All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S07E04.Murder.Underground.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

(Dramatic music)

Narrator: An intriguing ruin
carved in to a sardinian cliff face.

It's not only the fact this
tunnel sort of leads out to sea

but it comes out
half way up a cliff.

An eerie facility in the usa
with a gothic look and feel.

Those gargoyles
are very strange.

Almost like they're
guarding something

or perhaps warning
people about what's inside.

A top secret building in Japan
that may have called a nation to war.

The units stationed there
burned all the radio transmissions,

all the receipts, everything
else that was there

so we have no paper record

of what actually went
in and out of that place.

And an extraordinary
underground labyrinth of tunnels

in southern Ukraine.

So, increasingly
disorientated underground

these Russian secret police
begin to hunt each other.

(Dramatic music)

Decaying relics...

..Ruins of lost worlds.

Sights haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting
to be revealed.

On the outskirts of
louisville, Kentucky

perched on the top of a hill

lies the battered shell of
a huge imposing building.

It's not the kind of place you'd
stumble across by accident,

it's pretty secluded.

To get to the place

you have to take
this long winding drive

that snakes up the hill.

At first sight there seems to be
more questions than answers.

You can't really tell

if this is the front or
the back of the building.

How do you get in?
It's a bit disorientating.

This rambling structure seems
to go on forever in every direction.

While ominous looking
creatures gaze down from above

inside there's an eerie
and confused picture.

We have to ask why
are these abandoned?

What terrible thing happened here
that makes people want to stay away?

And how is it linked to a
modern day global pandemic?

A three-storey solarium
dominates it's southern face,

could that unlock the mystery
of this buildings original purpose?

There would have been a bed

pulled out in front of
every single open doorway.

All the way down
and around this thing,

across the whole back.

Dale Clark grew up
just five miles away

and has been showing
people around here

for the last 18 years.

Then there were usually
smaller children's beds

shoved up against the
brick wall on the outside.

And there was just a little path

between the foot of
the beds over here

and the side of
the beds over there.

They spent a good chunk
of their time out here.

It must have been
a very strange sight

coming up that driveway

and seeing all the
people out like that.

But what were they
doing out there?

It's not like there's a view
of the ocean or the river

or anything like that.

This is waverley hills,

a 180,000 square feet facility

built to house over 500 people.

But here the devil
is in the detail.

So, if from the outside

it looks like maybe it could
be a fancy hotel or retreat,

the inside has a
very different feel to it.

There's not much left behind

but there are odd bits
of medical equipment.

This is not just a place of life

here in the hills of Kentucky,

what we're looking
at is a place of death.

This is the morgue.

We have no idea why
this room is so small.

At the worst cases
a body an hour,

this little room's going
to fill up very quickly.

That's why there's a
maintenance department

down the far end
of the building,

that's four times
the size of this.

It became the auxiliary
morgue during the worst of it.

When you need to
have an auxiliary morgue

you're taking a lot of bodies.

Waverley wasn't alone,

the body count was piling
up all over the United States

and around the
rest of the world.

It hit the us so badly

that they had to form
a national committee

to deal with the problem.

A global pandemic
of this disease

struck terror in to the
hearts of everyone.

The disease was tuberculosis.

Built in 1942 this was
more than just a hospital.

You've also got dentists and
a barbers and even a gift shop.

Patients are not just
here for a few days,

the patients are
here long enough

to grow their hair
long and get it cut.

They need to function in this
place for the rest of their lives.

Children that were
born in waverley

had to be taken away
from their mothers

immediately after birth,

the risk of contamination
was that severe.

And it gives you some sense

of how long people
were confined here

if they were having
children born here.

The story of a
patient called Lois

demonstrates the
heart-breaking realities.

She was a mother of
two when she got here

and if a patient
was doing better

they would allow them
to go home on furlough

and then have to come back.

She came back
and it didn't go well,

she had conceived a
child while she was gone.

To our knowledge the only
time Lois ever got to see her son

that was born here

was standing in one of
these solarium windows

looking at the road that ran
across the back of the building

and somebody held him up.

