at Saipan, you know, heralds

a new kind of Japanese warfare.

The Japanese Naval Air Service starts to use the so-called

"kamikaze" aircraft attack.

And the Japanese Navy is going to find its own way

to conduct suicide attack.

In September 1944, this facility was given

a menacing new purpose,

to turn men into human torpedo pilots.

These horrifying new weapons were called "Kaiten."

They take these Type 93 torpedoes, and they say,

"Why don't we put like a suicide pilot

"on each of these torpedoes?

"We'll make a little cabin with 30 minutes of oxygen inside,

"and the guy will steer it into the side

of an American destroyer."

When adding the cabin, the Navy also increased

the length of the torpedo to allow for three times more

explosives than the original Type 93.

A Kaiten was big enough not just to sink a destroyer.

The Kaiten had enough payload

to sink a battleship, to sink an aircraft carrier.

Incredibly, when the Japanese Navy advertised

for people to pilot these suicide submarines,

and they were seeking 200 such people,

more than 2,000 17- to 28-year-olds applied.

By November 1944, just two months after training began,

the first Kaiten pilots were ready to attack.

Before they left this base, their sacrifice was honored

by the island's residents.

We went to see them off once with our teacher.

I saluted them.

As a child, I think I admired them.

I thought they were courageous.

On November 6th, eight Kaiten and their pilots

were loaded onto submarines.

Two weeks later, they had U.S. ships in their sights.

There's a huge explosion.

The fireball is so big that it looks as though

a lot of ships have gone up.

including an American aircraft carrier.

2 In late 1944, the Japanese developed a deadly

new weapon of war at this base, the "Kaiten."

A human-piloted suicide torpedo.

At dawn on November 20, they launched

their first attack against the U.S. Navy.

Five Kaiten are deployed from two Japanese submarines

against the U.S.S. Mississiniwa, which is a fuel supply ship.

There's a huge explosion,

and 63 U.S. sailors are killed in the attack.

The fireball was so big

that the Japanese assumed that all these Kaiten

had hit targets and they'd blown up this entire

assembled fleet in this anchorage.

But in fact, they sank one ship.

But because the Japanese believed

the mission had been more successful than it really was,

it gave them a sense of false confidence.

So they poured more resources into the program

thinking that this would be a secret weapon.

They were wrong.

And for the rest of the war,

they only sank like a couple of ships.

It promised incredible results but delivered very little.

Far more Japanese sailors died than Americans were killed

by this program.

Regardless of the Kaiten's success rate,

the Japanese even made plans to deploy them

against an American invasion of the mainland.

But it never came to that, as Japan finally surrendered

after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This terrifying and inhumane weapon of war

was consigned to a dark period of Japanese history.

Every year since 1962,

the relatives of Kaiten pilots and the people of Ozu Island

have gathered to remember

the young men who left here never to return.

Those suicide crew

who died in the war for their country,

we must give our respects.

And for that reason, the souls of those 106 people

are enshrined here.

In central Italy stand the ghostly remains

of a catastrophe that left a trail

of broken dreams in its wake.

This is a beautiful part of the world.

The landscape is rugged, the mountains are snow-capped.

Nestled in the middle is what looks like a town

typical of this region.

Yet the cobblestone streets are eerily quiet,

and it creates this very unsettling feeling.

These buildings look as if they've been caught

in a moment of time.

People left this place in a hurry.

Why?

The only reason you would do that is because

you're running for your life.

All hell broke loose. You just couldn't move.

You could only hold on for dear life.

The warning signs were all around,

yet the authorities chose to ignore them.

They told the locals to stay inside.

That turned out to be a terrible and tragic mistake.

No one said leave. Quite the opposite.

They'll carry their sins in their conscience.

This disaster devastated the entire region

and claimed hundreds of lives.

But the question that haunts everyone is,

could this tragedy have been avoided?

Coming back here makes me feel sad.

What hits me the most is the silence.

You could hear radios or TVs, children playing,

riding their bikes.

