Original subtitles

It's hard to comprehend the scale

of the Pacific-Asian theatre of war.

It stretches from Hawaii to Burma,

from the Aleutian Islands to Indochina.

In 1942, the United States sends fighting men

to far-off places most Americans had never heard of.

They are soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines

from every town in America.

They will confront an enemy whose moral code

does not permit surrender.

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.

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.

Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor,

Japan invades the Philippines.

They begin with a devastating strike

against the US air base at Clark Field...

Then land 35,000 troops and advance

on the capital, Manila.

American and Filipino forces are overwhelmed.

Within weeks, Manila is captured.

There was a Philippine war plan that,

in the event of a Japanese major invasion,

the forces would withdraw to Bataan.

Bataan is strategically located next to Manila Bay.

It's this rocky peninsula.

It's got two dormant volcanoes that are sitting in the middle of it,

and so it's really good defensive terrain.

On December 23, 1941, US and Filipino troops

begin their retreat to the Peninsula of Bataan.

You have this chaotic retreat.

About 100,000 US and Filipino troops,

and we should add the 25,000 civilians,

Filipino but also Americans, now desperate to escape

the attacking Japanese.

As the troops retreat,

the Japanese continue following

a well-planned, well-coordinated offensive

aimed at British and Dutch colonies.

They have already invaded Burma, Borneo, and Malaya.

They take Hong Kong on Christmas Day,

then move further into Malaya.

Malaya is considered difficult jungle terrain.

But the Japanese,

using bicycle infantry and some tanks,

manage to push south...

...to the island of Singapore...

...known as the Gibraltar of the East.

Singapore was our military base,

with its massive naval facilities...

...guns facing into the sea

so that it could protect that position,

and really a military HQ

for the Empire in the Far East.

They begin their assault on February 8th.

Winston Churchill, back in London, is looking on in horror.

He's an Empire man.

He said many times, he didn't come to power

to oversee the liquidation of His Majesty's empire,

but it's crumbling before his eyes.

Churchill cannot abandon the defence of Britain

and the Battle of the Atlantic.

He cannot risk losing the whole of the Mediterranean,

North Africa, and the Middle East, to Axis forces.

So what's got to go?

Unfortunately for Churchill,

he's got to scrimp and save when it comes

to defence in the Far East.

It's just too much for Britain to handle.

The Japanese take advantage

of British military mistakes

and capture the island in only seven days.

Tens of thousands of Commonwealth troops

are trapped and imprisoned.

Singapore was the granite foundation

of the British Empire in Asia, and, boom...

...in the space of days, it falls.

The idea that Japanese forces could go into this historic place,

a real symbol of British power and prestige in Asia,

and take it within such a short time

is absolutely tremendous as far as Japanese are concerned.

This is Britain's Fall of Rome moment

in its Asian empire.

Japan has plunged into the war

and is ravaging the beautiful, fertile, prosperous,

and densely populated lands of the Far East.

The British Empire now for centuries

had been the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

The Japanese had cracked it like an egg.

By the time the shock of Pearl Harbor,

you know, wears off,

the Japanese have taken their empire

and expanded it seemingly overnight.

Japan's Asian offensive has two primary war aims.

First, the seizure of raw materials like oil and rubber.

Second, to replace the Western colonial powers

who have long dominated the region

and establish an empire of their own.

This is one of the most audacious offensives in military history.

In late 1941, early 1942, it's good news every week,

almost every day, coming in.

They are liberating Asia.

They are pushing back white Western colonial power.

The speed and scope of the Japanese offensive

stuns the world.

A year earlier, General Tomoyuki Yamashita,

the commander of the assault on the Philippines,

consults with Japan's Axis ally, Nazi Germany.

Japan is eager to adapt

the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg tactics

to a very different theatre of war.

He was really admiring the German blitzkrieg,

the German lightning war,

and he took the German blitzkrieg

as the role model for a future Japanese war in Southeast Asia.

