♪ [theme song plays] ♪
[narrator] In the first months of 1945,
Japan was on the run.
The Americans had fought their way across the Pacific.
US submarines and aircraft had destroyed Japan's
merchant fleet and naval airpower.
The main Japanese home islands had been cut off
from vital supplies of fuel and raw materials.
The Japanese were facing defeat.
Yet they refused to surrender,
convinced that if they fought back
with sufficient brutality, the Americans
wouldn't have the stomach for the fight
and would give in.
Japan made clear that every move towards
the home islands would be paid for in Allied blood.
It presented the United States with a huge problem.
How could Japan be defeated
without a terrible loss of American life?
The country would eventually turn to the most
powerful and dreadful weapon ever seen.
[explosion]
A weapon that would change the course of war forever.
In early 1945, as US military planners
considered the next move against Japan,
their gaze fell on the Japanese- occupied island of Iwo Jima.
It lay a mere 800 miles from the Japanese mainland
and would be a valuable base for attacking the country.
The US commander in the central Pacific,
Admiral Chester Nimitz, assembled the largest
landing fleet ever brought together
in the Pacific campaign,
and prepared to invade the island.
Nimitz was taking no risks.
Wave after wave of American aircraft
paved the way with a massive aerial bombardment.
[explosions]
Then, on the morning of February the 19th, 1945,
the guns of the naval task force began one of the most
prolonged bombardments of the war.
[explosions]
At the same time, landing craft set off for the shore.
The marines hit the beaches of Iwo Jima
along the south-western shore
just after 9 o'clock in the morning.
For a few moments, there was an eerie calm.
The massive naval and aerial bombardment
appeared to have overwhelmed the Japanese garrison.
Then a hurricane of Japanese fire swept over them.
[weaponry fire]
General Tadamichi Kuribayashi,
the Japanese commander on the island,
had told his men to hold their fire
until the Americans were right under their guns.
[explosions]
Now, the Japanese opened up from a network
of tunnels, caves and bunkers.
[explosions]
There was carnage.
But gradually, small groups of US troops
inched their way forward.
Finally, by the evening, the beachhead had been secured.
The task now was to capture the 550 foot high
Mount Suribachi, the heavily defended
volcano that dominates Iwo Jima.
[explosions]
For three days, marines clawed their way
up the steep pitted slopes.
[gunfire]
They were supported by a constant air
and naval bombardment from the invasion fleet.
[explosions]
Finally, on February the 23rd, 1945,
a US platoon, led by First Lieutenant Harold Schreier,
began the final assault,
carrying with them a small US flag.
They reached the summit, and raised their flag
using a piece of piping as a pole.
marine Corps photographer, Staff Sergeant
Louis Lowery, captured the scene with a few precious photographs.
The hard-pressed marines on the beaches below
cheered and wept.
Ships sounded their whistles.
Three hours later, the event was re-staged
with a larger US flag.
The moment was immortalised by photographer
Joe Rosenthal, with one of the most
iconic photographs of the war.
But the battle for Iwo Jima was far from over.
[gunfire]
The rest of the island was still in Japanese hands.
The next day, the marines captured the first
of the island's strategically vital airfields.
[gunfire]
But Kuribayashi had told his men to take as many
of the enemy with them as possible.
Their duty to the Emperor, to die on the island.
[explosions]
It meant each assault became a bloody frontal affair.
It took two weeks before the remaining two
airfields on the island were in US hands.
Even as the fighting continued, the US air force
began to make use of Iwo Jima's airfields.
During the late spring and summer of 1945,
over 2,500 damaged US bombers
made emergency landings on the island,
often saving the lives of their crews.
Finally, at the end of March,
after some six weeks of ferocious fighting,
the last Japanese resistance was snuffed out.
But the capture of Iwo Jima had come at a terrible price.
Only 200 of the 22,000-strong Japanese garrison survived.
The Americans had also suffered badly.
Nearly 7,000 marines had been killed
and some 18,000 wounded.
The Americans finally had the base they needed,
but it was now clear that unless the US
could come up with an alternative,
any invasion of Japan would be paid for
in tens of thousands of American lives.
In the United States, one group of military planners
had long believed there was
an alternative to invading Japan.
It was called strategic bombing.
