Original subtitles

[ominous music]

- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

is a transformative figure in American history.

He steers the country out of the Depression

and away from isolationism.

In the summer of 1944,

Allied forces are battling across France,

and heavy bombers are striking the Japanese home islands,

but forcing the Axis powers to submit to FDR's demand

unconditional surrender still requires enormous effort

from America and its Allies.

- All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march;

Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine the nightmare

they're about to unleash.

The most destructive war in human history.

- Suddenly, the world is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

- The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies led by the Big Three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with immensely complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military operation of human history.

- The Allies have to come together,

not just militarily, but industrial scale.

It's a global perspective.

- They have to fight in every climate,

from the Arctic to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa,

and the depths of the ocean.

[triumphant music]

- But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings,

and we see them at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives that others might live.

- World War II was a struggle

in which there could be one victor

and one vanquished.

[triumphant music continues]

[weapons thundering]

[group cheering]

[tense music]

- [Tom] Summer, 1944.

While American forces combat Germany in Europe

and Japan in the Asia Pacific,

in the United States, it's an election year.

Even though his nation is at war,

the Commander In Chief, the most powerful man in the world,

must seek the approval of voters.

- Franklin Roosevelt is trying to do something

no American has ever done,

which is be elected to a fourth term as President,

and the country is not ready

to turn Franklin Roosevelt out,

but they're not thrilled about rehiring him either.

- Roosevelt wasn't in robust health

when he first ran for President in 1932.

He was a polio victim as a young man;

he's in a wheelchair.

Those who've known him before the war

always come away a bit shocked

at how dramatically he seemed to age.

- The stress of the war has ground him down,

so he's got to demonstrate to the American people

that he is still firmly in command in this war

and can bring it to a successful close.

[intriguing music]

Roosevelt decides to sail over to Hawaii

to hold a wartime conference with his top leaders.

By being on a warship at the site where the war started,

for the Americans,

he has the ability to project an image

of continued vitality and strength.

- [Tom] The primary purpose of the Pearl Harbor Conference

is to determine American strategy against Japan

in the Pacific.

-[Robert] Roosevelt looks at Japan

and sees a country infected

with a kind of militarism,

[crowd chanting]

a desire to conquer its neighbors,

a notion of racial superiority

over all the other peoples in Asia.

[soldier shouting in foreign language]

-[Robert] To prevent another Pearl Harbor,

he's going to have to stick to the policy

he declared in 1943: unconditional surrender.

- [Tom] The United States controls most of the Pacific,

including New Guinea

and the recently captured Mariana Islands.

The Navy wants to push on and take Formosa,

modern-day Taiwan,

as a prelude to invading Japan.

General Douglas MacArthur has other ideas.

[dramatic music]

- Douglas MacArthur is one of the most famous

American generals in history,

also one of the most controversial.

He's got an ego that is unbelievable.

In Hawaii, he shows up late.

He keeps the President waiting on purpose,

-[Jonathan] And then rolls in, in this leather jacket,

decidedly casual,

in complete contrast to the Navy,

which is all turned out in their dress whites.

-[Robert] MacArthur believes he's more important

to the country than the President.

In fact, he believes he is the country,

that his will and his desires in some way

embody the will and desire of the American people.

- [Tom] MacArthur insists American forces must return

to the Philippines

for reasons both strategic and personal.

[solemn music]

-[Jonathan] Douglas MacArthur had a long-standing affiliation

with the Philippines.

He had a real affinity for the Filipino people.

He had lived there before the war,

and then in 1941 and 1942,

he was the commander in chief of that garrison

when it was attacked by the Japanese

at the very beginning of the war.

[tense music]

- [Tom] When Japanese forces overran the Philippines

in 1942,

Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur

to evacuate to Australia.

He understood MacArthur's personal value

to the morale of the American public.

After months of bitter fighting,

American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese.

In the cruelest conditions,

they were marched off the Bataan Peninsula

and into captivity:

the Bataan Death March.

During the Japanese occupation,

hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are killed.

Women are forced into sex slavery;

entire villages are destroyed in mass executions.

- As he is about to leave,

MacArthur makes this famous pronouncement:

- I shall return.