Giovanna Colagrande grew up in this sleepy rural town.

It was a tight-knit community.

Forged through family and friendship.

Mimmo and Clementina lived here.

I would pass by their house, and often Mimmo was playing

the piano, and I would sit outside to listen.

The earliest history of this town dates back to about

the 12th century, so it really has stood here

for hundreds of years.

There were generations that had grown up here,

living side by side with each other.

This is the town of Fossa.

High on the hill is the most important building

for those that lived here.

It's called the "Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta"

and it was built in the 18th century.

Every Sunday, it would be packed to the rafters.

On Sundays, we used to dress with more care.

We were going to church to praise the Lord.

We would wear our best.

You couldn't show up in a tracksuit.

We would look good, elegant.

I came here every Sunday, but now I rarely go.

A storm was coming that would test the faith

of the town's residents.

On December the 14th 2008, this region was struck

by a series of tremors called a seismic swarm.

Just over a month later, in January 2009,

the tremors began to intensify in both severity and frequency.

At the beginning, we kind of underestimated them.

They were low-intensity. We didn't pay too much mind.

It was the growing frequency that started to worry everyone.

A lot of people developed panic attacks.

It was good reason to be concerned.

After all, Italy is the most geologically active area

in all of Europe.

If the big one came,

the town's residents wanted to be ready.

But predicting earthquakes is not considered

scientifically possible.

Yet Giampaolo Giuliani, a local amateur seismologist,

claimed he knew how to do it.

He installed radon detectors in the basements of buildings

in the nearby city of L'Aquila and elsewhere in the region.

Giuliani believed that the release of this gas

signaled a looming tremor.

When the seismic swarm occurred, he noticed

increased radon levels in his detectors and predicted

that a major quake would strike into town 30 miles from here.

On March 30, 2009, the earthquake did happen,

but it was much smaller than Giuliani anticipated.

As a result,

the authorities put an injunction on Giuliani

for causing unnecessary panic and alarm.

He was even forced to take down his warnings from the internet.

But the day after, there was an earthquake,

4.2 on the Richter scale.

The residents in the region were now terrified,

especially because they had been told

that there was no basis to Giuliani's claims.

The Italian government convened a special committee

of six scientists and a government official,

Bernardo de Bernardinis, to assess the risks.

So after the meeting, the government official relayed

the scientists' discussions to the public.

We were told that the frequent earthquakes

was just the release of energy, but that wasn't true.

2 In April 2009, the residents of Fossa

and the nearby city of L'Aquila

were advised by officials that a series

of low-level earthquakes were not a cause for concern.

About a week later, in the middle of the night,

a 6.3 magnitude tremor struck the Abruzzo region.

And this was the deadliest the country

had seen in 30 years.

Fossa was directly in the firing line.

People were sleeping when the quake hit,

and the ground began to shake violently.

We could not get out of bed.

It was terrifying.

Like being in the hands of a dragon.

Cracks opened up in buildings.

Huge boulders sheared off the sides of mountains

and came crashing down on the town.

My house is quite modern,

and was built accordingly.

But my relatives and my husband's relatives

lived here in the old town.

So we drove as far in as we could.

And we found hell.

In one building, a boulder struck a house

and bunk beds that children once slept in

are left exposed.

It was sheer chance

they weren't sleeping there that night.

They would have been killed.

But four people did die-- a three-year-old girl,

a 76-year-old lady, and a couple who died together.

They say they were hugging each other.

In the nearby city of L'Aquila,

the situation was even worse.

Entire buildings were reduced to rubble,

and 70,000 people were forced to flee.

309 people were killed and more than 1,600 were injured.

The dust didn't even have time to settle

before the backlash began.

Mounting anger led to the region's capital

of L'Aquila bringing a prosecution case against

the scientists who said there was no reason for alarm.

The prosecution didn't blame them

for not predicting the earthquake,

but rather for the failure of accurate communication.

The fact that they told people to stay in their homes

was a key part of the trial.

If you say to people, "Don't worry,"

they won't worry.