Patients need to be isolated,

they need to be kept
away from cities and towns

where they could cause
thousands of infections

and thousands of deaths.

It can survive in the air

and it can attack any
organ in your body

but it usually
goes for the lungs.

The victorian name
for it was consumption

because it consumes
your body from the inside.

At one point across
america and Europe,

one in seven deaths
were down to tb,

one in seven people
died of tuberculosis.

Jefferson county, Kentucky

was one of the worst
hit places in the country.

Fortunately waverley
hills Rose to the occasion.

Waverley is as good as it gets.

Here is a place where you're
going to be looked after by the best.

If you're going to try
out a new procedure

waverley was where you
were going to try it out.

And they were really at the
cutting edge of tb treatment.

But in the early 1900s

the best tuberculosis
treatments were still experimental

to say the least.

Procedures we talk
about most of all in here

are auto-pneumothorax

which is basically where they
would let air in to your chest cavity

and manually collapse
one of your lungs.

It's very, very painful,

they thought, mistakenly,

that while the lung was collapsed
it would rest and heal itself.

Medical science had not yet
learned how to deal with this disease

and that the best way to heal

was for the patient to
heal himself or herself.

Aside from these procedures

there were only three treatments
thought to be effective against tb.

Fresh air, sunshine
and nutrition.

This building has areas
purpose built for that.

Here along these massive
balconies called solariums.

These are the best
treatments they had

but as we know from the number
of people that were dying here

it wasn't really that
effective in the end.

(Piano playing)

There are hospitals today which
have a whole separate set of corridors

for moving dead
people out of rooms.

The solution here was
more direct, a body chute.

It was not originally
built to be a body chute,

it was built to bring up
building supplies and materials.

All the mechanisms, machines,
the track and everything

that was built to
bring bricks up,

they just reversed it
and took bodies down.

Bottom there
was a little building

it was basically storage

so they could either
be loaded into hearses,

ambulances, train cars
depending where they needed to go.

This is just a grim
form of architecture

but totally necessary.

And scrawling's on the walls

serve as a reminder of the risks
taken by the staff who worked here.

The employees were
the original graffiti artists,

there's a lot of names
signed in pencil,

quite a few of them are dated
and some of them are very old.

Just to let themselves
know that they're still alive,

that you know they came
and did a horrible job,

took a chance on
getting deathly ill

and a lot of them
you know, survived.

(Ambient music)

But in 1943

a scientific breakthrough
meant the beginning of the end

for the waverley
hills sanatorium.

The antibiotic streptomycin
was developed,

it was the cure the world
had been waiting for.

Without streptomycin
or a similar antibiotics

tuberculosis would still be a
plague even in the developed world

where it's rarely seen.

It's no longer needed
in the 21st century

but it's such a
monumental building

it has reinvent itself in
order to find a purpose today.

Closed as a tb
sanatorium in 1961,

waverly hills is now frequented

by people looking for
something entirely different.

If an unmerciful god allowed
the souls of the departed

to roam the world

then this is just the kind
of place people imagine

unquiet spirits would be.

A nurse who got pregnant by a
doctor who was married to someone else

mysteriously was found
hanging out here in the hallway

across from the elevator car.

Just it right up there is
where she was found,

was she just overcome?

Or a lot of people think that maybe
something more sinister happened.

No-one will ever 100% for sure
know exactly what happened to her.

(Dramatic music)

For most of the world

tb is seen as a
disease of the past

but recent studies have suggested
that might not be the case.

The original strain they
can pretty much take care of,

the problem is there's
a new strain coming out

that is very
antibiotic resistant

and the old treatments
just aren't working.

Tuberculosis is nature
continuing to this day

to claw at human life and
to force us to fight back.

Scientists across the globe
are racing to find treatments

for this new strain of tb

and entirely new viruses and diseases
that threaten a global pandemic.

It's almost like an arms race
with these terrible diseases

and we hope that we're
winning but it's a close battle.

Despite their
devastating effects

these battles bring humanity
together in new and inspiring ways.

(Cheering and applause)

(Dramatic music)

On the Italian
island of sardinia,

in the blue waters
of the mediterranean

an intriguing ruin
clings to a cliff face.

