Original subtitles

For almost four years,

American soldiers and Marines in the Pacific

have struggled across beaches, through jungles

and atop mountains to subdue a nation that refuses to surrender.

The effort has been immense.

More is required.

In the spring of 1945,

the United States will start the final push

to defeat the Japanese empire.

All wars changed 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 vanquished.

With the Rhine's west bank secured,

Britain expects other crossings of Germany's river of destiny,

after a law to build up our own strength,

and after that, the end of the European war should not be far off.

In America in the spring of 1945,

there is hope that the war in Europe is nearing its end.

Husbands and fathers,

boyfriends and brothers

might finally be coming home.

It is front and centre on the American mind.

How quickly can we get to Berlin

and get the soldiers home?

The public get this sort of an attitude that, you know,

hey, the war's almost over.

They'll be coming home, but it's almost like a marathon

and you see the finish line in the distance,

and so you know you can give one last kick and then somebody says,

"Actually there's another three miles to go."

Victory in Europe seems within reach.

Victory over Tokyo remains on the far horizon.

For months, hundreds of B-29s have been striking Japanese cities

to marginal effect.

The army air forces believed

that a sufficient amount of pinpoint bombing from high altitude

would take out Japanese industry

and make it impossible for them to continue the war.

It didn't work.

Bombing from 30,000 feet, the winds were too strong,

blew the bombs all over the place.

Under the command of General Curtis LeMay,

the Air Force alters its tactics.

On March 9th, 1945,

LeMay's B-29s will attack Tokyo from only 5,000 feet using a new weapon.

Bombs filled with napalm.

Napalm is this gel combined with gasoline that will stick to things

and then it catches fire and it makes it very, very hard to put out.

It's for starting fires that are designed to just go out of control.

And the reason it's gonna be so destructive is that Tokyo is

mostly made of wooden paper and this is just going to explode.

It'll be incredibly inflammable.

The argument was that

if you destroy the housing units of the Japanese workers,

they wouldn't be able to go to work and build the planes and tanks.

They needed to continue the conflict.

But the outcome was absolutely horrific.

It is just complete devastation in Tokyo.

100,000 people were killed.

We think of Dresden as being the worst single moment

in the European Theatre of Operations.

The fire storm at Dresden,

25,000 were lost there,

but in Tokyo

there's a 100,000 killed in a single operation.

The whole city was a sea of fire.

It was so hot that canals start to boil

and the fires eat up so much of the oxygen that a lot of the people

who die asphyxiate because there's no oxygen left.

A huge proportion of the city is simply gone in one night.

The destruction is immense.

16 square miles of Tokyo are obliterated.

After this one raid, a million Japanese no longer have a home.

It's unprecedented.

General LeMay later I recall that

he would've been tried as a war criminal

if United States lost in the war.

To survey the damage,

Emperor Hirohito emerges from his bunker beneath the Imperial Palace.

Emperor Hirohito has been pretty isolated throughout the war,

but he does have a sense that the war is not exactly

going as his generals and admirals are telling him.

So when the fire bombing in Tokyo happened,

that only intensifies his desire

to start looking for ways to end the war.

For Emperor Hirohito, the big concern is not what might

happen to the ordinary Japanese people,

but if the Americans make it onto Japanese soil,

what might happen to him?

What might happen to the imperial line

that goes back centuries in Japan?

He says, "I can't possibly face my ancestors

having sacrificed the throne."

The emperor of Japan is considered to be divine

with immense authority over his people.

But Hirohito rarely exerts that authority

in political or military matters.

There's the committee for the supreme direction of the war,

which is six people, two people from the army,

two people from the navy, the prime minister and the foreign minister.

Those six are the only six that had any real say within Japan.

The civilian leaders understood they couldn't win the war,

but the military are determined to fight on.

Japanese military leaders have lived their whole life

under a professional code.

That surrender is so dishonourable you would rather die,

no matter what the suffering, the warrior does not surrender.

For all the firebombing, for all the destruction

already rained on Japan, there's no sign of surrender.

The American high command now believes that the Japanese

would not surrender short of an invasion

and occupation of the Japanese home islands.

The United States is gathering its forces for the next phase

of its assault on Imperial Japan.

The capture of Okinawa,

the largest island on the Ryukyu chain.

Okinawa is just 400 miles south of Kyushu,

which is the most southerly of the Japanese home islands,

and therefore can be used to launch an invasion fleet.

So Okinawa is absolutely vital to the Americans.

Okinawa would be defended

by about 100,000 Japanese frontline troops

and also native Okinawan militia forces.

They know that the Americans have overwhelming superiority

in the air and at sea.

