Original subtitles

♪ (TENSE MUSIC)

The debris of the merciless battles of World War II

is still strewn across the remote islands of the Pacific.

Below the waves, ghost fleets and their cargoes

bear silent testimony to the battles above.

All types of aircraft are scattered on the sea floor,

and on land, the remains of savage and bloody conflicts.

A tangible museum of the weapons of war, frozen in time,

charting the track of one of the planet's grimmest

and most far-reaching military campaigns.

For the protagonists,

the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean were the prize.

Today, history tells its own story through these remains of war.

(WAVE WHOOSHES)

By now, the Pacific War was going badly for Japan.

(CANON FIRE)

After their successes in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands,

and the destruction of the Imperial Japanese Fleet at Truk,

there were still many major obstacles

for the Americans on the road to Tokyo.

Island hopping northwards, the liberation of the Philippines

was the next major target for the Americans.

But before they could launch their invasion,

another Japanese-occupied territory had to be neutralised.

Hard as it is to believe today,

the tiny island nation of Palau

was a crucial pivot in the later stages of the Pacific conflict

and became a brutal battlefield,

both on land and on the ocean.

♪ (LIGHT AMBIENT MUSIC)

Palau's capital city, Koror,

has grown up around the debris of the Second World War.

Today, this rusting military hardware

lies uneasily alongside modern developments,

exactly where it was abandoned 80 years ago.

♪ (PRESSING MUSIC)

The sea floor of Palau's lagoon is littered with shipwrecks

dating back to World War II.

Silent monuments to a short but ferocious raid by the American Navy,

codenamed Operation Desecrate I.

Over an intense 2 days of aerial bombardment,

more than 40 Japanese ships were sunk or damaged.

With Truk already neutralised as a naval base,

and with Allied forces advancing throughout the region,

Palau's role had become crucial to the Imperial Japanese Navy.

As island after island fell to the unstoppable American advance

across the Pacific,

Palau had become a stronghold in what the Japanese viewed

as the last line of defence of their homeland.

In the Imperial government's plans for domination

of the whole Pacific region,

Palau was to play a key role.

As early as 1937,

Japan had started to militarise the islands.

Docks had been built to service the larger ships in the lagoon.

The ports were both for incoming and outgoing cargoes.

The islands bristled with defenses.

Anti-aircraft batteries were positioned.

Artillery pieces mounted to cover all approaches.

Tanks were dug in, ready to repel a land invasion.

Airfields were built on both Koror and Peleliu Islands

as bases for bombers and fighters

to delay the American advance.

Storage facilities were constructed where supplies of food,

fuel, and munitions were stockpiled.

Roads, and indeed the whole infrastructure of the islands,

were upgraded to serve the needs of the large military force.

And a huge defensive network of tunnels was constructed

to protect them against both land and aerial attack.

They were to prove crucial to the Japanese as a last line of defence

and a huge obstacle to the Americans in finally securing the islands.

The Americans saw Palau

as a threat to their advance on the Philippines.

They couldn't leave such a major naval and air force base

intact on their flanks.

So, like Truk,

it had to be neutralised.

Operation Desecrate I,

the raid on shipping in the Palau Islands group,

was carried out at the end of March 1944.

Wave upon wave of fighter planes and bombers

were launched from the task force's aircraft carriers.

The Japanese fleet had nowhere to escape to.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

The initial wave of fighters strafed the trapped fleet.

Then the bombers rained a hail of 1,000-pound bombs

onto their targets.

(EXPLOSION)

(MUSIC SLOWS)

In just 2 days,

the attackers downed around 125 Japanese aircraft

and critically damaged more than 40 ships.

At the cost of just 18 American lives.

♪ (INTRIGUING MUSIC)

The Imperial Japanese Navy ship Iro was a fleet oiler.

This means that she had both fuel tanks and dry cargo holds

in order to supply other ships while at sea,

an essential role to support a fleet at war.

She'd already been involved in the Japanese invasion of Rabaul,

the Guadalcanal campaign, and delivered supplies to Truk.

Japan herself had no natural oil reserves.

But the conquered Dutch East Indies,

now known as Indonesia, had massive reserves of oil.

And it was from there that Iro had come.

Loaded with oil in Balikpapan, she was en route with her cargo

to supply the fleet in Palau.

Iro had not had a lucky war.

She'd already been torpedoed twice.

On the first occasion, she'd been disabled

and towed to the Marshall Islands for 2 months of repairs.

