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00:59The country had occupied Malaya and Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia today.
01:16These territories have become vital sources of strategic supplies such as oil and rubber.
01:24Now the United States laid plans to roll back the Japanese gates.
01:31The aim was to cut the country's supply lines by seizing the occupied territories.
01:45Japan could then be gradually strangled to death.
01:48But to win in the vast expanse of the Pacific, the US would need to develop new forms of mobile warfare.
02:00They would be based on amphibious landings supported by aircraft flying from carriers.
02:09The Japanese, unable to match American firepower, resorted to increasingly desperate measures.
02:21The country fell back on ancient notions of military honor to create suicide units.
02:29The result would be a terrible loss of life.
02:41This would be a decisive phase in the war in the Pacific and would mark the end of Japan's dreams of empire.
02:54But this was to come.
03:01Back in the spring of 1943, the US military chiefs faced a dilemma.
03:06They had been presented with two options for the defeat of Japan.
03:16The flamboyant US Army General, Douglas MacArthur, commander of the US and Australian forces in the southwest Pacific,
03:24favored a primarily land-based route.
03:27His idea was to seize the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.
03:37They could then be turned into a strategic barrier that would cut off Japan from its newly conquered lands in Burma, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.
03:48Japan would be starved into surrender.
03:50Equally importantly, this plan would mean MacArthur could repay a debt.
03:58Earlier in the war, he had been kicked out of the Philippines by the Japanese,
04:02and he had promised to return to liberate the country.
04:07But the US Navy had a different idea.
04:13It would bypass the heavily defended Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.
04:20Instead, it would seize a string of much smaller islands scattered across the central Pacific and close to the Japanese homeland.
04:35Rather than a barrier, the US would have a series of strategic bases from which to attack Japan's supply lines.
04:42They argued it would be swifter and much more economic.
04:55The American military command put off the decision.
05:01Both the army and navy were told to go ahead.
05:05In June 1943, MacArthur's plan was launched.
05:18It was called Operation Cartwheel.
05:22The first target was the major Japanese military base at Rabaul, on New Britain, in the Solomon Islands.
05:29It would be a two-pronged attack.
05:40The eastern prong brought its way up through New Georgia and Bougainville.
05:45But the virtually impenetrable jungle and unhealthy climate made progress slow.
05:46The western prong battled its way through Papua New Guinea.
06:01It was nearly nine months before the pincer's met, and the Japanese base at Rabaul was isolated.
06:22Meanwhile, as the US Army took control of the Solomon Islands, the US Navy mustered a mighty fleet.
06:41It included the first four of the brand-new Essex-class aircraft carriers.
06:46The new carriers were equipped with outstanding new planes like the Hellcat and Corsair fighters,
07:09Helldiver dive bombers and Avenger torpedo bombers.
07:16Together, they both outperformed and outnumbered their Japanese opponents.
07:27The Navy's first targets were the Japanese garrisons on the Coral Atolls of Tarawa and Macon in the Gilbert Islands.
07:35These were close to some of the most important supply routes across the Pacific.
07:46For a week, the Atolls were bombed by carrier-based aircraft.
07:51Then, on November 20th, 1943, there was an amphibious landing.
08:12Macon was captured with little difficulty.
08:15But Tarawa was a different story.
08:29Reconnaissance had failed to reveal that the water was too shallow for the landing craft.
08:34As the Marines waded ashore, they came under intense fire.
08:46As the Marines waded ashore, they came under intense fire.
08:54The island was honeycombed with fortified machine gun missiles.
08:58U.S. troops who made it to dry land were pinned down on the beach.
09:12By the end of the day, over 1,500 of the 5,000 U.S. Marines landed had been killed or severely injured.
09:35Over the next two days, frontal assaults pushed the Japanese back inch by inch.
09:42Very often, only flamethrowers could eliminate the Japanese strongholds.
09:54It took three days before the last pocket of Japanese resistance was wiped out.
09:59Of the 4,200 Japanese troops on the island, only 17 were captured alive.
10:21Tarawa was a terrible forerunner of what was to come.
10:24The Japanese had shown that there would be no question of surrender.
10:34They would fight to the death.
10:41It was a grim prospect.
10:42In January 1944, America's naval offensive in the Pacific moved on to the Marshall Islands.
10:58Admiral Chester Nimitz, the U.S. naval commander in the Central Pacific, was anxious to avoid another bloodbath.
11:12So, aircraft from his carrier force bombed Japanese airfields on the islands for nearly two months.
11:30Finally, on February the 1st, 1944, he sent in the assault forces.
