All language subtitles for Ken Burns - The War - Episode 1 - A Necessary War

(distant birds calling)

(Artie Shaw's "Moonglow"
playing)

NARRATOR:
One evening
in the summer of 1941,

several months before
the United States would be drawn

into the Second World War,

in a little farming town
in Alabama,

a 16-year-old high-school boy
named Glenn Dowling Frazier

discovered
that the girl he loved

was interested in someone else.

(crickets chirping)

Frazier was so angry and upset

that when the owner of a
juke joint refused him service,

he stalked outside,
climbed onto his motorcycle,

and roared through the door,

shattering bottles
and smashing furniture.

As he raced away,

the bar owner chased him
down the street with a shotgun.

The next morning,

humiliated, scared,

and unable to face his parents,

Glenn Frazier went to
the nearest recruiting office,

lied about his age
and joined the peacetime army.

He volunteered to serve
in the Philippines.

FRAZIER:
When I volunteered
for the Philippine Islands,

I had no idea that we would
actually be in a war.

I was thinking
that probably Germany was

the most likely place
that there would be a war,

so in my mind, I thought it'd be
safe over there.

I never thought Japan
would be attacking us.

NARRATOR:
Over the next four years,

Frazier would find himself
in the midst of war--

desperate hand-to-hand combat,

a forced march so brutal
the world would never forget it,

and nightmarish prison camps

where simply surviving required

luck and bravery
and unshakable will.

Back in Alabama, those who loved
him would be told he was dead.

All Glenn Frazier would be able
to do was cling to the hope

that one day
he could come back home.

(artillery shell whooshes,
explodes)

(gunfire, men shouting)

I don't think there is
such a thing as a good war.

There are sometimes
necessary wars.

And I think
one might say just wars.

And that, never...

I never questioned the necessity
of that war

and I still do not question it.

It was something
that had to be done.

NARRATOR:
The greatest cataclysm
in history

grew out of ancient
and ordinary human emotions:

anger and arrogance and bigotry,

victimhood
and the lust for power.

And it ended
because other human qualities--

courage and perseverance
and selflessness;

faith, leadership,
and the hunger for freedom--

combined
with unimaginable brutality

to change the course
of human events.

(air raid siren wailing)

The Second World War brought out
the best and the worst

in a generation,
and blurred the two

so that they became, at times,
almost indistinguishable.

In the killing that engulfed
the world from 1939 to 1945,

between 50 and 60 million people
died...

...so many,
and in so many different places,

that the real number
will never be known.

More than 85 million men
and women served in uniform,

but the overwhelming majority
of those who perished

were civilians--

men, women, and children
obliterated

by the arithmetic of war.

(distant explosion)

The United States of America
was relatively fortunate.

More than 405,000 soldiers
and sailors,

airmen and marines died,
but that figure represented

proportionately fewer
military casualties

than were suffered by any
of the other major combatants.

American cities
were not destroyed.

American civilians were
never really at risk.

But without American power,

without the sacrifice
of American lives,

the struggle's outcome
would have been very different.

The American economy
only grew stronger

as the fighting went on,
and by the time it ended,

the United States would be the
most powerful nation on earth

and a once isolated and insular
people would find themselves

at the center of world affairs.

The war touched every family

on every street
in every town in America--

towns like Luverne, Minnesota;

Sacramento, California;

Waterbury, Connecticut;

and Mobile, Alabama--

and nothing would ever be
the same again.

(gunfire and artillery fire)

HYNES:
I'm not sure I can speak

about why human beings
in general go to war.

I think that's
a pretty large category.

I can only speak

about why 18-year-olds
from Minneapolis go to war.

They go to war
because it's impossible not to,

because a current is established

in the society so swift,
flowing toward war,

that every young man who steps
into it is carried downstream.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
Luverne, Minnesota,
August 1941.

"Miss Aagot Rylund, who is
in town visiting her brother,

"knows what it is
to see vast sections of a city

"ripped to ruin by German bombs

"and she remembers the nights
that London burned,

"by the unbelievable glare
of the far-off flames.

"She knows what it is to have
high explosive bombs blast

"their big craters
right outside the doorway

of the shelter
in which she was sleeping."

"She has had
her best friends killed."

"Looking out
at the peaceful countryside

"from the Thompson porch,
she said it was hard to believe

that the rest of the world
was at war."

Al McIntosh, Rock County Star.

NARRATOR:
Much of the world was
already at war

in the fall of 1941.

But for most Americans,

finally beginning to recover
from the Great Depression,

events overseas seemed
impossibly far away.

In Luverne, Minnesota,
the biggest town in Rock County,

in the state's
southwestern corner,

the autumn harvest was
only a memory...

and its 3,000 citizens had begun
the long winter wait

until they could sow
their fields again.

Al McIntosh, the editor
of the Rock County Star,

lived at 517 North Kniss Avenue.

He was a newcomer
from North Dakota

who had turned down
big city jobs

to run his own small-town paper.

He would soon find himself
trying to explain

the unexplainable
to his new neighbors.

Six-year-old Jim Sherman lived
with his family

at 503 North Estey Street.

SHERMAN:
I think it was
a pretty close-knit community.

Uh, there was a saying that

if you don't want people
to know about it,

you don't do it-- sort of thing.

And everybody knew pretty much
everybody else in town.

NARRATOR:
Four miles south of town,

near the Rock River,

was the 120-acre farm
of the Aanenson family.

There they raised cows
and grew barley, oats, and corn.

who would face the most fearful
odds in the skies over France,

was named Quentin.

sometimes I would be on a piece
of farm machinery plowing corn

and a lonely airplane
would fly over

and I would look up
and my spirit would soar.

"That's where I want to be
sometime.

"I want to live that way.

I want to do those things."

NARRATOR:
In Sacramento, California,
the state capital,

Okies, refugees
from the Dust Bowl,

still camped on the edge
of town

and worked the fields
and orchards and vineyards

of the surrounding
Sacramento Valley.

The city had been the gateway
to the California Gold Rush

and the western anchor of
the transcontinental railroad.

Although it was home
to some 106,000 people,

Sacramento still seemed
like a small town.

Tom and Earl Burke,

who would be asked to sacrifice
everything for their country,

lived with their parents
at 3240 Lassen Way,

just north of town.

EARL:
It was a tremendous town;
everybody knew each other.

All, all ethnic groups were
just perfect.

I mean it was... you could go
out on the streets at night

at 11:00, 12:00 at night

and, you know, you could
walk home in the dark.

Nobody locked the doors.

Nobody even thought of it.

It was a nice, clean,
little town.

BURNETT MILLER:
The lower end of town was rather
colorful to us.

There were lots of whorehouses.

As you got up towards
the nicer part of town,

towards Tenth Street, uh,

the houses of prostitution
were quite fancy.

And as kids,
we used to run down there

and run through the place,
just raising hell.

NARRATOR:
18-year-old Burnett Miller lived
with his family

in a comfortable neighborhood
at 3643 West Lincoln Avenue.

He would discover,
in the last days of the war,

why it had to be fought.

Almost 7,000 Japanese-Americans
also lived in Sacramento

and the surrounding county.

Doctors, lawyers, teachers,
and shop owners,

as well as some of the most
productive farmers in America.

Susumu Satow and his family grew
strawberries, grapes,

and raspberries on their
20-acre farm, east of the city.

SUSUMU SATOW:
My mother didn't speak English.

My father spoke, uh,
broken English.

As a youngster, at the age
of about eight, nine, I guess,

I used to walk down the railroad
track to a place called Mills.

And Mills had a semipro
baseball team.

And so I grew up in sort of a
baseball environment, I guess.

NARRATOR:
In Waterbury, Connecticut,

on the banks
of the Naugatuck River,

a skilled workforce,

mostly immigrants
and immigrants' children,

turned out screws and washers
and buttons,

shower heads and alarm clocks,

toy airplanes
and lipstick holders,

and cocktail shakers.

Since the 19th century,

its citizens had proudly called
their town "Brass City."

Ray Leopold, the son of a Jewish
immigrant from Latvia,

lived on Route Eight on
the southern edge of the city.

Waterbury was a center
for high-quality craft.

There were individuals there
who could do 1/10,000 of an inch

on anything and if there was
zero tolerance required,

they could do that, too.

OLGA CIARLO:
Well, Waterbury, where we lived,

there were a lot
of Italian people.

They had made a good business
for themselves

and were very well liked.

We had a wonderful neighborhood.

We had parties
every single Sunday.

Every Sunday was a picnic
for us.

NARRATOR:
The Ciarlo family lived
at 1032 North Main Street,

in the Italian section of town.

Their father had recently died.

His loss would be only
the beginning of their troubles.

And in Mobile, Alabama,

population 112,000,

the only real industry
was shipbuilding,

as it had been since the
Great War, a generation earlier.

Once a center of cotton
and slave trading,

Mobile was best known
for its annual Azalea Festival,

and its leisurely Southern air.

John Gray and his family lived
on the south side of town,

near the L & N Railroad tracks
at 407 Royal Street.

He would soon be asked
to fight a war for freedom,

though his own country's
definition of freedom

did not include him.

GRAY:
Whites and blacks got along
pretty good,

as long as you had
the status quo.

But you could not, uh,
eat at the counter at Woolworth.

You'd have to go down to the end

and order your sandwich
and take it out.

Out to eat.

NARRATOR:
Across town,

Katharine Phillips
and her family

lived at 1555 Monterey Place.

PHILLIPS:
Daddy said Mobile
made its living

by taking in each other's wash.

And it was absolutely true.

The pace of life was slow.

On a hot summer evening--

of course there was
no air-conditioning--

so Daddy would load us in
the car and we'd drive downtown

to Brown's Ice Cream and
he'd buy us an ice cream cone

and then we'd drive out
to Arlington

and park out by the bay,

and all sit there
and enjoy the sea breeze.