This involved carefully targeted bombing raids,
designed to destroy Japan's infrastructure,
industry, and ability to wage war.
But in the first years of the Pacific war,
there was a problem.
Japan lay beyond the range of America's bombers.
In April 1942, the US had managed to launch
a one off bombing raid on Tokyo,
but it had pushed the bombers to their limits,
and was never a practical long-term option.
Then, in early 1944, the Boeing Aircraft Corporation
produced a revolutionary new heavy bomber,
the B-29 Superfortress.
It could carry 20,000 pounds of bombs
over a range of 3,250 miles.
Suddenly, Japan was just about in reach
of America's forward bases in the Pacific.
In summer 1944, nine months before the assault
on Iwo Jima, US B-29s stationed at Chengdu
in southwest China, began a series
of strategic bombing raids on Japan.
But range was still an issue.
It was too far for a fighter escort,
so the Superfortresses had to fly alone,
staying at high altitude for their own safety.
Even then, the range was only just within limits
and there was no room for navigational error.
[explosions]
Many of the bombs missed their targets.
Then, in July 1944, there was a development
that gave strategic bombing a new lease of life.
The US Navy captured the Mariana Islands
in the central Pacific.
They were only 1,500 miles from the Japanese homeland.
This was well within the B-29s operating range.
The odds for a successful bombing campaign
on Japan had dramatically improved.
On November the 24th, over 100 Superfortresses
took off from the Marianas.
Their target, the Nakajima aircraft factory in Tokyo.
But only 48 bombs struck anywhere near the target.
For three months, more raids targeted
other industrial sites.
But the B-29s were still flying without a fighter escort,
and still dropping their bombs from high altitude.
The targets were often obscured by cloud,
and jet stream winds made accurate
bomb-aiming impossible.
To make matters worse,
the B-29s suffered from engine problems.
There were also attacks from Kamikaze pilots.
By the winter of 1944, it was clear
that strategic bombing was just not working.
If Japan was to be bombed into submission,
the US would have to come up with something else.
So it was that on December the 18th, 1944,
America tried a new tactic.
84 B-29s set off from Chengdu for Japanese occupied
Hankow on the Yangtse River.
They flew much lower than usual
and carried mostly incendiary,
rather than high-explosive bombs.
Hankow was devastated.
The raid was more effective than almost
any of the previous strategic bombing raids.
The US appeared to have found a way forward.
Fire-bombing at low altitude.
The US bomber commander in the Marianas,
General Curtis LeMay, now ordered
the systematic fire-bombing of Japan.
It was the same tactic that Britain
had employed in Germany.
On the evening of March the 9th, 1945,
Pathfinder aircraft roared over Tokyo
dropping incendiary target indicators.
The fires they started marked the aiming points
for almost 300 B-29s.
Coming in at just 5,000 feet,
they dropped over 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs.
The flimsy wooden houses stood no chance.
Air was sucked in, creating towering firestorms,
which raced faster than people could run.
The glow for the burning city
could be seen over 150 miles away.
When the all clear finally sounded the following morning,
16 square miles of Tokyo had been obliterated.
Over 100,000 of its citizens were killed
and a million made homeless.
Tokyo was not the only city to face
this devastating new tactic.
Nagoya was set ablaze two nights later.
Then, Osaka and Kobe during the following week.
Firestorms engulfed whole areas,
destroying houses and industrial facilities.
But American success was coming at a price.
Without escorts, the low-flying US bombers
were dangerously vulnerable to Japanese fighters.
American losses now mounted.
If the bombing campaign was ever to succeed,
the US needed bases even closer to Japan.
Within weeks, Iwo Jima fell.
Now, at last, the US air force not only had a base
for its bombers within easy striking distance of Japan,
it could finally use its Mustang fighters to escort them.
During the late spring and early summer of 1945,
strikes of up to 500 bombers attacked Japan every other day.
Once the largest industrial areas had been crippled,
LeMay moved on to lesser targets.
Yet, in the face of catastrophic damage
and an appalling death toll,
the Japanese showed no sign of cracking.
It finally dawned on the Americans
that strategic bombing alone was never going to defeat Japan.
It looked like a full scale invasion
of the country was becoming inevitable.
