All language subtitles for PBS.Ken.Burns.The.War.2of7.When.Things.Get.Tough_track3_[eng]-eng

(distant birds calling)

(distant car horn honking)

(birds chirping)

NARRATOR:
Early in 1943, an envelope
from the War Department arrived

at 1032 North Main Street
in Waterbury, Connecticut,

the home of the Ciarlo family.

They knew it was coming.

There were three boys
in the family.

Two were exempt from the draft:

Dom, married with one child
and another on the way;

and Tom, just 16
and still too young to go.

But the middle son, Corado,
was 19 and single,

working at Waterbury Steel Ball,

a perfect candidate
for the army.

His family and friends
called him "Babe."

OLGA CIARLO:
And he was the one to go.

Course, it was a shock
to all of us,

and my mother cried forever.

Forever.

But that's the way the war was.

So... it was a tough time.

And not only that,
but my father had passed away

in, uh, 1937.

My mother was
very, very heartbroken

at that time already.

My mother would take the bus

and go up to the cemetery
all by herself.

She couldn't speak
a word of English.

And all she could tell the man
on the bus was, "Cemetery."

And then to know that my brother
was going off to war,

she was scared.

She didn't want to go through
this all over again, so...

It was hard times,
very hard times.

(harp playing arpeggios)

(big band playing
"Let's Get Lost" introduction)

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
Here's number six,

a song by Frank Sinatra.

§§ Let's get lost... §§

CORADO (dramatized):
"May 9, 1943.

"Dearest Mom and family,

"We are listening
to the Lucky Strike program,

"and Frank Sinatra is singing
'Let's Get Lost,'

"and what a voice he's got.

"Tell Mom not to worry about me,

‘cause I'll be home
soon enough."

"I am calling Mom to give her
Mother's Day greetings.

"I will have to wait
five or six hours

for the call to go through,
but it is worth it."

§§ Let's defrost... §§

"From now until I get through
with my basic training,

"I will be pretty busy,

"so if Mom doesn't hear from me
for a few days,

"you explain to her
that I am all right,

"but just busy.

Love, Babe."

(Sinatra scatting softly)

(song ends)

(distant gunfire)

(nearby gunfire)

NARRATOR:
By January of 1943,

Americans had been at war
for more than a year.

The Navy had stopped
the Japanese advance

at the Battle of Midway.

The Marines
had taken Guadalcanal

in the Solomon Islands,

and American
and Australian forces

had defeated the Japanese
at Buna

on the island
of Papua New Guinea.

(artillery fire)

But the 4,000-mile march
toward the Japanese home islands

was just beginning.

And thousands of Americans

were still held prisoner
by the Japanese,

including nine-year-old
Sascha Weinzheimer,

whose family came
from the Sacramento Valley;

and Corporal Glenn Frazier,
from Ft. Deposit, Alabama.

Meanwhile,
in the snows around Stalingrad,

Hitler's dream of expanding his
empire eastward across Russia

was ending in catastrophe

as the Red Army annihilated
his surrounded armies.

(artillery fire
and automatic gunfire)

But the Germans,
with their vast war machine,

still occupied
most of Western Europe,

and the Allies had not yet
been able to agree on a plan

or a timetable to dislodge them.

For the time being,
they would have to be content

to nip at the edges
of Hitler's enormous domain.

American troops were now ashore
in North Africa,

ready to test themselves
for the first time

against the German
and Italian armies.

And American airmen,

including Earl Burke
of Sacramento, California,

would defy preposterous odds

and begin to bring the war
to the heart of Germany itself.

For the people
of Mobile, Alabama,

Luverne, Minnesota,

Sacramento, California,

Waterbury, Connecticut,

and every other town in America,

the war would dictate
the rhythm and pace of life

in ways they could not have
imagined a year before.

And the sense
of national purpose

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal
had brought to the battle

against the Great Depression

was now fully focused
on winning this war.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT:
I do not prophesy

when this war will end.

But I do believe
that this year of 1943...

will give to the United Nations
a very substantial advance

along the roads
that lead to Berlin

and Rome and Tokyo.

(applause)

A tremendous, costly,
long enduring task,

in peace as well as in war,

is still ahead of us.

But as we face
that continuing task,

we may know that the state
of this nation is good,

the heart of this nation
iS sound,

the spirit of this nation
is strong,

the faith of this nation
is eternal.

(applause)

(applause fading)

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
Roosevelt carried

a real message
of confidence with his voice.

He gave us all the confidence

that we could do
anything he asked us to do,

and certainly the boys could do
anything he asked them to do.

And he was the powerful
driving force.

Now, England had Churchill...

...but we had Roosevelt.

And, from the time
he announced Pearl Harbor

and announced
that we would go to war,

we were all behind him.

(Benny Goodman's band playing
"In a Sentimental Mood")

WARD CHAMBERLIN:
The lucky thing was that...

the American army didn't get
its first taste of battle

going across the channel, the
way some people wanted us to.

They had to go through that...
that North African thing,

which was a learning experience
and a very expensive one.

Our army got to be goddamn good,

but at the beginning
they were like anybody else--

they weren't too good at it.

(song ends)

(fanfare plays)

NARRATOR:
At an Allied conference
in Casablanca in January 1943,

everything went well
for the cameras,

and President Roosevelt

and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill

announced they would accept
nothing less

than unconditional surrender
from the enemy.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
...unconditional surrender.

NARRATOR:
But behind the scenes,
both men were concerned.

The Allies were still trying
to find ways to work together.

(distant artillery fire)
The previous November,

Allied troops
under General Dwight Eisenhower

had made coordinated landings
in Morocco and Algeria

without meeting much resistance.

But Hitler strengthened his
forces in neighboring Tunisia.

Eisenhower's troops
were meant to race east

to engage the enemy,

while British General
Bernard Montgomery

and his Eighth Army

pursued German General
Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps

westward from Egypt.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Tunisia, next-door
to Italian Libya,

is at the rear of the Axis army.

It's the next objective
for the American half

of the nutcracker campaign,
closing in on Rommel

from the west as the British
smash from the east.

The aim is to chase the Axis
out of North Africa,

threaten Italy

and other Nazi-dominated
territories in Europe,

and open shorter supply lines
to Russia.

That's the meaning
of the American drive to Tunis.

(wind whistling)

NARRATOR:
After two months
of sporadic fighting,

the battle for North Africa
suddenly intensified.

(artillery fire)

(men shouting, explosions)

On February 14, Rommel sent
his seasoned veterans

against the untested, poorly
led, and ill-equipped Americans.

His goal, he said,
was to instill in them

"an inferiority complex
of no mean order."

And for a time,

he succeeded.

(explosions and gunfire
become distant)

With the American forces
was Private Charles Mann,

a farmer's son
from Luverne, Minnesota.

CHARLES MANN:
It was good, I guess,
that you were afraid,

but it did not interfere with
what your real thinking was

because you had one idea

and that was that you
was gonna make it.

NARRATOR:
Rommel's forces quickly
overwhelmed the Americans

whose armor proved no match
for German panzers.

Some soldiers called
the Allied tanks "Ronsons,"

after the cigarette lighter,

for their propensity to burst
instantly into flame when hit.

(heart beating)

Stuka dive-bombers screamed
down upon the Americans.

Some men held,
others panicked.

Survivors fled westward
across the open plain.

They would not stop
for 50 miles.

CHAMBERLIN:
They didn't know what the hell
they were doing.

Guys never been
under fire before,

and, uh, when they got hit,
they didn't know what to do,

and they retreated,

and they had terrible
leadership.

It was chaos.

And war's always chaos.

