Original subtitles

NARRATOR: By the summer of 1945,

the allies are tearing Japan to shreds.

MAN: We’d scatter in all directions

and shout, "they’re coming!"

NARRATOR: A ground invasion seems imminent--

the largest amphibious assault in human history.

MAN: We knew the beaches,

we knew the order of battle.

NARRATOR: But one bomb...

Changes everything.

WOMAN: People just sat, catching fire.

NARRATOR: Some memories will never fade.

MAN: I experienced the collapse of our nation.

NARRATOR: And no survivors will ever forget.

MAN: My mother thought I had been killed.

NARRATOR: Hear the voices

and feel the fight.

♫ ♫

Brought to you by Sailor420 !!! Hope you enjoy the film !!!

♫ ♫

DAVID BRADEN: We were going up in daylight

and dropping leaflets that said,

"we advise you to evacuate your town

because we’re coming up here Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock

to burn it to the ground."

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: In march of 1945,

General Curtis Lemay took a torch to Tokyo

in the world’s first large-scale use of napalm bombs.

BRADEN: The first fire raid on Tokyo

flattened 16 square miles of the city.

Lemay was ecstatic.

He ordered more of those missions immediately.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Lemay targets any place with a war industry.

In a matter of months,

America firebombs 67 Japanese cities.

♫ ♫

Fueled by wood and wind,

flames wash through Japan like a flood.

FUNATO KAZUYO: Mother,

with my little brother on her back,

had her feet swept out from under her by the wind...

And she rolled away into the flames.

NARRATOR: American firebombs

kill an estimated half-million citizens.

♫ ♫

Lemay films the damage himself.

His footage has never been broadcast before.

In some places, only Bridges are left,

connecting neighborhoods that no longer exist.

♫ ♫

CURTIS LEMAY: I suppose if I had lost the war,

I would have been tried as a war criminal.

But all war is immoral.

And if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Japanese film shows the rush to evacuate.

♫ ♫

Entire classrooms of kids migrate from city to country.

But they don’t escape the fear.

SATO HIDEO: By 1945, we no longer had many classes.

The main thing we did was dig an anti-tank ditch

in the corner of the schoolyard.

NARRATOR: Japan is increasingly desperate.

America swoops in ever closer.

(engines roaring)

(gunfire)

BRADEN: By June,

we had just about obliterated any opposition

that we had from the ground or from the air.

(engines roaring and gunfire)

NARRATOR: Japan deploys its last planes and pilots

to face the allies in dogfights.

(engines roaring and gunfire)

These battles used to be out over the open pacific.

(gunfire)

Now they’re over Japan itself.

(gunfire)

Then the Japanese simply run out of gas.

(gunfire)

ART ANDERSON: We would see whole airfields

loaded with airplanes,

and there wasn’t one that could get off the ground.

(engines roaring and gunfire)

The Japanese were completely out of fuel.

(engines roaring)

(gunfire)

You’d find a little cargo boat,

with two or three drums of gasoline

from some remote island,

trying to make it back to the mainland.

(gunfire)

NARRATOR: The Japanese empire is gasping for breath.

Yet there’s no sign of surrender.

Allies begin planning for the unthinkable.

♫ ♫

BAINE KERR: We had the plans for the landing in Japan.

And we knew the beaches,

we knew the order of battle.

All six marine divisions were

going to land in the assault.

And we would be followed

by 32 army divisions,

including macarthur’s.

NARRATOR: It would be the largest amphibious assault

in the history of warfare.

CODE NAME: Operation downfall.

KERR: Then they were going to embark

something like 70 divisions out of Europe

and sail directly there.

NARRATOR: The high-end estimate of the invasion force

is nearly two million men.

Planners assume that fighting will rage into 1947.

♫ ♫

After the human wreckage left on okinawa

just weeks earlier,

most marines don’t doubt this dire prediction.

CHARLES KILPATRICK: We knew they were digging in.

All those tremendous defenses in okinawa

they did in four months.

They had a lot longer than that to prepare in Tokyo.

♫ ♫

DAVID STRAUS: An officer told us

we were going to be in the assault wave.

He said, "look to your right and look to your left.

