Original subtitles

(Dramatic percussions)

Narrator: The remote pacific site

where a strange collection of structures

caught American forces unaware.

The Japanese military fortified everything they could,

cave systems, tunnel systems

so that when the allied forces finally landed

they would be entering in to a meat grinder.

The derelict Irish prison

where the inmates struggled to break in, as well as out.

A lot of very high risk inmates arrive

and this place simply isn't designed to hold them.

A massive complex in France with an explosive past.

Woman: No-one knows what happened for sure,

everything disappeared in one huge bang.

Was it deliberate? Was it accidental?

Was it sabotage?

And the Spanish ghost town

where us freedom fighters fought to the death for a better world.

We see a lot of graffiti

which itself has some real significance

in solving this mystery.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Forged through years of toil, now haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In the western pacific

foreboding ruins scattered across the Japanese island of ie jima

make for a confounding site.

This island is so unusual looking, it's almost entirely flat

but then you have this bulging mountain

standing right in the middle of it.

Looking down on it, it looks almost like an aircraft carrier.

And someone has built three runways here.

You'll see some old airfields

with weeds growing up, you know, through cracks in the pavement.

It's not immediately clear who was flying in

or out of this place.

The modern day town hides the first clue.

There's a building that looks completely out of place

in a 21st century context,

it looks battle scarred, it's got gaping holes in it.

Structures hidden below ground are no less intriguing.

And it has a lot of naturally occurring caves,

some of which could be engineered in to excellent defensive positions.

They're pretty well sheltered, from the outside you have no idea

of what a large complex exists behind those entrances.

What links the disused runway to the blown out building

and the fortified caves that lie below this island?

A torn out concrete shell hiding in the modern day town of ie

is the only building on the island that survived the second world war.

Local guide tamae takamichi knows exactly what this place once was.

Translation: "This building is the remains

"of the municipal pawn shop.

"It was built before the war and made out of concrete."

The one old concrete building left on this island

from the old days is the pawn shop.

The pawn shop is pretty much the local bank

and that means that it's got to be a strong safe place.

It has been torn to pieces, it has clearly been in a fight.

Translation: "The big holes are damaged from artillery.

"And the small ones these are from rifle fire.

1,000 miles from Tokyo,

iejima is part of the Japanese archipelago.

Since we're here in the pacific ocean,

a very contested space near the home islands of Japan,

this place obviously had military significance.

Iejima has got some nice long runways

that go straight out over the pacific ocean,

that means it's easy to take off, it's easy to land,

it's a big safe airport.

During the second world war

these overgrown airfields were among the largest in Asia,

the Japanese had built them to aid their expansion in the pacific.

But by 1944 they'd been forced to change their tactics.

The Japanese had learned they didn't have the resources

to stop the Americans any more.

So, instead of going out to meet in battle out over the ocean

they dug in, they went to ground.

Meanwhile from across the pacific,

the Americans envied iejima's airfields.

If you don't have iejima

then you don't have that clear path that takes you

from the American mainland to Hawaii

and step by step across the pacific to take Japan.

Iejima is the ideal place to land heavy military equipment.

The island itself has got some nice neatly shelving beaches

around it's perimeter.

Then around the island you can see

a whole bunch of entrances to little caves.

These coastal caves lie below

the flat stone plateau that covers this place.

Punctuated only once.

By mount gusuku, the spectacular peak at it's heart.

The island itself is pretty natural as a defensive position

because the pinnacle in the middle of the island

enable an all around defence.

(Dramatic music)

On home turf the Japanese knew

just how to defend this peculiar place.

What the Japanese wanted to do ideally

was to make it difficult for the Americans to land

by using artillery

and defend the island in depth using infantry

who were comparatively poorly prepared.

The Japanese smashed the airfields,

built pillbox positions and laid mines

but most importantly they made full use of mount gusuku.

Below ground this limestone peak is riddled with tunnels and caves

which the Japanese plan to use to move around undetected.

They secured the tunnel entrances,

built machine gun positions and fortified caves.

