Original subtitles

An imposing bastion in Dover

transformed in the face of an unprecedented crisis.

This went from defending against enemy forces

to a new kind of front line for Britain.

In Japan, a secret training camp for wartime missions of no return.

The weapons created here would be turned against American sailors.

Hundreds would lose their lives.

An Italian town whose people were given lethal advice

by government officials.

They told the locals to stay inside.

This is what signed, tragically, their own death warrant.

And a floating fortress in New Jersey

that became a sanctuary and a saviour.

This marvel of engineering

played its part in some of America's biggest battles.

In Southern Japan are the remains of a facility

that defined a desperate moment in the nation's history.

We're in Ozu Island,

a really thin strip of land just a few miles long.

This seems like a normal little harbour.

But along the cliff face, there is a tunnel entrance.

When you come out the other side,

there is only the pier and then the open sea.

There's not a lot to tell us what this place is for.

And it makes you wonder

how is this tunnel connected to the other structures

we see around here.

It was built to inflict mortal wounds on Japan's rivals.

But as their empire crumbled,

it was given a horrifying new mission.

Their own culture would lead the Japanese Armed Forces

into a different way of engaging with their enemies.

These people are indoctrinated

to sacrifice their lives for their country.

This was the last shred of their homeland

that these men would ever see.

Kenichi Tanaka was born on Ozu Island.

He remembers when his peaceful home

became a hive of mysterious activity.

The Japanese had good reason to keep this site concealed.

In the late 1930s, when it was first operational,

Japan was hellbent on expanding its empire.

By this point, Japan,

having defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War,

sees itself as kind of the overlord of East Asia,

and they want the United States out of Asia.

And as tension ramps up,

Japan needs a much sharper naval weapon

to counter what they see

as inevitable American pressure on them in the Pacific.

So, the Japanese Navy starts to design

what becomes the Type 93 torpedo.

The Type 93 has got a top-secret tank of oxygen inside

that is going to make it ever so slightly faster,

ever so slightly more powerful than any other torpedo around.

The Navy now needed somewhere away from prying eyes

to trial-run their deadly new technology.

In 1937, construction began on Ozu Island.

They test them here because of the size of the Sado Sea,

and the fact that it is remote

and there's not going to be any collateral damage.

And here on the island is the barracks for all personnel,

the testing facilities, the maintenance facilities

for this ambitious torpedo programme.

After a year of development,

the Japanese Navy perfected their secret weapon

with the data they gathered here.

It was now the most advanced naval torpedo in the world.

The effective range of the Type 93 torpedo is 13 miles,

and the best American torpedoes in this period,

their effective range is eight miles,

so this gives the Japanese an immediate edge.

The American military had no idea this new weapon even existed,

but they were about to find out.

In December 1941,

Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

And the Type 93 torpedo would prove devastating

against the Allies in the Second World War.

During the Battle of the Java Sea alone,

the formidable weapon destroyed multiple Allied vessels.

These ships that were hit by those Type 93s,

they didn't know what hit them.

They couldn't believe that

a torpedo could come from a Japanese ship

that they saw that far off the horizon.

But by mid-1942, it became clear Japan had seriously underestimated

the strength of the American military.

Over the next year, the US Navy, Marine Corps

start to conduct the island-hopping campaign.

As island after island is taken away from the Japanese Empire,

the Americans are getting closer and closer to Japan itself.

So, they start casting around for new ideas -

how does this outgunned,

outnumbered, out-industrialised power

go toe-to-toe with the United States?

They have to find new diabolical weapons.

This site is going to be developed into something terrifying,

something desperate.

The Japanese Navy would be inspired

by a bloody confrontation 1,500 miles south of Ozu Island.

At the Battle of Saipan in 1944,

the Japanese garrison launches a suicide charge

at the American invaders,

and 4,000 Japanese soldiers just run at the American lines

and almost all of them are killed.