And when we'd cooled down
enough, he'd bring us home

and everybody could go to bed
and go to sleep.

Or we sat on our porch
in the evening

and the children played
in the yard.

It was a wonderful way
to grow up.

And we were completely away
from the rest of the world

down in Mobile.

NARRATOR:
No one in Mobile, Waterbury,

Sacramento, Luverne,
or anywhere else in America

was prepared
for what was about to happen

to them and their country.

DANIEL INOUYE:
Pearl Harbor was a Sunday

and, together with the family,

we're all getting ready
to go to church.

And the disc jockey's going on
with Hawaiian music,

and suddenly
he sounded hysterical.

For a moment,
I thought this was an act.

So I stepped out into the street
and sure enough...

there are puffs and smoke coming
out of that Pearl Harbor area.

And so I called my father out,

And all of a sudden, three
aircraft flew right overhead.

They were pearl gray
with red dots.

I knew what was happening.

(artillery shells whistling,
explosions booming)

And I thought my world had just
come to an end.

(explosion)

(siren wailing)

NARRATOR:
At 7:55 a.m.

on Sunday, December 7, 1941,

hundreds of Japanese warplanes,

launched from aircraft carriers
far out at sea,

attacked the American
Pacific Fleet

anchored
at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

(explosion)

The attack took
a terrible toll--

so terrible a toll
that the War Department

kept secret the exact details
for years.

(explosions)

Eight battleships,
including theUSS Arizona,

three light cruisers,
three destroyers,

and four other naval vessels
were either sunk or damaged.

164 American aircraft
were also destroyed.

Most hadn't even gotten
off the ground.

And 2,403 Americans were dead.

Nothing like this
had ever happened

to the United States of America
before.

17-year-old Daniel Inouye,
the son of a Japanese immigrant,

was a senior at William McKinley
High School in Honolulu

and a Red Cross volunteer.

INOUYE:
A call came in that we had
casualties nearby,

One haunts me every so often.

It was a woman
clutching a child.

Her head was severed,

but here she was with her arms
around her baby.

And, uh...

So this is
what I had to pick up, at 17.

ANNOUNCER (over radio):
One, two, three, four.

Hello, NBC. Hello, NBC.

This is KBU in Honolulu, Hawaii.

PHILLIPS:
I was a sophomore at Auburn

when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

ANNOUNCER:
It is no joke, it is a real war.

I came home from church,
went to the dormitory

and heard all this
screaming and crying.

And I went down the hall,
I said,

"What's the matter?
What's wrong?"

They said, "Turn the radio on."

So we turned our radio on
and, of course,

he said, "The Japs have
attacked Pearl Harbor."

ANNOUNCER:
We have been on the telephone
with our station KGMB,

which is in Honolulu,
and they report to us

that the antiaircraft fire
can be heard

in a steady drone
as the attacking planes come in.

PHILLIPS:
But we comforted each other,

and the girls all cried and wept

because they had
boyfriends or relatives

that were already
in the armed forces.

And we realized immediately

that this would be war.

NARRATOR:
Katherine Phillips'
younger brother Sid

was back home in Mobile.

SIDNEY PHILLIPS:
I was in a drugstore,
drinking a milkshake,

and this lady burst in
the side door and screamed,

"Turn on the radio!"

They were talking about
Pearl Harbor on every station.

ANNOUNCER:
And London now awaits Prime
Minister Churchill's promise

to declare war on Japan
within the hour.

We knew this meant
we were in the war.

And we just...

all sat there quietly.

The radio kept giving the same
information again and again.

ANNOUNCER:
...8:30 p.m. tonight...

BARBARA COVINGTON:
I remember I was home
eating breakfast

with my mother
and my two brothers.

I was the youngest,

and we were getting ready
to go to Sunday school.

I remember the fear
coming in my mother's eyes,

because she knew my brothers

were probably going to be
called, and they were.

ANNOUNCER:
From Washington, Secretary
of War Henry L. Stimson

today ordered the entire Army
into uniform,

ASAKO TOKUNO:
That was about the time
we had finals at school,

and this was my first semester
at UC Berkeley.

And, uh, heard the news first.

Of course, I traveled by bus
to go to school.

And as I'd stand
on that corner...

(clears throat)

I would get
this terrible feeling

that people were watching,
looking at me.

And, um, you just get
so self-conscious, you know,

so much more aware.

I'd never been aware of my...

you know, my ethnicity.

And so, that was very strange.

That was the first time
I really felt, you know,

ANNOUNCER:
For the latest news
on the Pacific situation,

keep tuned to this station.

LEOPOLD:
It seemed so incredible.

2,400 innocent people

blown off the face of the earth
was an atrocity.

It was something
that had to be corrected--

perhaps the word
might be "avenged."

And, um...
we had to get busy with it.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT (on radio):
Yesterday...

December 7, 1941...

NARRATOR:
The following afternoon,
people in Sacramento,

Waterbury, Luverne, Mobile,

and everywhere else in America

gathered around
their radios to hear

President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt

ask a joint session of Congress
for a declaration of war.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT:
The attack yesterday

on the Hawaiian Islands
has caused severe damage

to American naval
and military forces.

I regret to tell you
that very many American lives

have been lost.

In addition, American ships
have been reported torpedoed...

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
We gathered outside of
Langdon Hall at Auburn,

and they had
a loudspeaker truck,

and we stood there quietly

and listened to
President Roosevelt declare war.

(voice breaking):
And, of course,
our whole life changed.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT:
With confidence
in our Armed Forces,

with the unbounding
determination

of our people,

we will gain
the inevitable triumph,

so help us God.

(applause)

NARRATOR:
Three days after Congress
declared war on Japan,

Japan's allies, Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy,

declared war
on the United States.

All across the country,

anxious Americans
asked themselves,

"How did this happen?"

For more than a decade,
they had had glimpses of a world

descending into chaos--

in their newspapers,
over the radio

and in newsreels
shown in movie theaters.

The Strand and the State
in Waterbury.

The Crest and the Alhambra
in Sacramento.

The Roxy and the Pike in Mobile.

And the Pix and the Palace
in Luverne.

ANNOUNCER:
For the first time, we saw
great cities squashed flat,

civilians bombed and killed.

NARRATOR:
They had hoped they could
stay out of it all.

EMMA BELLE PETCHER:
You couldn't fathom
across the ocean,

you know,
and you couldn't fathom

what it was really like.

But they would show
these newsreels,

and I'd sneak in the back of the
theater and see these newsreels,

and they were horrifying.

NARRATOR:
Throughout the 1930s,
country after country

had been held hostage
to the ruthless ambitions

of the leaders of
what would be called "the Axis."

Benito Mussolini, the swaggering
dictator of Italy,

dreamed of restoring the ancient
Roman Empire and becoming

master of the Mediterranean.

Adolf Hitler built
his monstrous Nazi regime

and the mightiest army on earth

on the German thirst
for revenge--

revenge against the victors
of the First World War,

but also against those at home
who he claimed had stabbed

their armed forces in the back:

Socialists, Communists,
and the Jews.

Above all, the Jews,

who he said were both
evil and subhuman.

The German people were superior
to all others, he assured them,

and he had been chosen to lead
them to their great destiny--

a Reich that would rule
over the Old World

and the New
for a thousand years.

CROWD (chanting):
Heil! Heil!

The fact is that I am a Jew.

I was aware of what was
going on in Europe,

perhaps a little more than the
average person might have known.

And I did feel that,
somehow or other,

that Hitler had to be stopped.

Not only for the Jews,
but for everybody in the world.

QUENTIN AANENSON:
We knew the war in Europe

was going to affect us
eventually.

After Czechoslovakia had been
taken over by Germany...

we knew that the war
was coming our direction,

one way or the other.

ANNOUNCER:
The beginning of the Blitzkrieg,
"the lightning war,"

ripping deep into a nation
not equipped to meet it.

NARRATOR:
On September 1, 1939,

Hitler's forces stormed across
the border of Poland.

In response to the attack,
Britain and France

declared war on Germany.

The Second World War had begun.

Denmark and Norway fell.

Holland had surrendered.

Belgium was crushed.

French defenses had collapsed.

And in June of 1940,

Paris fell.

Adolf Hitler was the master
of Western Europe.

Then he set his sights
on Britain.

For more than a year,
she would stand alone

against relentless attack
from the air.

EDWARD MURROW (over radio):
Hello, America.

This is Edward Murrow
speaking from London.

They came over shortly

after blackout time
and opened the attack

with a veritable shower
of flares and incendiaries.

NARRATOR:
American public opinion,

which had been steadfastly
against being pulled

into Europe's troubles again,
had begun to change.

We had a built-up resentment
to Hitler.

We had been watching
the news since 1939,

so we knew what Hitler
was doing in Europe.

The way he had attacked Poland,

the way he had tried
to bring England

to her knees
with that constant bombing--

we just disliked Hitler
and everything he was doing.

NARRATOR:
But as plans
for Britain faltered,

Hitler had turned his attention
to the east,

ordering three million troops
in a surprise attack

on his supposed ally,
the Soviet Union,

setting in motion the worst
slaughter of the war.

Meanwhile, on the far side
of the world,

the military men who ruled Japan
in the name of the emperor

believed their people
superior, too.

Their small, crowded
island nation had moved

from medieval feudalism
to the modern era

in less than a century,

and they dreamed of Japan's
becoming a mighty,

self-sufficient power.

With extraordinary brutality,

they had set out to seize
the resources of China.

And they coveted
the French and Dutch

and British colonies
in Southeast Asia as well.