A week after we hit that beach, one of you will be dead."

That was a real morale builder.

NARRATOR: But President Harry Truman

is weighing a different option.

♫ ♫

In the middle of nowhere, new Mexico,

scientists prepare to hoist a steel globe

into a tower of scaffolding.

It’s the world’s first nuclear device.

They lift it carefully,

knowing if it drops,

it’ll turn them into dust...

If it works at all.

This is the moment of truth for the Manhattan project--

the Trinity test.

After securing it in the tower,

the scientists move 20 miles away.

Then they flip the switch.

♫ ♫

JOAN HINTON: It was like being at the bottom

of an ocean of light.

We were bathed in it from all directions.

♫ ♫

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: We knew the world

would not be the same.

A few people laughed.

A few people cried.

Most people were silent.

NARRATOR: Then one of oppenheimer’s colleagues

turns to him and says,

"now we are all sons of bitches."

♫ ♫

Trinity was a test

of a fragile bomb of unknown power,

sitting on the floor of an empty desert.

Next,

they’ll have to figure out

how to push one out of a moving airplane.

Only a handful of humans know the atomic age has dawned.

For everyone else,

the pacific war still looks like this.

(cannon and rocket fire)

♫ ♫

Supplying China has stymied the allies

since the start of the war.

Japan controls the Burma road,

choking off China from allied territory.

As a workaround,

Americans tried flying supplies over the hump of the Himalayas.

They tried sending secret agents through Tibet

to get on the good side of the 7-year-old Dalai Lama.

Finally, they try engineering.

Allies try to bypass the Japanese blockade

with a new road

from the Indian town of ledo.

The jungle is no easy place to make a detour.

MOSE DAVIE: It was rugged.

We were assigned to mile zero,

which we called "hell’s gate."

NARRATOR: From there,

they slowly carve a new ribbon of road

for 460 miles.

DAVIE: We used every imaginable tool they had

to move the earth.

NARRATOR: Workers nickname it "the big snake."

It takes a bite out of every man that works on it.

DAVIE: I lost about 55 pounds up there on the road.

The rations and the heat took me bad.

NARRATOR: But the effort pays off.

A stream of supplies begins to flow into China.

Now the pressure on Japan

seems to be coming from every direction.

Burma can now stand firm with the allies.

Japanese troops dissolve into the jungle,

isolated and abandoned.

♫ ♫

Here, freedom is a relief.

♫ ♫

In the American west, it’s bittersweet.

Since 1942,

more than a hundred thousand Japanese Americans

have been forced into internment camps.

♫ ♫

Kids have been growing up as little more than prisoners.

TAKEO SHIROMA: When I got to camp,

I was a junior.

My diploma was from the bureau of Indian affairs.

NARRATOR: The fears that put them here

have not materialized.

They haven’t become spies or saboteurs.

Instead, they’ve been quietly showing

just how American they really are.

♫ ♫

So even with the war grinding on,

America opens the gates.

ROBERTA SHIROMA: That was a dividing line in our lives--

before camp and after camp.

NARRATOR: Roberta and takeo Shiroma

will have to start over.

TAKEO SHIROMA: My parents lost their business.

NARRATOR: It’s like they’re immigrants once more,

departing with a few suitcases

to a country whose lofty principles

do not apply to them.

Many Americans don’t want them back.

One senator suggests they all be deported to Japan.

West coast newspapers decry what they call

"california’s jap problem."

TAKEO SHIROMA: My father could not get a job.

They said, "have you looked at your face?

We can’t hire you."

NARRATOR: Some even cling to the camps

when they could freely leave.

But the shiromas try to heed wisdom

from their ancestral home.

ROBERTA SHIROMA: We have a phrase

that we hear all the time.

It’s called "Shigata Ga Nai."

It means "it couldn’t be helped."

It’s something that happened,

and you let it go.

NARRATOR: That will be easier for some than others.

In another desert of the American west,

B-29 crews line up for inspection.

JAMES PRICE: He told us that we were in an outfit

that might end the war.

NARRATOR: Then...

They prepare for a high-stakes game

of target practice.

The Trinity test ushered in the atomic age.