This banzai charge of Saipan, you know,

heralds a new kind of Japanese warfare.

The Japanese Naval Air Service

starts to use the so-called kamikaze aircraft attack...

..and the Japanese Navy is going to find its own way

to conduct suicide attack.

In September 1944,

this facility was given a menacing new purpose -

to turn men into human torpedo pilots.

These horrifying new weapons were called Kaiten.

They take these Type 93 torpedoes and they say,

"Why don't we, you know,

"put, like, a suicide pilot on each of these torpedoes?

"We'll make a little cabin with 30 minutes of oxygen inside

"and the guy will steer it

"into the side of an American destroyer."

When adding the cabin,

the Navy also increased the length of the torpedo

to allow for three times more explosives

than the original Type 93.

A Kaiten was big enough not just to sink a destroyer.

The Kaiten had enough payload to sink a battleship,

to sink an aircraft carrier.

Incredibly, when the Japanese Navy

advertised for people to pilot these suicide submarines,

and they were seeking 200 such people,

more than 2,000 17- to 28-year-olds applied.

By November 1944,

just two months after training began,

the first Kaiten pilots were ready to attack.

Before they left this base,

their sacrifice was honoured by the island's residents.

On the 6th of November,

eight Kaiten and their pilots were loaded onto submarines.

Two weeks later, they had US ships in their sights.

So, five of the Kaiten

are deployed against the USS Mississinewa,

which is a fuel supply ship.

There's a huge explosion

and 63 US sailors are killed in the attack.

The fireball was so big that the Japanese assumed

that all these Kaiten had hit targets

and they'd blown up this entire assembled fleet

in this anchorage, when in fact they sank one ship.

But because the Japanese believed the mission

had been more successful than it really was,

it gave them a sense of false confidence.

So, they poured more resources into the programme,

thinking that this would be a secret weapon.

They were wrong.

And for the rest of the war,

they only sank, like, a couple of ships.

It promised incredible results but delivered very little.

Far more Japanese sailors died

than Americans were killed by this programme.

Regardless of the Kaitens' success rate,

the Japanese made plans to deploy them

against an American invasion of the mainland.

It was part of the government's wider strategy

to defend the country,

called "100 million shattered jewels".

The big picture was that 100 million Japanese people

were ready to give up their lives in suicide attacks

to defend their homes.

But it never came to that,

as Japan finally surrendered after the atomic bombing

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This terrifying and inhumane weapon of war

was consigned to a dark period of Japanese history.

Every year since 1962,

the relatives of Kaiten pilots and the people of Ozu Island

have gathered to remember the young men who left here,

never to return.

In Central Italy stand the ghostly remains of a catastrophe

that left a trail of broken dreams in its wake.

This is a beautiful part of the world.

The landscape is rugged, the mountains are snow-capped...

Nestled in the middle

is what looks like a town typical of this region,

yet the cobblestone streets are eerily quiet,

and it creates this very unsettling feeling.

These buildings look as if

they've been caught in a moment of time.

People left this place in a hurry.

Why?

The only reason you would do that

is because you're running for your life.

The warning signs were all around,

yet the authorities chose to ignore them.

They told the locals to stay inside.

That turned out to be a terrible and tragic mistake.

This disaster devastated the entire region

and claimed hundreds of lives.

But the question that haunts everyone is,

could this tragedy have been avoided?

Giovanna Colagrande grew up in this sleepy rural town.

It was a tight-knit community

forged through family and friendship.

The earliest history of this town

dates back to about the 12th century,

so it really has stood here for hundreds of years.

There were generations that had grown up here,

living side by side with each other.

This is the town of Fossa.

High on the hill is the most important building

for those that lived here.

It's called the Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta,

and it was built in the 18th century.

Every Sunday, it would be packed to the rafters.

A storm was coming

that would test the faith of the town's residents.

On December 14th, 2008,

this region was struck by a series of tremors

called a seismic swarm.