ANNOUNCER:
From Shanghai to Nanking,

Japan still spreads destruction
from the skies

upon a score of Chinese cities.

Here is the result:

innocent victims of the savagery
that masquerades as modern war.

NARRATOR:
Among the obstacles
in Japan's way

were the U.S. Pacific Fleet
based in Hawaii...

and American military outposts
in Guam, Wake Island,

and in the Commonwealth
of the Philippines.

The Axis leaders were united

in their scorn
for the United States.

Its people were "timid,
undisciplined scum,"

Hitler said,
"under the influence

of Negroes and Jews."

He was certain
such a mongrel people

could never win a war against
his Aryan legions.

President Roosevelt had done
everything he could,

short of war, to combat
the aggressors.

Providing desperately needed aid
to Britain and Russia...

...demanding that Japan
withdraw from China.

Finally,
freezing Japanese assets

in the United States,
so that no American oil

could be used to fuel
further aggression in Asia.

For the Japanese militarists,

that had been the signal
to go to war with America.

They made General Hideki Tojo
prime minister.

He thought that by destroying

the U.S. Pacific Fleet
at Pearl Harbor

in a single blow,

he could stun and demoralize
the country long enough

to become so dominant
in the region

that Japan could
never be dislodged.

American intelligence officers

had broken the Japanese
diplomatic code

and knew some kind
of attack was coming.

(explosion, plane soaring)

But no one had known
where or when

until December 7th.

GLENN FRAZIER:
I was raised in a real
Christian family

and, as a result, killing was
not part of my training.

And, uh, that was a big hurdle
for me to get over

because I had been
taught not to kill.

NARRATOR:
Within hours of Pearl Harbor,

the Japanese had also attacked

the main Philippine island
of Luzon.

17-year-old Glenn Frazier
was now in the middle of a war

he thought he would
never have to face.

FRAZIER:
And when the war started

and I was going
to the field hospital,

a couple
of Japanese planes-- Zeros--

bombed and strafed the hospital.

(gunfire, explosions)

And as we were approaching,

a friend of mine and I--
uh, we got into a ditch

and one of the dive bombers
came back and strafed us

and dropped one bomb
and hit him direct.

And all I ever found of him
was his left foot in a shoe.

And when that Japanese Zero
turned his wings

right above the trees
and started to fly away,

I could see him
with a smile on his face.

And at that point, I had
no problem with killing people.

In fact, I got to the point
where I hunted them.

(gunshot)

And if I didn't kill
a Japanese in a day,

I felt I didn't do my job.

(gunshot)

NARRATOR:
Glenn Frazier was one
of 31,000 men

under the command
of General Douglas MacArthur,

the best-known soldier
in the American Army.

A frontline hero of World War I,

he was as self-absorbed
as he was courageous.

But the news of Pearl Harbor
had paralyzed him.

He had had nine hours' warning,

yet when the Japanese attacked

his airfields
in the Philippines,

most of MacArthur's planes
were still parked wing to wing,

easy targets for the enemy.

(bombs whistling,
then exploding)

More than 50,000 Japanese
soldiers would soon be ashore,

converging on Manila
from the north and the south.

Neither the American troops,

nor the thousands of Filipino
reservists MacArthur called up

would be able to stop them.

The Americans were being
pushed out of the Pacific.

MacArthur eventually ordered
all his forces to retreat

onto the mountainous,
forest-covered Bataan Peninsula.

He withdrew with his family
and his aides

to the heavily fortified island
at the mouth of Manila Bay

called Corregidor.

Meanwhile, other Americans
in the Philippines,

innocent civilians thousands
of miles from home,

had been swept up
in the war as well.

(siren wailing,
bell clanging)

(clamoring)

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER:
The day Pearl Harbor got bombed

was the seventh.

But in the Philippines,

with... over the international
date line, it was the eighth.

Same day, and we were bombed
a few hours later.

And I had polio
when I was a baby,

so I used to go to Manila
three times a week

for physical therapy.

And this is what I was doing
on a Monday morning,

on the eighth, when the Japanese
started bombing.

NARRATOR:
Sascha Weinzheimer was
eight years old

in December of 1941,

the daughter and granddaughter
of wealthy farmers

with enormous holdings
in the Sacramento Valley

and in the Philippines.

As she would detail
in a journal,

she lived with her mother
and father,

her three-year-old sister
and her three-month-old brother

on one of the largest
sugar plantations

on the Philippine Island
of Luzon.

("Auld Lang Syne"playing)

(explosions thundering
in distance)

SASCHA WEINZHEIMER (dramatized):
"On New Year's Eve,

"Daddy brought home
three soldiers.

"When they all had big glasses

"of whiskey and soda
in their hands,

"they started telling stories
about fighting the Japs.

"They always smiled when people
wouldn't believe them

"when they said,
'Lady, we haven't got a chance.'

Mother scolded them
for talking that way."

NARRATOR:
After Japanese bombs fell
near their plantation,

Sascha and her family
moved into Manila--

now with the army gone,
a neutral, "Open City"--

joining other refugees
at the Bayview Hotel.

WEINZHEIMER:
The Japanese came in

on the second of January.

That was the beginning of,
you know,

this putting the people
into camps and so forth.

And your life changed fast.

WEINZHEIMER (dramatized):
"The first thing I remember

"was looking across the street
towards the bay

"and seeing Japanese soldiers
and officers around the flagpole

"hoisting up the Japanese flag

where our Stars and Stripes
had been."

(crowd cheering)

"Soon trucks came rolling down
the boulevard,

"yelling, 'Banzai!'

"We were told to be calm
and keep away from the windows.

Everyone was nervous,
especially Mother."

NARRATOR:
Japanese soldiers took
Sascha's father

from the Bayview Hotel

to the walled campus
of Santo Tomas University,

which had been turned
into a civilian internment camp.

WEINZHEIMER (dramatized):
"After Daddy started
to say good-bye,

"I could just hardly stand it,

"and for the first time,
I was afraid,

"so I screamed
and held onto Daddy

"until I had to be pulled away.

"Then he ran out,

and that was the last
we saw of him for a few months."

NARRATOR:
Sascha and the rest
of her family found shelter

first in one convent,
and then another.

Wherever they were, the sound
of the guns from Bataan--

where Glenn Frazier

and his comrades
were still struggling

to stop the Japanese advance--

continued day and night.

(distant explosions)

(loud, rumbling explosion)

(Duke Ellington's "Perdido"
playing)

SAM HYNES:
You have to imagine
what it was like

to be a teenage, middle-class,
lower-middle-class kid

in Minneapolis in 1941.

The chances for excitement
were fairly limited.

You could drive a car fast,
you could get drunk,

you could take a girl out

and try and get somewhere
and fail.

That's local excitement.

But to have an exciting life--

it was hard to imagine
what an exciting life would be.

And then, suddenly,
you could be, uh, a pilot

or a submariner,
or an artilleryman,

or any damn thing,
but you'd be...

It was something exciting,
and it was something adult.

All of a sudden,
you could choose,

just choose to be an adult
by writing your name.

I'm working for a bank in town
and delivering checks.

I write my name,
and now I'm potentially

a combat pilot, a fighter pilot,
an ace.

Or I'm the commander
of a submarine

going into Tokyo Bay.

These are incredible
opportunities.

You see, they're-they're
melodramatic,

exciting, like the movies.

And you might do it.

So that's terrific.

It has nothing to do
with patriotism.

It has nothing to do, really,
with who the enemy is.

It's the opportunity
to be somebody more exciting

than the kid you are.

(Benny Goodman's
"Wang Wang Blues" playing)

(music continues)

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
I came home
for my Christmas holidays,

and that's when I found out

that my brother Sidney
had gone down

and joined the Marine Corps.

And then, of course,
life really took on meaning.

SIDNEY:
My father was
very patriotic, and...

I felt like really expected me
to join the military,

so my friend W.O. Brown

said, "Sid, let's go join
the Navy in the morning."

And I said, "Fine."

And the recruiting office
was crowded

like you wouldn't believe,

so we walked up
to the head of the line,

saw this Marine
recruiting sergeant.

He came over and said,

"Do you boys want
to kill Japs?"

And we said,
"Yeah, that's the idea,

but we're going
to join the Navy."

And he said, "No," he said,
"You don't belong in the Navy.

"You belong in the Marine Corps.

"You can't get
in the Navy, anyway,

because your parents
are married."

And we, uh, ended up
joining the Marine Corps.

KATHARINE:
So Sidney joined the Marines.

Daddy told Mother, "You might
as well sign the paper, Kate.

He's going to go anyway."

He was only 17 years old.

So the story in the family is,

the Marine recruiting officer
crossed the street

anytime in the next year
that he encountered my mother,

because she would give him
a piece of her mind

for taking her little boy
into the Marines.

NARRATOR:
Unlike the professional armies
of Germany and Japan,

the armed forces

that Sid Phillips and others
rushed to join

had been totally unprepared
to wage a world war.

In 1940, the U.S. Army
had been smaller

than that of Rumania--

only 174,000 men in uniform,

wearing tin hats and leggings
issued during World War I,

and carrying rifles designed
in 1903.

The Army still owned tens of
thousands of cavalry horses.

To make up for lost time,

Congress had federalized
the National Guard.

In Luverne, 129 local boys--

members of the Minnesota
National Guard--

were called to active duty.

The entire town had turned out
at the depot to say good-bye.

Then, in the fall of 1940,
Congress enacted the draft,

and every young man
in America began to worry

when his number would come up.

WILLIAM PERKINS:
Somebody got the greetings.

Long envelope, you know.

And when you opened it up,
it would say,

"The President of the United
States and your neighbors

"have selected you to be drafted
into the Armed Forces for...

to protect the country,
et cetera, et cetera."

