Original subtitles

Previously, on World War II in HD.

A whale hit us. We just couldn't believe it. You know, a whale.

New recruit Jack Yusen's maiden voyage on the Samuel B.

Roberts is cut short in the Atlantic,

and fate reroutes him and his ship to the pacific.

Our sonar guy is picking up a Japanese sub.

I race up to the bridge to see what's going on, and

one of the guys yells: "we're right on top of it."

It feels good to score our first kill.

Also in the pacific theater: It's damned frustrating. I want to be in the action.

Austrian immigrant turned US soldier Jack Werner watches the

heat of the battle on Kwajalein from the deck of a ship.

So instead of actually fighting, it looks like

I'll be the man behind the man behind the gun.

I make a promise to myself,

I will never sit on the sidelines again.

Grant us a common faith, that man shall know bread and peace,

That he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security,

an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best,

not only in our own lands but throughout the world.

For the past three years, nearly 65,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war

have been at the mercy of their Japanese captors.

They've been starved and tortured, and they're barely surviving.

Their ordeal began in the spring of 1942.

Led by general Douglas Macarthur, the Filipino and American troops

were trying to defend the Philippines against an overwhelming Japanese invasion force.

But with the fall of the islands inevitable, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered

Macarthur to personally withdraw and abandon his remaining men.

What happened next, was an atrocity only made public many months later,

after two American officers pulled off a daring escape.

Known as the Bataan Death March, the Japanese forcibly marched 75,000 prisoners

65 miles to an internment camp, known as Camp O'Donnell.

Along the way, they brutalized them, subjecting them to unspeakable acts of violence.

An estimated 10,000 died during the march.

Now, in the fall of 1944, General Macarthur and the

American military are ready to return to the Philippines.

To liberate the islands and rescue the survivors of the Bataan Death March.

We find out through our officers that we're forming up to attack the Philippine Islands.

We're gonna be part of helping to liberate those islands and free those guys.

18-Year-old sailor Jack Yusen and his destroyer escort,

USS Samuel B. Roberts, are sailing with the US 7th fleet,

part of an American armada of more than 600 ships steaming toward the Philippine Islands.

We're taking 250,000 troops.

Our convoy is 20 miles wide, 35 miles long.

Every kind of ship imaginable, and a few I

couldn't have pictured even in my wildest dreams.

Yusen and his ship are going to take part in the first crucial

hurdle in the Philippine Campaign, recapturing the Island of Leyte.

Located on the outer eastern edge of the Central Philippine Archipelago,

Leyte will provide military with an important staging

area to support the eventual invasion of Luzon,

and the liberation of the Philippine Capital at Manila.

It's our job to keep any Japs from sneaking through and attacking our landing forces.

If we don't do our job, men ashore will die.

As Yusen and his ship take up defensive positions off

the island of Samar, 100 miles to the southwest,

The US 6th army approaches Leyte's beaches.

As we head in, I can feel the tension rising,

just thinking that we are to be some of the first men to hit the beach.

First Sergeant Jack Werner is heading toward the beaches of Leyte.

Although Werner saw action last year on Attu and later on Kwajalein,

this is his first amphibious landing on a beach under fire.

As soon as the ramp comes down, we sprint across the water.

A mortar hits right behind me.

My commanding officer is dead, and a bunch of other guys are wounded.

Werner and his platoon sprint toward the thick dune grass at the edge of the beach.

It's so dense, we can't see anything.

Seems like a good place to take cover and regroup for a moment.

Jap fire is coming down around us.

I don't understand how they can possibly see us through the grass,

and then it dawns on me.

As we lay there, I discover,

to my amazement that I was the ranking person in that group.

As a first sergeant, I was second in command after

the commanding officer, who had been killed.

We were really tuckered down there,

and I really didn't know where that fire was coming from.

But it's up to me to figure it out and get us out of this.

One of my scouts, this kid from Kentucky, crawls

over to me and points up to the coconut trees.

I can hardly believe it. Japanese snipers have tied themselves to

the trees so they can pick us off with a perfect line of sight.

I motion to everyone, ordering them to lay down a covering

fire while the kid from Kentucky crawls into position.

And just like that, he takes care of two of them himself.

Reinforcements come racing in from the beach.

They help us finish off the snipers and tell us to withdraw to the shore.

I was only in command for an hour, but I feel I did reasonably well.