Just over a month later in January 2009,

the tremors began to intensify in both severity and frequency.

It was good reason to be concerned.

After all, Italy is the most geologically active area

in all of Europe.

If the big one came,

the town's residents wanted to be ready.

But predicting earthquakes is not considered scientifically possible,

yet Giampaolo Giuliani, a local amateur seismologist,

claimed he knew how to do it.

He installed radon detectors in the basements of buildings

in the nearby city of L'Aquila and elsewhere in the region.

Giuliani believed that the release of this gas

signalled a looming tremor.

When the seismic swarm occurred,

he noticed increased radon levels in his detectors

and predicted that a major quake would strike

in a town 30 miles from here.

On the 30th of March 2009, the earthquake did happen,

but it was much smaller than Giuliani anticipated.

As a result, the authorities put an injunction on Giuliani

for causing unnecessary panic and alarm.

He was even forced to take down his warnings from the internet.

But the day after, there was an earthquake -

4.2 on the Richter scale.

The residents in the region were now terrified,

especially because they had been told

that there was no basis to Giuliani's claims.

The Italian government convened a special committee

of six scientists and a government official,

Bernardo De Bernardinis, to assess the risks.

So, after the meeting,

the government official relayed the scientists' discussions

to the public.

About a week later, in the middle of the night,

a 6.3-magnitude tremor struck the Abruzzo region,

and this was the deadliest the country had seen in 30 years.

Fossa was directly in the firing line.

People were sleeping when the quake hit,

and the ground began to shake violently.

Cracks opened up in buildings.

Huge boulders sheared off the sides of mountains

and came crashing down on the town.

In one building, a boulder has struck a house,

and bunk beds that children once slept in are left exposed.

In the nearby city of L'Aquila, the situation was even worse.

Entire buildings were reduced to rubble,

and 70,000 people were forced to flee.

309 people were killed and more than 1,600 were injured.

The damage totalled somewhere in the range of $10 billion.

The dust didn't even have time to settle before the backlash began.

Mounting anger led to the region's capital of L'Aquila

bringing a prosecution case against the scientists

who said there was no reason for alarm.

The prosecution didn't blame them for not predicting the earthquake,

but rather for the failure of accurate communication.

The fact that they told people to stay in their homes

was a key part of the trial.

A year later, the seven defendants were convicted

and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The result triggered an international outcry,

as researchers around the world

felt science itself was being put on trial.

Many in the scientific community

warned it would discourage scientists

from sharing their expertise

for fear that they might face lawsuits in the aftermath.

5,000 scientists signed an open letter,

calling, demanding that these defendants be released,

and in 2014, the court of appeal overturned these convictions,

but the families of those that lost their lives

were outraged at this.

One conviction was upheld - that of Bernardo De Bernardinis.

He was convicted of manslaughter,

but with a reduced sentence of two years.

Now, well over a decade later,

a reconstruction is happening in Fossa,

but it's a slow process.

In Camden, New Jersey,

lie the remains of an American juggernaut

that symbolises an era plagued by global conflict.

We are on the Delaware River,

and on it you can see this huge mass of metal

just glinting in the sunlight.

You don't have to be a naval expert

to realise that you are looking at a battleship -

and a big one at that.

So, the ship had served in World War II and Korea

and earned 13 battle stars

and the affectionate nickname The Big J.

It was an avenging angel to American servicemen in conflict

time and time again.

In Vietnam, this vessel achieved something extraordinary.

We fired all nine 16-inch guns,

and then we had the plane come back and tell us, "Congratulations.

"You're the first battleship to sink an island."

But any ship with a service record that long

is bound to eventually run aground of controversy,

and that's what happened with this one's last deployment

to the Middle East.

In 1968, Steve Sheehan began serving aboard this vessel.

At the time, he was an electrician's mate.

Taking the first steps onboard since I've been discharged

made me feel like I was finally home.