You see this structure
that just boggles the mind,

it looks like some
ancient building

but it starts maybe 100
feet up this rocky cliff.

Has some of it fallen away?

It's a really strange
juxtaposition

from cliffs to something that's
almost like plastered on the side.

Now it might look
on the face of it

that there's been an
engineering catastrophe here

and the cliff face
has fallen away

but no, this is purpose built

and what you see is what
you're supposed to see.

Inside the full extent of
the complex is revealed.

The tunnel itself
is quite extensive,

it goes several 100m
into the mountain,

you have to have a big incentive

to blast your way
through such hard rock.

Ultimately you see
there's two levels of tunnels

and you can see that
there is a series of bins

in between the two tunnels

with some kind of gate
at the bottom of each bin.

This is an amazing
site with great ingenuity

and it really is what gets
people into engineering.

You give someone a problem

and with enough imagination

they come up with
an amazing solution.

(Dramatic music)

Antonio littarru is an expert
on the history of this place.

Even during the Roman
era, prisoners came here.

They were doomed to work here

and we have a particular
term "damnati ad metalla,"

they were damned, condemned.

And yet this structure
is far from ancient.

It's not as old as
it looks actually

and it's quite
beautifully engineered,

this was not an
ancient monastery

or some kind of strange castle.

This was something industrial.

A closer look at
the tunnel walls

reveals the type of rocks
that are buried in the hillside.

You've got rocks
that are very, very old

and rocks that are
very, very young

and all through
those different eras

you get times when
you're having magma

which causes mineralisation

and causes things like
silver and lead and zinc.

Along the coast
visible from this cliff face

are the remains of
a sprawling complex

that hints at an operation
on a truly industrial scale.

You can see rail tracks,
huge storage chambers,

all sorts of things going
on, on an epic scale.

(Dramatic music)

You're almost dwarfed by
these rusting bits of machinery

and it's clear that
somehow this tunnel,

these two places were linked.

One of the biggest
challenges of mining here

is getting the
ore off the island.

For centuries there was
no real infrastructure.

In the first part of
the 20th century

the material was transported
by the so-called galanziere.

They were basically like miners
that transported this material

on their shoulders
in little basket cases.

The lead and zinc ore was
hauled to the coast by ox and cart.

As men and beasts
of burden alike

toiled in the baking
sardinian sun.

And from there things
only got even tougher.

You have hard rock,
hard basement rock

you often end up with
rugged rocky coastlines,

cliffs, inaccessible areas,

so they don't necessarily
lend themselves to big ports.

Small boats transported the
ore to the nearest deep water port,

that was 15 miles across
the treacherous open sea

on the island of San Pietro.

The area itself is quite
precarious in terms of weather.

You've got the mistral winds,

these cold winds coming down
from the north west off France

and you've got the (indistinct)
Winds that come in from the west.

These boats can only
hold about six tonnes of ore,

that's a remarkably small
amount, I mean that's really,

that's just a few
wheelbarrows full of ore

and they would load them
as heavily as they could

so now you've got
this little open boat

trying to get to a harbour
some distance away

where it can be loaded
in to a bigger boat.

It's full of rocks, these
boats sank all the time

it was incredibly
dangerous, slow, inefficient.

They're quite
precarious little boats

so you can imagine you're
loading a boat full of rocks

and then you're
trying to get it off,

if you got bad weather those
boats could easily topple over

and many did and many
people fell to their deaths.

To solve this age old problem

the mine owners turned
to venetian engineer

cesare vecelli.

And this guy was a real genius,

one of those out
of the box thinkers.

Vecelli spent a year
studying the problem

and studying the geography
around the mine and the coastline.

They found this
sort of wonderful site

where a sea stack
was actually protecting

the waterway between
the sea stack and the land

and it was deep water

so in principle you could
get big ships in there.

But then your issue
was creating a port.

Vecelli's solution
was porto flavia.

Instead of taking
the ore to the ports,

they would bring
a port to the ore.

He said instead of
building something new

why don't I use a structure
that's already there.