Some three-stories high with look outs across the island.

They fortified everything they could from cave systems, tunnel systems

so that when the allied forces finally landed

they would be entering into a meat grinder.

Iejima's civilian population took refuge

in the caves round the coast.

Local residents like tamae takamichi still revered this place.

Translation: "It's a sacred place on iejima,

"during the war many people sought refuge here.

"This place received many mortar shell attacks from the sea

"so people came here because it was safe."

With no idea what was going on underground,

when the American forces finally arrived

they weren't prepared for an unseen and deadly foe.

16 April 1945

the us army invades iejima.

The Americans had spent the whole second world war

learning how to conduct amphibious operations.

But the thousands of Japanese soldiers installed in mount gusuku

could see their every move.

The Americans advance to the town of ie

was under constant ambush.

And they couldn't tell civilians and Japanese soldiers apart.

Translation: "During the battle of iejima,

"civilians also took up arms.

"Some civilians were told by the Japanese army

"to fight with guns but they mainly used grenades."

Slow progress and the unexpected loss of hundreds of men

meant the Americans had to take the high ground of mount gusuku

which lay beyond the town of ie.

The gruelling conflict was witnessed

by the famous us war reporter Ernie pyle.

Ernie pyle was an American newspaper columnist

who was beloved for his devotion to the troops.

He was one of these war correspondents with a,

with a human touch, he really knew the gis.

Pyle was travelling with the troops near the town of ie

when they came under fire, a sniper hit him in the head.

Pyle was killed instantly.

True to his nature

he was pressing right up close to be near the action

when he was killed on iejima.

With pyle gone,

the Americans were determined to get the job done.

Beyond pyle's memorial

today there's one other remnant of the bitter battle that played out.

The shell of the concrete pawn shop.

This building did not necessarily serve

any strategic purpose for the United States

but it was caught in the crossfire.

They pulverised this pawn shop

on the way to pulverising the Japanese headquarters.

The Americans eventually took mount gusuku

but traces still lie below this place

that suggest for the people of ie the full horror of the war

was not yet over.

The Japanese military convinced the population

that the American forces would be like wild animals

and no-one would survive their onslaught.

On ie island they actually issued people hand grenades.

If all else fails they were to kill themselves

rather than suffer the disgrace of surrender.

In iejima's coastal caves

hundreds of civilians took their own lives,

those in the near tear cave didn't believe the propaganda

and chose not to.

Translation: "Many died inside these caves.

"However at this particular cave that tragedy didn't happen."

After a gruelling six-day battle, the Americans took iejima,

in total almost 5,000 Japanese and more than 1,000 American soldiers

lost their lives in the fight for iejima.

And some claim that Japan's resolute defence of this tiny island

led the us to drop the atomic bombs

that finally ended the war in this region.

But iejima still had one more role to play.

Translation: "At the end of the war

"the Japanese went to the Philippines via here."

After taking off from iejima

the delegation agreed peace terms in Manilla

before submitting to a public display.

We've all heard about the Japanese surrendering to general mcarthur

on the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay

but in fact the initial surrender happened here

at one of these air strips.

This is an almost forgotten part of the history of the war.

Today little remains of the bloody battle for iejima.

But the memory of the thousands of soldiers and civilians

who died here lives on.

Translation: "This place is one of the few places left from the war,

"not only for iejima but also for okinawa.

"So we are preserving it carefully."

Marooned in the chilly waters of the Celtic sea,

a cluster of structures guards Ireland's biggest harbour.

This island unambiguously has pride of place.

It's exposed, it's windy, it's isolated.

There are ditches, fences and walls,

this says security and strength.

It's really quite clear that this place was a fort,

so there's also a sense that there was something else happening here.

(Dramatic music)

This part is dark, it's quiet, there are bars on the windows,

there's a sort of oppressive feeling.

And the darkness just swallows you up

the further you go inside.

It feels like something of a time machine,

there are parts that are quite obviously several centuries old

and there are other bits that only seem like 20 years old.

At the centre of the complex is a long building

that appears to offer up some clues.