- It's not "we shall return";

it's "I shall return."

- This is a vow that becomes really a rallying cry

for Americans,

not only in the Philippines who are captured,

but also for Americans back home.

- [Tom] At Pearl Harbor,

MacArthur presses the President to strike Japan

through the Philippines instead of Formosa.

[dramatic music]

- The problem with the Philippines

is it's not just an island;

it's an archipelago.

And there's a very large Japanese army on these islands,

hundreds of thousands of troops

that could lead to protracted fighting with the Japanese.

-[Robert] But MacArthur has some arguments on his side as well.

The Philippines are an American possession.

They're a commonwealth.

To simply bypass the Philippines and go to Taiwan

will make America look like a very inconstant partner,

not to mention abandoning the survivors

of the Bataan Death March.

- [Tom] Roosevelt leaves the conference

without making a decision.

A week later, though,

he sends a letter to General MacArthur agreeing to his plan.

[weapons firing]

On October 20th,

over a hundred thousand U.S. troops

backed by the Seventh and Third U.S. Fleets land on Leyte,

a central island in the Philippines

with a protected gulf.

MacArthur's campaign to retake the country has begun.

[triumphant music]

-[A.J.] He had the Army Signal Corps of Engineers go ahead

on the beach ahead of him,

so by the time he got there,

he gives his radio address.

- [MacArthur] People of the Philippines, I have returned.

-[Jon] The fact that MacArthur is able to return

to fulfill that promise is a morale boost.

But the theater of MacArthur saying,

"I have returned,"

does not translate into straightforward Allied victory.

[suspenseful music]

- The Japanese know

that General MacArthur has promised to return,

and so they anticipated the next decisive battle

may be over the Philippines.

- [Tom] The Philippines sit between Japan

and the Dutch East Indies,

Japan's primary source of oil.

-[Jonathan] So if the Philippines get captured,

it will cut off the supply lines,

and the military runs out of oil.

- [Tom] The Japanese already have a plan

to defend the Philippines:

Operation Sho-Go, or victory.

They will send all their warships

to destroy the U.S. fleets in Leyte Gulf,

then trap General MacArthur's troops on the island.

-[Jonathan] The Japanese position is

it's absolutely imperative to carry out this operation now.

We've got oil, we've got warships.

We better use them or lose them.

- This is almost like one last banzai charge at sea

that can have a material effect

on the outcome of the war.

That's the kind of spirit

in which the Japanese are heading into this battle.

-[Robert] The Allies have promised the Japanese

that the war's gonna go on

until unconditional surrender of the Japanese empire.

But deep down inside,

I'm not sure the Japanese believe that.

They still think they can inflict enough casualties

on the United States that eventually,

despite all the talk of unconditional surrender,

the Americans will be willing to talk.

- [Tom] As MacArthur and his troops land on Leyte,

the Japanese fleets move towards the Philippines.

-[Christopher] At this point in the war,

the Japanese have suffered terrible losses in the Pacific

from Midway to Guadalcanal,

but they still have a tremendously powerful fleet.

They have these super battleships,

the Musashi and the Yamato.

- These are the biggest battleships ever built,

and this has always been the U.S. Navy's fear.

If these massive Yamato-class battleships get loose

in amongst MacArthur's troop ships,

the invasion support vessels,

the devastation could be immense.

- [Tom] Two Japanese fleets,

a central fleet and a southern fleet,

will converge on Leyte Gulf,

where U.S. naval forces are protecting MacArthur's landing.

Success depends on a third fleet

moving towards the gulf from the north:

a decoy fleet.

-[Bradley] There's another aspect.

There's essentially a carrier task force

that sails towards Leyte Gulf from the north.

It has four aircraft carriers in it.

It's designed to try to lure American ships away

from protecting MacArthur.

- And this is the brilliance of the Japanese move.

They decide to use the carriers as bait.

The entire Japanese strategy is to trap MacArthur,

trap this famous general himself, potentially.

- They're gonna bring these two heavily armed

and armored pincers against the American landing force

while it is still unloading cargo

and supplies and troops at Leyte

and annihilate it.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] General MacArthur has landed 130,000 troops

on Leyte,

the first step in the American liberation

of the Philippines.