Normally any mariner
looks at this coastline,

looks at that cliff, this
is their worst nightmare

and yet here they were
planning to turn this forbidding cliff

in to a port facility.

Construction began in 1923

and the teams here worked
day and night for two years.

Now all they had to do was blast
out thousands of tonnes of rock.

They finally broke
through the cliffs

and they could see the sea

but they didn't stop there.

And then here comes
the really scary part,

they started hanging
out over the water,

that way as they dug the tunnel

they could just shovel all
the rock out in to the water

and again they repeated the
process of drilling and blasting

until they'd carved
out a parallel tunnel

below the other one.

The miners then dug
nine vast chambers

connecting the two tunnels.

The silos are huge, 20m high

and between the nine of them

they could hold up to
10,000 tonnes of minerals.

This is the mechanism they used

to open the higher
mouth of the hopper,

you see right here.

This opened and a lot of
material came down from above.

Here once we had a moving belt.

With the final machinery
installed, the system was complete.

(Dramatic music)

Electric trains from the mine
arrived at the upper tunnel

where the ore was poured
into the nine huge silos.

Meanwhile large
cargo ships waited

in the calm waters
below porto flavia.

In the lower tunnel

the ore poured on
to the conveyor belt

before a 50 feet
long retractable arm

which extended out over the sea

dropped it in to the
ships waiting below.

At the end of that boom

was kind of a rubberised
sleeve so as all those,

that gravel and rock
was tumbling down

it wasn't just going
to spray everywhere

it was all going to go directly
into the hold where it belong.

In fact they could turn round
one of these ships in two days,

loading up to 500 tonnes
an hour directly in to the hold.

So a really amazing
engineering feat

and they used the
cliff and the geology

and the whole
function of gravity really

to aid them in that process.

Porto flavia was a huge success.

It slashed production
costs by up to 70%

but increased efficiency
came at a price.

It produced a lot of
wealth for the company,

and for this reason

a lot of the galanziere,
the workers there,

lost their jobs.

Global forces eventually put
an end to the ports good fortune.

Sadly the company didn't
have that many years to enjoy

the efficiency of their
brilliant engineering.

At the end of the 1920s you
had the stock market crash

and then the great depression

then you had world war ii,

it reopened for a few
years in the 1950s

but by the 1960s there
were new efficiencies,

new technologies.

The last shipping occurred

in may 1963.

And since that day

it has remained in
the memory of citizens,

and miners, and workers.

Porto flavia is now
preserved for visitors.

It's both a testament the
vision of one great engineer

and a tribute to the lives of
generations of sardinian miners.

This port shows
engineering at it's best,

you throw someone a challenge

of how to get a huge
amount of material out

when nature is against you

and they came up with this
incredible imaginative solution.

(Dramatic sound)

On the banks of the black
sea in southern Ukraine

is a port city founded

by Catherine the great.

The stylish architecture above ground
gives no clues to what lies beneath.

Every so often you hear a story of
some young people who go down

and someone gets lost and
doesn't make it back out again.

Some researchers say that we
have approximately 800 accesses.

These access points
range from the obscure,

to the downright bizarre.

When you look at this shed,

it might just be some
kind of equipment shed.

And then you go inside

and realise it gives you access

to the most incredible
underground labyrinth

anyone has ever seen.

It's absolutely quiet place,

the silence is 100%.

As soon as you
switch off your torch,

then the, the
darkness is absolute.

Few people walking
the streets of Odessa

realise what lies
beneath their feet.

As you go down,

it's clear that it's not just
a normal set of tunnels

it's actually much
more grand than that.

They just don't understand
that they are literally walking

above the underground city.

It's the biggest such
system, in the whole world.

A subterranean system
perfect for a criminal underworld.

Yet it also served as the
city's last line of defence

against an occupying force.

A resistance movement, that
formed part of a horror story.

So, month by month passed,
they began to get insane.

Increasingly
disoriented underground.

These Russian secret police...

..Begin to hunt each other.

(Eerie music)

The city of Odessa
owes it's very existence,

to one of the world's
most iconic female leaders.

The Russian empress
Catherine the great.

