All language subtitles for World War II S01 E17_en

- President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt is a transformative

figure in American history.

He steers the country
out of the Depression

and away from isolationism.

In the summer of 1944, Allied
forces are battling across France,

and heavy bombers are striking
the Japanese home islands,

but forcing the Axis powers
to submit to FDR's demand,

unconditional surrender still
requires enormous effort

from America and its Allies.

- All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world
like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march;
Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash.

The most destructive
war in human history.

- Suddenly,
the world is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

- The West is stunned by
the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies
led by the Big Three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with immensely
complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

- The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily,

but industrial scale.
It's a global perspective.

- They have to fight
in every climate,

from the Arctic
to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa,
and the depths of the ocean.

(triumphant music)

- But there was no
certainty of victory.

It was going to be
a horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans
at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings,

and we see them
at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

- World War II was a struggle
in which there could be one victor

and one vanquished.

(triumphant music continues)

(weapons thundering)

(group cheering) (tense music)

TOM: Summer, 1944.

While American forces
combat Germany in Europe

and Japan in the Asia Pacific,

in the United States,
it's an election year.

Even though his nation is at war,
the Commander In Chief,

the most powerful man in the world,
must seek the approval of voters.

- Franklin Roosevelt is trying to do
something no American has ever done,

which is be elected to
a fourth term as President,

and the country is not ready
to turn Franklin Roosevelt out,

but they're not thrilled
about rehiring him either.

- Roosevelt wasn't in robust health

when he first ran
for president in 1932.

He was a polio victim as a young
man; he's in a wheelchair.

Those who've known him before
the war always come away a bit

shocked at how dramatically
he seemed to age.

- The stress of the war
has ground him down,

so he's got to demonstrate to
the American people that he is still

firmly in command in this war and
can bring it to a successful close.

(intriguing music)

Roosevelt decides
to sail over to Hawaii

to hold a wartime conference
with his top leaders.

By being on a warship
at the site where the war started,

for the Americans,
he has the ability to project

an image of continued vitality
and strength.

TOM: The primary purpose
of the Pearl Harbor Conference

is to determine American strategy
against Japan in the Pacific.

ROBERT: Roosevelt looks at Japan
and sees a country infected

with a kind of militarism...

(crowd chanting)

...A desire to conquer
its neighbours,

a notion of racial superiority
over all the other peoples in Asia.

- (soldier shouting
in foreign language)

ROBERT: To prevent
another Pearl Harbor,

he's going to have to stick to
the policy he declared in 1943:

unconditional surrender.

TOM: The United States
controls most of the Pacific,

including New Guinea and the
recently captured Mariana Islands.

The Navy wants to push on and
take Formosa, modern-day Taiwan,

as a prelude to invading Japan.

General Douglas MacArthur
has other ideas.

(dramatic music)

- Douglas MacArthur is one of the
most famous American generals

in history,
also one of the most controversial.

He's got an ego
that is unbelievable.

In Hawaii, he shows up late.

He keeps the President
waiting on purpose.

JONATHAN: And then rolls in,
in this leather jacket,

decidedly casual,
in complete contrast to the Navy,

which is all turned out
in their dress whites.

ROBERT: MacArthur believes
he's more important to the country

than the President.

In fact, he believes
he is the country,

that his will and his desires
in some way embody the will

and desire of the American people.

TOM:
MacArthur insists American forces

must return to the Philippines for
reasons both strategic and personal.

(solemn music)

JONATHAN: Douglas MacArthur
had a long-standing affiliation

with the Philippines.

He had a real affinity
for the Filipino people.

He had lived there before the war,

and then in 1941 and 1942,

he was the commander in chief
of that garrison

when it was attacked by the Japanese
at the very beginning of the war.

(tense music)

TOM: When Japanese forces
overran the Philippines in 1942,

Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur
to evacuate to Australia.

He understood MacArthur's
personal value to the morale

of the American public.

After months of bitter fighting,

American and Filipino troops
surrendered to the Japanese.

In the cruellest conditions,

they were marched
off the Bataan Peninsula

and into captivity:
the Bataan Death March.

During the Japanese occupation,

hundreds of thousands of Filipinos
are killed.

Women are forced into sex slavery;

entire villages are destroyed
in mass executions.