But as U.S. troops establish a secure beachhead,

the Japanese Navy enacts Operation Sho-Go.

-[Jonathan] The Japanese have to figure out

how to sneak their forces close to the landing beaches

without being discovered,

because if they come under heavy air attack,

they're in real trouble.

So they plan to lure most of the American forces

out of the fight.

- [Tom] There are two American fleets

supporting MacArthur's forces:

the U.S. Third Fleet led by Admiral Bull Halsey

and the Seventh led by Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.

As the Japanese cross the Sibuyan Sea,

they're spotted by one of Halsey's scout planes.

[tense music]

-[Anand] The Americans attacked from the air,

and they better focus on the largest ships they see,

which was the super battleships Yamato and Musashi.

-[Jonathan] Musashi is an absolute giant.

She has 18.1-inch naval guns,

the largest naval guns ever mounted.

The Japanese have even developed

a special anti-aircraft shell for them as well,

which explodes in this enormous cloud,

and it's supposed to destroy any American planes

that are flying through it.

[weapons firing]

But the attacks that are

launched by these American planes

gradually start whittling away

at her defensive capabilities.

-[Dr. Grant] Torpedo after torpedo

streaks towards the Musashi,

hitting and exploding below the waterline.

-[Jonathan] Seventeen to 19 torpedoes,

more than a dozen bombs,

[bombs thundering]

finally get her to go down.

- [Tom] The Musashi sinks along with a thousand of her crew.

The Japanese central fleet retreats.

That night, Kinkaid's fleet,

including battleships

that had been damaged at Pearl Harbor,

decimate the Japanese southern fleet.

But Halsey again spots Japanese warships

north of Leyte Gulf,

including four aircraft carriers:

the Japanese decoy fleet.

-[Jonathan] In Halsey's mind,

as a carrier commander himself,

any enemy carrier fleet represents the most dire threat

to his mission,

which is protecting the invasion forces.

So Halsey takes his entire fleet

and goes charging off after it.

-[Bradley] And so Halsey's played into the Japanese hands

exactly as they had hoped.

-[Dr. Grant] Halsey's taken all the major firepower

north with him, and that puts MacArthur's invasion at risk.

[tense music]

- [Tom] Halsey moves north,

but the Japanese central fleet

under Admiral Takeo Kurita returns to Leyte Gulf.

From the battleship Yamato,

Kurita sees that only a portion of the Seventh Fleet

is left to protect MacArthur's invasion.

-[Jonathan] For Kurita, this is a heaven-sent opportunity.

The dawn breaks,

and now there is an American fleet

sitting directly under his guns.

All he has to do is sink them.

-[Dr. Grant] The American vessels

that are still around Leyte primarily provide support

for the landing forces going ashore.

So there's only a token force

of light escort carriers and destroyers.

-[Jonathan] Escort carriers are small, extremely vulnerable.

They can carry 25 to 30 aircraft max.

They're designed for ground support

for the troops ashore.

That's their role.

It is not to get themselves into standup fights

against large enemy warships.

- [Tom] The escort carriers launch their planes

against Kurita's much larger fleet.

- And then these escort carriers,

mostly what they do is turn around and run,

because they are not designed to fight a threat like this.

- [Tom] The only force that can match the Japanese,

Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet,

remains a hundred miles to the north.

His commander in chief, Admiral Chester Nimitz,

requests his location.

-[Jonathan] Halsey receives a message from Nimitz:

"Where, repeat, where, is Task Force 34

The world wonders."

Traditionally, naval messages begin and end

with sort of a nonsense phrase

to confuse code breakers.

The nonsense phrase they used in this message, though,

is "the world wonders,"

-[Jonathan] And the "world wonders" line

should have been removed by his cipher officer, but wasn't.

-[Robert] I've always wondered if Admiral Nimitz

was also sticking a little barb in Halsey as to,

"What are you doing up there?"

-[Jonathan] And the result is that Halsey

just goes into conniptions,

throws his cap on the floor,

swearing up and down.

His chief of staff has to tell him

to get a grip on this situation.

- [Tom] Halsey realizes the danger.

He sends his fastest battleships back to Leyte Gulf,

then continues after the Japanese carriers.