On the second occasion,

2 torpedoes fired from an American submarine hit her,

and she was towed a massive 4,600 miles

back to Japan for more patching up.

And now, with 8,000 tons of crude oil on board,

she was torpedoed for a 3rd time.

She managed to limp into Palau

and was anchored well away from the rest of the fleet

because of her volatile cargo.

And there her luck finally ran out,

less than a week after her arrival.

Still under repair, she was struck by no less than 6 1,000-pound bombs

and sank in 130 feet of water.

Palau had been crucial as a convoy gathering point

and a refuelling hub for the Imperial Navy.

It had to be kept continually supplied with oil

from the furthest outposts of Japanese-conquered territories.

Outbound ships from Japan

heading for the farthest outposts of the war

passed through carrying men, vital supplies, and ordnance.

And the islands were a staging and refuelling post

for vessels returning to their homeland.

Carrying plundered cargo, the wounded,

and to deliver prisoners to labour as slaves in Japan.

♪ (BRIGHT AMBIENT MUSIC)

This was the principal deep water anchorage

and where most of the shipwrecks are to be found.

Two headlands known as the Crab Claw

create a natural, well-enclosed anchorage.

And just inside the Crab Claw lies the Chuyo Maru.

The Chuyo was a steam-driven freighter.

Stairways lead to her long-abandoned bridge.

Walkways, corridors, and cabins invite exploration.

Open doorways entice you in.

Ladders draw you down into the depths of her engine room.

(VESSEL CREAKING)

Deep inside the wrecks, natural light barely penetrates.

Sometimes just a distant glimmer to lead you to safety.

Ladders climb from the very bowels of the ship to the daylight above.

The wooden decks of the cargo ships are long gone.

If not burnt during the airstrikes,

they'd been eaten by shipworms

and rotted away after so many decades under the sea.

Just the steel ribs remain,

and below, the empty, gaping cargo holds.

At sunset on the day of the attack, the Chuyo Maru was still afloat.

By dawn the next day, she'd slipped below the waves.

When they realised the attack was imminent,

many ships' captains brought their vessels close to shore,

hoping this would protect them from attack.

These limestone mushroom structures,

forced up from the sea floor by ancient seismic movements,

provided perfect shelter.

Under cover of camouflage nets,

it would be hard for an attacking pilot

to distinguish islands from ships.

♪ (BRIGHT SOMBRE MUSIC)

This wrecked wartime barge has its own special inhabitant,

a juvenile crocodile that's made its home here.

♪ (TENSE RHYTHMIC MUSIC)

Over 525 feet long, colossal for her day,

this tanker is one of the biggest ships in the lagoon.

With a range of over 9,300 miles,

she was capable of carrying almost 17 million litres of oil.

In the hot tropics, oil expands

and pressure can build to dangerous levels.

To prevent this,

pipes ran from each of the ship's oil tanks

to the top of the masts to let the cargo breathe.

But Amatsu Maru had a very short career,

just one year from launching to sinking.

She'd arrived in Palau from Singapore

just 3 days before the American attack.

Struck by at least 3 1,000-pound bombs,

which killed 10 of her crew,

Amatsu Maru met her fate.

♪ (BRIGHT AMBIENT MUSIC)

Because she lies in relatively shallow water,

she was initially heavily salvaged in the 1950s,

when probably the first thing taken

were the contents of the safe on the ship's bridge.

The salvagers simply blew the door off.

Some of the most valuable metals were the huge propellers.

Amatsu Maru is one of the few wrecks that still has hers in place.

The destruction of so many tankers like Amatsu Maru

and fleet oilers like the Iro

was a crippling blow to Japan's war effort.

Coming only 6 weeks after the sinking of similar ships in Truk,

the Imperial Navy's capability to transport oil

from the Dutch East Indies was now severely curtailed.

(AIRCRAFT WHIRRS)

(CANON FIRE)

(EXPLOSIONS)

(HEAVY ARTILLERY FIRE)

Downed planes of every type and size

are strewn across the ocean floor.

Bombers, fighter planes, and reconnaissance aircraft,

all sharing the same fate.

If there was just one aircraft that symbolised Japanese air power

during World War II, it was the Zero fighter,

versions of which served throughout the Pacific War.

Directly outside one of Palau's newest hotels,

in just a few shallow feet of water

lie the remains of one of those Zeros.

Of all the Japanese planes that were scrambled,

few survived.