- As he is about to leave, MacArthur
makes this famous pronouncement:

- I shall return.
- (attendance murmur approval)

- It's not "we shall return";
it's "I shall return."

- This is a vow that becomes
really a rallying cry for Americans,

not only in the Philippines
who are captured,

but also for Americans back home.

TOM: At Pearl Harbor,
MacArthur presses the President

to strike Japan through the
Philippines instead of Formosa.

(dramatic music)

- The problem with the Philippines
is it's not just an island;

it's an archipelago.

And there's a very large Japanese
army on these islands,

hundreds of thousands of troops.

That could lead to protracted
fighting with the Japanese.

ROBERT: But MacArthur has some
arguments on his side as well.

The Philippines are
an American possession.

They're a commonwealth.

To simply bypass the Philippines
and go to Taiwan

will make America look
like a very inconstant partner,

not to mention abandoning the
survivors of the Bataan Death March.

TOM: Roosevelt leaves the conference
without making a decision.

A week later, though, he sends
a letter to General MacArthur

agreeing to his plan.

(weapons firing)

On October 20th,

over a hundred thousand US troops

backed by the Seventh
and Third US Fleets

land on Leyte, a central island
in the Philippines

with a protected gulf.

MacArthur's campaign
to retake the country has begun.

(triumphant music)

AJ: He had the Army
Signal Corps of Engineers

go ahead on the beach ahead of him,

so by the time he got there,
he gives his radio address.

- People of the Philippines,

I have returned.

JON: The fact that MacArthur
is able to return

to fulfil that promise
is a morale boost.

But the theatre of MacArthur saying,
"I have returned,"

does not translate into
straightforward Allied victory.

(suspenseful music)

- The Japanese know
that General MacArthur

has promised to return,

and so they anticipated the next

decisive battle may
be over the Philippines.

TOM: The Philippines sit between
Japan and the Dutch East Indies,

Japan's primary source of oil.

JONATHAN:
So if the Philippines get captured,

it will cut off the supply lines,

and the military runs out of oil.

TOM: The Japanese already have
a plan to defend the Philippines:

Operation Sho-Go, or victory.

They will send all their warships to
destroy the US fleets in Leyte Gulf,

then trap General MacArthur's
troops on the island.

JONATHAN: The Japanese position is

it's absolutely imperative to
carry out this operation now.

We've got oil, we've got warships.
We better use them or lose them.

- This is almost like one
last banzai charge at sea

that can have a material effect
on the outcome of the war.

That's the kind of spirit

in which the Japanese
are heading into this battle.

ROBERT: The Allies have promised the
Japanese that the war's gonna go on

until unconditional surrender
of the Japanese empire.

But deep down inside, I'm not
sure the Japanese believe that.

They still think they can
inflict enough casualties

on the United States
that eventually,

despite all the talk of
unconditional surrender,

the Americans
will be willing to talk.

TOM: As MacArthur and his troops
land on Leyte,

the Japanese fleets move
towards the Philippines.

CHRISTOPHER:
At this point in the war,

the Japanese have suffered
terrible losses in the Pacific,

from Midway to Guadalcanal,

but they still have a tremendously
powerful fleet.

They have these super battleships,
the Musashi and the Yamato.

- These are the biggest battleships
ever built,

and this has always been
the US Navy's fear.

If these massive Yamato-class
battleships get loose in amongst

MacArthur's troop ships,
the invasion support vessels,

the devastation could be immense.

TOM: Two Japanese fleets,

a central fleet
and a southern fleet,

will converge on Leyte Gulf,

where US naval forces are
protecting MacArthur's landing.

Success depends on a third fleet

moving towards the gulf
from the north:

a decoy fleet.

BRADLEY: There's another aspect.

There's essentially a carrier task
force that sails towards Leyte Gulf

from the north.

It has four aircraft carriers in it.

It's designed to try to
lure American ships away

from protecting MacArthur.

- And this is the brilliance
of the Japanese move.

They decide to use
the carriers as bait.

The entire Japanese strategy
is to trap MacArthur,

trap this famous general himself, potentially.

- They're gonna bring these two
heavily armed and armoured pincers

against the American landing force
while it is still unloading cargo

and supplies and troops
at Leyte and annihilate it.