It's the only ship I ever sailed on in the Navy,

and I'm very proud of it.

This now-peaceful ship was built at a time

when the United States was on the brink of war.

The American government sees the writing on the wall,

and in July 1939,

two months before the German invasion of Poland,

they commission an entirely new class of battleships.

When this vessel was launched,

it was the biggest and most powerful battleship

in the entire US Navy.

This is the USS New Jersey,

one of four Iowa-class battleships built to strike fear

into the hearts of America's rivals during World War II.

Able to hold a crew up to 2,700,

the New Jersey was a floating fortress.

It had nine 16-inch guns

and a secondary armament of 20-millimetre

and 40-millimetre anti-aircraft batteries

to protect the battleship from aerial attack.

In 1944, the vessel arrived in the Pacific, ready for war.

It served with distinction,

playing a key role in the battle for Leyte,

the largest sea campaign of all time.

But despite its critical role in the American victory,

its days were numbered.

By 1957, the USS New Jersey

had reached the end of its useful life.

The era of big battleships was really coming to a close.

Naval technology is changing,

and the battleship is being supplanted by the aircraft carrier

because the aircraft carrier can engage targets at much longer range.

When the Vietnam War begins,

the Americans begin this air campaign

called Rolling Thunder,

where they send planes over North Vietnam

to take out critical infrastructure.

But these repeated sorties are ending up

putting American pilots in immense jeopardy.

Around 1,000 US aircraft were shot out of the skies,

with the same number of pilots being wounded,

killed, or captured.

As increasing numbers of downed US airmen

were paraded on TV screens around the world,

pressure mounted to find a new way to attack the enemy.

The US Navy had a secret weapon,

and it was one that would save American lives.

On August 1st, 1967, the USS New Jersey gets the call.

I thought, "This is my opportunity to go onboard a ship,"

and when I came up here to look at the battleship,

I went, "My God, that thing is big."

I went to the Panama Canal, and then we were off to Vietnam.

On September 29, 1968,

the USS New Jersey arrives off the Vietnamese coast,

and the next day, it opens fire.

The New Jersey would maraud up and down the coast,

demolishing bunker complexes,

fortified positions, troop concentrations,

and sinking enemy ships in the process.

The ship would also provide ad hoc artillery support

to US troops on the ground near the coast.

In one three-day battle,

it's estimated that the USS New Jersey

saved 100 American lives for each day it was deployed there.

They knew when the battleship was firing,

because it sounded like a railroad train

as the projectile went through the air.

Just, "Phump, phump, phump, phump, phump," before it hit.

So, they knew the battleship was coming to their aid.

With this unrivalled firepower, the USS New Jersey

is able to pull off the unthinkable in the South China Sea.

The ship was called on to bombard some coastal artillery on an island.

The captain said, "All hands, get to your battle stations.

"Turret one, two, and three is going to go in line.

"It's going to be a nine-gun salvo."

And when the USS New Jersey fired,

it ended up sinking part of this island.

This is reported with great enthusiasm

back in the States, with newspaper headlines saying that

the New Jersey has sunk an island.

But to the troops fighting on the ground,

Big J, as it became known, was much more than a battleship -

it was a sanctuary.

The grunts - the ground troops in Vietnam -

found it, you know, just filthy, dirty work in the field,

and some of them were fortunate enough

that they got a period of rest and relaxation

onboard the USS New Jersey.

The poor guys hadn't had showers in weeks.

They got a good night's sleep, a warm bed,

hot dinner, good breakfast.

When going by where they were bunked,

we had to walk softly because we knew they were still asleep

and we wanted them to be asleep.

For the beleaguered troops,

an even bigger surprise lay in store.

At 10am on Christmas morning 1968,

a helicopter touched down on the deck of the USS New Jersey.

So, this was approximately where I stood

when Bob Hope was on the top of the turret

with all of his gorgeous women.

And the deck was filled with Marines, Army, and Navy.