And I was down
to a friend of mine's,

Howard Lopes,
and he got the letter,

and he opened it up,
and he was drafted.

And so, boy, we just
laughed and roared,

and then I had to go home.

And when I walked in the house,
my grandma says,

"There's a letter up for you
up there."

And I... so I picked
it up, and I looked at it.

And it said, "Greetings.

"The President
of the United States

I flew out the house,
run down the street, you know,

back up the street
where Howard lived,

and I walked in
with the paper in my hand.

Everybody looked at me,

and they had a good time
laughing,

because I had been drafted.

They knew.
I didn't have to tell them.

I just hold up... the letter up.

NARRATOR:
Nearly 50 million men

would register for the draft
during the war.

To serve, they had
to be five feet tall,

weigh 105 pounds,
have correctable vision

and at least half their teeth.

Of the 18 million men
examined by Army doctors,

five and a half million
were rejected on medical,

or dental, or what was called
moral grounds--

usually because they'd given
what the Army considered

the wrong answer
to the question,

"Do you like girls?"

At first, the men also had
to be able to read and write,

but when hundreds
of thousands were rejected

on that score,
the requirement was dropped,

and the Army set up
special schools

to make its citizen soldiers
literate.

The goal of basic training

was to turn undisciplined boys
into fighting men,

whose comradeship and loyalty
to their unit would help them

withstand the worst
that battle had to offer.

No one who went through it
would ever forget it.

WALTER THOMPSON:
Well, I was 18--
I was real young.

I-I actually cried
the first night

'cause I was scared, you know?

It was strangers.

Never saw any of those guys
in my life.

From all walks of life,
all sizes and all shapes.

And lonely for your parents,

your home, your friends.

No one in the barrack
that I knew.

And so, it was just
an eerie feeling

to be in that situation.

NARRATOR:
Despite a growing chorus
of protests by black citizens

outraged at the idea
of fighting bigotry abroad

while it was tolerated at home,

the military continued to insist

on segregating African-American
servicemen into all-black units.

Even blood supplies for saving
the lives of the wounded

were kept separate.

WILLIE RUSHTON:
Oh, we thought that one day,

our country would be better
for everybody,

'cause I knew
I saw a lot of things

that my father had to go through

that I didn't have
to go through,

so I figured that
when my children come on,

we'd still have something better
than what I had,

so that's why I wanted
to go fight for my country.

FILM ANNOUNCER:
For this is what
we are fighting.

Freedom's oldest enemy,

the passion of the few
to rule the many.

This isn't just a war.

This is a common man's
life-and-death struggle

against those who would put him
back into slavery.

BURNETT MILLER:
You know, we had lots
of propaganda at films...

...showing us how bad
the enemy was

and how evil and so forth.

We were all quite cynical
about these.

We thought,
these are training films.

It's an awful lot
of propaganda and baloney.

ANNOUNCER:
For the Nazi master race theory

calls for the complete wiping
out of so-called inferior races.

And in village after village,
local Judases point out

loyal Polish neighbors.

MILLER:
We didn't believe

in the brand of evil
that they were propagandizing.

We didn't think we were
fighting to save the world.

But we thought that, you know,

it was our country
against that country,

and that country
had been the aggressor,

and, uh... the Japanese,
their allies,

had started us in it,
and we had to win it.

And it was that simple.

We didn't realize till later
how important it really was.

I was fairly close
to being a pacifist.

I believed that there is

mostly negotiated solutions

to most problems of this sort.

But I couldn't fathom
that there was ever

a solution to the confrontation
that Hitler was giving

to us and the rest of the world.

I felt that I belonged
in the service,

um, because the threat,

while it was directed
at the entire rest of the world,

was particularly directed

at the origins that I came from.

(Duke Ellington's
"Echoes of Harlem" playing)

If I didn't know it

at the particular moment
I went in,

13 weeks later, after I had
finished my basic training,

I knew, expertly, how to kill.

Kill with a bayonet,
kill with a bullet,

kill with your hands.

Yes, I could kill.

HYNES:
I left Minneapolis
for the service

on a dank, wet, cold,

March Minneapolis evening.

My father drove me
to the station

in the car that he almost
never let me drive

(chuckles):
as a kid,

downtown, past all the...

places that had been the, uh,

stations of my childhood
and growing up,

to the Rock Island Railroad.

It was dark.

The long platform was dark

with hanging
arc lights at distance,

it was dark, light,
dark, light, dark, light.

And at the far end
was a Navy yeoman

with a clipboard
and a gathering of young men

or boys around him.

And we stopped,
and my father shook my hand.

It seemed very strange to me
that my father and I

were on handshaking terms.

Then he turned around and walked
back toward the entrance--

dark, light, dark, light,
dark, light--

and out into the street
and was gone.

And I turned to the yeoman
and went up

and said, "Present,"
when my name came up,

and I was in the Navy.

LIFE REPORTER (dramatized):
February 23, 1942.

"Out of Poland have come
these appalling pictures

of the end product
of German conquest."

"They show mass misery and death
carried by German thoroughness

to an extreme
rarely seen before in history."

"They also show
the kind of thing

"the fighting foes
of Nazism may expect

if they really lose the war."

"The methodical massacre
takes on

"an emotional quality of sadism,

as applied by
the Nazis to the Jews."

"Herded in Polish ghettos,
forbidden to walk out

"or use a railway, machine-
gunned in their synagogues,

"thrown by thousands
into the rivers,

"stripped of clothing and food
and possessions.

The Jews of Poland
are literally dying out."

"These are the grim
statistical facts.

The details of human agony are
multiplied beyond the telling."

LIFE magazine.

NARRATOR:
At the start of 1942,

almost all the news was bad.

The Soviet Union,
the United States' new ally,

was under unceasing attack
from the Germans,

who had encircled Leningrad

and reached the outskirts
of Moscow.

Japanese troops
had now taken Singapore,

the Gibraltar of the East,

and with it, all of Malaya.

They had seized Borneo
and Burma and Hong Kong.

And they had taken
Guam and Wake Island,

Makin and Tarawa.

There was not
a single American base

between Hawaii
and the Philippines.

But President Roosevelt

and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill agreed

that for the time being
they would have to remain

on the defensive in the Pacific.

Germany, they decided,

with its vast armies
and mighty industrial machine,

was the greatest danger.

Victory in Europe would require

not only the mobilization
of a generation of young men,

but also billions
of rounds of ammunition,

millions of guns, hundreds of
thousands of tanks and airplanes

and fleets of ships
to bring them to battle.

Producing all of that
would take time.

Meanwhile, the survival of
Britain and the Soviet Union

depended on
a steady stream of food

and fuel and weapons
from America.

("American Anthem" playing)

BURT WILSON:
When I was seven years old,
in Theodore Judah School,

a boy from England,
an English refugee,

His name was
William Murgathroid Buchanan.

We all called him Roid--
Roid Buchanan.

And we developed
a great friendship.

And one day,
Roid came over to my house,

and I was upstairs,
and he called,

"Burt! Burt!"

And I looked out the window,

and I said, "Hi, Roid.
What's going on?"

And Roid said, "Do you know

what a dirty German sub
did to my father?"

And I said, "No. What?"

He said, "It killed him."

And I-I don't...

I didn't know
how to deal with that.

I went downstairs,

and we sat down under the tree
and talked awhile.

But it was still something that

I'd never had any experience
with, up until that time--

one of my best friends
telling me

that his father
was killed in a war.

NARRATOR:
On the evening of
January 13, 1942,

as American troops tried to stop
the Japanese on Bataan,

a German U-boat surfaced
silently off Manhattan.

Its commander was astonished
but gratified to see

that more than a month
after Germany declared war

on the United States,

America's largest city
was still ablaze with lights.

Using those lights
to silhouette his target,

he sent a torpedo
hissing toward the side

of an American oil tanker...

...then slipped back
beneath the sea

and moved south
in search of further prey.

Within 12 hours, he had sunk
seven more unarmed vessels.

The United States seemed

totally unprepared
for this kind of war.

U-boats would sink 25 tankers
along the East Coast,

continuing a fierce struggle
for supremacy of the seas

called the Battle
of the Atlantic

and threatening to choke off
America's allies.

Still, from Boston to Miami,

city fathers stubbornly resisted
the idea of blackouts.

Turning the lights off
would hurt tourism, they said.

The last light would not
wink out until May.

But the Germans
continued to sink

two or three merchant vessels
every day.

More than 230 Allied ships

and almost five million tons
of desperately needed mat�riel

went to the bottom of the sea
in the first six months of 1942.

American beaches
were black with oil.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
All along the Gulf Coast

and all on the shores
of Mobile Bay,

we could go sit on the beach,

but we were not allowed
to light a fire,

because of the U-boats.

We heard often in Mobile
that ships were sunk

just as they went out
of Mobile Bay.

And we know this to be true,

because the life preservers
and the canned goods

washed up on our beaches.

NARRATOR:
For a time, the waters
from Jacksonville, Florida,

to Galveston, Texas,
were considered

the most dangerous
shipping lane in the world.

"The only safe run,"
said one weary merchant seaman,

"is from St. Louis
to Cincinnati."

(distant gunfire)

(closer gunfire)

(shouting)

GLENN FRAZIER:
I really fought
the first few days

for the good Old Glory.

You know, like everybody else,

you're saying,
"good old United States.

"We're going to fight, we're
going to whip these Japanese

in a matter
of six months," and so forth.

But when it really hit me that
this was not a short situation

and that they were hitting
us hard,

then I think I changed
pretty much to protect myself

and my fellow Americans,
and I think I was fighting more

NARRATOR:
Nearly 80,000 American
and Filipino troops

had managed to escape the
Japanese around Manila

and take up positions
on the Bataan Peninsula.