11:35The flat and open island of Roy was quickly overrun.
11:45But the islands of Kwajalein and Namur were wooded, and the Japanese resisted fanatically.
12:04U.S. forces used flamethrowers and explosives.
12:34The Japanese responded by launching suicidal banzai charges.
12:44But the U.S. forces now knew what to expect.
12:49The Japanese were beaten back.
12:51Over 8,000 Japanese soldiers died for the loss of less than 400 U.S. lives.
13:16Atoll after atoll in the Marshall Islands now fell to the U.S. advance.
13:21The island of Truk was bypassed and cut off.
13:34Though a small Japanese garrison would remain undefeated until the end of the war.
13:38The way was now clear for the next push.
13:48A thousand miles west, towards the Mariana Islands.
13:54If captured, the islands would put the Japanese mainland within range of U.S. heavy bombers.
14:00They would also enable America to block Japan's supply lines from Southeast Asia.
14:13On June 11th, 1944, the U.S. started to soften up the three main islands in the Mariana Islands.
14:20Four days later, marines stormed the beaches of the northerly island of Saipan.
14:32This time, the terrain was mountainous, with many caves.
14:49And the preliminary bombardment had not disrupted the Japanese defences as much as had been hoped.
15:03Nevertheless, by the end of the day, the American bridgehead was secure.
15:07In Tokyo, the news caused mounting alarm.
15:18The Japanese high command now sent a carrier fleet to rescue the situation and save the Marianas.
15:24But the task force was spotted by U.S. submarines.
15:37The Americans sent their main carrier force to intercept the Japanese.
15:47On the morning of June 19th, 1944, the Japanese launched airstrikes against the U.S. ships.
15:54But U.S. radar saw them coming.
16:16450 fighters were scrambled to intercept the Japanese planes.
16:24It turned into the largest aircraft carrier battle ever fought.
16:36The U.S. task force had 15 aircraft carriers and more than 900 aircraft.
16:42But Japan had lost many of its experienced air crews during the Solomon and Marshall Islands campaigns.
17:05Its novice pilots faced battle-hardened U.S. flights.
17:09The Japanese were out-gunned and out-fought.
17:26It would go down in history as the great Marianas turkey ship.
17:30Half an hour into the battle, a torpedo from a U.S. submarine hit the newest and largest Japanese carrier,
17:49the Taiho, while she was still launching aircraft.
17:52The Battle of the Philippine Sea had claimed its first major victim.
18:03At around the same time, another U.S. submarine torpedoed the carrier, Shokako.
18:09She was completely destroyed.
18:21Nevertheless, the Japanese commander decided to continue with the operation,
18:25hoping to stop further U.S. landings in the Marianas.
18:28For much of the following day, the U.S. forces tried to pin down the exact location
18:42of the remaining Japanese carriers.
18:44It took them until the afternoon to find them.
18:50It was late in the day to launch an attack, and the aircraft would have to fly at the limit of their range.
18:58But the U.S. task force commander, Admiral Mark Mitcher, decided to gamble and attack.
19:05A third Japanese carrier, the Hayao, was hit and sunk.
19:22The Japanese had lost over 300 aircraft.
19:26But as the U.S. planes now returned, dangerously short of fuel, they ran into a problem.
19:42In the gathering darkness, they couldn't find their own carriers.
19:46Many ran out of fuel and had to ditch in the sea.
19:50Mitcher, in an act of extraordinary courage,
19:53ordered his carriers to switch on their lights to guide in the returning aircraft.
20:02Fortunately for the Americans, there were no Japanese submarines to see them.
20:08Nevertheless, over 80 U.S. planes were lost,
20:12either through having to ditch in the sea,
20:15or through crashing while they landed.
20:23Three carriers and most of the aircraft needed to equip its remaining carrier fleet were gone.
20:37From now on, the United States Navy would dominate the Pacific,
20:42striking when and where it wanted.
20:44The Japanese naval defeat in the Philippine Sea
20:58meant the United States could now press on with its assault on the Marianas.
21:07The Japanese naval defeat in the Philippine Sea
21:10meant the United States could now press on with its assault on the Marianas.
21:14The Japanese forces on Saipan held out for three weeks
21:18before they were overcome on July the 9th, 1944.
21:26The final horror came
21:28when thousands of Japanese civilians
21:30were persuaded to jump to their deaths from the cliffs
21:33rather than be captured by the Americans.
21:36The last Japanese troops then launched their now inevitable suicide charge.
21:58Virtually the entire 32,000-strong garrison was killed.
22:02Over 3,000 Americans also died.