For the US battle planners, the next logical step
in the land campaign was the Japanese island of Okinawa.
It lay a mere 350 miles from the Japanese homeland islands.
The island was defended by more than 120,000 men.
The Japanese commander, General Mitsuru Ishijima,
was determined to turn it into an American graveyard.
Once again, Admiral Nimitz, the US commander
in the region, assembled a huge fleet.
It included 40 aircraft carriers and 18 battleships.
The opening bombardment of Okinawa
began on March the 23rd, 1945.
[explosions]
It lasted for a whole week.
Finally, on the morning of April the 1st,
the assault boats headed for the shore.
To their surprise, they met almost no opposition.
By nightfall, 60,000 men had landed
and the beachhead was up to two miles deep.
For the next two days, the US forces built up
their strength and pushed across the island.
Again, opposition was unexpectedly light.
By April the 4th, the Japanese defenders
had been split in two.
Marine divisions now headed north,
Army units pushed south.
The marines continued to meet only sporadic resistance,
and within three weeks had cleared
the northern part of the island.
But it was a different story in the south.
There, the army units ran into savage fire.
[explosions]
For ten days, the Japanese held their defensive line.
Then, when they could hold out no longer,
they simply withdrew to the next defensive position,
and continued to resist all over again.
Meanwhile, the Japanese also prepared
to launch an air assault on the invasion fleet.
Early on the morning of April the 7th,
kamikaze pilots gathered to drink
their ritual cups of sake
and climb into their aircraft for the last time.
Over 700 aircraft, half of them kamikazes,
took off and approached the US landing fleet.
A line of radar-equipped destroyers,
operating about 50 miles out at sea, was hit first.
By the end of the first day of the attack,
two US destroyers had been sunk.
24 other vessels were also damaged.
But the Japanese had lost over 300 planes.
Over the following days,
the Japanese introduced a new weapon.
The Okha, or Cherry Blossom, was a rocket-powered
suicide missile driven by a kamikaze pilot.
It was launched from a bomber
and carried a massive 2,650 pound warhead.
On April the 12th, another US destroyer was hit and sunk.
The Okha looked deadly,
but US fighters quickly learned to intercept
and shoot down the bombers that carried them.
In desperation, the Japanese navy now sent
a suicide mission of its own.
The Yamato, Japan's largest battleship,
was loaded with just enough fuel to reach Okinawa,
and ordered to fight to the death,
sinking as many US ships as possible in the process.
But as the giant ship approached Okinawa,
it was spotted.
Some 400 US aircraft descended on it.
[explosions]
Within two hours, it blew up.
The fireball could be seen for over 100 miles.
Back on Okinawa, torrential rain
now turned the battlefield into a quagmire.
For over a month, US troops struggled
to push their way south.
Every cave or dugout entrance had to be blasted
by flamethrowers, grenades, and explosives.
As before, as one defensive line was overrun,
the Japanese slipped back to another,
and the whole grim business would start again.
[gunfire]
US casualties rapidly mounted.
Finally, on June the 1st, the town of Shuri was captured.
Then, on June the 4th, a new contingent of marines
landed to the south of Naha, the island's capital,
and linked up with troops pushing down from the north.
[gunfire]
Savage fighting continued,
but by June the 17th,
the Japanese resistance was collapsing.
Five days later, the Americans finally secured Okinawa.
The Japanese commander, General Ishijima,
committed ritual suicide, hara kiri.
Over 7,000 prisoners were taken,
the first time ever that such large numbers
of Japanese troops had surrendered.
It had been a bloody and exhausting campaign.
100,000 Japanese soldiers,
and some 40,000 civilians,
had been killed.
The Americans, for their part,
had lost over 15,000 men.
It was a sobering reminder of what would await
the American forces if they invaded
the main Japanese home islands.
More than ever, they needed a solution,
a way to obliterate Japan's will to fight,
once and for all.
The victory at Okinawa meant America's
military planners now had to decide what to do next.
Despite shattering defeats, the Japanese
still showed no sign of surrendering.
Some US commanders argued for a continuation
of the fire bombing campaign,
but by the summer of 1945, it was clear
that bombing alone would never defeat Japan.
An invasion seemed unavoidable,
but the question was, at what price?