When those girls came out, the place went wild.

Bob Hope was a lifelong performer and comedian.

He first began entertaining troops in 1943 during World War II.

It was always something that the troops yearned for.

It was a break from the monotony.

He stayed around afterwards

and thanked everybody for their service.

He was very generous. He was a wonderful guy.

Christmas can be such a lonely and difficult time of year,

so what Bob Hope did for soldiers' morale

is really incalculable.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But less than four months later,

Big J was called back to the United States.

Among the ship's crew,

it was rumoured that the North Vietnamese

had refused to engage in peace talks

while the battleship patrolled their coast.

Four years after the New Jersey returned home,

America's involvement in the Vietnam War finally ended

when they withdrew from Saigon.

But its service was not over yet.

And incredible as it sounds,

the USS New Jersey, laid down in 1943,

is called back to action in 1983.

Lebanon was in the midst of a messy and brutal civil war.

And the New Jersey became

part of Reagan's decision to send US Marines

and other personnel to Lebanon

to try to calm down the civil war and bring peace to the region.

Sadly, it ended with tragedy.

After the New Jersey arrived in Lebanese waters,

its fearsome weaponry was soon called on to retaliate

when US naval reconnaissance planes were fired on by enemy combatants.

But there was a problem.

The ship's powder had been mixed incorrectly,

so these huge guns were wildly inaccurate

and they were missing their targets by big margins.

Civilians were likely killed as a result of that,

and so America's reputation in the region took a hit.

These were the last shells ever fired

aboard the USS New Jersey.

After leaving Lebanon in 1984,

Big J continued to serve in the Pacific

and the Persian Gulf until 1991 when it was officially retired.

It was a ship of such significance,

it was even featured in Tom Clancy's classic Cold War thriller,

The Hunt For Red October.

In 2001, the USS New Jersey was turned into a museum.

Steve Sheehan now shares with the public

the story of America's most decorated battleship.

They should know about the people that have fought for their freedom

and the ships they were aboard.

On England's south coast is an ageing complex

designed to defend the nation's borders.

Overlooking the port,

a vast structure is etched into the hillside.

It seems to dominate the town and the coastline.

It's a real jumble of architecture from different eras.

There are cannonades, defensive ditches...

This is clearly some sort of military stronghold.

Once intended to keep Britain's enemies out,

it turned into a site that trapped people within.

There's barbed wire and shiny metal fences,

a sports pitch, 1960s blocks,

and a foreboding castle-like structure.

There's no mistaking this place is a prison.

So, what kind of criminals were kept here?

Yet looks can be deceiving, and not all is as it seems.

Despite its appearance,

this building was not planned to be a prison.

But the people who passed through here

tell a very different story.

There was no charge, no trial,

but the doors were locked and they were trapped here.

Weekly, you were hearing someone trying to commit suicide

cos they've lost all the hope.

For centuries, the coastal town of Dover

has been the gateway to Britain.

Its proximity to mainland Europe - only 21 miles from France

across the narrowest part of the English Channel -

meant that it often needed to be defended.

Let's just say the British and French

have had their disagreements over the years.

In 1803, the rise of a new dictator named Napoleon Bonaparte

spurred a frenzy of construction.

He posed the biggest threat to the nation in over a century.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the fort held barracks for 200 men

and was intended to house 12 24-pounder guns

in large casemates.

It was called the Dover Citadel,

and it formed part of the biggest defence network

ever built on England's south coast.

If Napoleon dared to cross the Channel,

Britain was going to be ready.

Defensive ditches, ramparts, and barracks

were built in anticipation.

But the feared invasion never came,

and when the war ended, it was put on hold.

Yet the Dover Citadel continued to be upgraded

for the following 150 years

to combat Britain's foreign adversaries.

The fort would remain garrisoned through both World Wars until 1944,

when the threat of Nazi invasion had passed.