(dramatic music)

TOM: General MacArthur has
landed 130,000 troops on Leyte,

the first step in the American
liberation of the Philippines.

But as US troops establish
a secure beachhead,

the Japanese Navy enacts
Operation Sho-Go.

JONATHAN: The Japanese have to
figure out how to sneak their forces

close to the landing beaches
without being discovered,

because if they come under heavy
air attack, they're in real trouble.

So they plan to lure most of the
American forces out of the fight.

TOM: There are two American fleets
supporting MacArthur's forces:

the US Third Fleet led
by Admiral Bull Halsey,

and the Seventh led by
Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.

As the Japanese cross
the Sibuyan Sea,

they're spotted by one
of Halsey's scout planes.

(tense music)

ANAND: The Americans
attack from the air,

and their better focus was
on the largest ships they see,

which was the super battleships
Yamato and Musashi.

JONATHAN:
Musashi is an absolute giant.

She has 18.1-inch naval guns,
the largest naval guns ever mounted.

The Japanese have even developed
a special anti-aircraft shell

for them as well,

which explodes in
this enormous cloud,

and it's supposed to destroy
any American planes

that are flying through it.

(weapons firing)

But the attacks that are launched
by these American planes

gradually start whittling away
at her defensive capabilities.

DR GRANT: Torpedo after torpedo
streaks towards the Musashi,

hitting and exploding
below the waterline.

JONATHAN: 17 to 19 torpedoes,

more than a dozen bombs...

(bombs thundering)

...finally get her to go down.

TOM: The Musashi sinks
along with a thousand of her crew.

The Japanese central fleet retreats.

That night, Kinkaid's fleet,

including battleships that had
been damaged at Pearl Harbor,

decimates the Japanese
southern fleet.

But Halsey again spots Japanese
warships north of Leyte Gulf,

including four aircraft carriers:

the Japanese decoy fleet.

JONATHAN: In Halsey's mind,
as a carrier commander himself,

any enemy carrier fleet represents
the most dire threat to his mission,

which is protecting
the invasion forces.

So Halsey takes his entire fleet
and goes charging off after it.

BRADLEY: And so Halsey's
played into the Japanese hands

exactly as they had hoped.

DR GRANT: Halsey's taken all
the major firepower north with him,

and that puts MacArthur's invasion
at risk.

(tense music)

TOM: Halsey moves north,
but the Japanese central fleet

under Admiral Takeo Kurita
returns to Leyte Gulf.

From the battleship Yamato,
Kurita sees that only a portion

of the Seventh Fleet is left
to protect MacArthur's invasion.

JONATHAN: For Kurita,
this is a heaven-sent opportunity.

The dawn breaks,

and now there is an American fleet
sitting directly under his guns.

All he has to do is sink them.

DR GRANT: The American vessels
that are still around Leyte

primarily provide support
for the landing forces going ashore.

So there's only a token force
of light escort carriers

and destroyers.

JONATHAN: Escort carriers are small,
extremely vulnerable.

They can carry
25 to 30 aircraft max.

They're designed for ground
support for the troops ashore.

That's their role.

It is not to get themselves
into stand-up fights

against large enemy warships.

TOM: The escort carriers
launch their planes

against Kurita's much larger fleet.

- These escort carriers, mostly what
they do is turn around and run,

because they are not designed
to fight a threat like this.

TOM: The only force that
can match the Japanese,

Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet,

remains a hundred miles
to the north.

His commander in chief,
Admiral Chester Nimitz,

requests his location.

JONATHAN: Halsey receives
a message from Nimitz:

"Where, repeat, where, is Task
Force 34? The world wonders."

- Traditionally, naval messages
begin and end

with sort of a nonsense phrase
to confuse code breakers.

The nonsense phrase they used
in this message, though, is

"The world wonders."

JONATHAN: And "The world wonders"
line should have been removed

by his cipher officer, but wasn't.

ROBERT: I've always wondered
if Admiral Nimitz was also sticking

a little barb in Halsey as to,
"What are you doing up there?"

JONATHAN: And the result is that
Halsey just goes into conniptions,

throws his cap on the floor,
swearing up and down.

His chief of staff has to tell him
to get a grip on this situation.

TOM: Halsey realises the danger.

He sends his fastest battleships
back to Leyte Gulf, then continues

after the Japanese carriers.