The plan for the defence of Okinawa

is don't go for a Banzai charge.

Instead, they will prepare these defensive fortifications,

let the Americans come to them and take them out that way.

Using native Okinawans as forced labour,

the Japanese build a network of bunkers and tunnels.

And the idea was kill four, five Americans

before you are killed yourself.

The Japanese overall strategy is to make the Americans pay

so much for Okinawa that an invasion of the Japanese home islands

would be unthinkable.

The garrison on Okinawa is only half the Japanese strategy

for defending the island.

The other element of the plan is to use kamikaze,

but in far greater numbers than ever been used before.

The Japanese recognise that when the Americans conduct

these amphibious landing operations, the ships offshore are the lifeline

that's keeping the battalions ashore in the fight.

So they came up with this idea of these organised waves

of kamikaze attacks.

And if you launch 300 kamikaze at the American fleet

and you take out seven aircraft carriers or something,

that is a war-changing thing.

The Battle of Okinawa starts with the largest invasion

of the war in the Pacific.

A massive effort combining naval, air and ground support.

60,000 soldiers and marines are bound for Okinawa's western beaches.

The invasion force will land on Hagushi Bay,

then the Marines will sweep north, and the army south,

to take control of the entire island.

The biggest danger in an amphibious operation

is the actual landing because you are incredibly vulnerable.

You are out in the open.

The combat troops going up first.

Both Marine and Army have been told to expect up to 80% casualties.

So if you've drawn the unlucky straw of being one of the first units,

you're pretty convinced not many of you're gonna survive.

They get to the beaches start walking up it,

body's tense waiting for the bullets to come...

...and there is nothing.

They're experiencing virtually no opposition.

And so there was a thought that

hey, maybe Okinawa's not gonna turn out to be a big bloodbath after all.

The first few days go very well for the landing forces.

They cut across all the way to the other side of the island

against minimal opposition.

It's looking too good to be true at this stage.

Military leaders believed that Japan must fight to protect

the honour of the country.

And these kamikaze pilots are the chosen ones

to go to this divine mission to protect their homeland.

They really believe that that would turn the tide of the war.

The pilots are young, many of them are teenagers,

they're ill-trained.

They don't even have enough fuel to come back from this flight

if they wanted to. They know they're going to die.

So when they get to the first American ship they see,

they attack.

For the first five days of the invasion of Okinawa,

there's no opposition to the massive US fleet surrounding the island.

But just after noon on April 6th, the Japanese arrive in force.

Imagine we're on the bridge of one of these destroyers

80 miles north of Okinawa.

The kamikaze come from starboard, from port, from high, from low.

So you feel like you're in a boxing ring with about five other boxers

attacking you from every direction.

Hundreds of kamikaze at a time thrown against the invading fleet.

They thought with the sheer numbers,

they could take out the capital ships;

that's battleships and aircraft carriers

and drive off the US fleet in its entirety.

The kamikaze don't really have much success

against aircraft carriers...

...but 300+ ships are targeted by the kamikazes.

More than 36 of them sink.

It is more devastating than any conventional bombing attack

has been in the war so far, but it's not enough.

What the kamikaze tells me is that the Japanese knew the war was lost,

at least by conventional means.

There's nothing more dangerous in warfare than a cornered enemy.

The Japanese are gonna go down in flames

but will never surrender, never.

For the US Navy,

the battle against the kamikaze at Okinawa

is bloodier than any previous confrontation

of the entire Pacific War.

And American ground forces are now facing

increasing resistance as well.

The force that had landed on the beaches is pushing south toward

a place called Kakazu Ridge

where they encounter the first line of Japanese defences.

It's the first time the Americans meet serious opposition

and it stops them dead.

The Japanese have created a defensive system that goes

right across the whole width of the island,

so they can't be out-flanked.

American troops endure days of non-stop enemy fire.

This is attritional, grizzly, meat grinding fighting,

and that's just the first line of defence.

There are gonna be many more beyond this.

What we thought was gonna be a cakewalk is anything but.

April 12th.

The American people learn Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

the man they elected four times is dead.

Vice president Harry S. Truman, a former judge and senator

from Missouri is sworn in hours later.

Roosevelt had led the country through the Great Depression

and through the war.

In the 82 days that Truman had been vice president,

he met with Roosevelt all of twice.

He really knows nothing about what's going on with the war effort.

He didn't think he was up to the job

and there are people who would say he was right.

The new president is immediately confronted

with enormous challenges.

It's important for the wartime president to demonstrate

that he has a plan for bringing this war to a successful conclusion

and as rapidly as possible.