The Japanese had some one million men
defending the home islands.
They were supported by about 5,000 aircraft,
and new kamikaze pilots were being trained all the time.
Mass suicide attacks by civilian volunteers
could also be expected.
A bloodbath seemed inevitable.
It was estimated that over a quarter of a million
American lives might be lost.
Then, in July 1945, the new US President,
Harry S. Truman, heard about the results
of a top secret Allied scientific research program.
It was called the Manhattan Project.
For three years, Allied scientists had been working
on an atom bomb, a weapon that draws
on the vast quantities of energy released
when an atom is split.
It would have an unimaginable destructive force.
The project was led by US General Leslie Groves,
an Army engineer.
The scientific director was Robert Oppenheimer,
a 39-year-old physicist from the University of California.
Over a three year period, the program had recruited
many of the Allies' best scientific brains.
Two radioactive materials seemed to offer
most promise as fuels for the new bombs.
One was a naturally occurring form of uranium
called Uranium 235.
It was processed at a vast factory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The other was plutonium, a man-made material
manufactured in primitive nuclear reactors
at Hanford in Washington State.
The research was coordinated and conducted
by a team of scientists at Los Alamos,
a specially built laboratory complex
in the New Mexico desert.
By early 1945, the Los Alamo scientists
were pretty confident that they had
a uranium bomb that worked,
but it required huge quantities of Uranium 235,
and the scientists worried
that they didn't have enough of it,
so they also designed a second bomb
that used plutonium.
But this, unlike the uranium bomb,
was much less well understood,
and they weren't sure it would work.
Before it could be used,
they would need to test it.
By early July 1945, after an expenditure
of more the $2 billion,
the plutonium bomb was ready for trials.
The Gadget, as it was called, was mounted
on a steel tower in the New Mexico desert.
At 5:30 in the morning of July the 16th,
the atomic age began.
[explosion]
News that Operation Trinity had been successful
was swiftly passed to President Truman.
He had recently arrived at a conference
in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam,
meeting with Stalin and Churchill,
discussing the future of Europe.
Truman didn't hesitate.
He ordered his commanders to prepare to drop
the new bombs on Japan as soon as possible.
Two bombs, a uranium device code-named Little Boy
and a plutonium bomb called Fat Man,
were now transported to the Mariana Islands.
There, the immensely experienced Colonel Paul Tibbets,
leader of the specially trained 509th Composite Group,
prepared his B-29.
At 2:45 in the morning of August the 6th,
Tibbets lifted his plane,
named Enola Gay after his mother,
off the runway.
On board he was carrying Little Boy.
The flight to the target,
Japan's fourth largest city, Hiroshima,
went without a hitch.
At 8am, on a bright, sunny morning,
Enola Gay approached the city at 33,000 feet.
Then, at just after 8:15, Little Boy was released.
[explosion]
The uranium bomb had the power
of nearly 13,00 tons of TNT.
The temperature beneath the mushroom cloud
reached 5,000 degrees centigrade.
Thousands of people were instantly vaporised.
Shock waves levelled buildings up to a five mile radius.
Estimates of the death toll vary hugely.
Some put it at 40,000 people,
others at 100,000.
Many suffered from terrible burns and blistering.
Over the course of the following weeks,
thousands more people died from radiation poisoning.
On August the 7th, 1945, President Truman
told the world about the bomb
and issued Japan with a warning.
Let there be no mistake.
We shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
[Truman] They may expect a rain of ruin from the air,
the like of which has never been seen on this earth.
[narrator] But no Japanese surrender was received.
Two days later, on August the 9th,
Fat Man was dropped on the major military port of Nagasaki.
[explosion]
The plutonium bomb was even more powerful.
In fact, the bomb fell way off target,
but it still caused massive destruction.
Between 35,000 and 50,000 people are estimated
to have died in the explosion.
The Japanese government could now have no doubt
that they faced a new and horrific weapon,
but the question remained,
would even this force them to surrender?
The Nagasaki bomb was followed by a stark warning
from US Secretary of State James Byrnes.
There is still time, but little time,
for the Japanese to save themselves
from the destruction which threatens them.
[narrator] The intention was clear.
The atom bomb would be used again and again,
until Japan gave in.
That same day, Japan's position became even more precarious.