So we must surprise the enemy. We must be fast.

It's always movement, movement, movement.

For the enemy, for their enemy, for the Allies,

it looks like the Japanese aren't even thinking

about what they're doing, because they're moving so fast

and they're moving constantly.

But this has a kind of shock effect on the troops there

that are trying to defend the peninsula.

The Japanese have learned to move quickly,

move stealthily. They fight well at night,

which is what most armies are not good at.

They are pretty good at operational art;

don't attack strongpoints, envelop the enemy,

put them in untenable positions either in time or space.

And, hence, it defines a lot of their victories early in the war.

The British underestimate the Japanese.

I think part of that was racism.

I think they were astonished

that a non-European race could defeat Europeans in battle.

They didn't consider Asian people capable

of what the Japanese are doing.

After the Japanese land in Malaya,

Singapore's governor,

Sir Shenton Thomas, allegedly says,

"Well, I suppose you'll have to shove the little men off."

But British hubris is no match

for Japanese military prowess.

There had always been this faction

in the Imperial Japanese Army called the Kodoha,

the Imperial Way Faction, whose belief was,

because of Japan's extraordinary fighting spirit

in the blood of their soldiers,

we can overcome the odds.

And that really is drummed into the soldiers.

So there is this esprit de corps within the Japanese Army.

It's guided by this belief in Bushido,

the way of the warrior.

Japanese military discipline is instilled

by physically harsh measures.

Officers abuse non-commissioned officers,

who in turn abuse the men.

You can see in diaries and in letters home people saying,

"I got beaten up today.

I got slapped. I got punched.

I had a rifle butt get me in the stomach."

There is a fair amount of ritualistic abuse

that takes place as they go through

what they would refer to as lessons.

It's all about self-sacrifice.

They are all about suppressing individual needs and desires

for the sense of whatever the nation needs,

for whatever the emperor might need.

In just two months of fighting,

Japan has achieved most of its objectives

and appears to be winning the war...

...except in the Philippines,

where US and Filipino troops are fighting back.

After more than a month of fighting,

US and Filipino forces

continue to resist the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula.

But supplies, food, and ammunition

are running perilously short.

Supplies, provisions, ammunition,

they're strewn about the Philippine Islands,

and they're not where the defenders need them.

The American forces are now completely isolated

and surrounded.

They don't have what they need to survive.

The men spend a lot of their time just foraging for food.

Every snake, monkey,

anything within the Bataan Peninsula is fair game.

The commanding officer of both American

and Filipino troops in the Philippines

is the charismatic and controversial

General Douglas MacArthur.

MacArthur's the son of a Civil War hero.

He's confident, courageous, a proven battlefield leader.

MacArthur's begging for more troops,

for more supplies, for more ships,

but none of those things are coming. The US doesn't have them.

The Japanese, of course, they're coming

after MacArthur's force.

They know they can't leave an army like this with MacArthur

and consider the Philippines have been occupied.

In Washington, President Roosevelt faces

a very difficult situation.

The American people expect the troops to be supported,

but he knows resupplying and reinforcing Bataan

is impossible.

Also, for both political and symbolic reasons,

he must retrieve General MacArthur from the Philippines.

You couldn't afford to let MacArthur be captured.

You couldn't do it

because it was bad for the American spirit.

You can't let a man like this go down.

He's a figure of history.

MacArthur does everything that he can

to inspire his troops in Bataan,

and he's prepared to go down with the ship.

But FDR orders MacArthur to leave the Philippines.

Three weeks later, he sends a rescue operation,

and MacArthur, with his wife and young son,

leaves the Philippines on a small torpedo boat.

He promises, "I will return."

And this is his commitment to the American people,

but, more importantly, to himself.

Knowing that America must make a stand,

General MacArthur issues a final order to his men.

MacArthur orders the garrison to fight to the last,

which is completely unrealistic.