Once again, General MacArthur's
planning had faltered.

Most supplies had been
left behind.

Rations had to be cut in half.

Bataan's humid forests
bred malarial mosquitoes.

Clean water was in short supply.

There was little medicine
on hand.

One field hospital had eight
operating tables...

and 1,200 battle casualties
in need of surgery.

Still the men struggled
to hold on...

...fighting off one attack
after another,

then retreating
halfway down the peninsula.

For weeks, the men on Bataan
continued to hope

that rescuers were coming.

Again and again, MacArthur
had assured them of it.

"Help is on the way,"
he promised.

FRAZIER:
On the Voice of America,
one time, I remember it,

we were getting it
on short-wave radio.

It said, uh,
as far as the eye can see,

there's ships and planes coming
to the Philippines.

We were told continuously that
we were getting reinforcements.

We were told that when we
retreated back into Bataan,

it would only be
for a few weeks.

NARRATOR:
But no troops, no planes
had ever been dispatched.

They could not have made it
through, anyway.

The Japanese now controlled
the South Pacific.

"There are times," Secretary
of War Henry Stimson confided

to his diary,
"when men must die."

By early March, three out
of four of Bataan's defenders

were incapacitated in some way--

sick, exhausted, wounded,
weak from hunger,

suffering from beriberi.

FRAZIER:
At the end, close to the end,
there was one can of salmon

issued to 35 men

and some rice
and very little rice,

so our situation was getting...

deteriorating and getting worse
every day.

NARRATOR:
MacArthur managed to leave
his quarters on Corregidor

to visit his men on Bataan
precisely once.

They began calling
him "Dugout Doug."

The soldiers' bitterness
intensified when,

acting under direct orders
from the president,

MacArthur, his wife,
four-year-old son

and 17 members of his staff

slipped out of Corregidor
in a PT boat.

From Australia, he issued
a brief statement:

"I came through," he said,
"and I shall return."

FRAZIER:
When he left and went
to Australia,

that's what I call
doomsday for Bataan,

because we knew
then that we had to fight,

and he issued orders
to fight to the last man,

and that's, we knew what
our fate was going to be.

(projectile whistling
through air)

NARRATOR:
On April 9, 1942,
Major General Edward L. King

sent a soldier forward
with a white flag.

It was the largest surrender
by the United States Army

in its history--

78,000 American
and Filipino troops.

General King asked a Japanese
officer just one question:

Would his men be treated
decently?

Yes, said the officer.

"We are not barbarians."

But Japanese tradition held
that those who surrendered

rather than die
on the battlefield

were cowards,
unworthy of respect.

The prisoners were prodded
northward,

300 at a time.

They were to walk from Mariveles
to San Fernando,

then be loaded
onto railroad cars

for the journey to Camp
O'Donnell in central Luzon.

What followed would be
remembered

as the Bataan Death March.

FRAZIER:
If we had known what was ahead
of us at the beginning

of the Bataan Death March, uh,
I would have taken death.

It was very, very difficult
for us to understand,

because we had had no contact
with the Japanese whatsoever

as to what these people
are all about

and what they're like.

And they immediately
started beating guys

if they didn't stand right
or if they were sitting down.

We didn't know
where we were going.

We didn't know anything.

And we were stopped on the way,

some of us were,
and searched and beat again.

And all our possessions
were taken away from us.

Some of them had rings that they
just cut the fingers off

and take the rings.

They poured the water out
of my canteen

to be sure that I didn't
have any, any water.

I saw them buried alive.

When a guy was bayoneted
or shot,

laying in the road and
the convoys were coming along,

I saw trucks that would just
go out of their way

to run over the guy
in the middle of the road.

And when by the time you have
15 or 20 trucks run over you,

you look like a smashed
tomato or something.

And I saw people that had
their throats cut,

because they would take
their bayonets

and stick it out through
the corner of the truck at night

and it would just be high enough
to cut their throats.

And beating with a rifle butt

until there just was
no more life in them.

I saw Filipino women cut.

Their stomachs were cut open.

Their throats were cut.

I saw Filipinos
and Americans beheaded

just with one swipe of a saber.

I marched six days
and seven nights, never stopped.

I did not have but one sip
of water and no food.

Now, they say that you can't
do this, but I did.

When I got to the end
of the march after,

uh, at the end of the entire
march where I stopped

to get on a train--
they put us on a train--

my-my tongue wouldn't even
go back in my mouth.

And if you look and talk
to somebody about that,

they'll tell you that's
how close to death I was.

NARRATOR:
No one knows precisely
how many men died

on the Bataan Death March--

somewhere between 6,000 and
11,000 Filipinos and Americans.

And at the end of the march,

Camp O'Donnell
provided no relief.

An unfinished
Philippine Army base,

surrounded by barbed wire
and machine gun towers,

with little water
and little shelter from the sun,

it would eventually hold nearly
60,000 miserable, desperate men.

Food was nothing but lugao,
watery rice soup

filled with weevils and worms.

It was best to try and swallow
it after dark,

one man recalled,
so as not to have to look at it.

Some 16,000 more Filipinos
and Americans would die

at Camp O'Donnell--
of dehydration, malnutrition,

malaria, beriberi, scurvy,
dysentery, hopelessness.

"Their bodies went by
in an endless column,"

one sergeant remembered.

"Day and night, they were
carried to the cemetery."

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
We had all been so distressed

about leaving our boys
in the Philippines.

There was no way of rescuing
them, we know now,

but at the time, we didn't know
that there were no ships.

Remember, they didn't tell us
how much had been sunk

at Pearl Harbor,
and we kept thinking,

"Why don't you go in there

and get the boys
out of the Philippines?"

NARRATOR:
One day, Glenn Frazier
volunteered for burial detail.

FRAZIER:
On some days, we buried 250 men,

so I didn't know but what one
day that might happen to me.

So my idea was
I had two sets of dog tags.

And I said to myself,

"Well, I think I'll just throw
one of these sets of dog tags

"in the mass grave, so if I'm
alive when the war ends,

there's no problem."

But if I'm missing or dead,
I didn't... I wanted my family

to know and have some kind
of ending, and so forth,

so they would think that I was
in this grave.

(artillery explosion)

NARRATOR:
On May 6, 1942,

Corregidor, the last American
stronghold in the Philippines,

fell to the Japanese.

(men speaking Japanese)

(seagulls cawing)

(distant foghorn blows)

SAM HYNES:
I went to Seattle in 1942.

One memory
is very clear and strong.

It's a Saturday, and I'm taking
a bus into the center of town

and across the public square

in front of the town hall,
I guess it is...

And I see ahead of me

a line of people standing
patiently by a bus stop.

And as I approach, I see that
they're all Japanese

and that they're getting
onto buses.

And I realize that these are
the Japanese-American citizens

of Seattle and the neighborhood
who are being sent off

to what amounted
to a concentration camp.

And I think,
"Well, those are my enemies."

But they don't look like enemies
standing there

in their American clothes
with their cardboard suitcases

waiting to be sent off
into the desert.

NARRATOR:
On February 19, 1942,

President Roosevelt had signed
Executive Order 9066.

Its tone was carefully neutral.

It authorized the War Department
to designate "military areas"

and then exclude
anyone from them

whom it felt to be a danger.

But it had a specific target...

...the more than 110,000 people
of Japanese ancestry

living along the West Coast.

They were about to be forced

from their homes
and moved inland.

Thousands of German and Italian
aliens were also locked up,

but millions of German-
and Italian-American citizens

remained free to live their
lives as they always had.

Only Japanese-Americans
on the West Coast

were singled out.

"A Jap's a Jap,"
said General John L. DeWitt

of the West Coast
Defense Command.

"It makes no difference

"whether he is an American
citizen or not.

I don't want any of them."

Almost no one protested
the government's plan,

which also classified
all Japanese-Americans

as unfit for military service.

DANIEL INOUYE:
1-A is physically fit,

and 4-F,
something's wrong with you.

But 4-C means enemy alien.

And here I was, 17 years of age.

I considered myself
a good American but, uh...

made into an enemy.

NARRATOR:
In Sacramento, soon after
Order 9066 was issued,

hand-lettered signs went up
all over town,

saying "Japs must go."

The orders to leave
arrived in May.

Susumu Satow and his family
could scarcely believe it.

They were given
one week's notice.

It was middle
of the harvest and...

but still, yet we had
to abandon it and leave.

And so, of course, we made
arrangement with our friends.

"Hey, come and pick
the strawberries

because it's ready
to be marketed."

And so I imagine they did that.

BURT WILSON:
There was an area of town

here in Sacramento that was
mostly where the Japanese lived.

And it was empty almost
overnight.

And we wondered, you know,
what happened?

They took somebody
out of eighth grade,

a Japanese boy who did
wonderful cartoons.

And one day he was there,
and the next day he was gone.

And that was very difficult
for us to understand,

because we didn't see Sammy
or any Japanese--

at least I didn't-- any
Japanese-American as the enemy.

(train whistle blows)

SATOW:
We were allowed to bring

whatever you could carry,
that's it.

And so you put just essentials
in your suitcase.

You know, first day,

when we had to pack up our
things and go to the train,

I really wondered,
what's going to happen to us?

You know, that, uh, this is just
the beginning

and, uh, they may very well
send us back to Japan.

And that, to me, was horrible.

I, in my heart, knew my loyalty
belongs to America.

I went to school, pledged
allegiance every morning

in grammar school and so forth.

And for me to think

that I may be sent to Japan
was... was horrendous.

NARRATOR:
Asako Tokuno was still
a freshman

at Berkeley that spring.

Her parents and her grandfather
were evacuated first,

because they had been born
in Japan.