It's clear to the American population that Germany

is on its last legs, but Japan is still fighting hard.

The question really is,

how many American lives am I going to lose to end this war?

That's the whole ball game for Harry Truman.

Truman meets with Secretary of War Henry Stimson

and Army General Leslie Groves.

The agenda is classified.

They hand Truman a document.

Truman opens it up and reads it

and the memo begins with these dramatic words.

"Within four months, we shall, in all probability, have completed

the most terrible weapon ever known in human history,

one bomb which can destroy a whole city."

The Manhattan Project, the top secret American program

to develop the world's first atomic bombs.

For three years, thousands of scientists and engineers

have worked on the most powerful weapon in history.

It is set to be tested mid-summer.

Truman and his commanders are ready to pay any price

to bring this war to an end.

But an invasion of the Japanese home islands

will be bloody on an unimaginable scale.

Higher losses than any previous campaign,

either in the Pacific War or in the war in Europe.

The Manhattan project, the attempt to develop atomic weapons.

If that proves to be successful,

if those tests prove out, then that is an alternative.

The war in Europe is over.

The Nazi Third Reich has been destroyed.

But for war-weary America and its allies,

the war in the Pacific continues,

and many of the men who helped defeat Germany

may now be required to fight Japan.

At this point, people in the military knew

that a lot of these units are gonna need to be transferred.

Just because the war in Europe is over, don't get excited.

We're gonna need those troops in the Pacific.

After two months of ceaseless combat,

Marine and Army units break through

the main Japanese defensive line on Okinawa.

Japanese troops are forced to retreat

and attempt a last stand on the Kiyan Peninsula.

By this point, the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa

are low on ammunition,

they are starving, they're exhausted,

but they realise that the next step for the allies after Okinawa

is the home islands.

They are all that stand between the allies and their families,

their homes.

They are the last line of defence and everyone is depending on them.

Although the Americans have gained ground...

...the more you push and the more terrain that has been captured,

the more dangerous and costly the battle is becoming.

But the Americans know we're making progress.

If war is a clash of wills,

the United States is a nation willing to fight it out to the end.

Organised resistance on Okinawa ends On June 22nd.

The Japanese army's commanding general

and his chief of staff both commit suicide by ritual seppuku.

100,000 Japanese servicemen are killed.

On the American side, the casualties are 50,000 killed and wounded.

These are the worst of battle casualties in the Pacific War

for the Americans,

worse than all of that are the number of civilians killed.

Up to 125,000,

which is a third of the population caught in the crossfire.

This is just Okinawa.

What happens when we get to their home islands?

The cost is gonna be enormous.

This war ain't over. It's not even close to being over.

American leaders understand the Battle of Okinawa

is a frightening preview of what to expect

when Japan's home islands are invaded.

Truman has a meeting with General Marshall

and the joint chiefs of staff on Operation Downfall;

the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

This plan goes back to the Roosevelt presidency.

Planning is going forward

and the most interested person at the meeting is George Marshall.

He wants Truman to sign off on it.

Operation Downfall will be a two-pronged operation,

the first called Operation Olympic.

The idea of Operation Olympic is to invade the southern island of Kyushu

and seize naval bases and air bases while pushing Japanese forces north.

The critical phase, though, of Operation Downfall

is what's code-named Operation Coronet.

It's the invasion of Honshu, which is where Tokyo itself sits.

So this would inevitably end

in either the destruction or capture of the Japanese capital.

Think about the scale of Operation Downfall as a whole.

5 million men involved,

up to a million British and Commonwealth troops,

4 million American troops, and this is gonna dwarf D-Day

in the logistics and the naval of forces that are gonna be involved.

Then the forces that are actually gonna land

and most importantly of all is gonna dwarf the number of casualties.

If the allies had to invade Japan,

that would be the largest amphibious assault ever undertaken.

And the Americans were gonna bear almost the entire weight of it,

and the President understood that

better than most of the American public did.

Truman specifically says to his chiefs of staff,

I don't want an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.

So Truman, in June of '45,

is looking at a brutal final act against Japan.

But it is very important to Harry Truman

that he always be seen as the decider.

The buck stops here.

Truman understands that this war with Japan needs to end,

the invasion looks horrible.

But what's option B in this situation?

Even at this late date in June,

there's no sense that the Manhattan Project is going to work.

They really don't know if they have a bomb yet.

And so Truman signs off on Operation Downfall,

the two big invasions of Japan.

Stage one, Operation Olympic is set for November 1st.

The clock is ticking.

The Japanese army's plan is to fight to the bitter end

with a decisive and final battle in the home islands.

For a while now, the Japanese army had been planning

what they call Operation Ketsugo, which means operation decisive.