At least I didn't get anybody killed.

When I'm in this plane, I'm so busy looking, thinking.

It's a lot to know, but once you get the hang

of it, you can do things that birds can't do.

One year ago,

22-year-old Arkansas native Shelby Westbrook was a welder living in Toledo, Ohio.

Now he's in Alabama, training to become a pilot with

the army air force's first all-black fighter group.

Known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the soldiers train at a segregated campus.

They are commanded by White and Puerto Rican officers.

We may have separate facilities, but it's a good feeling knowing

that we are doing what a lot of folks said we couldn't.

I could've gone into the infantry, but when the draft board started

sending me letters, I made an application for the air corps.

First, they were only accepting college graduates for flight training,

and then they ran out of college graduates,

so then they started recruiting those with two years' college,

and when they ran out of the two-year college folks, they came up with a written test.

If you could pass the test, then you could qualify for the program.

So that's how I came.

Cause I had no college training, and now I'm a

commissioned pilot in the 332nd fighter group.

Westbrook and the Tuskegee airmen are filmed in color in stateside films like this one.

Produced by the military,

this film was intended to publicize the inclusion

of African-Americans in the army air forces.

After their training, the fighter group's overseas

combat action is shot in black and white.

The briefing officer gets out this huge map of the entire European theater.

He says, "Gentlemen, today we're going after the oil refineries."

We all look around. Everyone knows this won't be a milk run.

Westbrook and the 332nd fighter group are escorting bombers

as part of an ongoing Allied strategy to bomb Nazi oil facilities.

Their target is the Germans' massive oil refining complex in Blechhammer, Poland.

There, the Germans are using the area's natural

deposits of soft coal to produce synthetic oil,

which they use to fuel nearly all of their planes.

Blechhammer is among the most heavily defended targets in the Reich.

The amount of flak is unbelievable.

There's so much anti-aircraft fire and smokescreens, it's hard to see anything.

Some smoke clouds are so dense, like a thunderstorm from hell just sitting in the sky,

our bombers are completely disappearing in them.

As the B-17s finish their drop and begin to turn back, German fighters close in.

There's no time to feel, only time to react.

Our big bombers are like sitting ducks, so it is up to us to protect them.

It's time to do our job.

To protect the bombers, Westbrook and the other pilots are

drawn into tense air-to-air combat with German fighters.

Running dogfights that drag the American pilots from 20,000 feet to below 5,000.

The dogfights only last a matter of minutes,

the amount of time it takes to empty the 1,200

rounds of 50-caliber ammunition in each plane.

After eight hours in the air, Westbrook

and the rest of the Tuskegee squadron are finally back in friendly skies.

Once the bombers land, the fighters peel off and

head back to their own small airstrip at Ramitelli,

completely separated from the white pilots.

When I'm flying, all I can think about is what I'm doing.

The responsibility is exciting.

But when I get back here, the reality of the danger hits me.

This is a serious business.

We're on the beach and resting when a single landing craft appears.

And sure enough, it's General Macarthur,

who is returning to Leyte as he has promised.

After fighting off a group of Japanese sharpshooters on Leyte,

first sergeant Jack Werner is back on the secured beach,

Just in time to see General Macarthur land with the American liberation forces.

Dark sunglasses, pressed pants.

Some of the soldiers are snickering.

I can't believe it. Some of these soldiers have no respect.

The General just strolls onto the beach and walks

into the jungle, and that is the last I see of him.

People of the Philippines, I have returned.

By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil,

soil consecrated in the blood of our two people.

We have come dedicated and committed to the task of destroying

every vestige of enemy control over your people.

The hour of your redemption is here.

While General Macarthur marks his triumphant return to Philippine soil,

the situation offshore takes a dramatic turn, putting the entire invasion in jeopardy.

The navy's lightly armored transport ships are moored just off Leyte's beaches,

carrying supplies and reinforcements for the troops already ashore.

But the heavily armed third fleet, which had been protecting them

and the American soldiers ashore, is suddenly gone.

After receiving word that the Japanese Imperial

navy's last four carriers are to the north,

the third fleet has moved off in pursuit.

With Leyte's beaches now vulnerable to attack,

two powerful Japanese task forces steam toward the island in a pincer move.

The first approaches from the south, where it

is stopped by a line of American battleships.

But the second, a heavily armed force of battleships,

cruisers, and destroyers, approaches from the north.