-[Bradley] Now, what the Americans don't know

is that the Japanese carriers lying to Halsey's north

don't have many planes on them.

In fact, most of the planes have been offloaded already

and flown to the island of Luzon

for what is about to come,

because a new and terrifying weapon

emerges from this battle:

[plane buzzing]

the kamikaze.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] At an airfield on Luzon,

Japanese pilots are assembled for a unique mission.

-[Dr. Grant] Japanese pilots at the beginning of the war

were the cream of the crop,

elite, hand-selected, and carefully trained.

But by this point in the war, Japan

just doesn't have the time or the resources

to train its pilots.

-[Noriko] The Japanese military leadership

has to make a tough decision

to make a cost-efficient way

of destroying American enemy ships.

And one way to do it is to undertake one-way flight

that will end with crashing a plane.

- [Tom] This new unit of 24 pilots,

led by 23-year-old Lieutenant Yukio Seki,

is Japan's first organized special attack unit.

They will soon become known as kamikaze:

the divine wind.

-[Bradley] So the kamikaze in some ways represents

a perversion of traditional Japanese bushido doctrine,

the samurai code,

this idea of sacrificing one's life for Japan

and for the emperor.

-[Christopher] It's hard to generalize

about their motivations.

You find some of them saying,

"I'm doing this for the emperor."

Other pilots talk about their village,

they talk about families,

and they say, "I'm doing this for you."

For the Japanese, what they're doing

was not regarded as suicide.

It's a death in combat.

So it's this sense that

these young men are becoming something really special,

that almost to give this level of self-sacrifice

makes you a samurai.

[solemn music]

- [Tom] In Leyte Gulf,

the American escort carriers of the U.S. Seventh Fleet

confront a new and lethal threat from the air.

[plane buzzing]

[plane buzzing]

-[Dr. Grant] Stopping a kamikaze plane is almost impossible.

The American carriers can only do two things.

One is maneuver away,

and the second is put up a huge curtain of flak.

But oftentimes

the kamikazes can break through that flak curtain.

-[Robert] You could fire every anti-aircraft gun in the world,

but unless you get something like a direct hit

that kills the pilot,

that plane's gonna hit your ship.

[tense music]

-[Bradley] There's a psychological effect as well.

Japanese kamikaze are giving up their lives

in the most violent ways possible

simply to kill Americans.

This is something that is difficult

for Americans to understand,

that this is a human being

who has chosen to do this to you.

How do you fight against an enemy like this?

- [Tom] Lieutenant Seki crashes his plane

into the flight deck of an American escort carrier,

the USS St. Lo.

It's the first ship to be sunk by kamikaze attack.

Six other vessels are struck and barely stay afloat.

But Admiral Kurita's central fleet

also faces an aerial attack.

-[Jonathan] Despite the pounding the Americans have taken,

it is actually Kurita

who is under a major disadvantage here.

He's up against 350 American planes,

and because Kurita is being constantly attacked

by American aircraft,

he becomes increasingly paranoid

that he is now surrounded by American carriers.

-[Bradley] So after these moments of tension

where Kurita could have potentially wreaked havoc

on the American fleet in Leyte Gulf,

he actually withdraws.

- [Tom] Kurita retreats ahead

of Admiral Halsey's returning warships,

but the Japanese have lost a third of their navy.

-[Bradley] It's the largest naval battle in human history.

More than 200,000 combatants involved,

and the American victory really knocks

the Japanese Imperial Navy out of the war in the Pacific.

-[Col. Douds] But without a doubt,

the Japanese are not gonna surrender.

This perversion of the bushido code,

it has manifested itself on islands throughout this war,

and now it's manifesting itself in the sea and in the air.

So it's starting to get in the mind of the Allies

about how costly it will be

to achieve that unconditional surrender of Japan.

[weapons firing]

- [Tom] Over two months of fighting in dense jungle terrain

against fierce Japanese resistance,

General MacArthur's troops retake Leyte.

Luzon is next.

-[Jonathan] Luzon in particular

is gonna be a very tough nut to crack,

because not only is it a large island with mountain chains

the Japanese can fortify,

but there's also this enormous capital of Manila

with about a million people

sitting in the middle of the island.