She and her sister
were left behind for a time

to close
the family flower business.

We all somehow gathered
the flowers,

bunched them and got them
to the market,

to the flower market
in San Francisco.

And so we were able to keep
the business going.

And all those flowers didn't go
to waste, you know.

They were just in the height
of their beauty

at that time of the year,

getting ready
for Easter and all the holidays.

We were really...
kind of caught in the middle

when the war happened, although
no question about our loyalty

to our country, you know,
and how we felt.

(voice breaking):
This is our country,

and when this whole evacuation
thing happened, I mean,

it was like we had no country,
because we weren't from Japan

and they took away our...
our rights, actually.

We couldn't protest, and we
wouldn't have protested,

because we had to do what
the government told us to do.

And so, uh, I think our parents
realized, of course,

they were, you know,
not citizens,

so they accepted
the whole thing.

But for us,
I think it was a lot harder,

the fact that we had no rights.

(Japanese flute playing)

(band plays upbeat march)

(projector clacking)

NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Action pictures made by
Movietone cameraman Al Brick,

when a big enemy invasion fleet
drove to seize Midway Island

and was heavily defeated.

A hostile cruiser on fire,
bombed and ablaze,

filmed from an American plane
as it lies

like a smoking
volcano on the sea.

One of the greatest blows
of devastation...

NARRATOR:
By June of 1942, Americans
were desperate for good news.

And the victory at Midway--

the westernmost of the inhabited
Hawaiian Islands--

was just what they had been
waiting for.

It turned out to be
a great triumph,

but it had almost been
a total disaster.

The Japanese had hoped to smash
what was left

of the Pacific Fleet, take
Hawaii, hold its people hostage

and force the United States
to sue for peace.

But American cryptographers
had deciphered their plans,

and the Navy
was waiting for them.

Still, when the battle began,

all but six of the first 41
American torpedo-bombers

sent to attack the Japanese
fleet were shot down...

...without scoring a single hit
on the enemy warships.

But then, American dive bombers

swooped down
on four Japanese carriers.

And eventually, all four of them
were destroyed.

Midway marked the first defeat
for the Japanese Navy

in 350 years.

(projector clacking)

(band plays upbeat fanfare)

NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Hollywood's most famous
movie stars

leave the film capital to help
the government sell war bonds.

The country has asked the people
to invest a billion dollars

in one month to help pay
for the war.

And here's the start
of the drive.

They'll tour 300
cities from coast to coast.

This is the people's way
of saying,

"From the home front
to the battlefront,

"from movie stars
to sales clerks,

America's 130 million citizens
are in the war."

The war-- the single greatest
coordinated effort

in American history--

would eventually cost the
United States $304 billion-?

more than three trillion dollars
in today's terms.

Taxes alone could
never pay for it all.

That required a series
of annual War Bond drives.

The whole country
got involved.

In Mobile, John Cottingham,
a worker at Brookley Field,

invested all but eight cents
of his paycheck each month

in war bonds.

The Black Bears, the local
Negro League baseball team,

staged a doubleheader
that raised $100,000.

The citizens
of Sacramento were asked

to buy $16 million
worth of bonds

during one particular drive.

They were told it would pay
for 96 minutes of the war.

In Waterbury, bonds were sold
from "Liberty House,"

set up in the middle
of the town green

on the site where similar bonds

had been sold
to help defeat Germany

during the First World War.

People turned out to gaze
at a giant barrage balloon,

to see a German plane
that had been shot from the sky,

and ride a tank.

AL McINTOSH (dramatized):
Luverne, Minnesota.

"They can send all
the movie stars they want

"on countrywide
war bond sales drives,

"but for our part,
we'll take Maude Jochims

as the best bond salesman--
or saleswoman-- of them all."

"We stopped in at the Palace
Wednesday afternoon,

"and they were going
to fall $8,000 short.

"Then Maude,
as a one-woman campaign,

"waded in to canvass
Rock County patrons.

"The bond orders poured in

and the total was boosted
over $48,000."

Al McIntosh,
Rock County Star Herald.

NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
This was the Russian
front in 1942.

The Germans advanced, looting,

torturing,
murdering as they went.

The casualties ran
into the millions.

They had driven 1,000 miles
deep into Russian territory,

but Russia, with her
"scorched earth" policy,

left nothing of value behind.

Wheat, which could not be
harvested, was set afire.

Bridges were blown up, dams,
railroads, power plants.

NARRATOR:
Although the German invasion
of the Soviet Union

had stalled outside Moscow,

with both sides suffering
unspeakable losses,

a new Nazi offensive
in the spring of 1942

had sent more
than 225 divisions

steadily advancing
across Russia.

Millions of civilians
and soldiers died.

Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin
was demanding that the Allies

immediately open
a second front in the west

to relieve the pressure
on his beleaguered people.

not a single Allied soldier
fighting in Western Europe,

and there would not be
for a long time.

They simply weren't ready.

American planners
had a straightforward idea

of how to beat the Germans:

invade France
in the spring of 1943

and drive right for Berlin.

But the British were wary
of moving too fast.

"A defeat on the French coast,"
Winston Churchill warned,

was "the only way in which we
could possibly lose this war."

Instead, he favored attacking

German and Italian forces
in North Africa.

American commanders
thought invading Africa

would be a dangerous
and wasteful diversion...

...but Congressional elections
were coming up.

American voters were eager

for more offensive action
against the Axis.

President Roosevelt
overruled his generals.

The invasion of occupied France
would be delayed.

Instead, preparations were made
for American troops

to land in North Africa
at the end of 1942.

A bitter General George C.
Marshall, Army Chief of Staff,

wrote privately that he
and his fellow commanders

had "failed to see
that the leader in a democracy

has to keep
the people entertained."

("American Patrol"
by Glenn Miller playing)

SIDNEY PHILLIPS:
I did notice repeatedly during
the war that there would be

a sense of pride
in what you were a part of.

You would feel
the power of the military.

You would feel the power
of the convoy you were in,

the warships that
were surrounding you,

the weapons that you
were responsible for.

It was a strange feeling.

You knew you were
in great danger,

but you somehow felt safe

in that you were a part
of this great, powerful group.

NARRATOR:
In early August of 1942,

Private Sidney Phillips
of Mobile, Alabama,

and the 19,000 men
of the First Marine Division

steamed out
of Wellington, New Zealand,

in a large convoy,
including all three

of America's carriers
in the South Pacific.

Their target was
so remote, so obscure,

that some of their officers
had trouble saying its name.

But that summer, Guadalcanal,
a 90-mile-long island

at the eastern end
of the Solomon chain,

covered with dense jungle
and coconut plantations,

had suddenly become

one of the most strategically
important spots in the Pacific.

Two separate commands

had the task of pushing
back the Japanese.

General Douglas MacArthur

was in command
of the Southwestern Pacific,

assigned to drive
from New Guinea

toward the Philippines
and Formosa.

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
would use the Marines

to climb a longer ladder--
up the Solomons, the Gilberts,

the Marshalls, the Marianas,

the Volcano Islands,
the Ryukus.

He would begin
in the Solomons.

The Japanese had made landings
there, and construction crews

were hard at work
on an airstrip on Guadalcanal.

If they were allowed
to complete it,

Japanese warplanes
could choke off shipping lanes

between the United States
and Australia

and make the Allied
campaign impossible.

The Marines, including
17-year-old Sid Phillips,

now a mortarman,
had been sent to stop them.

Their commander had assumed
his green troops would receive

another six months of training
before they saw combat.

They were armed

with old single-shot,
bolt-action rifles.

They had only ten days'
worth of ammunition,

and in order to get them into
the fight as fast as possible,

their supply stocks had been
reduced from 90 days to 60.

The men called it
"Operation Shoestring."

(projectiles whistling
through air)

At dawn on August 7, 1942,

American land forces
went on the offensive

for the first time
in the Second World War.

No one had any idea how long,
how bloody

and how consequential the battle
for Guadalcanal would be.

Sid Phillips' platoon
was part of the second wave

of Marines to go ashore.

"We had been repeatedly told

"this would be the first

ship-to-shore
landing," he remembered,

"and nobody could more
than guess if such an idea

"We braced ourselves, and
the craft slid up on the beach.

We charged out, ready
to do or die," Phillips said,

"and there was the first wave
sitting, laughing at us."

There was virtually
no opposition.

The first American casualty
on Guadalcanal was a Marine

who cut his hand
with a machete,

trying to open a coconut.

The Marines moved
off the beach.

A combat photographer
caught Sid Phillips

relieving himself.

PHILLIPS:
There were times
of sheer boredom

and just plain hard work.

The war is actually
planned by the officers,

but it is fought
by the privates,

and the privates do 99%
of all the hard work.

NARRATOR:
Americans seized
the unfinished airstrip

with little trouble and renamed
it "Henderson Field"

after a Marine pilot
who was killed

during the Battle of Midway.

They began to prepare it
for American planes

with signs that read
"Under New Management."

Their orders were
to hold the field at all cost.

The enemy couldn't
be allowed to retake it.

Then... the Japanese attacked.

The American fleet offshore
was their first target.

PHILLIPS:
The Japanese Navy came in
and sank all of our escorts.

(artillery fire)

NARRATOR:
Four heavy cruisers were lost,

along with more than 1,800
American sailors.

our supply ships, too, but they
didn't-- it was at night,

and they didn't know
how successful they had been.

But the next day,
all of our supplies left,

and we were... we were there
without ever unloading

even our ten days of supplies
that we had brought in with us.

We would have starved to death
if there hadn't have been

a big supply
of Japanese rice there.

NARRATOR:
The Marines
found themselves alone

and began to wonder if they,
like the men on Bataan,

had simply been abandoned.

(gunfire)

With no support
from the sea or the air,

the men were strafed
and bombed daily...