BRADLEY: Now,
what the Americans don't know

is that the Japanese carriers
lying to Halsey's north

don't have many planes on them.

In fact, most of the planes
have been offloaded already

and flown to the island of Luzon
for what is about to come,

because a new and terrifying weapon
emerges from this battle...

(plane buzzing)

...the kamikaze.

(dramatic music)

TOM: At an airfield on Luzon,

Japanese pilots are assembled
for a unique mission.

DR GRANT: Japanese pilots,
at the beginning of the war,

were the cream of the crop,
elite, hand-selected,

and carefully trained.

But by this point in the war,

Japan just doesn't have the time or
the resources to train its pilots.

NORIKO: The Japanese
military leadership

has to make a tough decision
to make a cost-efficient way

of destroying American enemy ships.

And one way to do it is to
undertake one-way flight

that will end with crashing a plane.

TOM: This new unit of 24 pilots,

led by 23-year-old
Lieutenant Yukio Seki,

is Japan's first organised
special attack unit.

They will soon become
known as kamikaze:

the divine wind.

BRADLEY: So the kamikaze
in some ways represents

a perversion of traditional Japanese
bushido doctrine, the samurai code,

this idea of sacrificing one's life
for Japan and for the emperor.

CHRISTOPHER: It's hard to generalise
about their motivations.

You find some of them saying,
"I'm doing this for the emperor."

Other pilots talk
about their village,

they talk about families, and
they say, "I'm doing this for you."

For the Japanese, what they're doing
was not regarded as suicide.

It's a death in combat.

So it's this sense
that these young men

are becoming something
really special,

that almost to give this level of
self-sacrifice makes you a samurai.

(solemn music)

TOM: In Leyte Gulf,

the American escort carriers
of the US Seventh Fleet

confront a new and lethal threat
from the air.

(plane buzzing)

(plane explodes)

(soldiers yelling)

(plane buzzing)

DR GRANT: Stopping a kamikaze plane
is almost impossible.

The American carriers
can only do two things.

One is manoeuvre away,

and the second is put up
a huge curtain of flak.

But often-times the kamikazes
can break through that flak curtain.

ROBERT: You could fire every
anti-aircraft gun in the world,

but unless you get something like
a direct hit that kills the pilot,

that plane's gonna hit your ship.

(tense music)

BRADLEY: There's a psychological
effect as well.

Japanese kamikaze are giving up
their lives in the most violent ways

possible simply to kill Americans.

This is something that is difficult
for Americans to understand,

that this is a human being
who has chosen to do this to you.

How do you fight
against an enemy like this?

TOM: Lieutenant Seki crashes
his plane into the flight deck

of an American escort carrier,
the USS St. Lo.

It's the first ship to be sunk
by kamikaze attack.

Six other vessels are struck
and barely stay afloat.

But Admiral Kurita's central fleet
also faces an aerial attack.

JONATHAN: Despite the pounding
the Americans have taken,

it is actually Kurita who is under
a major disadvantage here.

He's up against 350 American planes,

and because Kurita
is being constantly attacked

by American aircraft,
he becomes increasingly paranoid

that he is now surrounded
by American carriers.

BRADLEY: So after these
moments of tension where Kurita

could have potentially wreaked havoc
on the American fleet in Leyte Gulf,

he actually withdraws.

TOM: Kurita retreats ahead of
Admiral Halsey's returning warships,

but the Japanese have lost
a third of their navy.

BRADLEY: It's the largest naval
battle in human history.

More than 200,000
combatants involved,

and the American victory really
knocks the Japanese Imperial Navy

out of the war in the Pacific.

COL DOUDS: But without a doubt,

the Japanese are
not gonna surrender.

This perversion of the bushido code,

it has manifested itself on islands
throughout this war,

and now it's manifesting
itself in the sea and in the air.

So it's starting to get in the mind
of the Allies about how costly

it will be to achieve that
unconditional surrender of Japan.

(weapons firing)

TOM: Over two months of fighting
in dense jungle terrain

against fierce Japanese resistance,

General MacArthur's troops
retake Leyte.

Luzon is next.

JONATHAN: Luzon in particular is
gonna be a very tough nut to crack,

because not only is it a large
island with mountain chains

the Japanese can fortify,

but there's also this enormous
capital of Manila

with about a million people
sitting in the middle of the island.