The commander
of the American troops there

was a visible coward.

He built a... a, uh...

headquarters for himself
in a rock chamber

some 20 miles back
from the line

with the argument that he could
communicate better from there.

So, he was appalling.

NARRATOR:
After beating back
two American counterattacks,

the Germans poured westward
through the Kasserine Pass,

gateway to Algeria,

threatening the Allies' main
supply base at Tebessa.

(artillery fire)

(explosions, men shouting)

(automatic gunfire)

(men shouting)

In two weeks of fighting,
6,000 Americans were lost.

45 soldiers from the little town
of Red Oak, lowa,

were killed
or reported missing.

A third of those who lived

were victims
of neuropsychiatric disorders

brought on by the first
experience of battle

for which they were totally
unprepared.

2,400 surrendered.

The Americans simply didn't
know how to fight,

a British commander said,

and if they didn't
learn quickly,

they "will play no useful
part whatsoever"

in the invasion of Europe.

General Eisenhower agreed.

"Our operations to date,"
he confided grimly to a friend,

"will be condemned
in their entirety

by all War College classes
for the next 25 years."

The correspondent Ernie Pyle
was with the troops

and struggled to make sense
of what he'd seen.

PYLE (dramatized):
"You folks at home
must be disappointed

at what happened to our
American troops in Tunisia."

"Personally, I feel that some
such setback as this--

"tragic though it is
for many Americans,

"for whom it is now too late--

is not entirely
a bad thing for us."

"It's all right to have
a good opinion of yourself,

"but we Americans
are so smug with our cockiness.

"We somehow feel that just
because we're Americans

we can whip our weight
in wildcats."

FUSSELL:
But I think every ground war
has to begin that way

because what's going to happen
to people is so unthinkable.

So it's only after you've been
in it a little while

that you're capable
of understanding

what's happening well
enough to do well at it.

And you have to do well at it.

NARRATOR:
The Americans pulled
themselves together.

Air strikes staggered
the German advance.

American artillery

moved in to hammer
German tank columns

with howitzer shells.

The enemy was running out
of ammunition, food, gasoline,

while the Allies
were well-supplied

with everything they needed
to keep fighting.

Fearing a counterattack,

Rommel pulled back
through the Kasserine Pass.

Eisenhower replaced
his inept commander

with a Major General
named George S. Patton,

who would transform
the beleaguered Second Corps

into a determined,
capable force.

MANN:
It was purely a matter of Patton

using different tactics
to beat them suckers.

That's what it amounted to.

We'd done so poorly towards,
uh, Rommel's forces,

but next time around
we'd done it right.

NARRATOR:
Now the Allies pushed forward,

surrounding the German
and Italian armies

on Cape Bon in northern Tunisia.

(loud explosions and gunfire)

On May 12, after three more
months of fighting,

the last Axis troops
in North Africa surrendered--

a quarter of a million men.

(Benny Goodman's band playing
"In a Sentimental Mood")

The lessons the Allies had
learned had come hard:

76,000 men had been lost,

including
Captain Richards Aldridge,

a flyer from Mobile,
who was reported missing,

and Private Charles Mann
from Luverne,

who had been wounded
in the neck by shrapnel.

MANN:
I bled like a stuck hog.

If that had been
an inch higher or lower,

I'd have had it.

NARRATOR:
The prolonged six-month campaign
in North Africa

had forced the Allies to
postpone the planned invasion

of France once again--

from August until
spring of the following year.

But the Allies had proven

that they could work together
toward victory.

And the inexperienced Americans

were beginning
to learn how to fight.

("In a Sentimental Mood"
continues playing)

PYLE (dramatized):
"The most vivid change
in our men

"is the casual
and workshop manner

"in which they now talk
about killing.

"They have made
the psychological transition

"from the normal belief that
taking human life is sinful

"over to a new,
professional outlook

"where killing is a craft.

"To them, now, there is nothing
morally wrong about killing.

"In fact,
it is an admirable thing.

"So you at home need never
be ashamed

"of our American fighters.

"The greatest disservice
you folks at home can do

"for our men over here

"is to believe we are at last
over the hump.

"For actually--
and over here we all know it--

the worst is yet to come."

Ernie Pyle.

(Aaron Copland's
"Music for Movies" plays)

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
An army of 150,000 men,
women, and children

invaded an American city--

whites, Negroes, Indians,
Creoles, Cajuns.

They came from every corner
of the land,

their roots in every curve
of the globe--

Moscow, Indiana; Warsaw, North
Dakota; Hamburg, California;

Milan, Missouri;
Baghdad, Kentucky.

Some came out of patriotism,
some out of grim necessity,

some for a richer life.

All came to do a war job.

This could be any one
of a hundred

great American war centers.

It happens
to be Mobile, Alabama,

but the story is the same
in every war town in America.

NARRATOR:
The chronic unemployment
that had eaten at Mobile

and every other American town
for more than a decade

during the Depression
was over.

(drums beating intro
to "Sing, Sing, Sing")

Idle factories were back
in business.

(Benny Goodman's band playing
"Sing, Sing, Sing")

Mass production
was an American invention,

but now it reached levels

its inventors
could never have imagined.

Nearly all manufacturing
was converted to the war effort.

("Sing, Sing, Sing"
continues playing)

In 1941, more than three million
cars had been manufactured

in the United States.

Only 139 more were made
during the entire war.

Instead,
Chrysler made fuselages.

General Motors made
airplane engines,

guns, trucks, and tanks.

And at its vast Willow Run plant
in Ypsilanti, Michigan--

67 acres of assembly lines under
a single roof

that one observer called

"the Grand Canyon
of the mechanized world"--

the Ford Motor Company performed
something like a miracle

24 hours a day.

The average Ford car
had some 15,000 parts.

The B-24 Liberator long-range
bomber had 1,550,000 parts.

One came off the line at Willow
Run every 63 minutes.

If the American military
wasn't yet quite equal

to the Germans or the Japanese,

American workers would soon be
able to build ships and planes

faster than the enemy could sink
them or shoot them down.

By the end of the war,

more than one-half of
all the industrial production

in the world would take place
in the United States.

(Count Basie's
"The Basie Boogie" playing)

Mobile was among

the fastest-growing
of all American war towns.

Even before the war began,

powerful Democratic Congressman
Frank Boykin landed his city

a $26 million defense contract
that transformed

the municipal airport
into Brookley Field,

a major Army Air Force
supply depot

and bomber modification center

that provided
17,000 civilian jobs.

In 1940, Gulf Shipbuilding
had had 240 employees.

By 1943, it had 11,600.

In the same period,

Alabama Dry Dock went from 1,000
workers to almost 30,000.

They included Hank Williams,
the future country music star,

and the parents of future
home run hitter Hank Aaron.

CLYDE ODUM:
It was seven days a week.

And during the war
when it was so strong,

it was 12-hour days, five days
a week, ten hours on Saturday.

Eight hours on Sunday-- you felt
like you've had a week off.

There was such
an influx of people

that they got
on each other's nerves.

And there wasn't enough,
uh, watering holes

to entertain everybody.

And so they'd get out
and have fights and drink

and all that kind of stuff.

NARRATOR:
African-Americans streamed
into Mobile

from all over the South
in search of defense work

and a fresh start.

They found both.

But they also found
the same kind of discrimination

they had known at home.

JOHN GRAY:
Mobile was
a pretty fair-minded city.

And before this time, whites and
blacks got along pretty good

as long as you had
the status quo.

Uh, but when blacks began
to get homes,

to buy homes and to ride
in big cars,

uh, it turned some people off.

The policemen would stop you
and give you a ticket.