Soldiers are dying in medical tents

merely because there's not enough medicine to save them.

So everybody's in a weakened condition.

But the defence is quite heroic.

But the soldiers on Bataan realise they're being sacrificed.

So "The Battling Bastards of Bataan" is written

by a journalist named Hewlett.

"The Battling Bastards of Bataan...

"no mamas, no papas, no Uncle Sam,

"no aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

"no pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.

And no one gives a damn."

For all the people left in Bataan,

I'm sure that's exactly what they thought.

After four months of fatigue, hunger, and disease...

...the Bataan garrison surrenders.

But their ordeal is just beginning.

The Japanese didn't expect

that so many Allied defenders of the Philippines

would actually surrender and become prisoners of war.

One of the things you're taught in the Japanese military

is you don't surrender.

You're disgracing your family.

You're disgracing your home, your village,

your country, the emperor.

Surrender is dishonourable, not only to yourself but to your family.

Anybody who surrenders is inherently dishonourable.

The idea that you would surrender

and that you would expect to be treated with respect

having done so really is disgusting to a lot of the Japanese soldiers.

The Japanese march the 75,000 American

and Filipino troops

to a POW camp 65 miles north of Bataan.

These men are exhausted. They're malnourished.

The Japanese, they line them up,

and they march them out.

In 110-degree heat with no food, no water,

and Japanese guards just beating you

and kicking you and stabbing you the whole way.

And so, if you're a recruit out there

and you've received umpteen beatings

from your own senior officers on the way

to where you are now, then it's a very short hop

to having a Westerner in front of you, asking for food,

asking for water, and slapping them,

punching them, perhaps even shooting them.

The Japanese will drink their canteens

and then dump the contents out on the roadside.

Wounded troops will fall to the ground.

They will be instantly bayoneted or shot.

They have been taught to regard Western soldiers,

and I think white Western civilians generally,

with really no respect at all.

These people are lesser, almost to the point of being

a slightly lesser species.

Thousands die on what will become known

as the Bataan Death March.

The loss of the Philippines will cripple

America's military capability in the Pacific for months.

It's also a serious blow to morale at home.

In a matter of just a few months,

the Japanese have conquered an empire

of 500 million people.

The Japanese have the upper hand in the Pacific.

It's not clear what or who can stop them.

Spring in Tokyo...

...Japan controls vast areas of the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

To protect this growing empire,

Japan will consolidate its new territory

and push into various island chains

to create an even stronger barrier

against the United States.

The Japanese saying, we got to consolidate

our position quickly.

We have to create a defensive bastion

between the United States and Japan.

So all these island chains threaded like pearls,

they have got to be strengthened.

They've got to be fortified into some kind of defensive perimeter.

Japan deploys thousands of troops

to outposts stretching far into the South Pacific.

The Japanese are making absolutely sure

that what they've got, they will hold.

In the US, war production accelerates.

FDR calls for 60,000 planes

and 125,000 tanks

to be produced in 1942.

And in June, the US Navy

defeats the Japanese at the Battle of Midway.

It's Japan's first decisive defeat.

The victory at Midway has taken place in June 1942,

but this is a naval victory.

It's only directed against Japanese warships.

Eventually, the Americans know

they're going to have to retake real estate.

They're going to actually have to capture islands.

The Japanese plan in the South Pacific

is to build a lot of airstrips,

which are going to allow them to use air power

to defend these stronghold positions.

To counter, America sends in the old breed;

the 1st Marine Division.

Marine Corps was always "soldiers from the sea,"

back in the Revolution when we invade Nassau, right?

We are meant to come from the sea.

That's the mission, in support of the navy.

That's their purpose.

After World War I, what they really start to do

is turn their attention to, what does the next war look like?

And what they start to realise is,

Japan is becoming a power in the Pacific.

If we're going to fight in the Pacific,

then we need to figure out how to conduct amphibious landings.