It's a plan to defend Kyushu. They think they've got

perhaps a million men that they can put into the field.

They also want to put civilians into the field.

Their idea is that they will make things so terrifying,

that it will stop the Americans

trying to do anything anywhere else in the home islands.

Women and children were going through the military drills

where everybody was given a bamboo spear.

They are essentially mobilising everybody older than 12 years old...

...to fight to the death.

In July, for the first time, President Truman

meets with both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at Potsdam,

formerly the home of Prussian kings and the German Kaiser.

Europe is devastated.

It's a massive disaster zone.

The point of the Potsdam Conference

is for these three governments to come together

and figure out how these countries are gonna be rebuilt.

But Truman has his eyes on a completely different problem.

He huddles with Secretary of War Stimson,

and what are they talking about?

They're talking about the Pacific.

With Operation Downfall months away,

President Truman seeks assurance that the Soviets

will participate in the war against Japan as pledged.

All this time, Japan and the Soviet Union had been neutral.

They had not been at war with one another.

Stalin promised within 90 days of the end of the war in Europe,

he'll join the war against Japan.

He promised that to Roosevelt back at Yalta.

So Truman hopes that's a go.

But at the start of the conference,

Stimson receives a coded cable from the War Department.

"Operated on this morning, diagnosis not yet complete,

but results seem satisfactory.

Dr Groves is pleased."

Truman now knew that the atomic bomb had been detonated successfully.

In this moment,

we have this amazing window into Truman's thinking,

because he was keeping a diary.

Truman realises this bomb could be a short circuit to ending the war.

When Truman hears that the atomic bomb actually works,

he knows they have to use it,

but he wants to give the Japanese

one last chance to surrender before he does.

President Truman, along with Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek,

the leader of the Republic of China, issue the Potsdam Declaration,

a warning to Japan of what awaits

if they don't surrender unconditionally.

But Stimson suggests

they consider allowing Hirohito to keep his throne.

Stimson understands the constitutional and cultural position

that the emperor plays in Japanese life, this kind of demigod status.

So he insists on inserting into the declaration,

assurance that they won't try the emperor for war crimes.

But beyond that, it will be unconditional surrender,

and no other terms will be acceptable.

Also in this document is wordage

that does not mention the atomic bomb,

but it does say that if unconditional surrender

is not coming, the destruction was going to be historic and massive.

The Office of War Information releases the Potsdam Declaration

and the Japanese receive it via radio from San Francisco.

Prime Minister Suzuki and Emperor Hirohito

are of the opinion that

the Potsdam Declaration is not really vindictive.

They see some hope.

Emperor Hirohito himself, at this point,

he is open to accepting it, but he

understands his role as an emperor.

There are only certain times for him to weigh in.

The emperor and the Peace Party

are in an impossible position here.

I mean, if they respond positively to the ultimatum,

the military might turn against them,

but if they completely ignore it,

there's a danger that the Americans are actually gonna carry out

what they suggest.

Two days later,

Japan's Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki holds a press conference.

When press asks about Potsdam Declaration,

Suzuki uses the word "mokusatsu."

The best translation for that is "no comment"

or I'm not going to respond to that question.

However, the word mokusatsu can also mean we're going to ignore it.

I think the Japanese media, they're very quick to interpret it

in the most hostile and negative way.

Then the American media pick it up,

then that becomes the view of the American administration as well

that the Japanese are rejecting the Potsdam Declaration.

And to Truman, the Japanese response is plain and clear.

He believes that the Japanese told him to go to hell.

By early 1945,

Tinian Island in the Marianas is the largest air base on Earth.

Hundreds of B-29s have taken off

from its multiple runways to bomb Japan.

But there's a very mysterious restricted area

at one part of the base.

No one really knows what's going on up there.

It belongs to some unit called the 509th Composite Group.

These are the preparations for the arrival of the atomic bomb.

Components for the atomic bombs are delivered in late July

and carefully assembled over the following days.

So the Manhattan Project was able to produce enough uranium

and plutonium for three bombs.

And after the Trinity test,

the Americans only had two bombs in the arsenal.

Truman makes the decision to drop the bomb.

He legitimately wants to save US casualties

and bring this war to an end rapidly.

At the same time, he wants to assert his authority as president.

It is one of the most consequential decisions that...

...any nation has ever made,

and no one knows what was gonna happen.

But President Truman did understand

that this was of a different scale and scope.

He compares it to the biblical flood in his diary,

"As the world was once destroyed by water for Noah,

perhaps now it'll be destroyed by fire and destruction."

By design, the target of the first atomic bomb is a city

relatively unscathed by the war.