My cousin got a ticket

for driving 16 miles an hour
in a 15-mile zone.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
150,000 people, ten full
military divisions--

the civilian equivalent of
Rommel's entire African army--

bivouacked without warning
in the narrow confines

of one peaceful Southern city.

Less than three years ago,
you might have walked blocks

in Mobile without encountering
a person.

Today you stop to scratch
your head

and a line forms behind you.

No wonder there's such a chaos
and congestion of traffic.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
Mobile became so crowded

in six months

that people were living
in vacant lots.

They put up tents
in vacant lots.

People went
into the boarding houses,

and one room would hold
as many as four men.

(newsreel narration continues)

They would sleep

for so many hours,

get up and leave the bed,

go to work and another man
would take the bed.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
This was a neighborhood
grocery store.

These girls: welders, checkers,
and machinists.

NARRATOR:
Emma Belle Petcher was from the
tiny town of Millry, Alabama.

Most of her girlfriends had
taken secretarial jobs

once they'd gotten out
of high school,

but Emma Belle, like her father,
loved to take things apart.

PETCHER:
I always fixed my own appliances
at home, growing up.

The washing machine got
a nail in the pump.

I took the pump apart
and took the nail out

of the housing of the pump
and, you know, run...

I didn't have the patience to
call in a repairman

who would be, maybe, three days
later and he wouldn't tell you

morning or evening, so I'd empty
the washing machine,

turn it upside down,
take the screwdrivers

and... because I knew how
to do all this stuff.

("Pistol Packin' Mama" by Jimmie
Lunceford & His Orchestra plays)

So, I packed my little cardboard
suitcase and got on the bus

and went to Mobile.

So they put me in a school
to learn airplane accessories.

That was starters, generators,

alternators
and some other thing.

So we did those parts,
just those little instruments,

over and over and over
and over until graduation.

We had to almost put them
together blindfolded.

NARRATOR:
Petcher breezed through
all her tests

and got a job working
on airplanes.

By 1943, six million women
had entered the workforce,

and nearly half of them were
working in defense plants.

LIFE magazine paid tribute to
the mythical "Rosie the Riveter"

as "neither drudge nor slave,
but the heroine of a new order."

In Mobile, 2,500 women worked
at Alabama Dry Dock,

1,200 at Gulf Shipbuilding
and 750 at Brookley Field,

where Emma Belle Petcher worked
her way up to inspector,

responsible for quality control.

PETCHER:
You would be assigned X number
of planes

to be responsible for.

I was to inspect the torque
in the screws in the wings,

and go into the gas tanks,

and crawl! up in the wings
with flashlights.

Well, I was so conscientious, I
just didn't make the mistakes.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
I worked at the government
nursery school

which was downtown

in Christ Church Rectory,
and we had the children

of the women that worked
in the shipyards.

"Rosie the Riveter" would come
bring her child

in all of her headgear

and her togs that she did
her riveting in

and drop her precious
little baby off

and go down and work all day
and come back at 5:00

and pick the child up.

NARRATOR:
So many children flooded into
Mobile that its overrun schools

were pronounced
the worst in the nation

by the U.S.
Office of Education.

Some native citizens of Mobile
were openly scornful

of the newcomers.

A schoolteacher called them
"the lowest type of poor whites,

"these workers flocking
in from the backwoods.

"They prefer to live in shacks
and go barefoot.

"They let their kids run wild
on the streets.

I only hope we can get rid
of them after the war."

PETCHER:
No one did it verbally,
or to you,

but the air of the old
aristocratic Mobile people

were really, you know...
had to put up with a lot.

PHILLIPS:
Well, in Mobile,
the people that came here

to work in the shipyards came
from the small towns.

So we considered them rednecks.

And they really weren't;
they were very fine Americans.

But they were more of our
farming type of Southerner.

But they adjusted quickly.

PETCHER:
But, you know, everybody was
thrown into it together.

Whether they liked it or not.

We were all together.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
And the story of Mobile

is the story
of every American war town.

(stirring music plays)

BABE CIARLO (dramatized):
"Dearest Mom and family,

"I am feeling fine

"and I hope to hear the same
from all of you, always.

"I am at Camp Patrick Henry,
Virginia.

"I would have called you up,

"but there are no public
telephones at the camp.

"I feel bad because
I didn't call Mom up,

"but I thought for sure

"that I would go to New York
or Massachusetts.

"l would have done anything
in the world

"to be home that weekend.

"From here I don't know where we
are going and when we are going,

"but I am almost positive
it is overseas.

"There is nothing
to worry about,

"because I will not see action
for a long time

"and the war will be over soon.

Love, Babe."

LUDWIG WEINZHEIMER (dramatized):
"To the War Department,
Washington, D.C.

"Can you furnish me with the
exact status of my two sons--

"Walter Weinzheimer
and Conrad Ludwig Weinzheimer--

"who were American citizens
but resided in the Philippines

"at the outbreak of the war?

"Stop.

"Are they military
or civilian prisoners,

"dead or alive or missing?

"Stop.

"Such information is
urgently needed.

"Ludwig Weinzheimer--

Thornton Farms;
Thornton, California."

NARRATOR:
Ludwig Weinzheimer was
a well-to-do farmer

in the Sacramento Valley.

Just before Pearl Harbor,

his daughter-in-law had written
to him from Manila,

asking if his sons
and their families,

including his granddaughter
Sascha,

shouldn't come home
to California.

War seemed very close.

The old man told them
all to stay where they were.

The rumors of war were
exaggerated, he said.

Now, filled with guilt,
he was frantic to find out

what had happened to his two
sons and their families.

He wrote to everyone
he could think of--

old friends, the Red Cross,

the War Department,
the State Department.

In October,

the State Department told him

the family had been reported

to be in the Santo Tomas
Internment Camp in Manila,

but it could provide
no further information.

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER (dramatized):
"On February 15, 1943,

"a few days
after my tenth birthday,

"we moved into
the Santo Tomas Camp.

"We left Nila, our amah,
crying loudly.

"After bowing to the sentry
on duty,

we went through the gate, where
Daddy was waiting for us."

Sascha Weinzheimer.

NARRATOR:
For almost 14 months after
Manila fell to the Japanese,

Sascha Weinzheimer, her mother,
her sister Doris,

and her younger brother Buddy,
had managed

to stay out of the camp
the Japanese had established

for foreign civilians on the
campus of Santo Tomas University

on the city's outskirts.

But after Sascha reported
having seen

Japanese soldiers drowning
a small Filipino boy,

her mother decided
they would be safer

in the prison than outside it.

Their father had been imprisoned
there for more than a year--

so long that his young son
no longer recognized him.

There were now some 4,000
prisoners at Santo Tomas--

American and British, Dutch and
Norwegian, Polish and French.

Immediately,
the Japanese didn't want

to have anything
to do with us.

They weren't going to feed us.

They weren't going to follow
the Geneva Convention rules.

So you were left
to fend for yourself.

NARRATOR:
The Philippine Red Cross
provided rice.

Filipino friends
of the internees

passed canned foods and fresh
vegetables through the fence.

Families were permitted to build
themselves bamboo shanties

with palm leaves for roofs
in which to spend the day.

At night, they were herded
into crowded dormitories

in the main building.

Everyone was assigned a job.

SASCHA (dramatized):
"It was funny to see
bank presidents

"and other men like that

"cleaning toilets
and garbage cans.

"Mother had toilet duty
four times a week.

"There were all kinds
of people in camp.

"Some were hard workers,
like Daddy.

"Others were gripers
who liked to talk a lot

and goldbricks who didn't
do anything at all."