Their mission is to destroy the American transport

force and halt the liberation of the Philippines.

The only thing standing in their way is a handful of small outgunned American vessels,

including Jack Yusen's ship, the Samuel B. Roberts.

We're looking out at the sky about 70 miles towards the

horizon and we can see lightning and hear thunder.

But it's no storm. It's a battle.

Over the loudspeaker the captain says:

"uncover all guns. This is not a drill. This is for real!"

We have no idea what's happening.

We all knew that there was gonna be a big battle to retake the

Philippines, but we all thought it was going to be on land.

Captain makes an announcement: "There is a

Japanese task force coming down from the north,

battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

We will do our duty, though the outcome is doubtful."

"The outcome is doubtful". What does that mean?

All I want is to do my job and make my family proud.

24-Year-old Oregon native Jimmie Kanaya is a medic with the 442nd regimental combat team,

America's only all Japanese-American army combat unit.

The son of Japanese immigrants,

Kanaya enlisted in the army before the December 7, 1941, attack on pearl harbor.

After pearl harbor, I felt kind of helpless that I look like...

I look like the, you know, like the enemy, so

to speak, and that I had no control over it.

It was a very helpless feeling, like you can't win.

But we had to grin and bear it and make sure that,

you know, you're not going to be affected by it.

I had to be myself.

I had to be who I am and fight for my rights if I could.

Only two months after Pearl Harbor, the US Government

began setting up government-run relocation centers.

Over 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese

Americans were relocated to these internment camps.

All were pulled from their homes and jobs, without due process of

law, and identified as potential threats to national security.

Kanaya's family was no exception.

Right before he ships off to war, he visits them at their new home,

an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho.

It gives me an uneasy feeling, like being in a prison camp.

It's full of hastily built, constructed tar paper

shacks, and there are very minimal amenities.

Seeing that gives me more of a reason to want to prove to our country

that we're just as loyal as the average citizen.

It gives me more of a reason to want to fight.

While some army divisions fighting in Europe are filmed in color,

the overseas combat action of Kanaya's 442nd

regimental combat team is filmed in black and white.

The past few weeks have been a blur

crossing the Mediterranean, jumping on trucks in

Marseilles, sleeping on the side of the road.

It will actually be kind of nice to be in a foxhole again.

After proving their fighting ability in an impressive

campaign against the Germans in Northern Italy,

Kanaya and the 442nd are now in combat in the

mountainous region along the French-German border.

Here in the Vosges Mountains, Hitler's forces are doing

their best to slow the Allied army's advance into Germany.

Because of the region's steep cliffs and dense forests,

American tanks, artillery, and airpower are virtually useless.

It's the ideal terrain for the Germans to make

a stand, their backs against their homeland.

These mountains are impossible to move through.

The Germans could be just about anywhere out here.

As Kanaya and the 442nd approach the hill town of Bruyeres,

They come under heavy shelling.

After three days of vicious fighting, Bruyeres falls to the men of the 442nd.

But they get no time to rest.

The Colonel says that another battalion is trapped

on the other side of the mountain from us,

and they've got a lot of wounded who need to be evacuated.

So I grab three other medics and we set out.

The path is treacherous and thick with trees.

It makes me a bit nervous.

This kind of terrain makes it easy for the Germans to hide.

After struggling over the mountainous trails through no-man's-land,

Kanaya and the three medics arrive in Biffontaine.

There they find more than a dozen wounded men, seven of them on stretchers.

There's no way we can transport all these men back ourselves.

So the battalion commander assigns us 35 German prisoners to use as litter bearers.

I don't like this one bit.

You can't mix weapons with the red cross flag.

It's a violation of the Geneva Convention.

But being a medic that takes orders from infantry, I have

no control over the decision made by a superior officer.

When we set out, I tell my medics head way back.

Because if the Germans stop us along the way, there could be a firefight.

We're almost at the bottom of the hill when the whole column stops.

It's a German patrol, more than 20 men.

Our commanding officers know there's no sense trying to fight.

We are completely outnumbered and outgunned.

There's no time for emotions. You're too busy trying to

avoid the portable flak batteries on the ground below.

22-Year-old Tuskegee airman Shelby Westbrook is

flying his 31st mission with the 332nd fighter group.

Today he is escorting a group of B-24 liberators on a bombing run over Germany.

I'm hit somewhere in the coolant system.