Wanted to build a new port city.

In order to open up the
south of Russia to commerce.

A mighty port.

Where the three great rivers

of Eastern Europe came together.

The bug, the dnister

and the danube.

They desperately wanted
access to a port on the black sea

and via that, the mediterranean

and the rest of the world.

In 1794,

Catherine approved
funding for Odessa

which soon became a
Russian trading super hub.

So, Odessa went from being a...

..Basically a village to a
large city almost overnight.

They had a problem though,

in this area there
aren't a lot of trees.

It's grasslands

and farms.

So, for building materials

they turned to the local stone.

And luckily they were sitting
on a particular type of limestone

which is very, very good
for making buildings out of.

So, they used the geology

of the rocks beneath their feet.

This gave birth to a subterranean
world that pavel zagnyboroda,

now explores for a living.

Local authorities they try

to control it somehow but
it's almost impossible really.

No mobile phone connection,

no radio communication.

No GPS signal reaches that deep

so, you can rely
only on yourself,

on your own knowledge.

Yet even he may never understand

the full extent of this system.

No-one's really sure.

But one estimate is that there's
about 1,500 miles of tunnels.

Now if you, if you
put that in to context,

Paris has got about 150
- 200 miles of tunnels.

Rome maybe about 300 miles

so, it's three times both
Rome and Paris combined.

The layout of these tunnels

is extraordinarily complex.

And it's not just on one level,
they go down on multiple levels.

So you've got a
kind of complexity

in terms of the different
types of rooms and corridors.

But also it's multi-tiered,

it's actually on different levels,
they've used different parts

of the geology
in different ways.

It really is a labyrinth
underneath the city.

You can imagine how
someone could become...

..Dangerously lost down here.

But also how someone who
really understands the network

and knows their way around,
could use it to their advantage.

And in the city's darkest hour
this world beneath the surface,

would offer a glimmer of hope.

During world war two the Romanians
were allied with the Germans

and they attacked Odessa
and took it over in 1941.

The Soviets pulled out,

but they actually left behind

some secret what you
might call like special forces.

A group of Soviet secret police.

A group of the
chequer from Moscow.

And another group
from the Odessa office

are sent down in
to the catacombs.

At the head of these units

were major's
kuznetsov and colossian

and pavel has discovered
signs of their time here.

Kuznetsov and colossian.

These group was exactly
here, we found some bullets,

some batteries for radio
station, some guns as well.

They were well trained and
prepared to act as a partisan.

So, they had
water, food, guns...

..Explosives,

mines whatever they needed
for a long time to stay here.

But they weren't prepared
for the psychological challenge,

the isolation, the darkness.

You know we hear about people

on polar expeditions
who really struggled.

Imagine if you're down
in a tunnel for six months

without seeing the sun,

maybe only able to light
a candle once in a while.

Some of the men turned
violent, perhaps suicidal.

They also had to
contend with the invaders

using poison gas
in the catacombs

and sealing exits

in an effort to trap and
smoke out the rebels.

Here, danger lurked
around every corner.

Of course partisans are
always vulnerable you know,

it just takes one person
spilling the secret.

Along with kuznetsov

is evgenia (indistinct).

And she is a traitor.

(Indistinct) A member
of the surface team

betrayed her unit.

She turned informer

telling the Romanian security
forces everything she knew.

We don't know why she did
this, she betrayed all of them.

First of all they arrested all
13 people in the city of course

and then they blocked all the
exits for this underground team.

But evgenia
(indistinct) Betrayals

were eventually discovered
by her compatriots.

So, she is put on trial in a
brief informal people's trial

and put up against the
walls of the catacombs

and she's shot dead.

(Gunshot)

But now,

the two groups of
communist partisans

mistrust each other fatally.

They began to get insane.

So, they really
got absolutely mad

after approximately ten month,
they begin killing each other.

(Dramatic fast music)

The two of them,
hunt each other...

..In a silent vendetta.

And in the end none
of the Soviet partisans,

emerges from the
catacombs alive.

Having dispatched colossian
and his Moscow team.

Kuznetsov had finally been
killed by one of his own men.

