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00:01Welcome to a special edition of National Geographic Channel Presents.
00:05I'm Tom Brokaw.
00:07That terrible day that we call Pearl Harbor happened 60 years ago.
00:12You might think that time has healed all the wounds, that the shock has worn off,
00:18that historians have told us all the stories there are to tell.
00:21That's not true.
00:23Pearl Harbor was so unexpected, so brutal, so chaotic,
00:27that we're still struggling to understand all that happened that day.
00:32Undersea explorer Robert Ballard wants to fill in some of the gaps.
00:36He's on the trail of a secret Japanese weapon,
00:39a flotilla of midget submarines that were trying to penetrate Pearl Harbor before the attack.
00:46This, then, is a story of secrecy and treachery,
00:50of Japanese warriors preparing to die for their country,
00:53of Americans completely unprepared for a day that would change their lives forever.
01:05They were 18, or 19, or 20 years old, sailors in a tropical paradise.
01:15They didn't know that on the other side of the ocean,
01:18another group of young men was preparing to strike them while they slept.
01:24Their paths would cross for a few short hours on a Sunday morning in December.
01:31And in one terrifying instant, more than 1,000 of them would die.
01:40The legacy of what happened on December 7th still haunts us today.
01:47In the first images from inside the USS Arizona,
01:52an underwater cemetery that's also an ecological time bomb.
01:58In the search for a top-secret Japanese submarine
02:01that was sunk about an hour before the attack began.
02:05The submarine's heading north, starting to die.
02:09And in the quest to learn what really happened that day.
02:15And most of all, it still lives on in the memories of the men who were there
02:22when everything changed.
02:25Just a young kid when this happened.
02:28And I've lived through it.
02:31I lost a lot of my friends.
02:36I reached down to try to help him out.
02:38Scared me, Nick.
02:41Oh, keep off!
02:46But I hope it never happens again.
02:50Nobody will ever know what it was like except somebody that was actually there.
02:57They never had a chance.
02:59They didn't know what was coming.
03:00Nobody knew about it.
03:01They never woke up.
03:04180 people.
03:05Johnny.
03:05This is the story of a day when the history of the world
03:07took an unexpected turn
03:10at a sleepy little port in Hawaii
03:14called Pearl Harbor.
03:21November 7th, 1941, 7 a.m.
03:26A mobile radar station on the northwest coast of Oahu
03:30picked up the signal of a massive number of aircraft
03:33approaching the island from the north.
03:38They were less than 140 miles away,
03:42moving at 180 miles an hour.
03:47A telephone call went immediately to the information center
03:50in Honolulu, 40 miles to the southeast.
03:55The call was brought to a private named McDonald,
03:59who passed it on to a Lieutenant Tyler,
04:02who had just been assigned to the job.
04:05Tyler told the radar operators not to worry about it.
04:10In his mind, it was just a squadron of American B-17s
04:15due in from the mainland.
04:19For the third time that day, the Japanese had tripped the alarm.
04:23And for the third time, no one seemed to notice.
04:28It was 7.15 a.m.
04:32At 7.40 a.m., the first wave of airplanes reached the coast of Oahu,
04:38guided by the signal from a Honolulu radio station.
04:42The bombers and torpedo planes were at 9,000 feet.
04:475,000 feet above them, the Zeros flew cover.
04:56The first wave began to break up into their attack formations.
05:01One to fly inland toward Wheeler Airfield.
05:06The other to move down the western coast to Pearl Harbor.
05:15They were the only planes in the sky.
05:18There was no sign whatsoever that the Americans knew they were about to be attacked.
05:29At 7.50 a.m., the first wave breached Pearl Harbor.
05:36Among their first targets, Hickam Airfield and the Naval Airbase on Ford Island.
06:07Clarence Minor was an airman stationed on Ford Island.
06:12After all that noise in the tin roof up there and stuff was popping around,
06:17I looked up and I saw this airplane come diving down and that big meatball and I said, oh, shit.
06:28And then all hell all over the place was breaking loose.
06:31Bombs dropping, machine guns firing.
06:34Like I said, the thing that's so darn low, you throw rocks at them.