NARRATOR:
The prisoners organized
churches, schools, police,

even a "morality patrol,"

meant to keep teenagers
from disappearing together

into dark corners.

Your world becomes very small.

And you don't think beyond
your little environment,

because everything that's
important to you is right there.

It's not in the States.

It's not back at the plantation.

It's right there.

So you have to make do with what
you can in this small sphere.

SASCHA (dramatized):
"We got our chow from the lines
in tin cans.

"Then we would
eat in our shanty,

"and Mother said that
no matter what happened

"we would eat off
our bridge table

"with a tablecloth
with our colored dishes

and a small bowl of flowers
so long as we could."

Sascha Weinzheimer.

ROBERT KASHIWAGI:
As far as I'm concerned,
I was born here.

And according
to the Constitution

that I studied in school,
that I had the Bill of Rights

that should, should have
backed me up.

And until the very minute I got

onto the evacuation train,

I says, "It can't be.

How can they do that
to an American citizen?"

(Duke Ellington's
"Solitude" plays)

NARRATOR:
Robert Kashiwagi was
the 23-year-old son

of an immigrant farmer,
but he spoke no Japanese,

knew no other
Japanese-American family,

and had grown up in the
California countryside,

15 miles from Sacramento.

He had been in a sanitarium

being treated for
a lung condition

when Executive
Order 9066 went into effect.

KASHIWAGI:
Then my doctor approached me
and says,

"I don't know what to do,"
he says.

"You're bedridden,
but I can't keep you here.

The law won't allow me."

And I said, "Well, okay,
I'll make it easier for you.

"I'll join the family

and I'll go to camp
with my family," which I did.

And I couldn't help
the family pack.

All I could do was just go along
as excess baggage.

NARRATOR:
All 110,000 Japanese-Americans
from the West Coast

were now living in
ten hastily-constructed

inland "relocation centers."

KASHIWAGI:
The camp that I had to go
to was Amache, out in Colorado.

And it hit at 25 below zero.

All we had was one little
potbellied stove

in each little apartment

with a 60-watt light bulb
on the ceiling.

The barracks were just
makeshift barracks,

and the boards were not
matching together.

And there were big cracks,
and the wind was coming in.

And we stuffed newspapers
and things

in the cracks to keep
the elements out.

We had to learn how
to live all over again.

NARRATOR:
Armed guards and barbed wire
insured that no one got out.

Several who tried were shot.

SUSUMU SATOW:
To walk into a double-security
fence

with guard tower
looking down

with guns...

It's not a good feeling.

You know, you wonder, "Gee, how,
how could this be happening?"

But it's happening.

And so you kind
of accept that, I guess.

("Body and Soul"
by Benny Goodman plays)

NARRATOR:
Wherever they were sent,

however they were made to live,

the internees acted like
the Americans they were.

SATOW:
You, of course,
meet new people...

and you play cards...

and you play cards...

and play baseball.

First thing we did was
to form a baseball league.

We had games almost every night.

ASAKO TOKUNO:
It was democracy

on a small scale in action.

And we made it work, you know,
because everybody cooperated

and we knew we were going to be
living together

for who knows how long.

NARRATOR:
LIFE magazine claimed
the evacuees had been

"cheerful" about giving up
their homes and livelihoods.

After all, it said,

"All they forfeit
is their freedom."

SAM HYNES:
Dying is different for pilots,

for aviation personnel.

On the ground, in the infantry,
there's a corpse.

It might be blown apart,
but there's a foot

or an arm or something.

And it's very close.

In aviation, the planes tend
to go away and not come back.

Even if someone dies
in the air with you,

the plane explodes,
it falls to the ground

at a place you'll never see.

I had a number of friends
killed during the war...

...but I never saw
any of their bodies.

EARL BURKE:
The war came home to my family

on a very gut level.

Uh, my uncle, Earl,

who lived in Sacramento
called me one night and said,

"I want you to come over
to my house."

He was only a couple blocks
away, so I went over there.

And he showed me an article
in the newspaper that said

there was a crash
in Puerto Rico.

And my only brother I had,
older brother,

was listed as killed
in an airplane accident.

And we tried for 12 hours
on the telephone to try to get

to Puerto Rico to confirm that
this was, indeed, my brother.

And finally, somebody says,

"Yes, it was a Tom Burke
from Sacramento."

Well, five days later,
we got the telegram

telling that he had been killed.

So that's how my war came to us.

And there was no talking

about what had happened.

My parents were very stoic.

And I only heard
my mother cry once.

It was in her bedroom, since she
never cried in front of me.

So it was a tough thing
for those two people.

For me, I lost a brother.

Yeah, damn it.

We're gonna do something
about it.

Then I got the crazy idea
that I was going to enlist

and win the war.

It was kind of for Tommy...

in a way.

Not so consciously.

I didn't say,
"This is for you, Tom."

No, I never did that.

But, uh, I enlisted.

I'm glad I did.

(Benny Goodman's
"On the Alamo" plays)

(troops shouting cadence)

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke joined the Army

and trained first
at Fort Lewis in Seattle,

where, he remembered, he learned
"how to pick up cigarette butts,

"paint anything that didn't move

and salute anything that did."

Like his late brother,

he wanted to take part
in the air war.

After serving at a base
outside Reno, Nevada,

where he loaded bombs
onto heavy bombers,

he was sent across the country
to Camp Shanks, New Jersey,

and then on June 1, 1943,

boarded the Queen Mary,

part of the seemingly
endless stream of Gls now headed

for England to prepare
for the invasion of France.

Soon after he got there,
he happened upon

two old friends from Sacramento,

twin brothers named
Richard and Robert Egger.

BURKE:
I was in a Red Cross hut
on a base.

It was kind of
a PX type of thing.

So as we were drinking beer
and all that,

having a good time, they said,

"Well, why don't you
get with us?"

They were tail and ball turret
gunners on a B-17.

It sounded like fun.

What the heck, you know?

I was 19.

I could've had a lot of fun.

They seemed to be having
a lot of fun.

They were not scared at all.

So I says, "Okay,"
so the next day I went down

and got an application
and filled out the application.

And at that time, they were
losing a lot of bombers.

They were losing 60 at a time.

They were losing
over 600 men in a raid.

So they were taking anybody.

They were taking cooks.

They were taking truck drivers,

mechanics-- anybody they could
get into an airplane.

Nothing was going
to happen to me-- no way.

I'm 19 years old.

I'm going to conquer this world.

Nothing was going to happen
to me, you know... no.

NARRATOR:
Until the Allies
were able to launch

their long-planned
invasion of Europe,

the only way to weaken
German power

on the continent
was from the air.

Since bombing during the day
attracted anti-aircraft fire

and swarms of German fighters,

the British preferred to fly
their missions at night.

(explosion)

But when aerial surveys showed

that only one in five
British bombs had fallen

within five miles of its
intended industrial target,

their policy shifted

to what was called
"area bombing."

Relentless nighttime raids
on German cities,

intended to destroy
not only factories,

but whole neighborhoods

and "break the spirit
of the people."

While the British continued
to bomb German cities at night,

the Americans decided to take on
the much more dangerous task

of bombing defense industries
by day.

The Americans believed
the B-17--

their big, four-engine bomber--

superior to anything else
their allies or the enemy had.

It was called
the "Flying Fortress,"

because it was armed
with as many as nine

.50-caliber machine guns,

and each plane was fitted out

with the revolutionary
Norden bombsight,

said to be so accurate

it made it possible to
"drop a bomb in a pickle barrel

from 20,000 feet."

Around-the-clock bombing
took a fearful toll.