One of the scientists said, "Have a glass of Montepulciano

and go to bed."

A year later, the seven defendants were

convicted and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The result triggered an international outcry

as researchers around the world felt science itself

was being put on trial.

Many in the scientific community warned

it would discourage scientists from sharing

their expertise for fear that they might

face lawsuits in the aftermath.

5,000 scientists signed an open letter calling,

demanding that these defendants be released.

And In 2014, the Court of Appeal overturned

these convictions, but the families of those

that lost their lives were outraged at this.

I'm a believer, so if our justice failed,

there'll be divine justice.

Let's hope their dreams are tormented.

Sorry if I'm blunt.

Now, well over a decade later,

a reconstruction is happening in Fossa,

but it's a slow process.

After the event, people have changed.

A lot of them would like to come back,

but many are still afraid.

We need to carry on and try

and rebuild this place and repopulate it.

In Camden, New Jersey, lie remains

of an American juggernaut that symbolizes

an era plagued by global conflict.

We are on the Delaware River,

and on it you can see

this huge mass of metal just glinting in the sunlight.

You don't have to be a naval expert to realize

that you are looking at a battleship

and a big one at that.

So the ship had served in World War II in Korea

and earned 13 battle stars

and the affectionate nickname the "Big J."

It was an avenging angel to American servicemen

in conflict time and time again.

In Vietnam, this vessel achieved

something extraordinary.

We fired all nine 16-inch guns.

And then we had the plane come back and tell us,

"Congratulations, you're the first battleship

to sink an island."

But any ship with a service record that long

is bound to eventually run a ground of controversy.

And that's what happened with this one's last deployment

to the Middle East.

2 In New Jersey, floating on the Delaware River,

is an icon of American strength.

In 1968, Steve Sheehan began serving aboard this vessel.

At the time, he was an electrician's mate.

Taking the first steps

on board since I've been discharged

made me feel like I was finally home.

This now-peaceful ship was built at a time

when the United States was on the brink of war.

The American government sees the writing

on the wall, and in July 1939,

two months before the German invasion of Poland,

they commission an entirely new class of battleships.

When this vessel was launched, it was the biggest

and most powerful battleship in the entire U.S. Navy.

This is the U.S.S. New Jersey.

One of four Iowa-class battleships built to strike

fear into the heart of America's rivals during World War II.

Able to hold a crew up to 2,700,

the New Jersey was a floating fortress.

It had nine 16-inch guns and a secondary armament

of 20-millimeter and 40-millimeter anti-aircraft

batteries to protect the battleship from aerial attack.

In 1944, the vessel arrived in the Pacific,

ready for war.

It served with distinction, playing a key role

in the battle for Leyte,

the largest sea campaign of all time.

But despite its critical role in the American victory,

its days were numbered.

By 1957, the U.S.S. New Jersey

had reached the end of its useful life.

The era of big battleships was really coming to a close.

Naval technology is changing,

and the battleship is being supplanted

by the aircraft carrier, because the aircraft carrier

can engage targets at much longer range.

When the Vietnam War begins, the Americans

begin this air campaign called Rolling Thunder,

where they send planes over North Vietnam

to take out critical infrastructure.

But these repeated sorties are ending up

putting American pilots in immense jeopardy.

Around 1,000 U.S. aircraft were shot

out of the skies, with the same number of pilots

being wounded, killed, or captured.

As increasing numbers of downed

U.S. airmen were paraded on TV screens around the world,

pressure mounted to find a new way to attack the enemy.

The U.S. Navy had a secret weapon,

and it was one that would save American lives.

On August 1, 1967, the U.S.S. New Jersey

gets the call.

It was like, "This is my opportunity

to go onboard a ship."

And when I came up here and looked at the battleship,

I went, "My god, that thing is big."

Then we went to the Panama Canal,

and then we were off to...

Vietnam.

On September 29, 1968, the U.S.S. New Jersey

arrives off the Vietnamese coast.

And the next day, it opens fire.