American military leaders want the Japanese to understand

the awful destructive power of this new weapon.

That morning in Hiroshima is an ordinary morning.

People are going about their business.

Some people are going into the factories to work.

They're still wondering why they've not yet been bombed

and they're expecting it more or less any day.

And then people see this light in the sky,

sun shining off a single aircraft.

The first thing is the flashing light

as if sun explodes,

then a noise and a shock.

The people who were near the epicentre evaporate.

The casualties mount until you get between 90,000

and 160,000 people who've died.

The dominant image that survivors give of Hiroshima

is of one of the Buddhist hells.

One thing really difficult for historians to jive with

is this idea that Truman has chosen military targets

and he writes even in his diary, the words, "And not women and children."

We'll never really know.

Did he really feel that this was a military target

or was he writing that in his diary understanding that

history for generations was gonna judge him for this?

Truman is at sea coming home from Potsdam

when he received the news.

Later that same day, he goes on the airwaves to address

the American people and to tell them what has just happened.

He says it's a new type of bomb that America has used it

and will continue to use it until Japan surrenders.

If they do not now accept our terms,

they may expect a rain of ruin from the air,

the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

Even with Hiroshima in ruins, Japanese leaders do not surrender.

The peace camp pushed for immediate acceptance

of the Potsdam Declaration,

but the military side insists on continuing the war.

The reasoning is that may be the only atomic bomb that they had.

So they're still at the stalemate.

And then the Soviet Union declares war on Japan.

Just as Stalin promised,

exactly 90 days after the surrender of Germany,

one and a half million Soviet troops

pour across the border into Japanese occupied Manchuria.

The Japanese aren't aware that for months the Soviets

have amassed their armour on the borders with Manchuria.

But now the Russians are rolling into Manchuria

and they're rolling over the Japanese.

And now you've got the prospect of the Soviets,

not just making their way into Manchuria,

but possibly across to the Japanese home islands.

For Japan, it's a complete disaster.

On the same day the Red Army moves into Manchuria,

B-29s appear over Nagasaki.

One carries an atomic bomb.

The US has just one more atom bomb left.

But the whole idea is to give Japan the impression

that the US has an unlimited stock

and that if Japan won't surrender,

the US will continue to unleash atom bombs on Japan.

Between 60 and 70,000 people are killed instantly.

Prime Minister Suzuki convenes the war council

and the discussion is, are we gonna accept the Potsdam Declaration?

And the answer from the military is no.

You've had two atomic bombs.

You've had the Soviet invasion of Manchuria,

and yet the Supreme War Council is still split.

The war faction, the military,

they're absolutely not willing to consider unconditional surrender.

That's when Prime Minister Suzuki makes the very important move

saying that we need to ask the emperor.

This is a standout moment.

This is something you would never normally do.

There's a sense Hirohito is semi-divine

and shouldn't be troubled with the decision making process.

It's a really extraordinary step.

But Hirohito, I think, sees the gravity of the situation.

He sees that this is a moment where it's his responsibility

to step up as the leader effectively.

And he says,

"We must bear the unbearable and suffer the insufferable.

We will end the war and then move on."

I have received this afternoon

a message from the Japanese government.

I deem this reply, a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration,

which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.

And people go nuts.

Tens of thousands of people gather at the gate of the White House.

The world has been holding its breath since the war began.

Now it is over and there is great celebration.

One of the crucial factors in ending this war is that you have

Harry Truman, an accidental president who had to be briefed

on the wartime situation when he enters the Oval Office.

And Hirohito, who has never really made political decisions.

They assert themselves and bring the war to an end in August of 1945.

Batan, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa,

once obscure points on a map,

now each place has a new meaning.

In Japan on August 15th,

Emperor Hirohito addresses a nation that has never surrendered.

Most Japanese had never heard the emperor's voice before,

but the Jewel Voice Broadcast as it became known,

is essential to getting most Japanese used to the idea

of laying their arms and admitting surrender.

When the Japanese hear that the war is over,

there has to be a combination of feelings.

We sacrificed all these people, all this money

and these cities of Japan, and we lost.

Shock, sadness,

but also this incredible sense of grief that we let the emperor down.

Our lack of effort let the emperor down.

The Japanese accepted the idea of surrender.

The allies accepted the idea of Hirohito

remaining on the Japanese throne, and that was the end of the war.

September 2nd, 1945,

on the deck of the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay,

the Japanese sign the instrument of surrender,

the largest conflict in world history

closes with a signature and a speech.

Douglas MacArthur marks the occasion.

"It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind,

that from this solemn occasion,

a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past."

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