22:14Two weeks later, U.S. Marines landed on the islands of Guam and Tinia,
22:17also in the Marianas.
22:27Once again, they faced suicidal Japanese counter-attacks.
22:31But they failed to stop the American advance.
22:43The U.S. Navy had seized the Marianas.
22:49Both the U.S. Army and Navy offensives
22:52had now completed the first phase of their separate strategies to isolate Japan.
22:55The U.S. military planners now had to make a choice.
23:07Should they continue to back MacArthur's strategy
23:09and move on to the capture of the Philippines?
23:13Or should they go with a naval plan
23:15and send a fleet across the Pacific
23:17to seize Taiwan or the Ryukyu Islands?
23:28The naval option would isolate Japan without the need
23:30for an almost certainly lengthy and bloody operation to take the Philippines.
23:35But at a meeting in Hawaii on July the 26th, 1944,
23:42MacArthur charmed President Roosevelt
23:46into backing his plan to liberate the Philippines.
23:51The Navy was instructed to support it
23:54before returning to its island-hopping strategy.
23:58It was a decision that would cost a horrendous number
24:00of both military and civilian lives.
24:03The following month, U.S. forces landed on the Philippine island of Leyte.
24:18They took the Japanese by surprise.
24:31They had expected the first U.S. landing to be on the main island of Luzon.
24:35Within hours, MacArthur was striding ashore with press photographers in attendance.
24:49He later made a broadcast to the Philippine people.
24:52I see that the old flag staff still stands.
24:59Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak
25:05and let no enemy ever haul them down.
25:09But the Japanese soon recovered and launched an ambitious plan to use the remains of their naval power to counter-attack.
25:23Operation Sho, meaning victory, was typically complex.
25:30The main strength of the Japanese fleet was divided into two groups to form a pincer.
25:37One pincer would approach through the San Bernardino Straits and attack the U.S. landing from the north.
25:48The second would come in through the Surigao Straits and attack from the south.
25:53Meanwhile, a decoy group of Japan's last four carriers would approach the Philippines from the northeast,
26:02hoping to lure away the main U.S. carrier force covering the landing.
26:10The northern arm of the Japanese pincer came under air attack almost immediately.
26:15After nearly two days of bombardment, the super battleship Musashi was sunk.
26:28The northern pincer then appeared to retreat.
26:36It was now that the U.S. commanders got into a muddle.
26:39The man in charge of the main carrier force covering the landings was Admiral William Bull Halsey.
26:55He now got word of the Japanese carriers approaching from the northeast.
26:59Halsey, believing the northern pincer was no longer a threat, set off to intercept them.
27:05He had fallen for the Japanese decoy.
27:16The force protecting the U.S. landing was now severely weakened.
27:29But the commander of this force now inadvertently compounded the problem.
27:33Unaware that Halsey had taken off, he sent his battleships to ambush the southern arm of the Japanese pincer.
27:44It looked like a spectacular success.
27:46But then disaster struck.
27:53The northern arm of the Japanese pincer had only pretended to retreat.
27:56Under cover of darkness, it turned round and headed back.
27:59It then attacked the hugely depleted force protecting the U.S. landing.
28:00The northern arm of the Japanese pincer had only pretended to retreat.
28:02The northern arm of the Japanese pincer had only pretended to retreat.
28:07Under cover of darkness, it turned round and headed back.
28:11It then attacked the hugely depleted force protecting the U.S. landing.
28:23Only a handful of small escort carriers and destroyers faced the Japanese super battleship Yamato and three other battleships.
28:29It was now the turn of the Americans to put up a desperate fight.
28:48The Japanese tactic had caught the U.S. aircraft unprepared.
29:05They were armed with high explosives for land operations rather than armour-piercing bombs for ships.
29:11Then, just as it seemed the Japanese must break through, they suddenly turned tail.
29:35Their commander had worried he was sailing into a trap.
29:38Meanwhile, to the north, Halsey's headlong rush to intercept the Japanese decoy force finally paid off.
29:51On October the 25th, 1944, all four Japanese carriers were sunk.
30:10The Battle of Leyte Gulf had completely finished off Japan's once-proud navy.
30:26There was now little hope of holding back the American advance.
30:33For Japan, it was time for desperate measures.
30:39The stage was set for a terrible climax to MacArthur's plan.
30:44By the autumn of 1944, the Allies had isolated the Japanese forces in the Philippines.
30:59Their naval support had been destroyed.
31:01Japan needed a new tactic if it was to hold back the American advance.
31:08Japan needed a new tactic if it was to hold back the American advance.