But no one knows how to drop such a big bomb out of a plane.

So b-29s take off with dummy bombs called "pumpkins"

to drop onto the desert.

♫ ♫

PRICE: I guess they just plowed up these tumbleweeds

so we could see a target.

NARRATOR: From more than 5 1/2 miles up,

they let it go.

On the ground, experts observe the bomb’s dynamics.

PRICE: The first ones tumbled.

Then they changed the tailfins.

People from Los Alamos were down there timing

how long it would take them to fall.

Someone joked that they stood in the center of the target

because they felt that would be the safest place.

NARRATOR: It’s not a bullseye.

But with the real bomb, it might not matter.

♫ ♫

On August 5th,

another air crew prepares for a run on Japan.

It’s becoming almost routine.

This is the 345th bombardment group,

nicknamed the air apaches.

They’re on ie shima,

a little island off okinawa

that’s now a bustling air base.

The target is the town of tarumizu,

just 430 miles away.

♫ ♫

Captain John Hanna films the action himself.

With Japan unable to mount much of a defense,

hanna’s plane can scrape the rooflines.

♫ ♫

They make runs on a coastal factory

that makes rocket-propelled suicide planes.

And they firebomb nearby homes

to cripple the workers as much as their workplace.

♫ ♫

The 345th returns to base

with a few scratches from anti-aircraft fire.

♫ ♫

Tarumizu is wrecked.

Today’s raid is 325 planes

and thousands of bombs.

Tomorrow, it’ll be just one.

♫ ♫

Teenager yamaoka michiko

is on her way to downtown Hiroshima.

YAMAOKA MICHIKO: I was in the third year of high school.

I left the house around 7:45.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: From the island of Tinian,

Colonel Paul Tibbets is on his way to Japan.

PAUL TIBBETS: We had lulled the Japanese

into a sense of false security.

For a week

I sent a single airplane up over these targets.

I wanted them to think we were reconnaissance planes.

♫ ♫

MICHIKO: I wasn’t particularly afraid

when b-29s flew overhead.

I looked up to see if I could spot them.

That was the moment.

♫ ♫

There was no sound.

I felt colors.

I remember my body floating in the air.

I don’t know how far I was blown.

I tried to say something, but my voice couldn’t come out.

I said to myself, "goodbye, mom."

TIBBETS: Below the mushroom cloud,

it was black and boiling underneath,

like a boiling pot of tar.

MICHIKO: Fires burst out from just the light itself.

Nobody looked like a human being.

People couldn’t scream.

They just sat,

catching fire.

♫ ♫

TIBBETS: By that time, we were out over the water

and on our way back home.

It was an easy flight.

♫ ♫

I didn’t have the ability

to visualize what this thing really was.

There was no measure, no scale by which to judge this thing.

NARRATOR: As Tibbets lines up for a medal,

rumors swirl about the damage in Hiroshima.

TIBBETS: The guys came in with their eyes wide open

and asked...

"Jesus! Is this true?"

NARRATOR: A few days later,

Americans roll out another atomic bomb--

even bigger in size and power.

They name it "fat man."

Inside is a lump of plutonium about the size of a softball.

They seal the seams

to keep moisture away from the delicate components inside.

Since the bomb hit Hiroshima,

Japan has sent no message to the outside world.

It is silent...

As if in shock.

So Americans load up fat man

and head for the next target--

the city of kokura.

♫ ♫

When the b-29s arrive,

kokura is socked in,

with clouds and smoke from burning cities.

♫ ♫

They peel off for their secondary target.

♫ ♫

A Scottish pow is in a prison camp nearby.

ALISTAIR URQUHART: I saw a plane flying.

Two minutes later came a tremendous clap of thunder

from Nagasaki.

♫ ♫

A Gale-force wind nearly knocked me over.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Japan isn’t sure what’s hitting them.

♫ ♫

America isn’t sure what it’s unleashing.

Only those under the mushroom cloud really know.

But the world will soon find out.

♫ ♫

♫ ♫

The next day,

the Japanese contact the Swiss,

who pass messages to the Americans,

even as their carriers launch more raids.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union invades Manchuria,

opening another front Japan can barely defend.