Squadron leader tells me to peel off and head back to base.

Pilot closest to me forms up to escort me home.

But I'm starting to lose altitude.

I'm coming down out of the clouds.

There are mountains in front of me.

I'm on the east side of the black alps over German-occupied Yugoslavia.

We have two aircraft down, but that's the least of our problems.

Now we have to find a way to get out of here with our lives.

We're looking to find out where we are.

When we see guys in German uniforms, with rifles at the ready.

So we stopped. And we both had sidearms of .45 automatics.

But, hey, they already had theirs aimed at you.

Then all of a sudden, both the guys took their guns and put them on their shoulder.

And we looked, and there was a little red star on their cap.

They were Tito Partisans.

Westbrook and his wingman have been rescued by a

Yugoslavian resistance group known as Tito's Partisans.

To help him throw the Germans out of his homeland,

communist party leader Josip Broz Tito struck a deal with the Allies.

In exchange for weapons and ammunition, he and his 200,000 resistance fighters

have promised to protect and return downed Allied pilots,

helping them through German-held territory.

We sleep by day and march in the middle of the night when there's no moon.

This is a new kind of danger.

We can hear a booming from far away.

We all know we're outgunned.

Jack Yusen and the Samuel B. Roberts are off Samar

island, positioned to the north of Leyte island.

Their original mission was to patrol for subs and rescue downed pilots,

but now they have just learned that a powerful

Japanese task force is quickly bearing down on them.

The odds are stacked against us, but this is what we came here to do.

And we're all determined we'll do our duty.

Hoping to avoid almost certain destruction,

the small task force's escort carriers are ordered to pull back.

Sammy B., along with three other destroyer escorts and three destroyers,

are the only thing standing between the enemy and

the vulnerable transports unloading at Leyte.

Although they are hopelessly outmatched by the massive firepower

of the Japanese heavy cruisers and battleships,

they do the only thing they can: turn and attack.

Something hits the portside stern.

Then somebody yells out that our boys back there are all got disintegrated.

That's when I had a big lump in my throat because

two of my closest shipmates are on that gun.

That was their battle station, John Peoney and Leonard Goldstein.

And I kept thinking, "they're both gone; they're both gone."

And that's when I knew this is a fight to the finish.

We're gonna be in this until either we beat them

or they're gonna get, they're gonna beat us.

And that's the way we fought for the next hour.

The Sammy B. manages to land a few hits on the

Japanese cruisers before suffering another direct hit.

Within minutes, Yusen's ship starts taking on water.

The men are ordered to abandon ship.

I make it to the raft, and I glimpse back at the ship.

And there she goes, the Samuel B. Roberts.

We're all crying like babies.

We can only see a few yards because of the waves.

Makes us feel like we're all alone.

I feel something brush against my leg.

A man nearby screams: "Sharks!"

I look at the German prisoners we have with us.

Our only option is to surrender.

Now we're the prisoners and they are our captors.

The tables are turned.

Only moments ago, Japanese-American medic Jimmie Kanaya

was transporting wounded GI's through the Vosges Mountains.

Now he is in the hands of a German patrol,

being forcibly marched deep into enemy territory as a prisoner of war.

I feel worse than helpless.

I'm completely at the mercy of my captors.

These front-line German troops seem especially agitated.

One steals my watch while another frisks me for money.

I'm thinking about trying to escape.

But what would happen to my other medics and to the wounded guys if I did get away?

The guards might take their anger out on them.

No, I can't let that happen.

No matter what, I have to stand fast.

I wonder about how long I'll be here.

All I can think about is the last time I saw my parents at the internment camp in Idaho.

It's kind of ironic that here I was fighting for our country,

and I'm in enemy territory and behind barbed wires

and my parents and brother and sister were in a friendly country behind barbed wires.

And how do you answer that?

In December, Kanaya arrives at a POW camp near Warsaw, Poland.

There he is held until January of 1945,

when the approaching Russian army forces the Germans to retreat with their prisoners.

Kanaya and 1,400 other POWs are forced on

a 380-mile death march to another POW camp near Hammelburg, Germany.

My mother really prayed for me even that I was still alive.

And then when they found out I was alive, they continued praying then,

because while you're in captivity you're still uncertain as to your future.

Kanaya remains a prisoner of the Germans until April 1945,

two years after his parents are freed from the internment camp in Idaho.