But declassified documents

later revealed that one man
did survive to tell the tale.

So, he came to a security
services of Soviet army

and they came here.

And so he showed
them everything.

And they just showed him
death in his back right here.

On the third day after
the liberation of the city

he was killed by his own people,

after three years of this
terrible hell underground.

And so, the last
living eye witness

to this horrific tragedy
had been removed.

It appears that the Soviets

were not about to
allow the reputations

of their heroic
resistance fighters,

to be tarnished by the
realities of the story.

Because for propaganda

they needed absolutely
a different story.

It may seem that they all,

all these people,
all these partisans

they died for nothing.

Like in, completely in vain.

But it's not true

because Romanians
they didn't know

how many exactly there were
partisans hiding underground.

Tens of thousands of troops

were stationed here
throughout the war

to save the city from
their unseen enemy below.

I think that it was
this huge contribution

of these partisans
in to the victory.

(Eerie sound)

Pavel now runs part of the
catacombs as a museum.

Bringing centuries
of history to life.

From the city's birth
through piracy and smuggling

right up to the nuclear
bunkers of the cold war.

On the edge of a bay in
the south west of Japan,

is a complex that's been
towering over the land for decades.

(Dramatic sound)

This is set in
beautiful landscape,

there's water and trees everywhere
and then right in front of you

these three huge
towers are just there.

They're massive.

We're looking
at a really tall...

..Four-500 foot high towers.

Very slender tapering upward,
like almost like concrete needles.

They look almost
like smoke stacks.

If you can take a
peek inside the tower

you see a long, precarious
looking metal ladder

going up to the top.

Whoever had the job
of climbing that ladder

certainly didn't
suffer from vertigo.

The fact that
there's three of them

it makes you question why
wasn't one good enough?

Why did there need to be three?

Only when it's
viewed from above,

is that question answered.

They form a perfect
equilateral triangle

and then at the
centre of this triangle

is some sort of a building.

It's so overgrown,

it's been forgotten,

that building has been
completely wrapped up

by the plants and
trees that surround it.

Inside the building
there's not much there,

clearly this was an important
installation of some sort

but when it shut down whatever
was there got taken away.

The complex is linked

to the gravest military
disasters in u.S history.

(Suspenseful music)

But the bare rooms in
the hollowed out towers

paint an incomplete picture.

Whatever these
towers were built for

you don't see a
lot of infrastructure,

there's no lights or
cables or other things,

is there some other piece of
the puzzle that's missing here?

(Drumming music)

Dating back to 1918.

The towers have stood guard
over the site for more than a century

thanks largely to their
once cutting edge design.

Hideaki matsuo is a historian

with a deep knowledge
of their construction.

Translation: "If you
head to the back

"you can see the
lines in the wall,

"each layer is
four-and-a-half feet tall.

"After the first layer you have
to wait for another two days

"before you can add
another one on top.

"And after completing 100 layers

"this 446 foot
tower was finished."

The decision to build the
tower with reinforced concrete

despite the high costs and
the slow rate of progress

indicates how important it was to
get the construction exactly right.

It took four years to build this

at a cost in todays dollars,

of nearly $15 million

which speaks to
the sophistication

of the technology employed.

(Dramatic music)

Looking like an industrial
chimney from the outside,

the central winch system
shows that this was really

all about reaching new heights.

Translation: "When you go
to the back there is a ladder.

"It's the original one

"and there are 550
steps to the top.

"To reach the top
takes 55 minutes

"and you have to keep
climbing without a break.

"There is nowhere
to rest in between,

"it is quite a hard
climb and it's slow.

(Eerie music)

Today an aircraft warning light

sits on top of each tower.

But years ago, there was some
very different equipment here.

What's missing from the
structures today are the aerials

which were in the
form of triangular frames

and they would have sat
on the top of the towers.

Between the towers
were connecting wires

and that linked all of
them so they became one.

Together they were used to transmit
radio signals over great distances.

Radio waves come in
a range of wave lengths

from very short ones
to very long ones.

And it's the long waves that
most easily travel long distances

but to create a long radio wave

you need a very big antenna.