And if the American forces get involved

in urban combat there,

the casualties are likely to be very, very heavy.

[group cheering]

- [Tom] Twelve days after the victory at Leyte Gulf,

it's election night in the United States.

- [Reporter] At Hyde Park,

a victorious President greets townspeople

on election night.

- [Tom] Franklin D. Roosevelt wins

an unprecedented fourth term.

The unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany

remains his highest priority.

[dramatic music]

On January 9th, 1945,

MacArthur's troops land on Luzon in the Philippines.

Quickly, special operation forces trek inland

to liberate Japanese POW camps.

[weapons firing]

-[Jonathan] At the end of two years of captivity

in Japanese hands, these men are in terrible condition.

A third of them have already died.

There are also a number of American civilian detainees

that are in camps that are near Manila,

so there's a ticking clock here

as far as MacArthur is concerned.

He needs to liberate these camps as rapidly as possible.

[weapons firing]

- [Tom] In early February,

American forces surround the capital of Manila.

Most Japanese troops have retreated north

to create an extensive defensive line,

but one group stays with orders to fight to the last man.

[tense music]

-[Robert] The real problem of urban warfare in the modern era

is that the city is a gigantic sponge.

You can have a million-man army,

and suddenly it's split up all over the place.

-[Christopher] So the Americans find themselves having to fight

street by street, building by building,

and it really turns Manila into the Stalingrad

of the Pacific.

[weapons firing]

- [Tom] MacArthur's men are supported

by Filipino resistance fighters who provide intel,

disrupt Japanese supply lines,

and help secure key routes into the city.

-[Jonathan] There have been active groups of

Filipino guerrillas in existence since 1942,

and those guerrillas have been carrying on

a very successful campaign of resistance

against the Japanese occupiers.

[weapons firing]

-[Robert] The Japanese response, like the Nazis in Europe,

was to use guerrilla activity

as an excuse to murder civilians.

[tense music]

-[Christopher] So whether it's a school, a hospital, homes,

Filipino people are being bayoneted,

they're being shot, beheaded, sometimes burned alive,

corpses left to rot.

There's a sense of scorched earth,

a sense that we will leave nothing for the Americans.

-[Bradley] The Japanese will ultimately take the lives

of a hundred thousand Filipino civilians.

The Battle of Manila, in a lot of ways,

is a harbinger of what's to come.

-[Christopher] Roosevelt and his top military advisors are aware

of the increasingly dire implications

of a longer war with Japan,

but the American people are very focused

on what's going on in Europe,

and they think the war is now winding down.

- President Roosevelt's just been reelected.

He's looking at the horrors,

the brutality of the fighting in the Philippines,

and he's been peppered with letters

from the moms of America saying,

"Where is my boy?

What is he doing?

What God-forsaken island is he fighting on this time?"

He needs to find a way to strengthen the will

and resolve of the American people,

because he knows things are going to get a lot worse

before they get better.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] Roosevelt meets with British Prime Minister

Winston Churchill in Malta

to discuss the strategy for ending the war in Europe

and in the Pacific.

-[Bradley] The question is,

if we have an enemy willing to sacrifice young men

in kamikaze attacks,

an enemy that seems willing to fight on beyond reason,

how are we going to bring this to an end?

- Roosevelt's advisors are arguing

that the Japanese will not give up.

This war will not end

until there is actually an invasion

of the home islands.

-[A.J.] Churchill and Roosevelt are in Malta

on the way to Yalta early in 1945,

and this is where Operation Downfall first crystallizes:

the invasion of Japan.

The sense is that after the war in Europe would be over,

and all of the resources, all the men,

all the equipment that they could muster

would be transferred into the Far East theater

for a massive, massive operation,

the kind of which history has never seen before.

- This would occur

after a protracted strategic bombing campaign,

which as of early 1945

is beginning to take more and more effect.

- [Tom] At first, the Marines are ordered to take Iwo Jima.

-[Dr. Grant] Japan has an airfield on Iwo Jima,

and as the B-29s start operating

out of Saipan and the Marianas,

they're using it to spot the B-29 formations

on their radar scopes.

-[Col. Douds] Iwo Jima becomes a logical place to, first of all,

remove something from the Japanese control.