And if the American forces get
involved in urban combat there,

the casualties are likely
to be very, very heavy.

(group cheering)

TOM: 12 days after
the victory at Leyte Gulf,

it's election night
in the United States.

REPORTER: At Hyde Park,
a victorious President greets

townspeople on election night.

TOM: Franklin D Roosevelt
wins an unprecedented fourth term.

The unconditional surrender
of Japan and Germany

remains his highest priority.

(dramatic music)

On January 9th, 1945,

MacArthur's troops land
on Luzon in the Philippines.

Quickly, special operation forces
trek inland

to liberate Japanese POW camps.

(weapons firing)

JONATHAN: At the end of two years
of captivity in Japanese hands,

these men are in terrible condition.

A third of them have already died.

There are also a number of American
civilian detainees that are in camps

that are near Manila,

so there's a ticking clock here
as far as MacArthur is concerned.

He needs to liberate these
camps as rapidly as possible.

(weapons firing)

TOM: In early February,

American forces surround
the capital of Manila.

Most Japanese troops
have retreated north

to create an extensive
defensive line,

but one group stays with orders
to fight to the last man.

(tense music)

ROBERT: The real problem of urban
warfare in the modern era

is that the city
is a gigantic sponge.

You can have a million-man army,

and suddenly it's split up
all over the place.

CHRISTOPHER: So the Americans
find themselves having to fight

street by street,
building by building,

and it really turns Manila
into Stalingrad of the Pacific.

(weapons firing)

TOM: MacArthur's men are supported
by Filipino resistance fighters

who provide intel,
disrupt Japanese supply lines,

and help secure key routes
into the city.

JONATHAN: There have been
active groups of Filipino guerrillas

in existence since 1942,

and those guerrillas have been
carrying on a very successful

campaign of resistance
against the Japanese occupiers.

(weapons firing)

ROBERT: The Japanese response,
like the Nazis in Europe,

was to use guerrilla activity
as an excuse to murder civilians.

(tense music)

CHRISTOPHER: So whether
it's a school, a hospital, homes,

Filipino people are being bayoneted,

they're being shot, beheaded,
sometimes burned alive,

corpses left to rot.

There's a sense of scorched earth,

a sense that we will leave
nothing for the Americans.

BRADLEY: The Japanese
will ultimately take the lives

of a hundred thousand
Filipino civilians.

The Battle of Manila,
in a lot of ways,

is a harbinger of what's to come.

CHRISTOPHER: Roosevelt
and his top military advisors

are aware of the increasingly
dire implications

of a longer war with Japan,

but the American people are focused
on what's going on in Europe,

and they think the war
is now winding down.

- President Roosevelt's
just been re-elected.

He's looking at the horrors,

the brutality of the fighting
in the Philippines,

and he's been peppered
with letters from the mums

of America saying, "Where is my boy?
What is he doing?

What God-forsaken island
is he fighting on this time?"

He needs to find a way
to strengthen the will and resolve

of the American people,

because he knows things
are going to get a lot worse

before they get better.

(dramatic music)

TOM: Roosevelt meets with British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

in Malta to discuss the strategy
for ending the war in Europe

and in the Pacific.

BRADLEY: The question is,
if we have an enemy willing

to sacrifice young men
in kamikaze attacks,

an enemy that seems willing
to fight on beyond reason,

how are we going to
bring this to an end?

- Roosevelt's advisors are arguing
that the Japanese will not give up.

This war will not end

until there is actually an invasion
of the home islands.

AJ: Churchill and Roosevelt
are in Malta on the way to Yalta

early in 1945,

and this is where Operation Downfall
first crystallises:

the invasion of Japan.

The sense is that after the war
in Europe would be over,

and all of the resources,
all the men,

all the equipment that they could
muster would be transferred into

the Far East theatre
for a massive, massive operation,

the kind of which
history has never seen before.

- This would occur

after a protracted strategic
bombing campaign,

which as of early 1945 is beginning
to take more and more effect.

TOM: At first, the Marines
are ordered to take Iwo Jima.

DR GRANT: Japan has
an airfield on Iwo Jima,

and as the B-29s start operating
out of Saipan and the Marianas,

they're using it to spot the B-29
formations on their radar scopes.