The towers were part of the
hario wireless telegraph station.

They were designed to remedy a
long standing and costly problem.

(Dramatic music)

One of the forgotten wars
in world history by many,

is a brief war between
Japan and Russia in 1904.

But it was a time when
Japan actually tried out a lot

of their technologies
and in that war

they really learnt the importance
of good communication.

Prior to radio communication,

the standard way of sending a
message between ships was by flag.

Navies around the world
developed very sophisticated systems

using flags and other signals
where they could communicate

from ship to ship and
coordinate their activities.

But communicating
from ship to shore

was always a problem, once
you were over the horizon,

you were on your own.

In the modern world
of the 1920s and '30s

flags were outmoded
and outdated.

Japan would soon
start trying to expand,

they had imperial ambitions

and so communication
was Paramount to this.

They wanted to measure
themselves against Great Britain,

against the United States,

against the French empire,
against the Russians.

And so for this
they're going to need

a really modern
communications array,

so, that Tokyo central

can communicate with the
Japanese Navy wherever it is.

There were actually
three complexes like this,

one in Taiwan,

one near Tokyo

and this one close to Nagasaki.

The three could
communicate with each other

so, you could rely a message
from one to the next and beyond

but they could also broadcast
messages far out over the ocean.

You had better communications,
better information,

you have a huge edge
in any military conflict.

There was one building here

that was vital for success.

It was crucial to the Japanese
military victories of the 1930s

and as the second
world war crept closer

it was about to be
put to use again.

It may also have had a part

in one of the gravest
events in u.S history.

Translation: "This is the rooftop
of the telecommunications room,

"it is also the centre of
the three radio towers,

"those radio towers are
positioned in an equilateral triangle

"almost 1,000 feet
apart from each other.

"And this is located right in
the middle of those towers,

"which was important.

"Cables coming from
those three radio towers

"were connected to the
telecommunications room

"but the telecommunications
room itself

"was hidden underground."

With war on the horizon,

meticulous preparations
were carried out.

The facility was made highly
secure and self sufficient.

The building housed the
power to run the whole operation

in the form of
generators and batteries

but it was also
where communication

was sent and received.

Messages would be
picked up by the towers,

relayed to this building,

decoded and then retransmitted

to their original destination.

This dark space certainly had the
potential to cause untold damage.

Translation: "This room was where
they transmitted the secret codes

"that were created in sasebo.

"From the size of the room

"and because we know there
used to be five or six desks in here

"we presume that there
was a small number

"of transmission
workers in here.

"However as they were dealing
with highly confidential documents

"I don't imagine many
people were allowed in."

In 1941,

a top secret coded order

that shaped the
course of history,

is likely to have filtered
through these rooms.

There's good reason to
believe that one of the most

pivotal radio
transmissions in history

was made via this transmitter.

The words, 'climb
mountain itaka 1208'.

Those words were code

to send the
instruction to proceed

with the attack
on Pearl harbour.

(Dramatic music)

Once the order had
been given by Tokyo

it's believed that hario

actually transmitted
the fateful message

from mainland Japan,

to the waiting naval fleet.

The attack on Pearl
harbour was devastating

and it immediately drew
the United States into the war.

But questions about hario

and it's role in all this

remain unanswered to this day.

Translation: "There's almost
no documentation remaining

"about the hario radio site.

"Architectural drawings,

"records of transmission
history and so on,

"they don't exist at all.

"The reason being that
straight after the war ended

"any related
documents were burnt."

While the Japanese
may have destroyed

any incriminating and
damning paperwork

they couldn't make the very real
concrete evidence here disappear.

We can't say for
sure that the order

to attack Pearl harbour came
from hario because after the war

the Japanese destroyed all the
records that were stored there.

But given the configuration of the
various transmission sites in Japan

it probably came from here.

Today the prominent towers,

help to caution
another generation

not to repeat the
mistakes of the past.

And it's hoped
that they'll continue

to sound their warning
for many years to come.

These towers were designed
to last for about 90 years

but the way they were
engineered and constructed

means that they'll last
for a lot longer than that.

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