Amphibious landings on this scale are unprecedented.

Well, there's no sneaking up on an island.

They can see ships coming.

So everything across a beach is a frontal assault...

machine guns, rapid-fire artillery.

It's suicide, terrible idea.

And the Marine Corps goes, "Got it, we'll take that one."

And that's how they get into amphibious operations,

because that would be what was necessary

to operate in the Pacific.

The training for the US Marine Corps

is probably the toughest in the US armed forces at this point.

They are designed for amphibious warfare

but to travel relatively lightly,

because, of course, if you attack a coast from the sea,

you can't take much heavy equipment with you.

Their job is as an elite assault force.

But don't leave them in a campaign for too long,

because they don't have all the heavy weapons

to be able to do the job over a considerable period of time.

The Navy has ships, and the Army has tanks and artillery.

What does the Marine Corps have? It has culture.

So if you join the Marine Corps,

it's because maybe you can be one of those elite.

You know you get to go fight the Japanese.

The majority are new recruits.

They are relatively inexperienced.

They've had some pretty hurried training.

And now all of a sudden, in 1942,

they're going to go into action

against what they know and fear

is a very formidable opponent.

They've read a lot of the stories

about how the Japanese are almost supermen.

Until we actually face them in close combat,

we'll never know if we're good enough to take on these guys.

In the summer of 1942, an American B-17

on routine patrol reports that the Japanese are building

an airstrip on the largest of the Solomon Islands...

...Guadalcanal.

If the Japanese are successful,

they will build an airbase on Guadalcanal

and potentially sever

the lines of communication with Australia,

which is meant to be a jumping-off point

for any campaign that's going to come

from the Southern Pacific.

We cannot let that happen.

The Americans know that Australia is crucial

to their hold over the Pacific.

What's at stake, certainly for the United States Marine Corps,

is, they've hitched their horse to this idea of amphibious operations.

Now they actually have to go execute it.

If the Americans are going to roll back

Japanese power in the Pacific...

...it's going to have to be boots on the ground,

and boots on the ground it will be in Guadalcanal.

Early on August 7, 1942...

...the 1st Marine division approaches Guadalcanal.

They are the first US troops to take the offensive in World War II.

What's interesting about all amphibious landings

is that if they're opposed and you don't really understand

the terrain you're getting into,

there's always the possibility of disaster,

and that was absolutely the case at Guadalcanal.

After the naval bombardment, the Marines will land

and attempt to capture the airfield and secure the island.

The intelligence for the landings at Guadalcanal is so thin

that they don't know what the interior looks like,

and they certainly don't know

how many defending troops are there.

10,000 Marines reach the shore.

To their relief, the landing is unopposed.

There are no Japanese defending the beachhead.

The Japanese have only 2,500 men on the island,

most of them conscripted labour to build the airfield.

The Marines are astonished at how easy it is.

They move inland and then very quickly capture the airfield.

The Marines build a defensive perimeter

around the airstrip,

which they name Henderson Field,

after a Marine dive bomber

killed at the Battle of Midway.

Supplies for the Marines on Guadalcanal

are being held just offshore by a US Navy task force

anchored in Savo Sound.

But two days after the landing,

the calm of Savo Sound is shattered.

It's the middle of the night.

These American cruisers are asleep.

They don't come to battle stations quickly.

In the space of 25 to 30 minutes,

the Japanese have sunk four Allied cruisers,

killed more than 1,000 Allied sailors.

So it's a disastrous defeat for the Americans,

the worst naval defeat since Pearl Harbor.

You've got bodies washing up on the shore.

It's grisly.

So many American ships are sunk

that Savo Sound is christened Ironbottom Sound.

Vulnerable to air attack, the task force pulls out

before they've unloaded all the Marines' food and ammunition.

General Vandegrift is the commander

of the 1st Marine Division.

He's understandably upset that the Navy have skedaddled.