31:12The Japanese commander in the islands called for volunteers to join special units.
31:27They were called the Kamikazes, or Divine Wind,
31:31and drew on the Japanese military code of honour that it was better to die than live as a coward.
31:44They were suicide units.
31:46On October the 25th, 1944, the first Kamikaze unit took a final ceremonial drink before taking off.
32:03Its target was the US fleet.
32:06The escort carrier, St. Loeb, was sunk, and two others badly damaged.
32:30Further kamikaze attacks followed.
32:36Not all were restricted to the air.
32:49The Japanese troops now began strapping mines to their bodies
32:53and deliberately diving under US tanks.
33:01The American advance through the Philippine island of Leyte slowed.
33:06It would take two months before the island was finally secure.
33:23Over 70,000 Japanese troops had lost their lives.
33:30The Americans had lost nearly 16,000 men.
33:33But MacArthur was undaunted.
33:49He now moved on to the main Philippine island of Luzon.
33:55The defences were, as usual, softened up by air attacks.
33:58The U.S. troops went ashore virtually unopposed.
33:59The U.S. troops went ashore virtually unopposed.
34:07But as they advanced, Japanese resistance differed.
34:08Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:09Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:10Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:11Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:12Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:15Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:18Tanks, stiffied Inc.
34:20T gangs, artillery, McLuan, flamethrowers, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:25Tanks, artillery, mortars, and flamethrowers were used to destroy a succession of Japanese strongholds.
34:39Painfully, the U.S. forces battled forward.
34:48By January the 23rd, 1945,
34:52they had reached the major air base of Clark Field,
34:5560 miles from the capital, Manila.
35:03A week later, they were approaching the capital itself.
35:09Manila was famous for its architectural beauty.
35:17The Japanese regional commander had taken a decision
35:21to preserve its buildings by not defending it.
35:26But the junior Japanese garrison commander disobeyed orders
35:31and refused to withdraw.
35:34His 20,000 troops pledged to defend Manila to the death.
35:39There now began a ferocious, month-long battle
35:44to seize the Philippine capital.
35:52The U.S. troops fought their way into the city.
35:55At first, they, too, tried to preserve the major buildings.
36:07But as they ran into snipers, machine-gun nests and hidden artillery,
36:13they were forced to reduce much of the city to rob.
36:15By the end of February,
36:29the Japanese defenders had been driven back
36:31into the 16th-century citadel of Intramuros.
36:34It would take another week of fierce fighting to flush them out.
36:47Finally, on April the 13th, 1945,
37:05U.S. forces mounted an amphibious attack
37:08on Manila Bay's last fortification,
37:11Fort Drum,
37:12the concrete battleship in the harbour.
37:14Its ventilation shafts were packed with kerosene,
37:22white phosphorus, and explosives.
37:30None of the defenders survived.
37:32The battle for Manila had been an horrific affair.
37:51Thousands of Japanese and U.S. soldiers had died.
37:54But the real horror was that some 100,000 civilians
38:07also lost their lives.
38:10Many massacred indiscriminately by the Japanese
38:13during the final days of fighting.
38:15Elsewhere in the Philippines,
38:27there were more than 50 U.S. landings
38:30on other, smaller islands.
38:31But it would take until the end of the war
38:41before the last pockets of Japanese resistance
38:44were finally flushed out.
38:46MacArthur's conquest of the Philippines
38:57had proved as difficult and costly in lives
39:01as his critics had feared.
39:03It may also have been unnecessary.
39:06By now, U.S. submarines had virtually cut off Japan
39:18from its supply lines
39:19and the Navy was closing in on the homeland itself.
39:26The Japanese merchant fleet was particularly vulnerable.
39:30It was rarely organised into convoys,
39:38and anyway, there weren't enough escort vessels
39:40to protect them.
39:48By the end of 1944,
39:51so many Japanese merchant ships had been sunk.
39:54The U.S. Navy was having problems
39:56finding new targets.
40:00The U.S. submarines now moved in
40:03ever closer to the shores
40:05of the Japanese home islands.
40:09Japan was being starved of fuel,
40:12food and raw materials.
40:24The U.S. Navy's submarines in the Pacific
40:27had succeeded,
40:28where German U-boats in the Atlantic
40:30had failed
40:31in bringing an island nation
40:33close to defeat.
40:37But now,
40:39the U.S. forces face
40:40the daunting prospect
40:41of invading its fanatical enemy's homeland.
40:45U.S. forces were closing in on Japan
41:01from the south and east.
41:02U.S. forces were closing in on Japan
41:03from the south and east.