The New Jersey would maraud up and down the coast,

demolishing bunker complexes, fortified positions,

troop concentrations, and sinking enemy ships

in the process.

The ship would also provide ad hoc artillery support

to U.S. troops on the ground near the coast.

In one three-day battle,

it's estimated that the New Jersey

saved 100 American lives

for each day it was deployed there.

It sounded like a railroad train.

There's a projectile went through the air, just vroom,

vroom, vroom, vroom, before it hit.

So they knew that the battleship

was coming to their aid.

With this unrivaled firepower, the U.S.S. New Jersey is able

to pull off the unthinkable in the South China Sea.

The ship was called on to bombard some coastal artillery

on an island.

The captain said,

"All hands, get to your battle stations".

"It's gonna be a nine-gun salvo."

When the U.S.S. New Jersey fired up, it ended up sinking

part of this island.

This is reported with great enthusiasm

back in the States, with newspaper headlines saying

that the New Jersey has sunk an island.

But to the troops fighting on the ground,

Big J, as it became known,

was much more than a battleship.

It was a sanctuary, providing a safe place

for exhausted soldiers to rest and relax away from combat.

The poor guys hadn't had showers in weeks.

They got a good night's sleep,

warm bed, hot dinner, good breakfast.

When going by where they were bunked,

we had to walk softly because we knew they were still asleep

and we wanted them to be asleep.

For the beleaguered troops,

an even bigger surprise lay in store.

At 10 a.m. on Christmas morning, 1968,

a helicopter touched down

on the deck of the U.S.S. New Jersey.

So this is approximately where I stood

when Bob Hope was on the top of the turret

with all of his gorgeous women.

And the deck was filled with Marines, Army, and Navy.

When those girls came out, the place went wild.

Bob Hope was a lifelong performer, and comedian.

He first began entertaining troops in 1943

during World War II.

It was always something that the troops

yearned for-- it was a break from the monotony.

He stayed around afterwards and thanked everybody

for their service. He was very generous.

He was a wonderful guy.

But less than four months later,

Big J. was called back to the United States.

Among the ship's crew, it was rumored

the North Vietnamese refused to engage in peace talks

while the battleship patrolled their coast.

Four years after the Jersey returned home,

America's involvement in the Vietnam War

finally ended when they withdrew from Saigon.

Sadly, the next time the New Jersey

was called into action, it ended with tragedy.

2 By the early 1980s, the battleship U.S.S. New Jersey

had been defending America for 40 years,

and its service was not over yet.

In 1983, Lebanon was in the midst

of a messy and brutal civil war.

The New Jersey was dispatched

as part of a peacekeeping force.

Its massive guns were soon called on to retaliate

when U.S. naval reconnaissance planes were fired on

by enemy combatants.

But there was a problem.

The ship's powder had been mixed incorrectly,

so these huge guns were wildly inaccurate,

and they were missing their targets by big margins.

Civilians were likely killed as a result of that,

and so America's reputation in the region took a hit.

These were the last shells ever fired in combat

aboard the U.S.S. New Jersey.

After leaving Lebanon in 1984, Big J. continued to serve

in the Pacific and the Persian Gulf until 1991,

when it was officially retired.

It was a ship of such significance, it was even

featured in Tom Clancy's classic Cold War thriller,

"The Hunt for Red October".

In 2001, the U.S.S. New Jersey

was turned into a museum.

Steve Sheehan now shares with the public

the story of America's most decorated battleship.

They should know about the people that have fought

for their freedom and the ships they were aboard.

On England's south coast is an aging complex,

designed to defend the nation's borders.

Overlooking the port, a vast structure is etched

into the hillside.

It seems to dominate the town and the coastline.

It's a real jumble of architecture

from different eras.

There are cannonades, defensive ditches.

This is clearly some sort of military stronghold.

Once intended to keep Britain's enemies out,

it turned into a site that trapped people within.

There's barbed wire and shiny metal fences,

a sports pitch and a foreboding castle-like structure.

There's no mistaking. This place is a prison.

So what kind of criminals were kept here?