There's clearly evidence of fire

having swept through this place at some point.

It feels like something actually quite violent happened here.

It's those burnt out ruins that really draw you in

and make you wonder what happened here.

This is spike island.

Today it sits in Irish waters

yet these defensive structures were built by the British

more than 200 years ago.

Local historian Tom O'Neill once worked here.

The fort here was built by the British

'cause they were always afraid

that an enemy of theirs would invade Ireland

and use Ireland then as a base

through which to attack the mainland UK.

Building the strategically vital fort

cost almost 100 million pounds in todays money.

This was a really significant project.

They started in 1806

and it took 60 years to build across to cross a 24 acre site

and it's cutting edge military technology.

From here we can actually get a perfect idea

of how clever the design was

to make this fort as strong as possible.

Deep trenches surround the fort

which is built in a distinctive star shape

to protect it from every direction.

The design worked, no enemy ever attacked the fort.

But that doesn't mean it's going to escape violence all together.

Much later in it's life

it's going to be attacked from within.

The defensive role wasn't the only thing

this place was used for.

There's more than one story to tell about this place.

Bars on windows, security spikes and reinforced gates

show how the British retooled their prized bastion

to control the Irish instead.

Being on an island with fortified high walls

and excellent observation and look-out positions

that also made this site ideal to be a prison.

In 1845 the great famine hit Ireland

and this imperious star shaped fort became a paupers prison.

People became more desperate

and some were even willing to be arrested and imprisoned

just to get some food.

The situation was so dire

that these fortified walls soon held thousands of prisoners.

Additionally with the British government using spike island

as a stop over for convicts en route to criminal colonies

the population swelled.

And the numbers kept on rising

because of the numbers that were being arrested and imprisoned

until eventually we had 2,500 here

and that 2,500 made it one of the largest prisons

in the world at the time.

Eventually the famine passed and the prison closed in 1883.

But this would not last for long.

In 1916 when the Irish Republicans rebelled

against britain's oppressive military rule

the fort again proved invaluable.

During the Irish war of independence

this site was bought back in to use again as a prison.

And some of the rooms have changed very little since then.

This was where the convicted Republicans were held,

this would have been their living quarters,

their sleeping quarters, their dining quarters,

their recreation quarters.

With British soldiers guarding republican internees

hostility between them was inevitable.

There were some pretty serious tension

between these prisoners who had fought on one side

and the guards who were their enemies.

Obviously there was friction,

these were the individuals

that had been attempting to kill crown forces anyway.

The famous revolutionaries who came through this place

ran rings round the British.

There was one particularly important individual here with the prisoners

and his real name was Tom Malone, he made a name for himself

attacking and destroying rac barracks,

he was fairly near the top of the crown forces most wanted list

and he was arrested in cork city on Christmas morning 1920.

Malone was a commander in the republican army.

He was once described as Ireland's Houdini

when he escaped this fortress jail

helped by the prison's catholic chaplain.

His comrades had to remain inside until Irish independence in 1921.

But modern cell doors, locks and partitions

suggest spike island's role as a prison wasn't yet over.

In 1985 the fort was again used as a prison

but a civilian prison this time.

There had been a spate of increased crime

and so spike island was opened up again

to absorb some of these extra inmates.

This time it was the Irish themselves who put the prison fort to use.

This area was converted in to modern cells in 1985,

there were 25 four-man-cells in total

and that then gave the civil prison a capacity of 102.

Other blocks were less well secured.

The plan was to send fairly low risk inmates to spike island

and if that had been followed through

there wouldn't have been a problem.

But when prison governors got the opportunity

to get rid of some prisoners

well naturally enough they got rid of their troublemakers

if they possibly could.

A lot of very high risk inmates arrive

and this place simply isn't designed to hold them.

Damage found at one part of the makeshift jail

points to the consequences.

As you look closer and you see the damage,

you see the fire damage, the charred windows,

you realise that there was some final dramatic event

that was the last chapter of this site.

Spike island, a fort turned prison in the republic of Ireland.