In late July, British bombs

set off a whirling firestorm
that burned

or asphyxiated at least
40,000 German civilians

in and around Hamburg,

taking almost as many lives
in one week

as the German Luftwaffe
had taken

in eight months
of bombing Britain.

But the German will to resist

only intensified,
just as the will of Londoners

had intensified
during the Blitz.

Hamburg's factories

were soon back in business.

Meanwhile, American airmen

were suffering terrible losses.

MAN:
Planes, 9:00.

I got my sights.

(engine roaring)

(artillery fire)

MAN:
317 out of control at 3:00.

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke's friends
from Sacramento,

the Egger twins,

would both be shot down
in the coming months.

BURKE:
The number of missions
that you had to fly

before you were returned
to the States

and/or given a non-combat job

was 25 at that point.

The average number of missions

flown in 1943
for a combat person

was only 14.

If you got to 14,
you were usually dead.

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke was now a member

of the 854th Chemical Warfare
Company,

part of the 384th Bomb Group

in the U.S. Army's
Eighth Air Force.

On September 16, 1943,

he clambered
into the ball turret

for the first time.

Their target was the German
submarine facilities at Nantes,

on the French coast.

BURKE:
The ball turret
is underneath the aircraft.

You put your knees up against
your ears... almost.

Almost like a fetal position,

‘cause you're up in there jammed
in that little thing,

and you got
these horrendous guns

in front of you, two of ‘em.

Didn't pass my mind that I was
getting into trouble...

. till the first mission.

We're flying about 28,000 feet.

And, uh, the first time
I tried my turret

to see whether I could fire,
you know, possibly, uh...

do a reasonable job
of tracking a fighter plane,

I didn't know my right foot
from my left foot.

I thought I wanted
the gun to go that way,

and I'd press up my right foot,
it'd go that way.

And I didn't know
where it was going.

I was so scared.

I didn't know what I was doing.

And pretty soon,

you know, before we got
to the bombing area,

and the fighters
started to come out,

uh, I learned my right foot
from my left foot.

MAN:
Two fighters, 6:00 up, coming
in, diving out, chief.

(artillery fire)

(pilots speaking indistinctly)

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke survived
his first mission.

The raid and others like it

reduced French coastal towns
to rubble.

"Not a dog or a cat survived
in them," a German officer said,

but the concrete
submarine pens that had been

the Americans' target
remained intact.

BURKE:
Well, the accuracy
of our bombing

left much to be desired.

They said you could drop a bomb
into a pickle barrel.

We couldn't drop
a bomb in France

that hit anything, any target,
in the beginning.

We just couldn't hit 'em.

NARRATOR:
In August,

376 B-17s had conducted
a massive raid on Schweinfurt

and Regensburg, Germany,
hoping to smash

the heavily-defended factories
that supplied ball bearings

to the Nazi war machine.

AIRMAN:
Fighters, 10:00.

NARRATOR:
It had been a disaster.

(artillery fire)

60 Flying Fortresses
failed to return.

600 crewmen were lost.

The battered factories
were again

back working round the clock.

And so the Allied command

ordered a second strike
on Schweinfurt for October 14.

BURKE:
We were briefed that we were
going to Schweinfurt.

And you could have heard

all the people groan
and moan... swear.

Nobody wanted to go
back to Schweinfurt.

Nobody wanted to go
back to Schweinfurt.

NARRATOR:
Burke's squadron
was ready before dawn.

BURKE:
You were getting ready to go.

Those were the times you were
more nervous and scared

to get into that airplane.

You did not want to get
into that airplane.

But you did anyway.

You got in the airplane
because your friends were

getting in the aircraft.

You didn't want to let
your friends down.

Even though, you know...

didn't want to go.

NARRATOR:
283 B-17s took off into the fog

and headed for Schweinfurt.

Fighter escorts shielded them
across Belgium,

then turned back
before their fuel ran out.

Within minutes,
hundreds of German fighters

rose up to meet them.

(rapid artillery fire)

BURKE:
They came in ten abreast.

(artillery fire)

You see these
little things wink.

And, as they wink,
you know what's coming.

You're talking about
a quarter pound of lead

each time you saw
one of those winks.

(artillery fire)

Then they would stay off,
say a thousand yards,

and they would lob...
lob rockets at you.

You couldn't reach them

because your .50 caliber
machine gun couldn't touch them.

That's why we needed
the fighter escorts.

We were sitting ducks.

PILOT:
B-17 in trouble...

1:00 high.

BURKE:
When the bogeys were coming in,

you heard nine voices,

almost at once,
talking to each other.

(overlapping voices)

BURKE:
"Holy shit,
look at that son of a bitch!"

PILOT:
Don't yell on that intercom.

BURKE:
And that's what we were hearing
over my headphones,

because I couldn't hear
the battle sounds at all.

(rapid gunfire)

"That asshole's shooting at me?"

(rapid gunfire)

"No, no way that guy's
gonna shoot me."

(overlapping voices)

And you're up there,
you're pressing

the little red button here.

And, uh, hope that
he flies into it.

And I was up there flying
two .50 caliber machine guns,

shooting rounds of shells about
half an inch in diameter.

(rapid gunfire)

Lots of lead in the air.

PILOT:
Going out... and out...

Take the shot, you guys...

One shot...

(indistinct radio transmission)

NARRATOR:
As Earl Burke's battered
formation approached its target,

the German fighters withdrew,

and American crews braced
for yet another terror:

antiaircraft fire--

exploding shells
that filled the air

with thousands of metal shards.

The Germans called it "flak."

PILOT:
B-17 out of control at 3:00.

NARRATOR:
Many more planes were hit

and never reached their target.

BURKE:
And over Schweinfurt...

...bang.

Plexiglas on my right-hand side
exploded.

My left-hand side exploded.

And a 20-millimeter shell had
come up through my turret,

hitting me in the left arm.

Not breaking the arm,
but smashing the bone...

tearing my jacket off,

and went up
into the waist window

on the left-hand side,
hit the stanchion

of the .50 caliber gun,
and blew up.

Killed the waist gunner.

And here I was down
in this ball turret

trying to figure out
what I was supposed to do.

And, I have to say this,

my training as an Eagle Scout
in the Boy Scouts of America

saved my arm that day.

Because I put a tourniquet
around it, knew how to do that.

You know, to stop
the flow of blood.

And, uh, then everything
hunky-dory then.

And continued on flying
in the ball turret.

So it's about 35,
40 degrees below zero.

And when blood flows out,

it freezes and drops down
and rolls around on the bottom.

So the idea is to make sure
that when you're at altitude,

you pick your blood up
and throw it out.

Because if you didn't,

you'd have to mop it up
when you got down. (chuckles)

But I fly... I flew that way

for around four,
four and a half hours.

When I got hit,
immediately I says,

"Oh, my goodness... my parents.

"My parents will get
another telegram

telling either I was
wounded or dead."

At that point,
I didn't know which.

That was the first time
I ever thought

what my being in the service

did to my parents.

And I had second thoughts then.

But it was too late.

PILOT:
1:00 high... coming around...

NARRATOR:
German fighters returned

and attacked the bombers
in Earl Burke's group

again and again,

all the way back
to the English Channel.

(rapid gunfire)

The survivors landed
wherever they could,

at airfields scattered
all across England.

The second Schweinfurt raid was
just as disastrous as the first.

60 more Fortresses
had been shot down.

600 more men were lost

and hundreds more were wounded.

Surviving airmen
remembered that day

as "Black Thursday."

We, uh, first were sent

to a bomber base
to meet the B-17s

coming in shooting off
red flares,

which meant there
were wounded aboard.

The first one came in just right
over the treetops.