...pounded by shells
from Japanese ships offshore

and under attack
from enemy troops

hidden in the jungle.

PHILLIPS:
We understood that
we might be expendable.

It had become
sort of the established thing,

and, uh, we knew our country
was not yet, uh, heavily armed.

And yes, we did, uh, feel
that we might be expendable.

We really did.

(automatic gunfire)

(bomb whistling through air)

NARRATOR:
Phillips was among
those sent out to help recover

the bodies of Marines
killed in an enemy ambush.

PHILLIPS:
And it was about five miles out
to the ambush site.

Well, the American bodies
had been mutilated.

They had been beheaded and, uh,

had their genitals, uh,
stuffed in their mouths, and...

(artillery fire,
gunfire continue)

our battalion
never took a prisoner

that I know of after that.

I really...
I really don't remember

that we ever took a prisoner.

(artillery fire)

(gunfire)

NARRATOR:
On the late afternoon
of August 20,

(aircraft approaching)
after 13 harrowing days
on the island,

Phillips heard the sound
of approaching aircraft

and took cover as usual.

But this time,
the planes were American.

(man whistling)
The Marines cheered.

They were no longer alone.

PHILLIPS:
It looked like Uncle Sam
was going to fight

for that miserable place,
after all.

(distant gunfire)

NARRATOR:
But at 2:00 a.m.
the next morning,

just hours after the first
American planes arrived,

a Japanese commander
sent 900 fresh troops

against Marine positions
along the western bank

of a twisting jungle creek.

Its name was the Ilu River,
but because the maps

the Marines had been issued
had it wrong,

the fierce firefight
that followed

would be remembered
as the Battle of the Tenaru.

(artillery fire)

PHILLIPS:
At that time
on Guadalcanal,

almost every night
there would be some event

that would arouse everyone,
would keep everyone awake.

But this night it was different.

The whole world erupted,

and, uh... the lines became
just a wall of fire.

We knew it was the real event.

NARRATOR:
The Japanese commander
was so certain

he could destroy the Marines

that in his diary he had
filled in the entry for the day:

"21 August.

Enjoy the fruits of victory."

The Japanese kept coming
all night.

"Banzai," they screamed.

"Marine, you die!"

The Marines just kept shooting.

(gunfire, echoed yells)

(gunfire continues)

PHILLIPS:
We killed, I think,
over 900 Japanese

and lost something like
34 Marines.

So it did our morale
a great deal of good.

NARRATOR:
For the first time,

the supposedly invincible
Imperial Army had been stopped.

The humiliated commander,

who had predicted victory,
shot himself.

But the Battle of the Tenaru
settled nothing on Guadalcanal.

Japanese reinforcements
poured onto the island,

and the fighting
just went on and on.

(gunfire)

A confusing,
vicious war of ambush

and counterattack.

A terrifying world

where random Japanese shells
would explode

among the entrenched
and embattled Americans.

PHILLIPS:
Some men could take it,

and, uh, some just physically
could not take it.

The sheer terror of knowing
that the next one

is going to have
your name on it--

when that goes on
and on and on and on,

you... you get
a strange feeling

in which you seem
to become detached,

and you just think,
"Well, maybe this will end

"and maybe it won't,
and maybe we'll all be blown up

and maybe we won't,
but who cares?"

And you... you learn
to sort of live with it.

(explosion)
It is just a matter of fate.

You will either survive
if the Lord is willing

or you will not.

So there's really nothing
you can do.

(explosions)

And you just take it.

(gunfire and artillery fire
in distance)

NARRATOR:
Private Sid Phillips turned 18
on September 2.

The next day, he got
his first letter from home

since he'd sailed
for Guadalcanal.

It was, he wrote back,

"the best birthday present
possible for me."

In late September,

some American reinforcements
finally made it through.

But nightly visits
by fast-moving Japanese ships

the Marines called
the "Tokyo Express"

kept the enemy on the island

supplied and reinforced
as well.

(artillery fire)

NARRATOR:
Twice, the Japanese,

determined
to retake Henderson Field,

mounted full-scale assaults
on the airstrip.

(artillery fire)

Twice, the Marines
beat them back.

Thousands of Japanese were
shot dead or blown to pieces.

(flies buzzing)

Week after week,

the battle for Guadalcanal
ground on.

The Japanese
were not the only enemy.

The stench of rotting vegetation
and decomposing corpses

hung in the humid, lifeless air,
clung to the men's clothes,

remained as a taste
in the mouth.

Torrential rains
turned campsites into swamps,

jungle paths into rivers of mud.

Clouds of mosquitoes
spread malaria,

leaving hundreds helpless
with chills and fever.

To the men on Guadalcanal,

Operation Shoestring had become
Operation Pestilence.

"The typical Marine
on the island,"

Sid Phillips remembered,
"ran a fever,

"wore stinking dungarees,
loathed twilight,

and wondered whether
the U.S. Navy still existed."

the Japanese navy mounted
one last major offensive,

aimed at reinforcing
their forces

and dislodging the Americans
on Guadalcanal.

A much smaller number
of American ships steamed in

to try to stop them.

The naval battle that followed

went on for three days
and three nights.

PHILLIPS:
You could see
the salvos of the ships,

and you could see
the naval shells

going through the air
like lightning bugs.

And you could see ships explode.

We didn't know if they
were American or Japanese.

We didn't know who was winning
or who was losing.

Sometimes when a ship
would explode, it would...

the concussion would actually
flap your clothes

miles and miles away.

But we did know that
our fate was being decided

and we would, uh, we would...

sit there sort of mystified
and horrified

by what was going on,
because we knew

thousands of sailors were
dying on one side or the other.

NARRATOR:
Some 5,000 American sailors
lost their lives

in the fighting
off Guadalcanal--

so many
that the casualty figures

were again kept from the public.

Among those who died

were five brothers
from Fredericksburg, Iowa,

who all served
on the cruiser Juneau--

Joseph, Francis, Albert,

Madison and George Sullivan.

But Japan lost two battleships,

23 other warships,

600 aircraft,

and thousands
of sailors and airmen.

And most important
to Sid Phillips

and the men on Guadalcanal,
the enemy was no longer able

to resupply its forces
on the island.

The Japanese continued to fight,

but it was clear the Americans
would eventually prevail.

The last starving, desperate
Japanese troops on the island

would not be killed,
captured or evacuated

until February 1943.

21,000 Japanese soldiers
were lost.

Guadalcanal would prove
a crucial victory.

After six long months,

the Americans were beginning
to learn how to beat

the Japanese--
not only in the air

and on the sea,
but in the jungles,

where, over the next
three years,

the fighting would
only get worse.

Allied shipping lanes
to Australia remained open.

And there was more good news.

American and Australian forces
had also taken

the most important Japanese
strongholds on New Guinea.

Japan's expansion
had been stopped.

PHILLIPS:
By the time we left Guadalcanal,

which was December 22nd
of 1942--

we had been there
since August the 7th--

everybody had lost
at least 25 pounds.

Our clothes were in rags.

We were covered with sores.

And we had nearly starved
to death two or three times.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
We did not realize

how desperate the Marines
were on Guadalcanal,

because the news never told us.

In fact, it was not till years
later when Sidney came home

that we found that their food
was down to fish heads and rice

and that he was down
to 125 pounds

when they took him off
of Guadalcanal.

NARRATOR:
More than 1,700 Americans
had died on Guadalcanal.

Another 4,700 were wounded,

and thousands more
were seriously ill.

Sid Phillips had survived.

But his uncle Charles Tucker,
a Navy pilot

who had flown in and out
of Henderson Field, had not.

KATHARINE PHILLIPS:
When we lost Charlie, it made
it very real to all of us.

And by that time, we had started
losing boys in the neighborhood.

The boy up here on the corner
was a Navy pilot

and he was killed.

The boy down the street
was an Air Force pilot

and he was missing in action.

We just... they started
disappearing all around us.

And my mother spent her time

going to visit the other
mothers, consoling them.

And it was a very,
very fearful time.

You don't expect death
among people your age.

Old people die.

And then, you begin to see

that it's your contemporaries
are dying.

And therefore,
it is just conceivable

that you might die, too.

("American Anthem" playing)

NARRATOR:
Luverne, Minnesota,
had been lucky so far.

No local family had lost
a son in the war.

But in Sacramento,

Mrs. Lillian Cole had
received news

that her son David had perished
on the USS Arizona

at Pearl Harbor.

She had been asked
by the government

"to keep secret for the present

the name of the ship
on which he served."

Another Sacramento native,
Airman Tom Burke,

died on a training mission
in Puerto Rico,

devastating
his younger brother, Earl.

In Waterbury, the family of
Marine private Albert Boulanger

learned that he had been killed
on Guadalcanal,

not far from where Sid Phillips
of Mobile had been fighting.

Glenn Frazier was still
a prisoner of the Japanese,

but the girl he loved back
in Alabama had changed her mind

and was now waiting for him
to come home to her.

Back in the summer of 1942,

a movie called Holiday Inn
had opened.

In it, Bing Crosby introduced
a new song by Irving Berlin.

(introduction to "White
Christmas" playing)

� I'm dreaming �

� Of a white Christmas �

� Just like the ones
I used to know... �

NARRATOR:
It was an instant hit,
and at Christmastime

American servicemen heard it

wherever they happened
to be posted.

� ...and children listen �

� To hear sleigh bells
in the snow �

� I'm dreaming �

� Of a white Christmas �

� With every Christmas card
I write �

� May your days
be merry and bright... �

NARRATOR:
Japan's advance across
the Pacific had been stopped

at Midway and Guadalcanal,

but at the end of America's
first year at war,

Japan's Pacific empire still
stretched 4,000 miles.