Tasked with housing a number of high risk offenders

in an ill-equipped cell block,

violence soon erupted.

Tom O'Neill was a guard here at the time,

he witnessed the chaos that ensued.

This was one of the dormitories where prisoners were held in 1985.

On the night of 31 August, just before midnight,

the riot started.

The prisoners simply broke up the wooden floor

and set fire to it.

And when the fire was on

they simply kicked down the wooden doors and escaped.

They even managed to get as far as the pier

but they couldn't get any further

and that's why you build a prison on an island.

They can't get off

so they decide to do the next best thing.

They decide to break back into the prison

and destroy all the records there.

But the fully bastioned British built fort

wasn't that easy to break into.

The prisoners had to use an excavator to break down the doors.

The riot was just a simple want of destruction,

photocopiers turned upside down and smacked off the ground,

tins of paint opened and scattered all over the place,

just the want of destruction of it really.

The riot was eventually contained,

spike island was used as a prison for another 20 years.

The prison was remodelled and made much more secure,

they'd learnt their lesson.

Eventually it closed fully in 2004

primarily because of the cost of keeping prisoners here.

Having spent nearly 200 years off limits to civilians,

spike island is now open to the public.

It's colourful history preserved for generations to come.

But what we really have here is a place that provides snap shots

of Ireland's history at crucial moments

and a conflict that could characterise that history

and the violence that was there as well.

In Spain, the remains of a hilltop ghost town

reveal that this site is steeped in religion.

This place has been inhabited for centuries

at least since the knight's templar in the middle ages.

These little towns in the Spanish hills

were always on the very edge of survival.

The most prominent building is the church.

It was clearly the centre of this community.

But as you get a little closer you can see it's in ruins.

This is a place that has been torn to pieces

and here we've got buildings

that look like they've been scorched and crumbled.

A lot of these structures have been levelled by artillery,

we see the stone work pot marked with shell fragments,

bullet holes that sort of thing.

But there are traces to who was at war here.

We see a lot of graffiti

which itself has some real significance

in solving this mystery.

Then if we poke around a little more

we come across this plaque to Robert hale merriman.

That does not sound Spanish

and when I read further and I see the name Abraham Lincoln,

I know that Americans have done something significant here.

A band of freedom fighters once came to this desolate site

and left their idealism smashed in these ruins.

(Dramatic music)

This is called corbera d'ebre.

Today there's little left of the thriving community

where Joan Montana father was born in the 1920s.

Translation: "We are in one of the main streets of the old town.

"You have to imagine it was all houses here.

"You can even see the remains of the original cobbled street.

"And these are the foundations of the house

"where my father was born."

Back then the residents of corbera lived as they had done for centuries,

the church and the land owners held all the power.

Translation: "The main church was built here

"back in the 13th century.

"And the nerve centre of this rural community

"was the church square."

Once upon a time this little Spanish village

might have been filled with poor people

but they were poor people

who were strong in their Christian faith

and they understood themselves as subjects of a catholic monarchy.

Yet the damage rot on this church suggests something changed.

In 1931 a new left wing government sought to rest control

from the catholic land owners who ruled Spain...

..But it faced strong opposition.

There was an extreme right wing military click

who felt that they had a chance to save Spain.

You have senior army officers,

you've got some very wealthy people

and you've got a catholic church and that is the nationalist party.

In 1936 led by the fascist general Francisco Franco,

the nationalists staged a coup and a bitter civil war broke out.

The rubble of corbera

reveals how the conflict soon reached the town.

Translation: "Here we can make out the traces

"of a series of historical marks.

"This graffiti from the time reads, "seized ciente"."

The ciente it's the Spanish acronym

for the national labour confederation.

What that meant in that place and that time

was that these guys were anarchists.

The anarchists had taken advantage of the conflict.

One armed faction swept in to corbera.

When the ciente anarchists occupied this village

they saw the village priest as part of the nationalists,

the fascists, the enemy.

And so they did them in.

The anarchists killed corbera's priest and his assistants.

But when they left the town itself was still standing.