Over the next half-century, parts of this site were converted

for use as a prison for young offenders,

but it was transformed

after a wave of instability swept across the world in the 1990s.

Global conflicts in places like the Balkans, Somalia,

Sri Lanka, and the Middle East

triggered large-scale population movements.

The UK government was struggling

to deal with the growing numbers of refugees.

In the late 1970s,

individual asylum applications to the UK were around 300 a year.

In 1999, there were more than 70,000.

They resorted to housing some asylum seekers in criminal prisons.

But that was only a short-term solution.

This is the Dover Immigration Removal Centre.

Opened in 2002,

it was part of the British government's answer

to the growing refugee crisis.

The nationalities of those detained

tallies closely with countries that have been torn apart

by war in recent years.

Iraq, Syria, for example.

The facility housed more than 300 asylum seekers.

Your freedoms are very restricted.

At night, the doors to your cell are locked

and you're held there until the following morning.

Jack Taylor is visiting for the first time

since he was detained here in 2015.

I'm from Afghanistan.

When I've first been brought here and been put in this building,

I was very, very afraid and suffered a lot,

going through depression, anxiety.

Jack's path to this place began in the aftermath

of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre.

Following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan,

Jack's father served in the newly formed Afghan Army,

fighting the Taliban alongside American troops.

But in 2006, the Taliban launched a major offensive,

marking the most significant escalation of the war

since the regime was overthrown.

Jack's father was killed during this violent period.

As the Taliban regained territory, the country became more dangerous

for those opposed to their radical beliefs.

Imagine what it must have been like.

It must have been absolute hell for them.

Tens of thousands were forced to flee.

Jack was one of them.

In 2007, he arrived in the UK illegally

and applied for asylum.

First day when... when I came into this country,

I'm being taken to the police station,

and then they have asked me what was the reason

that I've come to this country, which I've told them,

and then transferred me to foster care.

I was 14 years old.

He spent the next eight years in a legal limbo,

waiting for his asylum application to be processed.

But in 2015, when Jack was 22 years old,

he was detained in this building

after failing to report regularly enough to the authorities.

There was a bunk bed here and my cellmate was on the top.

It was a very, very noisy place, cos imagine how many rooms,

and every single room, they were putting two, three people.

Detainees were usually restricted to the wing they were held in,

other than at mealtimes

or if you were taken to the medical building.

Making friendships is very difficult

as people are regularly moved without warning.

At any time, you could be presented with the news

that you were going to be deported within the next two weeks

back to the country you'd suffered so much to escape.

Jack discovered he faced the same fate

after being held here for around two months.

The country he fled in 2007

had become even more dangerous following the emergence

of the Islamic State terrorist organisation.

My head went spinning.

I was like, "Gosh," you know, "This is a very short time."

But then I was trying to find a lawyer to do something

and to cancel the removal decision.

For some, the fear of being

sent back to the country that they'd escaped from was so bad,

they decided to take their own lives.

So, a lot of people were going through very hard time.

They were thinking it's better to die here,

so they were just hurting themselves.

But Jack didn't lose hope,

and fought the decision to return him to Afghanistan.

He managed to find a lawyer who helped secure his release

and get him permission to stay in the UK.

It was the very happiest moment,

the day when I've been released, you know,

cos I wasn't expecting that would ever happen to me.

Now I have the ability to make my life better day by day,

and make new friends.

I feel very, very lucky.

Around six months after Jack was freed,

the Dover Immigration Removal Centre was decommissioned.

In 2015, it was announced the detention centre

would be shut down,

with the government citing its lack of modernity,

security, and proximity to airports.

Within two weeks of the announcement,

the site was closed

and detainees moved to other centres.

In 2022, Jack was granted refugee status

and could now begin his new life in the United Kingdom.

He has high hopes for what the future holds.

This country has saved my life and has given me dignity.

Now it's time for me to do something and pay back,

and be able to help those people like me

who have a very difficult past.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media