We thought it was
going to crash.

It skidded on the runway.

And I was in the ambulance.

We ran over there and ran in...

You had to crawl.

There was no way to get back
to a B-17 standing up.

The tail gunner was dead.

He'd been, you know, just
shot right through the head.

The copilot and the pilot had
been in a fire.

The belly gunner was hurt.

They were all injured.

I guess that the, uh,
plane that...

the German plane
that fired on them

just riddled the whole plane.

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke's injury kept him out
of action for weeks.

But each time he
or anyone else

returned to the air,

their odds of surviving the war
grew longer.

BURKE:
I kept away from making friends.

I did not make friends.

The reason is,

if you met a guy at the...
at the PX and bought him a beer,

tomorrow he would be gone.

You know, and you kept saying,
"I'm losing people."

So you locked yourself up.

(typewriter clacking)

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
"Luverne, Minnesota.

"All of us use the phrase
‘after the war' so much

"it almost
becomes meaningless.

"The motorist uses it
when he thinks of new tires,

"a new model car,

"and the right to drive as fast
and as far as he pleases.

"But for all of us, although
the words aren't often spoken,

it means the day
when you boys come home."

"It means,
if you had witnessed it--

"a portion of a little drama
as we did this week--

"the ecstatic happiness
and the wild gladness

of thousands
of family reunions."

"The other morning an unshaven,
weary uniformed man,

"with a string of gaily-colored
ribbons on his breast,

"slipped off the morning train
and was driven to his home.

"Instead of going
in the front way,

"he went around the back,
unnoticed.

Probably he just wanted
to feast his eyes on home."

"His children were watching
at the front,

"their noses almost boring holes
in the window panes,

as they watched
for a sign of Daddy."

"Nobody needs to describe
their shrieks of joy

"when he walked in from
the backdoor to surprise them.

"If you could
have seen them later,

"hanging on to his hands
for dear life

"as though they could hold him
home forever,

you couldn't have helped getting
a bit misty yourself."

Al Mcintosh,
Rock County Star-Herald.

JIM SHERMAN:
I think,
particularly in Luverne,

there was this general feeling
of we're in the right,

we're doing the right thing,

and all of the things
that we're doing, collectively,

sort of brought a lot of people
together.

It was in a totally
different feeling

that I don't think can ever
be duplicated, ever.

I just don't think that you
could have that sense of oneness

that, that we had
when we were growing up.

("There Shall Be No Night" by
Duke Ellington plays)

NARRATOR:
Almost a year
before Pearl Harbor,

129 National Guardsmen
from Rock County, Minnesota,

had found themselves called
to active duty.

They were eventually sent
to Alaska,

to help protect Fort Greely
on Kodiak Island.

SHERMAN:
And I was totally confused.

I thought that was
where they made cameras.

I thought it was Kodak.

And I couldn't,
for the life of me,

figure out why all these guys
from Luverne were going

to wherever
they made Kodak cameras.

NARRATOR:
An auto dealer named Ryal Miller
visited the men of Battery E

while hunting in Alaska

and filmed them with
an eight-millimeter camera.

When he got back,

he showed his home movies
at the Pix Theater

on Main Street in Luverne,

and families crowded in
for a glimpse

of how their boys were doing.

(projector clacking)

§§ §§

Afterwards,

people were encouraged
to make their own home movies,

and to write greetings
to their faraway friends

on a wrapping-paper letter
that stretched 120 feet.

The town barber, Kay Aanenson,

whose nephew Quentin had just
joined the Army Air Force,

had helped organize
the letter writing.

VERNON FREMSTAND (dramatized):
"Dear Kay and everybody,

"I wanted to let you know

"that the battery received
the swell letter.

"The boys are really
having a time reading it.

"They're on their hands and
knees and have the paper strung

"from one end of the barracks
to the other.

"It's things like this that
make us feel pretty darn good.

"In case you don't remember me,

"l used to sling hash in Gimm
and Byrnes restaurant.

"I was the tall, slim fellow
who used to work with Fred Gimm.

"Tell him hello for me.

"Well, Kay,
I'll cut this off here.

"We'll promise to get all
the damned Japs

"that stick their noses
in around here.

"Thanks again from all of us.

"As ever,

Vernon A. Fremstand."

NARRATOR:
Luverne, Minnesota, was about
as far away from the action

as any place in America,

but each day the war's reality
grew closer and closer.

SHERMAN:
I delivered papers.

And all of the mothers
who had somebody in the Army

would have a blue star in
the window on the little flag.

And then, if... if the son
or husband or whatever died,

they'd change that
to a gold star.

The gold star mothers were those

who had lost a family member
in the war.

And, uh, it was the fact
that the star had changed.

But I was too young

to really understand
the consequences of death.

(officer shouting in Japanese)

(troops shouting)

(officer shouting)

FRAZIER:
We didn't know anything
about the Japanese

when we were captured,

and they didn't know anything
much about us.

We most certainly didn't know
their language.

And to be able to be compelled
or... or made obey an order

that you didn't even know
what the order was--

a misunderstanding
or not any, any idea--

and this depending
on you maybe surviving...

NARRATOR:
Glenn Frazier had endured
the Bataan Death March

and weeks of imprisonment

at Camp O'Donnell
in the Philippines,

where survival had seemed
so unlikely,

he had thrown one of his dog
tags into a mass grave

that held the bodies of many
of his fellow prisoners.

That way, he thought,
if they were ever recovered,

his family back in Alabama
would find some comfort

in knowing
what had happened to him.

As the Marines had struggled
to take Guadalcanal,

Frazier was shipped
all the way to Japan,

to a prisoner-of-war camp
near Osaka.

FRAZIER:
The number
that the Japanese gave us

was like a serial number.

And mine was 6-32.

Roko naka san juni,
is the number in Japanese.

And they put it on your clothes.

You had a little button saying,
uh, 6-32.

And it was, uh,
it was part of your records,

and I kept that number all the
way through my days in Japan.

NARRATOR:
The commandant told Frazier
and his fellow prisoners

they would be treated well,
as "guests of the Emperor."

They were not.

What little food they had
was rotten.

Barracks were unheated.

The prisoners were divided
into ten-man "shooting squads."

If one member tried to escape,

he and all the others
would be shot.

Frazier developed double
pneumonia and nearly died.

All the prisoners were made
to work in Japanese foundries

or on the docks,
loading and unloading ships.

Small children jeered and cursed

as they walked to
and from the docks,

calling them cowards

for having surrendered,
rather than fight to the death.

Guards beat the prisoners
regularly,

and the smallest infraction
of rules could prove fatal.

One day I was walking, coming
back from a detail that day

on the streets of Osaka.

And the weather was cold.

And I put my hands
in my pocket,

and I'm walking along
with everybody else.

When we got to the camp
and they checked us in,

this guard pointed me out
and called me out.

And, uh, said, "Why did you have
your hands in your pocket?"

I said, "Because I was cold."

So they took me in
the commander's office

and the interpreter says,

"That's against
the military code.

Soldiers do not walk
with hands in pockets."

And I said, "Well, I'm not a
soldier, I'm a prisoner of war."

So the commander banged his fist
on his desk, and--

he was a major--
and got up and he says,

the interpreter said,
"He don't like your attitude."

So he come up and he started
arguing with me,

and I couldn't... I couldn't
understand anything he said.

So he pulled his saber out

and he said "He was going
to make an example of you,

"so that the other men will
understand

they have to obey orders."

So he puts his sword
to my throat, here,

and nicked me a little bit,

and I could feel a little bit
of blood coming down.

So the interpreter said,
"He's going to execute you."