Meanwhile the rest of Spain was swept up in the uneven fight

between the fascists nationalists and the left wing Republicans.

The Republicans, the government side of the Spanish civil war

have to fight throughout with one hand tied behind their back,

they have no American aid, no British aid,

against this big organised nationalist army

completely funded and supplied by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

In the 1930s there were plenty of young idealists

who were willing to fight for democracy.

2,800 Americans volunteered to fight

on the republican side in the Spanish civil war

and they came to be known as the Lincoln brigade.

Some of the most important writers and thinkers of the day

wanted to go sign up to fight.

Ernest Hemingway covered the war as a newspaper correspondent

and George orwell spent time fighting with the Republicans.

The cause attracted lesser known freedom fighters too.

Robert haile merriman, the commander of the Lincoln brigade

and he gives up his studies to go over and lead this brigade

in the Spanish civil war.

By the start of 1938

corbera had so far escaped the carnage

of Spain's vicious civil war

but pot-marked houses and swathes of derelict ground

suggest that this would soon change.

Corbera's proximity to the ebro river

meant the conflict was fast approaching.

If the nationalists can take the ebro river

and push to the sea,

they're going to drive a wedge between the republican stronghold

so it's vital for the nationalists to win there

and it's vital for the Republicans to hold there.

On the outskirts of corbera, merriman and the exhausted Lincoln brigade

dug in with Republicans.

Translation: "By march 1938

"we know soldiers were camped here, very close to corbera.

"These soldiers were members of the international brigade

"and they were suffering a lot.

"They were being defeated

"and they had come to the vicinity of corbera to regroup."

Merriment believed if he could just reach the republican held town

he and his men would be safe.

But unbeknown to him,

the fascist nationalist had seized corbera.

Merriman was now trapped behind enemy lines.

And in April 1938 just outside corbera,

he unwittingly walked into a nationalist camp.

And merriman and his second in command

are captured by their enemies

and so far as we can tell

they were probably put up against a wall

and shot right there on the spot.

The Republicans fought on, eventually they recaptured corbera.

But this bare hill, once covered in houses,

took the brunt of the fascist revenge.

Translation: "The very day the Republicans reconquered corbera

"the bombing started.

"And continued almost daily."

Mussolini sends troops to aide the nationalists

led by general franko,

the Germans send the condor legion this advanced air force.

Franko says I'm going to destroy the Republicans

in a battle of attrition

and that battle is focused on this village of corbera.

In August 1938 corbera was occupied by republican forces

putting it firmly in the crosshairs of general franko's fascist army.

Translation: "This place was protected from artillery fire

"so some soldiers made makeshift shelters here.

"They dug in and took advantage of the house wall.

"And after the bombing stopped the strafing started,

"we can still see the impact on this wall."

When the battle of the river ebro finally ended,

most of corbera had been destroyed.

Translation: "They call corbera the eternal flame.

"Nails and other metallic things are melted and fossilised here.

"We can even see the key

"that was used to open a tin of sardines."

Just a glance at the village of corbera

and the destruction there,

it points again to the savagery of the Spanish civil war.

General franko's nationalist party took control of Spain in 1939

and ran the country as a dictatorship for almost 40 years.

When Spain was again peaceful but a dictatorship

the villagers came back

and the place had been pounded to smithereens.

They rebuilt their village down by the road.

Today corbera remembers those who fought to the death

for a better world.

They came to stop the kind of fascism

that was going to be the ruin of Europe in the years to come.

These are people who were killing Nazis

at a time when governments weren't ready for that yet.

The first people to do that

are these idealistic volunteers in Spain.

Near the border between Germany and France,

in the long disputed region of al sass

lies a mysterious complex with an explosive past.

There's a big central building

where all the glass has been shattered, blown out,

something violent happened here.

When you look up you've got these crazy structures

just perched high up there above looking down on everything.

Whatever was being made

someone went to great efforts to try and sport it out of here.

It has a train line running through that's completely overgrown,

it's clearly not been used in decades.

And there on the tracks is a train that's just been left.