But it's absolutely vital also

that he gives a sense of confidence to his men.

We're going to get through this. We are US Marines, after all.

The first wave of Japanese troops land east

of the Marines' defensive perimeter on August 18th.

Their objective... Henderson Airfield.

The airfield is in a key position

to maintain the shipping lanes from America to Australia.

That supply line is like the Allied sciatic nerve.

So this is a very serious development.

It must have been very spooky for the Marines.

They are abandoned on the island.

They can hear the Japanese ships coming in.

They know there must be trouble ahead.

What options do ground forces have?

You can attack, you can defend, and you can retreat.

Well, guess what. The Marines can no longer retreat.

So, no matter what, we're going to have to fight it out.

The untested Marines are about to face

Japanese soldiers for the first time.

On Guadalcanal, the 1st Marine Division

is dug in around Henderson Airfield,

bracing for a Japanese assault.

Commanding the Japanese troops

is the veteran colonel Kiyonao Ichiki.

The Marines know that all the Japanese have done

up to this point is win.

They start to almost have these superpowers.

They're quiet at night. They're all snipers.

They don't require any rest. They're fanatical.

All of these things start to build almost a super-samurai adversary.

On August 21st,

Ichiki's troops attack the Marine lines.

The Marines respond with rifle, mortar,

and machine gun fire.

The Japanese have got about 200 guys

trying to get across this sandspit, and they're mown down.

Ichiki just sloughs that off. He'll launch two more attacks.

The Marines will beat them back.

The fighting is brutal...

Often hand-to-hand.

Some Japanese soldiers even use ancestral samurai swords.

The battle doesn't end until 5:00 that evening.

44 Marines are dead...

But nearly 900 Japanese soldiers are killed.

The Marines are stunned.

How could a battalion commander throw 900 men away?

Who would do that?

After the battle,

Colonel Ichiki commits suicide.

Just a single Japanese soldier surrenders.

They may look dead, but if they've got a weapon,

they're going to shoot you when you go past.

If they've got a grenade, they may blow themselves up

with a grenade to kill you. This is a different kind of enemy.

The US Marines on Guadalcanal realise

that to combat that and to protect themselves,

they're going to have to be equally ruthless.

And this produced an incredibly brutal form of warfare

that I think was unequalled in the Second World War.

The Marines now understand what will be required

to defend Guadalcanal.

The island has become a proving ground

for a generation of young Americans.

The Japanese conduct regular airstrikes on Henderson Field...

And continue to move men and supplies

into attacking positions.

Every night the Japanese are using fast transports

and depositing troops and supplies on Guadalcanal,

via what's going to be known as the Tokyo Express.

They are absolutely determined to retake this island.

Their whole strategy

for moving forward in the Southern Pacific

is based on recapturing Guadalcanal,

and they're going to pretty much send

as many troops as they can to make sure that they do the job.

Vandegrift and his staff start taking preventative action

in case they're overwhelmed,

so they start burning vital intelligence papers.

By October, the Japanese force

has more than doubled its size.

But the US Navy is able to resupply the Marines

from newly constructed supply bases.

Guadalcanal is now a battle of attrition...

...who will give in first?

The Japanese are very good at night attacks,

and so nights are horrific.

Imagine being a 19- or 20-year-old American kid,

and you're in a foxhole, maybe with one other person, right?

One guy sleeps. The other is on watch.

and you can hear the other foxholes with your compatriots,

but they're not visible in the dark.

Remember, these islands are really black as night.

And you hear screaming from another foxhole.

This is life or death.

You go to sleep, you may not wake up.

This man was with you 24 hours ago.

Now his throat's cut in the foxhole next to you.

This is a war of man against man.

This is personal.

And as darkness comes down every night,

the fear grows deeper and deeper.

Even though they're deprived of sleep,

lack sufficient food,

and battle tropical diseases,

the Marines maintain their morale.

But their casualty rate is climbing,

and they begin to suspect they're being abandoned.