So he asked me if I had
any last words to say.

And I looked him straight in the
eye and I said, "He can kill me,

"but he can not kill my spirit.

"And my spirit's going
to lodge in his body

and haunt him
until the day he dies."

And he had a frown
come over his face

and took three steps backward
and lowered his sword

and ordered me to be put

in a five-by-five-by-five
cubicle in the ground.

I had never seen
a Japanese back down

in front of any
of his subordinates

until that particular time.

Because once they
got to that point,

they went through with it,
regardless of the results.

("One O'Clock Jump"
by Count Basie plays)

NARRATOR:
As the country mobilized
for total war,

Americans at home were asked

by their government
to do without

most of the luxuries
and many of the necessities

they had begun
to take for granted.

Everything seemed to be rationed
or in short supply:

gasoline and fuel oil
and rubber;

bobby pins and zippers
and tin foil;

shoes and whiskey
and chewing gum;

butter and coffee and nylons
and tomato ketchup and sugar;

canned goods and cigarettes,

and the matches
needed to light them.

SHERMAN:
I guess the deep-down
feeling I had

is that they made us
sacrifice,

and if we were sacrificing,

we would somehow feel
closer to the war effort.

And I think that's really what
they were trying to do,

was to get your attitude in that
our fighting men and women

don't have these, so you
shouldn't have these,

and somehow you'll get
tied into the war effort.

We did without during
the Depression,

so doing without these
commodities really was not hard.

Recipes were adjusted according
to what you could get.

Now, there were
shortages all over.

You could get very
little white flour.

Cakes were all
adjusted to no sugar,

very little fat
or shortening of any sort.

So cakes took it
as hard as anything.

To have a birthday cake
was a real treat,

because it meant they
had to save everything

to make one cake.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Look, Miss.

See that?

You could drive a car
from Los Angeles to New York

with the gas that plane burns up
in just one hour of combat.

It takes two million
gallons of gas

to send a single 1,000-bomber
raid over enemy territory.

That's enough to drive
1,000 private automobiles

7,500 miles a year
for four years.

Now, where would you rather see
that "no gas" sign?

At his station?

Or here?

NARRATOR:
But many people tried
to get around rationing,

and a thriving black market
grew up

to satisfy those
who couldn't do without.

According to one study,

one in every four
retail transactions

during the war was illegal.

BABE CIARLO (dramatized):
"Dear Mom and family,

"l know you didn't receive mail
from me for over a week,

"but circumstances prevented me
from writing to you.

"Yes, that's right,

"I took a little boat ride
and I didn't even get seasick.

"Well, I suppose you're
wondering where I am.

"I think if I wouldn't tell you,
you would never guess it.

"Okay, I'll tell you,

"because I know you will want
to know in the worst way.

"I am somewhere in North Africa.

"Surprised?

"Well, I am, too,

"but I am very safe,
so don't worry.

Love, Babe."

NARRATOR:
At the Casablanca Conference

back in January,
the Allies had publicly called

for the unconditional surrender
of the Axis,

and privately decided upon an
invasion of the island of Sicily

and then the Italian mainland,

what Churchill called "the soft
underbelly of the Axis."

American commanders had
impatiently insisted

on a cross-channel
invasion of France,

but the British were wary,

still haunted by the memory
of the losses

they had suffered there
during the First World War.

They got their way.

Sicily would be first.

(dramatic newsreel music plays)

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
American troops of General
Patton's Seventh Army

move swiftly through western
Sicily, taking town after town

as they drive to join

General Montgomery's
British Eighth Army.

(explosions and rapid gunfire)

(men shouting)

DWAIN LUCE:
And Patton came to see us
and talk to us.

We all loved Patton.

We loved lke, too.

But I mean, we loved Patton.

And, uh, he was something.

He says, "Now, some troops can
move and some troops can shoot.

"But when you can move and shoot
at the same time,

then you and Napoleon are
pissing through the same straw."

NARRATOR:
It took the Allies just 38 days
to capture Sicily,

pushing the enemy
from one town to another.

Thousands of civilians died,

and 25,000 Allied soldiers
were dead or out of action.

The Axis lost 167,000 men,

the overwhelming majority
of them Italian.

Tens of thousands
of crack German troops

had managed to escape.

In Rome, Mussolini
had been deposed

by his own generals
and counselors.

The new Italian government
surrendered on September 8

and declared war
on Germany soon thereafter.

But there were now more than
132,000 German troops

waiting on the Italian mainland.

Another 460,000
were on their way to join them.

And a daring Nazi commando raid
rescued Mussolini from captivity

and set him up in northern Italy
as head of a puppet regime.

It was clear to the Allies

that the Germans were resolved
to hold Italy

at all costs.

When we got through
in North Africa,

we kept telling the Russians

that we were going to open up
another front.

Uh, but we couldn't open up

the front across the channel
at that point.

It would have been suicide.

The British were quite right
about that.

And so, we had,
we had to go into...

where were we going to go?

We went into Sicily; that turned
out to be fairly simple.

And then we went
across to Italy,

which we thought
was going to be like Sicily,

and it turned out to be much
more, much more difficult.

NARRATOR:
"Italy is like a boot,"
Napoleon once said.

"You must enter it like
Hannibal, from the top."

The Allies planned to attack it
from the bottom.

(alarms blaring)

(rapid gunfire and explosions)

At first, everything seemed
to go according to plan.

The Fifth Army landed at Salerno
on September 9.

(men shouting)

The British Eighth Army

seized the important
airfields at Foggia.

And Naples fell to the Americans
on October 1.

(applause and cheering)

Despite fierce resistance,
in three months

the Allies managed
to achieve two key goals:

They had forced Italy
out of the war

and onto their side,

and they were keeping thousands
of German troops busy

who might otherwise
have been fighting in Russia

or preparing to defend France

against the invasion
both sides knew was coming.

The Allies' target now was Rome,

only 150 miles away.

Getting there would prove harder
than anyone could have imagined.

With the Allied forces

was Private Babe Ciarlo
of Waterbury, Connecticut,

now a member of Company G,

Second Battalion, 15th Regiment,
Third Infantry Division,

Fifth Allied Army,

under the command
of General Mark Clark.

On September 18, nine days
after the first elements

of the Fifth Army had landed
at Salerno,

the Third Division had gone
ashore to join them.

(distant gunfire)

BABE CIARLO (dramatized):
"October 20, 1943.

"Dear family,

"I know I haven't written
to you for a long time,

"and I hope you understand

"the Army has been keeping me
pretty busy.

"I suppose you've been keeping
up with the news lately,

"and by the way
we're beating the Germans,

this war won't last
much longer."

(distant artillery explosion)

"Eddie and I are dying
for some nice raviolis,

"and I don't think it'll be long
before we get them.

"Will you please send me
Mom's brother's address

in your next letter?"

(shell explodes)

"Love, Babe."

NARRATOR:
Babe was careful always to keep
the details of what he was doing

from his family
SO as not to alarm his mother.

But her brother lived in Rome,

and Babe clearly wanted
everybody back home

to know he'd made it to Italy.

SOLDIER:
Fire!

(automatic gunfire, shouting)

As the Allies tried
to move north,

the weather turned bad,

and the terrain grew more
and more forbidding.

(artillery blast)

Crags, deep-cut valleys,

twisting mountain roads,
blown bridges--

all under constant German fire

from hidden hillside
strongholds.

(machine gun firing)

Bill Mauldin, from Mountain
Park, New Mexico,

was a cartoonist for Stars and
Stripes, the Army newspaper.

Week after week,
he managed to find laughs

in the lives
of ordinary infantrymen,

even when, as he said,

"You don't think life could be
any more miserable."