This incongruous collection of derelict buildings

seems to make little sense.

There's something here that people are willing to kill over,

it's that precious and that essential.

The first clue to what's going on here

lies half a mile underground.

They were digging for some valuable commodity here

but it wasn't gold, it wasn't diamonds, wasn't silver.

(Dramatic music)

This sprawling plant is carreau rodolphe.

It was built to extract a precious mineral

from deep underground.

Jean misiano once worked here.

Translation: "I spent 30 years working for this enterprise

"where working conditions were incredibly tough.

"This is the elevator that carried the miners both up and down.

"We're at the top of the rodolphe one shaft,

"which went down 750 metres."

It was nasty work down in the mines.

It was hot and cramped

and if you hit a pocket of gas it could trigger a deadly explosion.

Translation: "It's very dangerous here

"and expensive trying to get this mineral out."

More than 600 people lost their lives here

during a century of operation.

What precious mineral was worth this level of risk?

Translation: "Carreau rodolphe at the beginning of the 20th century

"was a strategic place for the production of a mineral

"called potash."

Potash is one of the best fertilisers going

and carreau rodolphe was sitting on top of the motherload.

(Dramatic classical music)

The first mine opened here in 1913

to extract the mineral the whole world wanted.

At the beginning of the 20th century

you have a big explosion in population,

we need to very quickly grow more crops and better crops

and for that you need fertiliser.

And a major part of fertiliser is potassium

and here potash, buried underground, contains that magic ingredient.

This site lies in El sass,

a region that France and Germany had long fought over.

The opening of this place made it even more desirable.

Carreau rodolphe was one of the only potash mines in the world

outside of Germany

but that put a huge target on it's back.

When world war one breaks out in August 1914,

in that initial German rush in to France.

They over run the carreau rodolphe

and they take this motherload of potash.

Even more worrying is that potash is the key ingredient in gunpowder.

This overgrown railroad once headed toward the battle trenches

of world war one.

And it wasn't only carrying the ingredients for gunpowder.

Intelligence reports suggested that ammunition was seen leaving

this industrial complex.

Translation: "From 1914 to 1915 the Germans installed

"a narrow Gauge railway starting here at carreau rodolphe.

"The munitions were transported to the front by train."

Now that it was key to the German war effort,

both the British and many French locals

wanted to destroy this place.

So who got there first?

New years Eve the last day of 1915,

this whole potash facility is just ripped apart

by a tremendous explosion.

The entire complex was reduced to rubble.

The munitions secretly stored at the factory

only added to the blast.

It shook houses and rattled windows 20 miles away from the site.

But the mystery persists. Who did it?

It would make sense if it was an allied aerial bombing attack

on the mine,

but if you asked the locals they didn't believe it.

Translation: "Attacking on the 31 December is symbolic

"since it's new years Eve and everybody celebrates then

"so they might have celebrated this victory too."

It's an interesting date to have an industrial accident,

you'd normally expect that to happen when everything was in full flow.

We'll never know.

Whatever caused it,

the blast meant the mine was out of action

until long after the first world war ended

by which time carreau rodolphe was back under French control.

It didn't actually open again till 1929

but then it was into full flow

because the world still needed potash.

The crazed collection of structures that littered the site

were all built to supply this pressing need.

The thing that fascinates me most about this site

is of course the head stocks,

these huge sheds that you see up in the sky.

The mine relied on lifting hundreds of tonnes of rubble

out of the ground,

it was bought to the surface on a cable system

which ran through enormous pulley wheels attached to the structures.

Over the coming decades,

500 million tonnes of potash were mined here...

..But as they dug even deeper, the cost of extraction grew.

Eventually in 2003 the last mine shaft closed.

(Upbeat music)

Today the dormant mine stands empty.

It may have seen out two world wars

but the hulk of the machinery and what's left behind

tells the story of the actual people that worked here.

Abandoned, disintegrating, reclaimed by nature.

Structures once at the cutting edge

bearing witness to the forces, pioneers and villains

that defined the world today.

Emblems of a shared past standing in our present.

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