Yet looks can be deceiving,

and not all is as it seems.

Despite its appearance, this building was not planned

to be a prison.

But the people who pass through here tell

a very different story.

For centuries, the coastal town of Dover

has been the gateway to Britain.

Its proximity to mainland Europe,

only 21 miles from France,

across the narrowest part of the English Channel,

often made it a target that needed to be defended.

Let's just say the British and French

have had their disagreements over the years.

In 1803, the rise of a new dictator named

Napoleon Bonaparte spurred a frenzy of construction.

He posed the biggest threat to the island nation

in over a century.

During the Napoleonic Wars,

the fort held barracks for 200 men and was intended

to house 12 24-pounder guns in large casemates.

It was called the "Dover Citadel",

and it formed part of the biggest defense network

ever built on England's south coast.

If Napoleon dared to cross the Channel,

Britain was going to be ready.

Defensive ditches, ramparts and barracks

were built in anticipation.

But the feared invasion never came,

and when the war ended, it was put on hold.

But over the next 150 years,

the Dover Citadel continued to be upgraded

to combat Britain's foreign adversaries

The fort would remain garrisoned

through both world wars until 1944,

when the threat of Nazi invasion had passed.

For the next 50 years, parts of this site

were converted for use as a prison for young offenders.

In the year 2002, it would be transformed once more.

This impregnable structure, went from defending against

enemy forces to a new kind of front line for Britain.

2 On England's south coast is the ruin of

a Napoleonic-era fortress.

It was transformed after a wave of instability

swept across the world in the 1990s.

Global conflicts in places like the Balkans, Somalia, Sri Lanka

and the Middle East triggered large-scale

population movements.

The UK government was struggling to deal with

the growing numbers of refugees.

In the late 1970s, individual asylum applications

to the U.K. were around 300 a year.

In 1999, there were more than 70,000.

They resorted to housing some asylum seekers

in criminal prisons.

But that was only a short-term solution.

This is the Dover Immigration Removal Centre,

the British government's answer to a growing refugee crisis.

The nationalities of those detained tallies closely with

countries that have been torn apart by war in recent years.

Iraq, Syria, for example.

The facility housed over 300 asylum seekers.

Your freedoms are very restricted.

At night, the doors to your cell are locked.

and you're held there until the following morning.

Jack Smith is visiting for the first time

since he was detained here in 2015.

Jack's path to this place began in the aftermath

of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center.

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan,

Jack's father served in the newly formed Afghan army,

fighting against the Taliban alongside American soldiers.

But in 2006, the Taliban launched a major

offensive, marking the most significant escalation

of the war since the regime was overthrown.

Jack's father was killed during this violent period.

As the Taliban regained territory,

the country became more dangerous

for those opposed to their radical beliefs.

Imagine what it must have been like.

It must have been absolute hell for them.

Tens of thousands were forced to flee.

Jack was one of them.

In 2007, he arrived in the U.K. illegally

and applied for asylum.

Jack spent the next eight years in a legal limbo,

waiting for his asylum application to be processed.

But in 2015, when Jack was 22 years old,

he was detained in this building after failing

to report regularly enough to the authorities.

At any time, you could be presented with the news

that you were gonna be deported within the next two

weeks back to the country you'd suffered so much to escape.

Jack discovered he faced the same fate

after being held here for around two months.

The country he fled in 2007

had become even more dangerous

following the emergence

of the Islamic State terrorist organization.

For some, the fear of being sent back

to the country that they'd escaped from was so bad,

they decided to take their own lives.

But Jack didn't lose hope

and fought the decision to return him to Afghanistan.

He managed to find a lawyer who helped secure his release

and get him permission to stay in the U.K.

Around six months after Jack was freed,

the Dover Immigration Removal Center was decommissioned.

In 2015, it was announced the detention center

would be shut down,

with the government citing its lack of modernity,

security, and proximity to airports.

In 2022, Jack was granted refugee status

and could now start his new life in the United Kingdom.

He has high hopes for what the future holds.