COL DOUDS: Iwo Jima becomes
a logical place to, first of all,

remove something
from the Japanese control.

Second, don't allow them
to have any Japanese fighter

on there or early warning systems.

And third, for all those B-29s
that are making those long flights

over 1,200 miles, it creates a place
to land if they have engine trouble,

if they run into any difficulties.

- So Iwo Jima has gotta go.

That needs to become
an American airfield.

ROBERT: American intelligence tells
the Marines that there are about

13,000 Japanese defenders,

but there are actually 23,000,

nearly double what the intelligence
estimates listed.

As a result,
you have an American invasion force

that's going to be meeting a much
tougher defence than it expected.

(tense music)

(ominous music)

TOM: Japanese troops on Iwo Jima

have been preparing for an American
attack for over three months.

MARTIN: The Japanese strategy
is to make the battle

last as long as possible.

Each day that that battle lasts

is a day where the people
at the home islands

are spared of an American
invasion.

- So the commander of the Japanese
on Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi,

says we're going to prepare these
defensive fortifications and wait,

draw the Americans in,
and then attack them.

BRADLEY: The Japanese aren't on Iwo
Jima; they're actually in Iwo Jima.

They have miles and miles
of tunnels that they have dug

out of this soft volcanic terrain
on the island.

And they've also fortified the most
prominent landmark on Iwo Jima,

which is Mount Suribachi.

TOM: Looming over the
Marines' landing beaches,

Mount Suribachi provides
the Japanese

with a perfect defensive position.

JONATHAN: It's gonna be this
defensive hive that the Americans

will have to reduce cave by cave,

bunker by bunker,
one thing at a time.

TOM: On Iwo Jima, Japanese
soldiers are issued orders to kill

10 Americans before they die.

BRADLEY: We see very few Japanese
who attempt to surrender.

There's a view that this is a great
dishonour, not only to oneself

and one's family,
but to the emperor as well.

CHRISTOPHER: If you look at
the letters that Kuribayashi writes

home to his family,
he's clear right from the beginning

that no one on the Japanese side

is coming home
from the Iwo Jima campaign.

He starts to issue these orders
very clearly to his men saying,

"Fight to the death,"
but he doesn't want a banzai charge.

He doesn't want pointless
suicidal acts.

He wants to show the Americans
the cost to them

of going as far as the Japanese
home islands.

(gentle music)

TOM: The Navy bombarded
Japanese positions for three days.

Now the Marines plan to land
60,000 men across Iwo Jima's

southern beaches, push north,
and take the island.

COL DOUDS: So at 8:59
on the 19th of February,

the first 10,000 men land,

and it's quiet.

But then at 10 o'clock
in the morning...

(explosions thundering)

...every Japanese soldier
with a mortar, machine gun,

or a piece of artillery will now
start to shell the landing beach.

(tense music)

(explosions thundering)

TOM: In the face of withering fire,

the Marines struggle up dunes
of 15 feet or more.

COL DOUDS: Iwo Jima is not sand;
it's volcanic ash.

Your feet just sink
up to your knees.

It's like walking in coffee grounds.

It's incredibly deadly
to try and move forward.

TOM: Bulldozers are called in
to clear a path through the dunes,

allowing the Marines
to continue their advance.

BRADLEY: As the Marines finally
make their way off the beaches,

they're getting attacked
from everywhere,

people coming out of tunnels,

of mortars coming off
of Mount Suribachi,

of hidden artillery emplacements
all over the place

with snipers' firing positions
they can't even see.

JONATHAN: Individual soldier has to
somehow get up close with a grenade

that he can put through
the firing slit

and kill the crew that's in there.

COL DOUDS: Ultimately, one of the
greatest weapons that the Marines

have is what they'd call
Zippo tanks,

which are tank-sized flamethrowers

that can shoot long distances,

and that becomes the weapon
of choice for Marines on Iwo Jima.

(tense music)

TOM: By the end of the first day,
the Marines have secured an airfield

and prepared to attack
Mount Suribachi.

ROBERT: On Iwo Jima,
two strategies come into conflict.

One says, no surrender,
that's the Japanese,

and then unconditional surrender,
and that's the American position.

And on Suribachi, the Americans
make a determined statement

that it's going to be
unconditional surrender.

There is no position on planet Earth
held by the Japanese army

that American troops cannot take.