MAULDIN (dramatized):
"Dig a hole in your backyard
while it is raining.

"Sit in the hole while the water
climbs up around your ankles.

"Pour cold mud
down your shirt collar.

Sit there for 48 hours..."

(shell explodes)

"And so there is no danger
of your dozing off,

"imagine that a guy is sneaking
around waiting for a chance

to club you on the head
or set your house on fire."

(shell explodes)

"Get out of the hole,
fill a suitcase full of rocks,

"pick it up, put a shotgun
in your other hand,

and walk on the muddiest road
you can find."

"Fall flat on your face
every few minutes,

"as you imagine big meteors
streaking down

"to sock you.

"If you repeat this performance
every three days

"for several months,
you may begin to understand

why an infantryman gets
out of breath..."

(men shouting)

"...but you still won't
understand

how he feels
when things get tough.”

(somber music plays)

NARRATOR:
The men learned
to sleep while marching--

it was "a kind of coma,"
one remembered--

and when they got a chance
to lie down,

preferred to sleep on rocks
rather than bare ground

because rocks were
relatively dry.

Hundreds of mules were used
to carry up supplies...

...and to carry back the dead.

Boulder by boulder,
hill by hill,

the Allies battered their way
through the German defenses--

the Volturno Line...

the Barbara Line...

the Reinhard Line...

(gunfire)

On November 17,

Babe Ciarlo's
Third Infantry Division

was pulled back to rest.

In 58 straight days of combat
since the landing at Salerno,

they had lost 3,265 men
and moved less than 50 miles.

The Third Division
would cycle through 76,000 men

before the war was over.

BABE CIARLO (dramatized):
"November 17, 1943.

"The reason why I didn't write

is because I don't have much
to say and I am a little lazy."

"I hope you have a good time
over the holidays,

"and I hope you eat
up at Mom's house for Christmas

so that Mom might be happier."

"Your loving brother,
always, Babe."

(explosions, gunfire)

(engines humming)

(pilots speaking indistinctly
over radios)

(artillery fire)

(artillery fire)

(bombs whizzing)

NARRATOR:
The terrible losses suffered

during the second assault on
Schweinfurt in October of 1943

and other raids that week

in which 88 more American
bombers had been shot down

helped persuade
the Allies to cut back

on daytime raids over Germany

until they could design
and produce enough fighters

capable of escorting bombers

all the way to their
targets and back again.

The targets themselves
were changed, as well.

Bombers continued to bomb
cities, including Berlin,

and to batter war industries,

but the destruction of the
German air force on the ground,

as well as in the air,
now took top priority.

AIRMAN:
Right to your left.

(artillery fire)

Ten o'clock.

GUNNER:
I got my sights on him.

NARRATOR:
The Allies were determined
to dominate the skies

before the planned
invasion of France.

AIRMAN:
Keep your eye on him.

NARRATOR:
Before D-Day.

EARL BURKE:
Of course, being
an enlisted man,

we didn't think the officers
knew what they were doing.

We could have fought it a little
bit better than they did.

(soldiers cheering)

But occasionally,
the missions came off proper.

We finally realized

that these guys knew
what they were doing.

They were fighting
the right war.

It was not an economical thing
to do in terms of life.

You'd lose ten bombers,

you'd lose 100 men.

(airplane engine roaring)

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke was no longer flying.

He had been wounded again,

this time by shrapnel

from a bomb that exploded
while he was on the ground.

BURKE:
They put me in a hospital.

And there they told me

that I had
to have my arm removed.

But fortunately,

the chief of surgery came
upon me in a hallway

as I was going
into the operating room.

Says, what was I doing in there?

I says, "Well, I'm...

guess I'm going to have
a little problem with my arm."

"What's wrong with your arm?"

"II... I got wounded,

and I got
what they call osteomyelitis."

And that was the scourge
of World War I.

If you got wounded in the bone,
that's what happened.

He says, "That... no...
not going to do it.

Back in the ward."

They put me back in the ward,
bring me back in a cast,

cut a hole in the cast,
put a little wire net across it.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He says, "I'm making
a little home for somebody."

I said, "What is that
little home going to do?"

He says, "I'm going to keep
these little guys in on your arm

so they can eat all that stuff
out of your bone."

And I said, "Well, what
kind of things are they?"

He says, "They're little
white things,

you know, like this."

Had a handful of maggots,
flipped them in there,

and put the wire cage
back on it.

Says, "Now those little guys
are going

"to eat that stuff out of you,

"cause we can't get it
out of you.

No way we can get that
out of you."

So there I was with this
little thing over there,

and watching those guys
having a meal.

I was in the hospital 15 months.

NARRATOR:
Earl Burke's air war was over.

He returned to California,

helped rescue pilots lost at sea
on training missions,

and finally, went home
to his parents in Sacramento.

§§ §§

NARRATOR:
Despite the all-out
Allied raids,

German aircraft production
would actually increase.

"We are virtually drowning
in aircraft,"

wrote one German flyer.

But the Luftwaffe was now losing
trained crews far faster

than they could be replaced.

And Allied bombing
had also denied the Germans

the precious fuel
they needed to train new ones.

"The time has come,"

the chief of the German
fighter wing told his superiors,

"when our force is within sight
of collapse."

(engines humming)

When the time finally came
to invade France,

the Allies would own the skies.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
"Luverne, Minnesota.

"For our Rock County Boys.

"Dear Gang,

"Who'd have thought
four years ago

"that you'd be reading this
in all the states of the Union,

"maybe in Africa, India,

"Iceland, England,

"Alaska, New Guinea,

"Australia, Caledonia, Hawaii,

"New Zealand,

"and a score of other places
with funny names?

"Up until late Monday,

"it didn't look much
like winter,

"and then the white flakes
began to fall silently,

"swirling in white clouds,

"almost blotting out
the streetlights at night.

"But it didn't last very long,

"just enough to throw
a little mantle of white

"in patches over the dark,
bare, dirty-looking ground.

"Tuesday morning,
the snapping cold came,

"and by Wednesday morning,

"the smoke from the chimneys
was hanging like white plumes

in the clear,
quiet, frosty air."

Al Mcintosh,
Rock County Star-Herald.

NARRATOR:
Americans could now look back

on some real progress
in the war against the Axis.

In the Pacific Theater
of Operations,

Americans had recaptured Attu
in the Aleutian Islands

and were fighting
on Bougainville and New Guinea.

But the Japanese were still
on the march in Burma,

intent on invading
northeastern India.

And the long campaign
to take the Gilberts,

the Marshalls
and the Carolines,

to liberate the Philippines

and eventually attack
the Japanese home islands

had only just begun.

In the European Theater,

improved radar,

new, long-range Allied aircraft,

and ever-growing numbers
of escort ships

sailing from American shipyards

reduced the threat
from German U-boats.

More and more weapons
and equipment

were now reaching
the embattled Soviet Union.

When the Red Army began to sweep
the enemy from the Ukraine,

thousands of newly-manufactured
American trucks

helped make possible
their deadly pursuit.

The Axis had been driven
from North Africa, too,

and Sicily was now
in Allied hands.

But the Germans were
fighting back hard in Italy.

And in secret,

they had already begun
to implement a policy

of systematized murder

that would one day persuade
even the most cynical G.I.

that the war had to be fought.

As Allied leaders drew up plans

for the long-delayed invasion
of the continent,

Hitler put tens of thousands
of laborers to work

strengthening
his coastal defenses.

For the men of Luverne,
Sacramento,

Mobile, Waterbury,
and every other American town,

things were bound
to get still tougher.