A lot of people are catching malaria, dysentery.

They don't have enough food.

They're just becoming increasingly incapable

of functioning.

General Vandegrift estimates that less than half

his force is fit enough to fight.

The Japanese are still coming.

Guadalcanal is going to be where the Japanese teach

the Americans the cost of punching a hole

in that defence perimeter.

They'll say, look at the effort it took.

Look at the number of men you lost on Guadalcanal.

How long do you think it'll take you

to batter your way across the Pacific?

One night, two months into the battle...

...the Japanese deliver a bombardment designed

to crush the Marines' spirits.

But the Marines just dig their foxholes deeper.

1,000 shells are sent over in 80 minutes.

We're talking about 14-inch shells,

described by some of the guys like the weight of small cars.

Most of the Marines' planes at Henderson Field

are destroyed in the bombardment.

The US reinforces the Marines...

...but the Japanese reinforce their troops as well.

Control of the island

and the entire US campaign in the Pacific is at stake.

All eyes are on Guadalcanal.

In America, Guadalcanal is front-page news.

It's on everyone's minds.

It was observed,

Guadalcanal is not a name, but an emotion.

You young Americans today are conducting yourselves

in a manner that is worthy of the highest,

proudest traditions of our nation.

All the attention of the American public

is focused on this island. Roosevelt knows

this is the first big American ground offensive of the war.

It's going horribly wrong.

They have to hold on to Guadalcanal.

Roosevelt sends a note to the Joint Chiefs and says,

"I want to be sure of something:

that every available man, ship, and plane

is being devoted to the struggle on Guadalcanal."

We here at home are supremely conscious

of our obligations to you.

We will not let you down.

The campaign gets a new commander,

Admiral William "Bull" Halsey.

Halsey's coming into this campaign

is like a defibrillator on the heart.

Halsey looks the part.

Halsey is this leathery, old commander

who's been successful.

He's a can-do, combative guy.

He can't wait to get to the Japanese.

His line was, "You hit 'em hard, you hit 'em fast,

and you hit 'em often."

This is entirely in keeping with the mentality

of your average Marine.

Admiral Halsey promises the Marines

all the support they need on Guadalcanal.

In just a few weeks, he gets the chance to demonstrate it.

A large Japanese fleet

carrying 14,000 troops

is approaching Guadalcanal.

This body of water is the size of a bathtub.

So risking your battleships

to send them up to Ironbottom Sound,

I mean, it honestly makes the hair stand up

on the back of my neck even now.

But Halsey is determined that he is going to fight

with everything that he's got,

and so he pushes all his chips into the middle of the table.

Halsey instructs the US Navy task force

to attack the Japanese fleet in the sound.

For two days, American and Japanese warships

battle in Savo Sound.

The fighting is fierce.

It's ship-to-ship combat at its most intense.

Nearly 2,000 Americans are killed...

...but the Japanese are only able to land

a quarter of their force.

Bull Halsey and the US Navy have turned the tide...

...and the Japanese begin to withdraw from Guadalcanal.

Most of the Marines on Guadalcanal are relieved by the US Army.

A generation of Americans have proven to the world

that they're capable of fighting this war.

But Guadalcanal has also revealed

how long and difficult this conflict is going to be

and how steep the price of victory.

It was the first clash of arms

between the Japanese Army

and American Marines and soldiers.

And in that victory, the Americans came out ahead.

Halsey put it best when he said, prior to the battle,

the Japanese advanced at their will.

After the battle, they retreated at ours.

It's a long road to Tokyo,

but Guadalcanal is the first step.

The Marines who hold the line for months on Guadalcanal

are sure their country has forgotten them.

But when the 1st Marine Division is relieved by army units

and sent to Australia to recuperate,

they learn that they're actually heroes.

That year, in 1942,

Hitler escalates his campaign

against the Jews of Europe

to an unimaginable level.

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