When he is finally liberated, Kanaya is close to starvation.

But unlike many he was imprisoned with, he survived.

All around us are fins. When the fins drop,

we all start clinging to the raft a little harder.

18-Year-old Jack Yusen and his shipmates Samuel B.

Roberts are adrift in the Philippine sea.

Hours earlier, their ship was sunk while trying to fight off a Japanese task force.

Now Yusen and his shipmates are at the mercy of the elements.

I was sleeping, dozing outside the net,

when I heard something pushing me on my thigh under the water.

And I looked down and there was a tiger shark pressing my leg.

I said: "Oh my God, big one."

Oh, I said: "God, get him away.

Get him away from me, please.

I'll go home. I want to be a good guy.

I'm not gonna fight with my brother again.

I'll find me a nice girl, get married. I'll have a good family.

Please get me out of this."

I looked down and he was gone.

A few seconds later, two men down from me, a shark took his right leg right off.

And we had to cut him loose.

We pushed him away because we had nothing for him, no morphine, no bandages, no nothing.

When we pushed our shipmate away, the sharks went to him and gave us a reprieve.

All around me, guys are giving up.

No food. No water. No hope.

Sleeping days and marching nights is taking its toll.

We have to be careful.

The Germans could be anywhere.

Having narrowly survived a crash landing in Yugoslavia,

Tuskegee airman Shelby Westbrook is in enemy-occupied territory.

He is being escorted by armed Yugoslavian resistance fighters known as Tito's Partisans.

Dressed in German uniforms as a disguise,

the partisans are attempting to guide Westbrook back to his airfield in Italy.

You don't know what your conditions are going to be from one minute to the next.

You are always n edge.

All of a sudden, you would hear a voice. I think the word was stoi.

Right out of the darkness you'd hear the word stoi, and everybody would freeze.

When the partisans froze, you froze.

You stopped. You didn't make any noises.

And there would be this quiet sound in the middle of black darkness.

And all of a sudden, you'd hear some voices start a little conversation.

And a couple minutes later, you'd start moving again.

It's strange to feel so helpless.

But all I can do is trust these guys and stay ready for whatever comes next.

For the next four weeks, Shelby Westbrook hides behind enemy lines.

With the help of the Partisans, he eventually reaches

the Port of Zara on Yugoslavia's Adriatic Coast.

There he meets British commandos, who transport him back to his squadron in Italy.

Westbrook goes on to fly another 29 missions before his tour of overseas duty is over.

When I got back to the tents,

I started teasing the other guys and saying: "hey,

I'll see you guys later. I am on my way home."

Stranded in the Philippine Sea, time is running out for Jack Yusen

and the other survivors of the sunken Samuel B. Roberts.

Although it is possible to survive up to five weeks without food,

most people can only last three to five days without water.

Guys are drinking so much saltwater, they're starting to hallucinate.

"Hello, hello dear..." A guy yells out: "Oh, there's my mother on the back porch.

I'm gonna go see her. Come on. Hi, mommy!" He starts swimming away.

One of the boys went after him.

When he got near him, the guy that was swimming away pulled out his knife.

He was gonna kill the guy who was gonna save him, bring him back to the raft.

He said: "I'm gonna see my mother, get away from me."

We never saw him again.

He went to see his mother on the back porch.

I don't know how much longer we're going to be able to hold on.

Way off in the distance, I see a patrol ship.

It gets closer and we see the American flag on its stack.

Oh, man, we start yelling: "Hey, hey!" Guys waking up.

And he circles us, and we're yelling at him.

And the captain of that little ship, he came out

on the port wing of the bridge with a megaphone.

"Who are you?" We all yelled out: "Samuel B. Roberts, DE 413."

And he still circles.

Now we're getting pissed off.

And we start cursing at him, every curse word you could ever think of.

He comes around again and he says: "Who won the World Series?"

We all yell out: "St. Louis Cardinals!"

You could hear the bells: "ring, ring. ", stop, stop, lifelines are coming out.

And that's how we got saved.

Yusen's task force lost four ships and 850 men,

including 90 sailors from the USS Samuel B. Roberts.

But their courageous stand against the enemy succeeded.

Mistaking Yusen's small group of ships for a far larger force than

what was actually present, the Japanese fleet turned and retreated.

The American invasion of Leyte is a success.

Three months later, American forces invade the main island of Luzon.

They liberate the island and the remaining POWs.