Days go by as each side deliberates

and translates

and negotiates.

(engines roaring)

♫ ♫

Bombs keep dropping.

On August 13th,

1,000 carrier planes make their final dive on Tokyo.

In 1942, this would have been impossible.

♫ ♫

Now it’s unstoppable.

(audio recording in japanese)

A scratchy recording of a strange voice

goes out over Japanese airwaves.

It’s Emperor Hirohito.

Revered as a distant god-like figure,

he has never addressed the public...

Until now.

TRANSLATED: We have decided to effect a settlement

of the present situation

by resorting to an extraordinary measure.

NARRATOR: He uses an archaic Japanese dialect

that few can understand.

But soon, the news becomes clear.

Japan surrenders.

♫ ♫

The world gasps in a moment of disbelief...

♫ ♫

ANNOUNCER: ...Coming out of Tokyo that Emperor Hirohito

has accepted the terms of surrender as drafted...

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Then exhales in relief.

♫ ♫

Navy ships racing toward Japan begin to coast.

♫ ♫

CHRIS WALKER: We had our ship loaded,

totally loaded for us to invade.

ROBERT TIPPEN: We got the message.

I ran up to the bridge where a good friend was signalman.

He spelled out "war is over."

JAMES REDDING: The captain announced,

"it’s against naval regulations,

but all hands can lay down to the scullery

for two cans of beer."

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: All across the pacific,

men slated for the final assault get the news of their lives.

STRAUS: I guarantee you there was a lot of relief.

I don’t know how many of us would have survived

the invasion of Japan,

but not very many, I don’t think.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: In the Philippines,

word slowly gets out.

Serviceman Dan Rocklin

films a nation slowly rising from its knees.

♫ ♫

From every corner of their fallen empire,

Japanese who fought from the shadows

finally emerge into daylight.

JOE RACKLEY: They started coming in

and putting their rifles down.

That was the end of them.

IITOYO SHOGO: We fell from heaven to hell overnight.

NARRATOR: Men who spent the last 3 1/2 years

trying to annihilate each other

are now facing each other.

BILL WALKER: The japs all came in from the jungle

and gave us their swords.

Of course, all our officers got the good ones.

NARRATOR: In China, Japanese troops are herded into boxcars--

a demoralizing start to their long journey home.

SHOGO: I experienced the collapse of our nation.

It was really worse than dying.

NARRATOR: In Japan, there is shock and shame.

KUMAGAYA TOKUICHI: Nobody truly thought

Japan would lose.

NARRATOR: Since its ancient beginnings

in the first century,

it has never known a foreign occupation.

The pride of empire

disintegrates into a cloud of fear.

♫ ♫

They arrive in white planes--

the color of surrender--

at general macarthur’s insistence.

He doesn’t want any mistaken identity.

The rising sun has been replaced by a green cross.

The Japanese delegation emerges.

They’ve just landed in the Philippines

to meet with MacArthur.

The future of Japan is now under negotiation.

MacArthur welcomes allies of every stripe.

A global array of military uniforms

marches into Manila.

They will talk all night

over hastily translated maps and documents.

And they settle on a date

to formally conclude the pacific war.

♫ ♫

A distant mount fuji presides over Tokyo bay.

For all the thousands on board the USS Missouri,

the focus is on one man--

now supreme commander for the allied powers.

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: I had received no instructions

as to what to say or what to do.

I was on my own,

standing on the quarterdeck

with only god and my own conscience to guide me.

NARRATOR: MacArthur stands to face the Japanese delegation

and stakes his claim.

MACARTHUR: I announce it my firm purpose

to proceed in the discharge of my responsibilities

with justice and tolerance,

to ensure that the terms of surrender

are fully, promptly, and faithfully complied with.

NARRATOR: Finally, in the calm of a sea-salt breeze,

the incessant pounding of the pacific war ceases

with the quiet scrawls of solemn signatures.

The ceremony ends with a ferocious roar--

a flyover of nearly 500 b-29s.

Now both sides have to make a sudden turn

from combat to cooperation.

A lasting peace in the pacific is at stake.

♫ ♫

Just weeks earlier,

this was the plan--

an all-out full-force charge

into the drawn swords of a 2,000-year-old empire.