Early in the morning of August the 9th,
a million and a half Soviet troops
stormed into Manchuria and northern China.
The Soviet leader, Josef Stalin,
was not only after territory. He wanted a say
in any final peace settlement in the far east.
There were still over a million Japanese troops in the area,
but the Red Army blitzkrieg was unstoppable.
The Japanese position in the war had become untenable.
That evening, Emperor Hirohito met
with his six top military and political leaders.
The war cabinet was divided.
Three, led by the Prime Minister,
Baron Kantaro Suzuki, argued for peace.
The other three wanted to continue fighting.
It was deadlock.
Then the Japanese Prime Minister broke with all
precedent, and asked the Emperor for his opinion.
Emperor Hirohito voted for peace,
on condition that his position as head of state was maintained.
The next morning, a proposal was sent
to the US Secretary of State James Byrnes.
Byrnes rejected it.
Only unconditional surrender would do.
[explosions]
As the Japanese war cabinet argued amongst itself,
Soviet troops continued to tear into Mongolia.
At the same time, American fighters
now roamed freely over Japan,
shooting up military targets and transport links at will.
[explosions]
Massive air raids continued to devastate Japan.
Then, on August the 14th,
the Truman administration sent word
that the Emperor's position would be safeguarded,
provided he agreed to accept the orders
of the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces.
Hirohito used his huge prestige to instruct the war cabinet
to endure the unendurable, and accept the terms.
That day in Washington, President Truman announced
that Japan had surrendered unconditionally.
[Truman] I deem this reply a full acceptance
of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies
the unconditional surrender of Japan.
[narrator] Cheering, singing crowds erupted
onto the streets of every American city.
In Britain, it was midnight when the new
Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, broadcast the news.
[Atlee] Japan has today surrendered.
The last of our enemies is laid low.
Peace has once again come to the world.
Let us thank God for this great deliverance
and His mercies.
Long live the King.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Within minutes, crowds appeared
on the streets of London.
Many gathered outside Buckingham Palace.
A giant street party lasted well into the following day.
The next morning, August the 15th,
an astounded Japanese people
listened to the voice of their god Emperor
for the very first time.
[Hirohito] [foreign language]
[narrator] He told them that Japan's position
had become impossible,
and the country was obliged to surrender.
All military forces must lay down their arms.
Such was the Emperor's prestige
that almost every unit obeyed.
But in Manchuria, despite the Japanese ceasefire,
the Soviet forces fought on.
[explosions]
For the first time, large numbers
of Japanese troops now surrendered.
Nevertheless, the Soviets, determined to seize
as much territory as possible,
continued to advance.
Stalin wouldn't stop the fighting for another week.
By then, the whole of Manchuria, half of Korea,
and part of northern China were under his control.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines,
and on many of the Pacific islands bypassed
by the Americans, it took weeks for news
of the surrender to reach isolated Japanese garrisons.
Some Japanese soldiers would remain hidden
in the jungle for more than 30 years.
Finally, on August the 28th,
two weeks after the surrender,
the first US troops arrived in Japan.
A huge US fleet gathered in Tokyo Bay,
sailing past the shattered hulks
of the once proud Japanese navy
that they had so comprehensively defeated.
Several days later, on September the 2nd, 1945,
a Japanese delegation came aboard
the USS battleship Missouri.
On its quarterdeck, the new Japanese Foreign Minister,
Mamoru Shigemitsu, signed the document
of unconditional surrender.
It was countersigned by US General Douglas MacArthur,
the man who would effectively run Japan
for the next six years.
As Supreme Commander for the Allied powers,
I announce it my firm purpose
in the tradition of the countries I represent,
to proceed in the discharge of my responsibilities
with justice and tolerance.
[narrator] Then a force of more than 2,000
Allied aircraft roared overhead.
It was a fitting tribute to the overwhelming power
which had finally brought Germany and Japan
to utter defeat.
[roar of airplanes]
World War II was at an end.
Japan's ruthless desire to wage war
had been crushed by a weapon of awesome destructive power.
Now in the East as in the West,
the world would be divided and shared along new lines.
New allegiances would be formed,
and new enemies would vie for global influence
under the spectre of nuclear war.
A new era in world history had begun.
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