Second, don't allow them to have any Japanese fighter

on there or early warning systems.

And third, for all those B -29s

that are making those long flights over 1,200 miles,

it creates a place to land if they have engine trouble,

if they run into any difficulties.

- So Iwo Jima has gotta go.

That needs to become an American airfield.

-[Robert] Now, American intelligence tells the Marines

that there are about 13,000 Japanese defenders,

but there are actually 23,000,

nearly double what the intelligence estimates listed.

As a result, you have an American invasion force

that's going to be meeting a much tougher defense

than it expected.

[tense music]

[ominous music]

- [Tom] Japanese troops on Iwo Jima have been preparing

for an American attack for over three months.

-[Martin] The Japanese strategy is to make the battle last

as long as possible.

Each day that that battle lasts

is a day where the people at the home islands

are spared of an American invasion.

-[Christopher] So the commander of the Japanese on Iwo Jima,

Kuribayashi, says,

we're going to prepare these defensive fortifications

and wait, draw the Americans in, and then attack them.

-[Bradley] The Japanese aren't on Iwo Jima;

they're actually in Iwo Jima.

They have miles and miles of tunnels

that they have dug out of this soft volcanic terrain

on the island.

And they've also fortified the most prominent landmark

on Iwo Jima, which is Mount Suribachi.

- [Tom] Looming over the Marines' landing beaches,

Mount Suribachi provides the Japanese

with a perfect defensive position.

-[Jonathan] It's gonna be this defensive hive

that the Americans will have to reduce cave by cave,

bunker by bunker, one thing at a time.

- [Tom] On Iwo Jima, Japanese soldiers are issued orders

to kill 10 Americans before they die.

-[Bradley] We see very few Japanese

who attempt to surrender.

There's a view that this is a great dishonor,

not only to oneself and one's family,

but to the emperor as well.

-[Christopher] If you look at the letters

that Kuribayashi writes home to his family,

he's clear right from the beginning

that no one on the Japanese side is coming home

from the Iwo Jima campaign.

And he starts to issue these orders

very clearly to his men saying, "Fight to the death,"

but he doesn't want a banzai charge.

He doesn't want pointless suicidal acts.

He wants to show the Americans the cost to them

of going as far as the Japanese home islands.

[gentle music]

- [Tom] The Navy bombarded Japanese positions

for three days.

Now the Marines plan to land 60,000 men

across Iwo Jima's southern beaches,

push north, and take the island.

-[Col. Douds] So at 8:59 on the 19th of February,

the first 10,000 men land, and it's quiet.

But then at 10 o'clock in the morning,

[explosions thundering]

every Japanese soldier with a mortar, machine gun,

or a piece of artillery

will now start to shell the landing beach.

[tense music]

[explosions thundering]

- [Tom] In the face of withering fire,

the Marines struggle up dunes of 15 feet or more.

-[Col. Douds] Iwo Jima is not sand; it's volcanic ash.

Your feet just sink up to your knees.

It's like walking in coffee grounds.

It's incredibly deadly to try and move forward.

-[Tom] Bulldozers are called in to clear a path

through the dunes,

allowing the Marines to continue their advance.

-[Bradley] As the Marines finally make their way

off the beaches, they're getting attacked from everywhere,

people coming out of tunnels,

of mortars coming off of Mount Suribachi,

of hidden artillery emplacements all over the place

with snipers firing positions they can't even see.

-[Jonathan] Individual soldier has to somehow

get up close with a grenade

that he can put through the firing slit

and kill the crew that's in there.

-[Col. Douds] Ultimately, one of the greatest weapons

that the Marines have is what they'd call Zippo tanks,

which are tank-sized flamethrowers

that can shoot long distances,

and that becomes the weapon of choice

for Marines on Iwo Jima.

[tense music]

- [Tom] By the end of the first day,

the Marines have secured an airfield

and prepared to attack Mount Suribachi.

-[Robert] On Iwo Jima, two strategies come into conflict.

One says, no surrender, that's the Japanese,

and then unconditional surrender,

and that's the American position.

And on Suribachi,

the Americans make a determined statement

that it's going to be unconditional surrender.