� I'm dreaming
of a white Christmas �
On the other side of the world,

the Red Army had stopped the
Nazi advance deep into Russia

at Stalingrad.

Allied troops had finally
landed in North Africa.

But there they would soon face
the full might

of the German army
for the first time.

The Germans still occupied
most of Europe,

still had designs on Britain

and, eventually,
on the United States as well.

For Americans in uniform,
a hometown Christmas

seemed very far away.

(final phrase
of "White Christmas" plays)

(gentle piano melody playing)

NORAH JONES:
� All we've been given �

� By those who came before �

� The dream of a nation �

� Where freedom would endure �

� The work and prayers
of centuries �

� Have brought us to this day �

� What shall be our legacy? �

� What will our children say? �

� Let them say of me �

� I was one who believed �

� In sharing the blessings
I received �

� Let me know in my heart �

� When my days are through �

� America, America �

� I gave my best to you... �

� America �

� I gave my best to you. �

(birds chirping,
distant machine gun firing)

NARRATOR:
Back on November 4, 1942,

as Sid Phillips and
the First Marine Division

continued to try to hold
Henderson Field on Guadalcanal,

a unique force began landing
31 miles to the east.

The Second Marine
Raider Battalion--

best known
as "Carlson's Raiders"--

had orders to slip into
the jungle behind enemy lines

and harass the 3,000-man
Japanese force hidden there.

With them was a young man
named Bill Lansford

from the Boyle Heights
neighborhood

of East Los Angeles.

His absent father
was a policeman.

His mother, Rosalinda Melendez,
had come to California

from Juarez, Mexico.

LANSFORD:
As a boy, I was not really aware
of the Anglo world at all.

Principally I lived
in Latino neighborhoods

and spoke Spanish at home

and knew very little English

until I was
about 14 years of age.

I had actually wanted
to join the Navy

because it had that mystique
of going to foreign lands

and all that kind of stuff.

But the fact of the matter is

that I was considered too skinny
and too little

and they rejected me over
and over until I got to be

like a fly hanging around
a gravy bowl there,

you know, the Navy station.

And one day I came out

and there was this enormous
Marine in blues

and standing there, and he gave
me a real pep talk.

He said, "Why don't
you join the Marines?

They're the best
outfit there is."

And I thought, "Well, the Navy
doesn't want me;

I'll try them," you know.

So in a way, it was the best
choice I ever made in my life.

NARRATOR:
At first, like many Latinos,

he did not feel entirely
welcome in the Marine Corps.

I think it was Little Texas
in the Marine Corps,

and as you know, Texans
and Mexicans didn't...

weren't exactly bosom buddies
in those days.

As the war advanced
and we went on through,

these Texan guys began seeing

that we weren't what
they thought we were.

that they weren't
what we thought they were.

And being Marines was
kind of a melting pot,

It was like the...
a mini United States, you know,

where you got Jews, you got
Italians, you got Indians,

and they all learn
to live together.

(explosion, men shouting)

The Latinos have a culture just
as the Japanese had, you know,

their own form of Bushido code,
which is not as extreme

but certainly is just as firm
in their nature.

And that's
that they want to prove

that they're up to whatever job
is given to them.

And they want to show that
they're as patriotic as anybody,

as some blue-eyed blond guy.

NARRATOR:
Lansford soon heard about
the Second Raider Battalion,

an elite commando unit,
and decided to volunteer.

Its commander,
Lt. Colonel Evans F. Carlson,

was a minister's son
with a crusader's zeal.

Carlson's motto was "Gung ho"--
Chinese for "Work together."

Officers were called
by their first names

and lived just as their men did.

Decisions were made
collectively, by consensus.

LANSFORD:
Colonel Carlson was
a visionary...

and he understood
guerrilla warfare perfectly.

He had made a lifelong study
of it and his...

I think his hero was
Lawrence of Arabia.

NARRATOR:
Carlson's second in command

was the oldest son of the
president of the United States,

James Roosevelt.

LANSFORD:
I think he may have been
nearsighted,

and he had to wear
special shoes,

but he certainly never asked and
never got any special treatment.

PETE ARIAS:
He used to stand in line
with the rest of the troops.

When we went to eat,
he'd stand in line

with his utensils
and stuff like that,

and, uh, he was just another guy
as far as I was concerned.

NARRATOR:
Also serving with the Raiders

was a farmer's son
from Los Angeles County,

Pete Arias of C Company,

who had joined up
to get away from home.

Within hours of landing
on Guadalcanal,

the Raiders moved into the
jungle, already on the hunt.

Their objective was to terrify
and bewilder the enemy,

mounting surprise attacks
from the rear,

then melting away again,
living off the land.

(explosion)

LANSFORD:
The Japanese had
never been defeated.

You know, they had defeated
the Russians in 1904,

and from that time on
they had been considered

the finest jungle troops
and light troops.

They had a sense
of being superior.

They held the American soldiers
in contempt.

They thought we were
a bunch of softies.

They thought that we could
not make the sacrifices

that the Japanese could-- the
Bushido code and all that stuff.

And that superiority
on the part of the Japanese

is one of the things
that defeated them,

because the last thing
they expected

was any Americans to be
behind their lines.

And they couldn't believe it.

And in the beginning

they thought we were
just small patrols

They didn't realize they were
up against an organized force.

And we... we couldn't take them
on, you know, face to face.

You know, there were
too many of them.

So we kept hitting their flanks
and hitting their rear end

and attacking them where they
thought we weren't going to be,

and chopping away at them.

It was like chopping pieces of
an animal until the animal died.

NARRATOR:
Most of the fighting was brief,
violent and at close quarters.

Sometimes just a few feet
separated the Americans

from the enemy.

ARIAS:
The Raiders were in there,

we was in there to take care
of people, you know.

If we ran into them,
we'd take care of them,

and that...
that's the way it was.

But there was a lot
of Japs, though.

We used to run into them
every other day.

Well, they used to tell us

that, uh... the Japanese
couldn't see very far.

But I... they could see
far enough to kill you.

NARRATOR:
One day, Pete Arias
and his squad

were ordered to cross a clearing

on the outskirts
of a deserted village.

ARIAS:
My corporal-- he was
our squad leader-- he says, uh,

"I don't think we ought
to go across that field."

So here comes the captain,
he says, the company commander,

he says,
"Hey, what's the holdup?"

And this, uh, then this squad
leader of mine says,

"Hey, Captain, I don't think we
ought to cross this field."

And the captain says,
"Aw, go ahead."

This machine gun opened up,
right in front of us.

It wiped out my squad.

My platoon leader, he said,
"Move your squad."

I says, "I ain't got no squad."

We lost a lot of people there.

NARRATOR:
In the fighting that followed,

some of the Raiders
were captured,

then tortured and mutilated.

LANSFORD:
And we could hear them,
you know, crying out

while they were being tortured.

And the following day,
after the battle

and after we discovered
our guys, our Raider guys,

staked to the ground
and, you know,

in effect tortured, cut up,

we had captured,
I think, five guys.

When we were assembled there
after the battle, Carlson said,

"Did anybody lose a good friend
in the battle yesterday?"

And some guys raised
their hands.

And then he said,
"Okay, take these guys out

and do what you have to do."

So some of the guys took
them out and killed them.

Just took them in the jungle
and shot them.

We were supposed to be
good guys and...

there were no reporters with us.

So the word never got out
until much later

that that had happened,
and some people still deny it.

But I was there and I'm telling
you that... that we did it.

NARRATOR:
What came to be called
the "Long Patrol"

went on for 30 brutal days.

Carlson's Raiders lost 34 men,

but they killed
almost 500 Japanese.

A few months later, the American
guerrillas would fight again

in the Solomon Islands,
this time on Bougainville.

LANSFORD:
Bougainville was the worst place
I've ever been.

If there really is a hell,

I mean it's got to be
like Bougainville.

It just... the island was
a pile of pestilence.

One night we were moving into
a position up the Piva Trail,

I mean you couldn't...
literally couldn't see your hand

in front of your face.

We were moving in there
and I had a machine gun

and, uh, my assistant gunner
and I set up the gun.

And we didn't know
where we were.

We didn't know
where the enemy was

except that he was supposed
to be right in front of us.

And as we were setting up
the gun, we heard a shot,

just one shot.

And I heard a guy go...
(grunts).

You know, he, like,
caught his breath.

And, uh, you know, we lay there
for a long time.

Then we began to hear
this guy moaning.

The moans became louder
and then he became delirious

and then he began
to call for his mother.

I thought that was only
in the movies, but it isn't.

And, uh, it was
a terrible night.

And then, you know, we were
trying to sleep and we couldn't,

and, uh, and I began thinking,

"Jesus Christ, why don't
you die, goddammit.

You know, we got to sleep."

You know, your mind gets crazy
after a while

under those conditions.

And he continued to moan and...

until near morning
when he died.

When it was daylight, we were
told to withdraw from there.

And they had this guy
in a poncho,

and they were dropping him
into one of the holes

that the people
in the back had dug.

And I said, "Who is the guy?"

He told me the name of...
of the guy

and it was, you know,
my best friend.

And he had been about three
or four guys away from me,

and it was
an accidental discharge.

Somebody had accidentally fired
a shot as he hit the deck,

and the rifle butt hit the deck
and he fired

and it was the only shot fired
that night

and he... it killed him.

And, you know, I just, you know,
I felt like hell.

I really felt that.

Because of hearing him
and the guilt feeling, you know,

that I kept saying, "Why don't
you die, for Christ sakes."

And the other guys told me
that they felt the same way.

We were so tired,
we just wanted to sleep.

When you wish a guy dead

and it turns out to be
your best friend, you know,

it's... the pits.

Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
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