Palau was also a major Japanese seaplane base.

This is an Aichi E13A seaplane,

known to the Allies as the "Jake".

A slow-flying reconnaissance aircraft,

she carried a crew of 3.

She was a long-range float plane and, in addition to reconnaissance,

was used for air-sea rescue of downed pilots

and sometimes in combat.

They were often launched from catapults

on Japanese battleships

and craned back on board after their mission.

After the approaching American task force was detected,

the Japanese formed a convoy to slip away to Formosa,

modern-day Taiwan.

But they were too late.

The Americans were only 90 miles away,

and a 72-strong flight of Hellcats, plus dive bombers, torpedo bombers,

and Grumman Avengers to drop mines, wrought havoc on the convoy.

With insufficient naval protection and ineffective anti-aircraft guns,

all the ships in the convoy were sunk.

One of the ships sunk by the American attack

was Teshio Maru,

an army cargo ship of the Japanese Imperial Fleet.

It's one of the shallower wrecks in Palau.

Attempting to escape the onslaught, Teshio's skipper had turned back,

hoping to return to the relative safety of the lagoon.

But she was strafed, torpedoed,

and bombed by the waves of American planes.

Crippled by a bomb on her starboard side

and a second that destroyed her steering gear,

Teshio drifted helplessly with the current

until running aground.

Eventually, she slid down the reef to her final resting place.

In the crystal-clear water outside the lagoon,

she's one of Palau's most scenic wrecks,

and fish and corals thrive on her.

Indeed, many of Japan's fleet sunk in Palau

have become oases of life in the ocean.

In the warm waters of the lagoon,

even the top of a ship's mast has become a coral reef in miniature,

a totally self-sustaining ecosystem.

Some ships seem remarkably intact.

Others are a mass of tangled iron and steel

where 1,000-pound high-explosive bombs or airborne torpedoes struck,

sending them quickly to the sea floor.

Having destroyed the Japanese fleet inside the lagoon,

the Americans could now turn their attention

to their other major target in Palau.

It's hard to believe that this tiny island,

population today just 700,

was the scene of one of the bloodiest

and most protracted battles of the Pacific campaign.

Where men fought and died is now again just another sandy beach

in what we today regard as paradise,

but for tens of thousands of men was true hell on earth.

The evidence of the carnage and destruction is still everywhere.

There are more remains of war per square mile on this island

than anywhere else in the Pacific.

A still tangible testament to the savage battle for this tiny island.

By 1944, Peleliu had become a major Japanese airbase,

effectively an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

By capturing the airfield,

the Americans could protect their flanks

from attack by Japanese planes based here

during their planned landings on the Philippines,

a few hundred miles to the west.

The American generals' assessments

were that the campaign would take just 3 days.

How wrong they were.

What they didn't realise

was how intensively fortified and protected

the island actually was.

Nor did they realise that they would be fighting

one of the best infantry regiments in the Imperial Army,

led by one of their most experienced officers,

Colonel Nakagawa.

The defenders had plenty time to prepare,

blasting out miles of galleries and tunnels.

Some were small, for snipers or gun positions.

Others could accommodate up to 1,000 men.

The Americans were facing an enemy deeply entrenched in caves,

prepared for a deadly war of attrition,

and under orders to fight to the last man.

Operation Stalemate II, the invasion of Peleliu,

was the largest amphibious operation in the Pacific to date

with more than 1,600 ships deployed.

Navy warships and planes initiated a massive bombardment

intended to soften up the island's defenses.

After 3 days of sustained pounding,

the first Marines headed for the shore.

Fighting was heavy along all the landing beaches

as the Japanese contested every inch of rock and coral.

The skilfully camouflaged

and well-protected Japanese artillery positions

were mostly untouched by the shelling.

So too were the Japanese defenders,

who emerged from the tunnels unscathed and combat-ready.

Pillboxes and bunkers were concealed amid coral ridges

and rock outcroppings.

All defensive positions were carefully chosen,

fully camouflaged, and with excellent fields of fire.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC STRINGS)

The airfield today gives little hint of the fact

that seizing it was the Americans' real goal on Peleliu.

It was both their actual and symbolic principal target.

But to take it,

they had to overcome unprecedented Japanese resistance.

The Marines had to battle their way across the open airfield

to secure it,

but the defenders had no intention of giving it up without a fight.