Instead, the allies approach unarmed.

♫ ♫

ROY SIMMONS: We didn’t have any ammunition.

MacArthur did not want any incidents.

Not one incident.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Thousands of troops

pour onto the soil of their sworn enemy...

Without firing,

without ducking,

without dying.

Japanese disarm themselves under allied supervision.

Americans look right into the jaws

of what awaited them.

KILPATRICK: From the water line to Tokyo,

every yard of it was entrenched and barricaded

with tunnels and caverns.

It would have been a bloodbath.

NARRATOR: Americans are fascinated with

the war’s opposing perspective.

They play with guns that were once aimed at them.

They find a Japanese ship

with allied planes painted on the side--

a cheat-sheet for gunners.

And one takes a tour of a Japanese sub.

CHARLES PASE: I’m sure they hated us.

But some of them tried to introduce

some sort of incipient friendship,

as if, in the back of their minds,

they recognized that we were humans,

just like they were.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: The Victors are now fully ashore.

♫ ♫

Next come the vanquished.

♫ ♫

Seven million Japanese

have been spread across Asia and the pacific,

fighting for the homeland they remember.

♫ ♫

Some have been gone for years,

with no idea what their nation has endured.

♫ ♫

Face masks and a blast of ddt

stave off the import of disease.

But there’s no cure for the shock of defeat.

Japanese citizens

imagined their enemies as ruthless barbarians.

Now these foreign armies are walking among them.

SIMMONS: They turned their backs to us

and hung their heads.

I asked the interpreter, "what are they doing?"

And he said, "that’s the sign of submission."

NARRATOR: Allies bombed and blockaded

the Japanese into starvation.

Now they unload c-rations.

MACARTHUR: We didn’t intend to feed them forever.

We needed to make Japan self-sufficient

as soon as it was humanly possible.

NARRATOR: This is a tall order.

Much of Japan is simply not there anymore.

♫ ♫

Tokyo is half gone.

♫ ♫

For mile after mile,

it looks like a forest clear cut down to stumps.

♫ ♫

Rebuilding is a job too immense for many to grasp.

So they simply get to it...

With picks...

And shovels...

And bare hands.

In two cities, it’s even worse.

♫ ♫

ART ANDERSON: We flew directly over Nagasaki.

From ground zero,

everything radiated out 360 degrees.

♫ ♫

JERELL CROW: We went to Hiroshima.

You can’t imagine.

For miles, there was nothing.

Nothing left.

This city was burned down to the sidewalks.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: But the bomb’s lasting impact

is not in the rubble of brick and mortar.

It’s in the scars of mind and body.

♫ ♫

Inside hospitals are injuries beyond anyone’s training.

♫ ♫

Anyone within half a mile was instantly scorched.

Two miles away, skin spontaneously ignited.

♫ ♫

Hiroshima teenager yamaoka michiko survives,

but then has to endure.

MICHIKO: People threw stones at me

and called me monster.

Once my mom tried to choke me to death.

If a girl has a face you couldn’t be born with,

I understand that even a mother could want to kill her child.

NARRATOR: In Hiroshima, few families are intact.

Mourners grieve at overcrowded cemeteries.

No one knows when or if

a new Japan will emerge from the atomic shadow.

REUBEN KANDLER: We’d hoped for this moment for years

and dreamt that one day it might arrive.

But we’d never known that it would.

NARRATOR: 140,000 allied prisoners of war

take their first steps toward home.

From a pow camp in Thailand,

they board flights to Vietnam.

♫ ♫

An old hotel in Saigon puts them up,

and it feels like the ritz.

In Singapore,

sikh soldiers from India come out of captivity.

U.S. troops salute their freedom.

In the Philippines,

Japan had called its 90,000 prisoners of war

"guests of the empire."

Now they hitch rides and join convoys

to carry them away from despair,

toward hope.

♫ ♫

In Japan itself,

36,000 pows have endured darkness and decay.

♫ ♫

RICHARD WILLIAMS: We had to carry 90% of them

out on stretchers.

Some of their bones were sticking through their skin.

NARRATOR: Former captives flood the streets,

getting their first sips of freedom...