There is no position on planet Earth

held by the Japanese army

that American troops cannot take.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] After securing the beaches,

U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima attack Mount Suribachi.

-[Martin] The force that goes up the hill

fights off Japanese resistance,

and upon reaching the summit,

they find a water pipe

that had been associated with a Japanese cistern.

They attach a small American flag to that water pipe,

and then they raise that flag.

[epic music]

-[Col. Douds] But they realize the flag's too small.

We need a bigger flag.

So what they're gonna do

is they're gonna take a ship's flag

and they're gonna send it up there.

And about noon, it gets up there.

- [Tom] Six Marines plant the second American flag.

Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer,

captures the moment.

[camera clicks]

-[Martin] All the ships offshore begin blowing their horns.

[horns blowing]

Everyone on the island can see it.

-[Col. Douds] It's a snapshot in time.

The composition's nearly perfect,

although he basically shoots it off his hip

without even using his rangefinder as he did it.

You can't see anybody's face.

And so really it becomes everybody's picture.

- [Tom] Two days later, Rosenthal's photograph

is on the front page of newspapers across America.

President Roosevelt immediately understands

how inspirational this single image is.

-[Jon] FDR was always a frustrated journalist.

He had been the editor of the Harvard newspaper.

He understood visual imagery.

-[Robert] It's American determination

embodied in a single photograph.

-[Col. Douds] They're all working together,

and so it tells a national story.

It's not just those guys on top of the hill

that raised the flag.

It's a nation that put that flag on top of the hill.

-[Jon] But it's striking that the flag isn't fully planted.

It's as if the struggle is still unfolding,

and that fit FDR's mood at that point.

This isn't over.

We're getting closer,

but we haven't gotten there yet.

- [Tom] To FDR, these six Marines

are the perfect symbol of America's wartime effort.

- He calls the Marines and says, "Find me these guys.

I want to bring them to the Oval Office.

I want to send them on a war bond drive."

-[Martin] So the Marine Corps sends somebody to the island,

but they find that three men who were in the photo

were dead already.

They died within days of the photograph being taken.

- [Tom] U.S. Marines suffered 26,000 dead,

wounded, and missing.

Almost every Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima is killed.

- Kuribayashi himself,

who never believed he was getting off Iwo Jima alive,

he retreats, and he takes his own life.

-[Bradley] It's the only battle in the Pacific

where the Americans actually take more casualties

than the Japanese take.

So for American military planners,

the lesson of Iwo Jima seems pretty clear,

that if you're going to launch Operation Downfall,

if you're actually going to invade

the Japanese home islands,

the cost is going to be immense,

because at this point in the war,

most Americans have concluded

that Japan is never going to surrender.

- [Tom] After victory on Iwo Jima,

the Marine Corps sends three surviving flag raisers

back to Washington,

but they will not meet their President.

[ominous music]

- [Reporter] Ladies and gentlemen,

the tragic news of the President's death

came to Washington today as a complete shock,

except to a very few people who knew of his condition.

-[Sarada] Franklin Roosevelt had

loomed so large for so long.

An entire generation of Americans

really only knew him as their President.

Supposedly during the funeral procession,

a man is so overcome by his emotions

and another man says, "Did you know the President?"

And he says, "No, but he knew me,"

and that's how people felt about Franklin Roosevelt.

-[Robert] Roosevelt had been a very, very active President,

a very, very powerful personality,

the kind of caretaker to the people,

and he knew you can't fight an endless war

if you want to maintain your democratic ideals.

He also knew how difficult unconditional surrender can be

to put into actual practice.

- [Tom] During years of fear and uncertainty,

Roosevelt was uniquely able

to lead America's colossal fight against fascism.

Now, this job will fall to his vice President,

Harry Truman.

-[Jon] Mrs. Roosevelt summons Truman to the White House.

He says, "Is there anything we can do for you?"

And Mrs. Roosevelt says,

"No, Harry, is there anything we can do for you?

For you are the one in trouble now."

- On assuming the presidency, Truman told reporters,

"I felt like the moon, the stars,

and all the planets had fallen on me."

Harry Truman of Missouri is now responsible

for the successful conclusion of the largest conflict

in human history,

including the final destruction

of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.