41:05the U.S. military attacks.
41:11But to the west,
41:12in China,
41:14Burma,
41:14and India,
41:15a separate campaign
41:16had been unfolding.
41:18Japan had invaded China in 1937.
41:36The United States had regarded the Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, as a Western ally and sent aid.
41:48Much of it went in through British-controlled Burma along the so-called Burma Road over the mountains to southern China.
42:03Then, in 1942, Japan invaded Burma and kicked out the British. The Burma Road was shut down.
42:18Six months later, Britain launched the first of a series of attacks to retake Burma and reopen the road.
42:29The first, in late 1942, advanced down the Burmese coast from India.
42:35But the Japanese crushed it.
42:51The second, nine months later, tried a different approach.
42:54Instead of sending in a conventional force, small groups of soldiers were infiltrated deep behind Japanese lines.
43:04They were known as Chindis, and were the brainchild of an unconventional officer called Ord Wingate.
43:16Their task was to destroy railway lines and disrupt Japanese communications.
43:22Chindis, that's the name for the guardian statues which stand at the steps of Burmese pagodas.
43:35A name from legend that's become flesh and blood.
43:38Living guardians of Burma's liberty.
43:39But the Japanese soon began to hunt them down.
44:01By mid-April 1943, over one third of the Chindid forces had been killed.
44:06The remainder were forced back into India.
44:15The struggle to retake Burma was becoming a serious problem.
44:22So, in late 1943, the Allies turned to US General Joseph Stilwell.
44:29We got run out of Burma, and it's humiliating as hell.
44:32I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake the place.
44:39Stilwell had spent years helping to overhaul the forces of neighbouring China.
44:46The Allies now decided to put them to the test.
44:49The Stilwell's Chinese soldiers, reinforced by an elite US group of jungle fighters known as Merrill's Marauders, would be sent into Burma.
45:05In October 1943, they crossed the border and made their way down the east side of the country.
45:18Meanwhile, the British-India army launched a diversionary strike along the Burmese coast.
45:37Finally, Chindids moved into northern Burma, deep behind enemy lines, to cut Japanese supply routes.
45:44The Japanese fell for the diversionary tactic and sent forces to counter-attack along the coast.
45:53Two divisions of troops from British-India came under fierce fire.
45:57But the Allied forces stood their ground.
46:06They were resupplied from the air.
46:11They could now fight back, and two weeks later, the Japanese withdrew.
46:18But it was only a temporary reprieve.
46:32The Japanese launched a counter-offensive of their own.
46:35In March 1944, they invaded India in an attempt to disrupt Allied preparations for further attacks.
46:54For two weeks, there was intense fighting.
47:01The towns of Kohima and Imphal were besieged.
47:06But there was stiff resistance, and the Japanese were finally forced to withdraw.
47:19Over 65,000 of them were killed.
47:26It was a major blow to their military strength in the region.
47:32Meanwhile, in Burma, Stillwell's Chinese forces had fought their way down the east side of the country,
47:38and by May 1944, had reached the important crossroads town of Michina on the old Burma Road.
47:49For three months, the Japanese held them up.
47:55But in early August 1944, Michina was overrun.
48:00The way was now clear for Stillwell's men to push further on down the east side of the country.
48:15They were soon joined by a fresh force of Anglo-Indian troops under British General William Slibb.
48:21This began advancing into the centre of the country.
48:23In early March 1945, Slim's forces took the important communications centre of Mechtyla.
48:35Soon afterwards, they seized Mandalay.
48:40With the monsoon season now approaching, Stillwell's forces dug in on the east.
49:01Stillwell's forces dug in on the east.
49:08But Slim's forces pushed on towards the Burmese capital of Rangoon.
49:15They were slowed down by the ray.
49:20But by early May 1945, the Allied troops were 20 miles north of Rangoon.
49:25Allied reinforcements were now sent in from the south to support them.
49:35Gurkhas parachuted into the Irrawaddy Delta.
49:41An Indian division came in by sea.
49:44On May the 3rd, 1945, the Allied forces finally entered Rangoon.
50:00But the city was empty.
50:02The Japanese had pulled out rather than risked being cut off.
50:06The monsoon was now in full flow.
50:14But the campaign to clear the Japanese out of Burma was effectively over.
50:21The next stop in the war in South East Asia would be Malaya.
50:26But for all the success, Allied losses in the war against the Japanese have been terrible.
50:33The Americans were desperate to find a way to bring the war to an end without having to invade the Japanese homeland.
50:42THE SELECTRON HOMELAND
50:46¶¶
51:16¶¶
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