And their first crack at the all-you-can-eat mess tent.

♫ ♫

They begin the long journey home...

Lucky to be alive.

♫ ♫

More than a quarter of western allied pows

died in captivity.

Japan planned to execute the rest--

all these men--

once the land invasion began.

Some had dug their own mass graves.

KANDLER: We talked about

what we were going to do when we got home...

Who we couldn’t wait to see...

And how all the problems of normal life

could never bother us again--

not after what we’d been through.

♫ ♫

REDDING: We picked up over a thousand military personnel.

The ship was so crowded.

But nobody complained.

We were homeward bound.

NARRATOR: They crave family.

JACK LENT: My mother thought I had been killed.

When I was in Hawaii,

I called her and told her I was fine.

Then I hit the bars and saw the girls.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: They crave the familiar.

REDDING: When we got to San Francisco,

people were throwing flowers.

There was a big sign--

"welcome home."

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: They crave home cooking.

ARTHUR OWEN: In Tarawa,

we ate nothing but crushed pineapple

and canned Vienna sausage.

I ate enough Vienna sausage to make a rope and swing me home.

♫ ♫

NARRATOR: Finally, they crave normalcy.

KAY CLEMENTSON: The first thing after I got discharged,

I went straight to a department store.

I bought me a whole suit of civilian clothes,

from head to foot.

And I put it on right there.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this,

but I just took my uniform and dropped it in the garbage

and walked on out.

That was one happy day.

♫ ♫

JOHN RICH: The trains were running.

And the streetcars were running.

The Japanese were very busy.

NARRATOR: A new Japan begins to rise out of the rubble.

MacArthur guides the occupation

without appearing as an overlord.

MACARTHUR: I advised the Japanese people

to seek a healthy blend

between the best of theirs and the best of ours.

NARRATOR: He opens civil liberties...

And religious freedoms

beyond the deep traditions of shinto and buddhism.

He also floods the country with ten million free bibles.

♫ ♫

Baseball is already a pastime both countries enjoy.

Macarthur’s own home movies

capture his wife Jean taking in a Japanese ballgame.

Once, she even throws out the first pitch.

The uso reaches its final stage,

with Danny Kaye playing it up for occupation troops.

♫ ♫

Markets get busier.

♫ ♫

People get friendlier.

♫ ♫

A new openness slowly blossoms.

♫ ♫

MacArthur allows hirohito to remain emperor.

He goes from recluse to public figure.

♫ ♫

Kids who would not dare look him in the eye

now surround him with cheers.

♫ ♫

Here, he makes his first visit to Hiroshima

to honor the bomb victims.

♫ ♫

It’s December 7, 1947--

exactly six years after the attack on Pearl Harbor

sparked the pacific war.

♫ ♫

ANNOUNCER: Japan, the land of Fuji-San,

is one of the most interesting of all countries to visit.

NARRATOR: To help the rebuilding effort,

America begins encouraging travel

to the country it just defeated.

Tourism brings cash and cultural exchange--

two things they hope can bring Japan

into the family of free nations.

Travel films promise a land of exotic sights and sounds.

(singing in japanese)

But with enough western touches to attract the skittish.

Tourism is the new post-war propaganda.

The message may be pandering,

but it does hint at the promise.

♫ ♫

From the edges of a vast ocean...

And from the ashes of its great cataclysm...

New generations will begin bridging

the great pacific divide.

But for this generation,

it will never again be the peaceful sea.

♫ ♫

KOBAYASHI HIROYASU: I wonder what war is.

I wonder why we did it.

I’m not talking about victory or loss.

I merely feel heartbroken for those who died.

However much you’re glorified,

if you’re dead, that’s it.

♫ ♫

GEORGE HAGGERTY: People always say,

this movie was realistic...

♫ ♫

Or that movie was not.

War is something you don’t get in any movie.

The pungent odor of decaying bodies...

The constant clatter of automatic weapons...

Suspenseful waiting...

Then the impact of whispering artillery shells...

Screams of the wounded and dying...

The overwhelming smell of gunpowder...

♫ ♫

You don’t get any of that in a movie.

♫ ♫