(EXPLOSION)

In addition to extreme temperatures approaching 50 degrees,

the Americans fought without any drinking water,

their supplies having been delivered

in barrels contaminated with oil.

Despite being only a few hundred yards from the beaches,

it took a massive 8 days after the initial landing

before it was finally secured,

at the cost of very heavy casualties to both sides.

♪ (DRIVING RHYTHMIC MUSIC)

(CANON FIRE)

(EXPLOSION)

♪ (EERIE DRONING)

Every building, bunker, and strongpoint was fiercely defended.

The remains of the command centre bear testimony

to the ferocity of the battle.

With stairs that now lead to nowhere,

pockmarked ceilings, and exposed wires and girders,

the old Japanese headquarters could form the setting for a horror movie.

In fact, the Americans had little inkling

as to what was in store for them.

Aerial reconnaissance photographs proved deceptive.

From the air, the island appeared a gently undulating series of hills,

green and lush with tropical vegetation.

But after the bombardment had pounded the island into a barren wasteland,

its true nature was revealed.

Sheer, almost unscalable, jagged coral outcrops.

The steep valleys and narrow ravines were death traps.

The real Japanese defence

centred on what's now known as "Bloody Nose Ridge".

Only 500 feet high, the ridge dominated Peleliu.

Every inch of coral was paid for in blood.

(PERSISTENT GUNFIRE)

♪ (HEAVY DRUMMING)

With most of the vegetation destroyed,

for the advancing American troops, there was nowhere to take cover,

and nowhere to hide.

Although still only in their late teens or early 20s,

many of the Marines on Peleliu were already battle-hardened veterans

of the Guadalcanal and New Britain campaigns.

Conditions were hellish.

(GUNFIRE)

Scorching daytime temperatures,

and with no water sources on the island,

thirst was a constant horror.

The Americans landed tanks to take part in the battle,

but the Japanese had every approach covered.

(MUSIC STOPS; CICADAS CHIRP)

This Sherman tank ran over an improvised Japanese mine

made from an unexploded bomb.

The detonation flipped the huge machine and created a fireball,

killing everyone inside.

With Peleliu's airfield now fully operational,

the Air Force provided bombing support to the Marines

attacking Bloody Nose Ridge.

The island was so small that it took less than 15 seconds

to arrive on target after takeoff.

(EXPLOSION)

The Japanese defensive perimeter slowly shrank to a pocket,

a few hundred feet square around Bloody Nose Ridge.

(AIRCRAFT WHIRRS)

It was essentially a grim fight to the death.

The Americans used flamethrowers and napalm to clear the tunnels,

(SMALL EXPLOSION)

and armoured bulldozers collapsed cave entrances

entombing Japanese soldiers within the bowels of the earth.

Peleliu was finally secured at the end of November 1944,

when organised Japanese resistance ceased

and Colonel Nakagawa committed ritual suicide.

A planned 3-day campaign had stretched to almost 3 months.

Virtually the entire Japanese garrison of 11,000

was wiped out.

Only 19 servicemen were taken prisoner.

Even today, around 3,000 Japanese

are recorded as missing in action here,

almost certainly still entombed in the huge cave system.

Almost 7,500 American troops were killed or wounded.

A horrific attrition rate of around 40% of those who took part.

A question that historians will debate forever is,

was Operation Stalemate II actually worth it?

Some say yes,

others argue that the cost was too high

and that by the time Peleliu was taken,

the American advance had rolled so much further towards Japan

that its airfield was never as useful as it might have been.

♪ (PULSING LIGHT MUSIC)

The sun was finally setting over the Empire of the Rising Sun.

♪ (FOREBODING STRINGS)

The solid reef,

which had been a major defensive feature of Truk,

had now become a prison wall.

Only 3 entrances to the lagoon were wide enough

and deep enough for seagoing ships.

All of these had been mined

and were regularly patrolled by American submarines.

Nothing could get in,

nothing could get out.

Truk was effectively isolated from the world.

Starvation became commonplace,

and even cannibalism was said to have occurred.

When the 40,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors on Truk

eventually surrendered,

the Americans were shocked by the malnutrition

of Trukese and Japanese alike.

Until the end of the war,

only occasional Japanese submarines managed to run the blockade of Truk.

This particular submarine, the I-169,

had enjoyed a successful war career.

During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour,

she launched one of 5 mini subs

whose job was to sink American battleships with their torpedoes.

The copper cables along her sides

were to create an anti-magnetic effect

known as degaussing - protection against magnetic mines.