(dramatic music)

TOM: After securing the beaches,

US Marines on Iwo Jima
attack Mount Suribachi.

MARTIN: The force that goes up the
hill fights off Japanese resistance,

and upon reaching the summit,

they find a water pipe that had been
associated with a Japanese cistern.

They attach a small American
flag to that water pipe,

and then they raise that flag.

(epic music)

COL DOUDS: But they
realise the flag's too small.

We need a bigger flag.

So what they're gonna do is
they're gonna take a ship's flag

and they're gonna send it up there.
And about noon, it gets up there.

TOM: Six Marines plant
the second American flag.

Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press
photographer, captures the moment.

(camera clicks)

MARTIN: All the ships offshore
begin blowing their horns.

(horns blowing)

Everyone on the island can see it.

COL DOUDS:
It's a snapshot in time.

The composition's nearly perfect,

although he basically shoots it
off his hip without even using

his rangefinder as he did it.

You can't see anybody's face.

And so really it becomes
everybody's picture.

TOM: Two days later, Rosenthal's
photograph is on the front page

of newspapers across America.

President Roosevelt immediately
understands how inspirational

this single image is.

JON: FDR was always
a frustrated journalist.

He had been the editor
of the Harvard newspaper.

He understood visual imagery.

ROBERT: It's American determination
embodied in a single photograph.

COL DOUDS:
They're all working together,

and so it tells a national story.

It's not just those guys on top
of the hill that raised the flag.

It's a nation that put that flag
on top of the hill.

JON: But it's striking that
the flag isn't fully planted.

It's as if the struggle
is still unfolding,

and that fit FDR's mood
at that point.

This isn't over.

We're getting closer,
but we haven't gotten there yet.

TOM: To FDR, these six Marines
are the perfect symbol

of America's wartime effort.

- He calls the Marines and says,
"Find me these guys.

I want to bring them
to the Oval Office.

I want to send them
on a war bond drive."

MARTIN: So the Marine Corps
sends somebody to the island,

but they find that three men who
were in the photo were dead already.

They died within days
of the photograph being taken.

TOM: US Marines suffered
26,000 dead, wounded, and missing.

Almost every Japanese
soldier on Iwo Jima is killed.

- Kuribayashi himself,
who never believed

he was getting off Iwo Jima alive,

he retreats,
and he takes his own life.

BRADLEY: It's the only battle in the
Pacific where the Americans actually

take more casualties
than the Japanese take.

So for American military planners,

the lesson of Iwo Jima
seems pretty clear,

that if you're going to launch
Operation Downfall,

if you're actually going to invade
the Japanese home islands,

the cost is going to be immense,
because at this point in the war,

most Americans have concluded that
Japan is never going to surrender.

TOM: After victory on Iwo Jima, the
Marine Corps sends three surviving

flag raisers back to Washington,

but they will not meet
their president.

(ominous music)

REPORTER: Ladies and gentlemen,

the tragic news of the President's
death came to Washington today

as a complete shock,
except to a very few people

who knew of his condition.

SARADA: Franklin Roosevelt
had loomed so large for so long.

An entire generation of Americans

really only knew him
as their president.

Supposedly during
the funeral procession,

a man is so overcome by his emotions

and another man says,
"Did you know the President?"

And he says, "No, but he knew me,"

and that's how people felt
about Franklin Roosevelt.

ROBERT: Roosevelt had been
a very, very active President,

a very, very powerful personality,
the kind of caretaker to the people,

and he knew you can't fight
an endless war if you want

to maintain your democratic ideals.

He also knew how difficult
unconditional surrender

can be to put into actual practice.

TOM: During years
of fear and uncertainty,

Roosevelt was uniquely able to lead

America's colossal
fight against fascism.

Now, this job will fall to his
vice president, Harry Truman.

JON: Mrs Roosevelt summons
Truman to the White House.

He says, "Is there anything
we can do for you?"

And Mrs Roosevelt says, "No, Harry,
is there anything we can do for you?

For you are the one in trouble now."

- On assuming the presidency,
Truman told reporters,

"I felt like the moon, the stars,

and all the planets
had fallen on me."

Harry Truman of Missouri
is now responsible

for the successful conclusion of the
largest conflict in human history,

including the final destruction
of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

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