She was delivering emergency rations to the starving garrison on Truk

when a 2 AM radio message ordered her to submerge

due to a possible air raid.

In panic, the junior officers still on board crash-dived

but forgot to close the air vents to the control room,

and the submarine plummeted to the sea floor.

When rescue divers arrived,

they could hear the frantic signalling of the trapped crew.

But when barges and a salvage tug attempted lifting her to the surface,

the weight of the water inside her was just too great.

The cables parted

and the sub again plunged stern-first to the sea floor.

After 3 days, the signalling from inside had stopped.

There were no longer any survivors.

Major landings on the Philippines

were followed by hard-won military successes.

Both sides recognised the strategic importance of Iwo Jima

as a stepping stone towards Japan.

Because by the time the island was finally secured,

it had become one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Americans

during the Pacific War.

Once again, the Japanese fought to the last man.

(EXPLOSION)

♪ (DARK DRIVING MUSIC)

Okinawa was the last step

before the actual invasion of Japan's home islands.

The Japanese had skilfully utilised terrain

to inflict maximum casualties, and the battle proved costly

and once again lasted much longer

than the Americans had originally expected.

(METAL CLANK)

Huge areas of the island were reduced to rubble.

These extreme losses of American, Japanese, and Okinawan lives,

more than 230,000 in total,

provided the ultimate basis for the decision of the atomic bombings

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

bringing about the final Japanese surrender.

When the American military departed from their principal supply base

on Vanuatu,

they left behind a substantial infrastructure

of roads, buildings, and runways.

But their oddest legacy is found off the shore

at Million Dollar Point.

This underwater scrap heap was not caused by enemy attack

or hostile action,

but it was an act almost as wasteful as the war

that resulted in its creation.

So why is it here?

Vanuatu was still under joint British and French control.

So when they were leaving,

the Americans offered their whole inventory of supplies

to the French and British at a very low price,

6 cents to the dollar,

everything from weaponry to bottles of Coca-Cola.

However, believing that if they refused to buy the items,

the American military would simply leave them behind for free,

neither Britain nor France took the deal.

The Americans were having none of this.

In an act of pure spite,

they drove all the vehicles, food, clothing, drinks, and other equipment

to a wharf on the southern coast of the island.

Then, using bulldozers,

they dumped the whole inventory into the sea,

ensuring that the European colonisers

couldn't get their hands on the items at all,

free or otherwise.

And as a final 'screw you' to their recent allies,

they drove the bulldozers themselves off the jetty,

after which they blew up the jetty.

Millions of dollars' worth of goods,

a fortune's worth of equipment, guns, and jeeps

were completely destroyed over 2 days,

rendered unusable at the bottom of the ocean.

And there they remain.

The Peleliu campaign had a curious postscript.

On the 21st of April, 1947,

Lieutenant Tadamichi Yamaguchi led 26 survivors out of the tunnels,

2 and a half years after the end of the battle.

♪ (RHYTHMIC BEAT)

The tunnel systems were so extensive

that the soldiers had managed to remain undiscovered

for all that time

on an island razed of vegetation

and swarming with American military.

It was the final formal surrender of World War II.

♪ (AMBIENT MUSIC)

War results in Ships sinking to the sea floor.

In an area that was an undersea desert, a structure arrives.

Coral polyps settle on bare steel

and flourish in their new living space.

Small fish come to graze on them.

And others move in and make the wreckage their home.

Where sunlight still permeates,

the corals grow luxuriantly and fish hunt.

On an accidental man-made reef, a new food chain has evolved.

Cold gray metal ships

that were built for only one purpose, war,

become beautiful undersea gardens.

Discovering the remains of war around the Pacific

is a poignant journey.

On land, jungle and vegetation are slowly but inevitably

absorbing both machinery and buildings.

As you make your way around a now lifeless and decaying rusty hull,

it's hard to imagine it as a busy ship

loaded with cargo,

crossing tens of thousands of miles of ocean,

engines throbbing,

crew going about their daily chores.

When diving down into the depths of history to these shipwrecks,

you can't fail to imagine

that the spirits of those who died here must still linger on.

They haunt these silent, ghostly remains,

yet the only noise you can hear is your own bubbles.

But your time down here is only short,

unlike the souls of the lost crew

who have been down here ever since this once proud vessel

disappeared beneath the waves.

♪ (GLIMMERING MUSIC)