06:42Ralph Lindenmeier was also on Ford Island.
06:467.55 in the morning, an explosion woke us up.
06:50I looked up at the clock when I first heard the explosion and felt it and I said, the Japs
06:56are here.
06:56And when I looked out the window, the plane came over and it saw the meatball on the fuselage and
07:03the wings.
07:04And I could look into the pilot's face and I could almost see him grinning.
07:11Anchored on Pier 1010 was the utility vessel Argonne, where 19-year-old Charles Christensen worked in the machine shop.
07:21I thought, oh, that was a bad explosion.
07:24I wonder what happened.
07:26And I opened the porthole up and I stuck my head right out there, you know, and oh, boy, was
07:32there ever a fire on Ford Island.
07:34I thought, oh, my goodness, something is really bad blowing up over there.
07:41It took a while for sailors and the ships at anchor to comprehend what was happening.
07:50Bert Davis, a machinist mate on the USS Selfridge, thought it was some kind of readiness drill.
07:58That's where I was standing when the plane came in.
08:01I was standing there shining my shoes.
08:04And I saw these planes coming in.
08:07Came in and came right straight across where the Raleigh was.
08:10And I thought to myself, what in the hell is the Army doing holding maneuvers on a day like this?
08:20While the dive bombers hammered the airfields, the torpedo planes descended to an altitude of a few dozen feet and
08:29took dead aim at Battleship Row.
08:36Aboard the Argonne, Charles Christensen had a perfect view of the first torpedo runs.
08:42He's coming in almost straight across me at a slight angle across.
08:48And he's low enough that he's maybe 30 feet off of the water, which puts him maybe eye level or
08:55a little more from me.
08:56And I can see the man's face.
08:58He's got his helmet on.
08:59He's got his goggles on.
09:00And he's looking over the side.
09:02And when he straightened that plane out, leveled it out, he dropped that torpedo.
09:07And I thought, oh, my God, look at that.
09:10And that torpedo just went as straight for the Oklahoma as it could go.
09:18This photo, taken from a Japanese plane, shows Battleship Row just after the attack began.
09:27The ripples emanating outward are the result of multiple torpedo strikes.
09:36George Smith was below deck on the Battleship Oklahoma when General Porter sounded.
09:42Then all of a sudden, a guy come over to the loudspeaker.
09:44This is no shit.
09:46Move it.
09:47And then we got a torpedo.
09:49I was really so scared.
09:51I didn't know what the hell was going on.
09:57The Oklahoma started to capsize almost immediately.
10:02When they said abandon ship, no way to get out was due to the Kingsman window.
10:07We went out there, and the ship was rolling on top of us.
10:11Maybe we jumped about five feet into the water, which wasn't far.
10:14But when you turn around and see this thing coming on top of you, you swim for all you can
10:19swim in as fast as you can swim.
10:22Because we know we had to get around the big gun turrets there.
10:26It went over so fast.
10:28I just was sure I didn't know.
10:30But I was sure they were trapped inside of that because it just rolled right on over.
10:36And there it was, keel up.
10:39George Smith had just been released from the Oklahoma's brig for going ashore without leave.
10:45And it saved his life.
10:47And when the ship got the torpedo, the brig was in the carpenter's shop on board ship.
10:52And when the torpedo hit, it broke the carpenter's workbench loose,
10:57pinned the guard against the wall, the bulkhead,
11:00and he couldn't release the other men that were in the brig, and they all drowned.
11:05On the far side of Fort Island, the old battleship Utah also got hit a few minutes before eight.
11:13Clark Simmons worked on the Utah as a mess attendant.
11:17And as I looked out the port, I saw a plane making a run on the Utah.
11:22And as she dropped her, the torpedo, the wing dipped,
11:28and then he straightened up, and the torpedo hit it.
11:31And another one right behind him did the same thing.
11:40And we knew that it was just a matter of time before the ship was going to sink.
11:46And actually, it took eight minutes.
11:47In eight minutes, the ship was history.
11:50She had turned turtle in eight minutes.
11:55As the line who began to part, came over the side and began to swim toward Fort Island.
12:02And as we were swimming, they were machine gunning us from both directions,
12:08from this direction, and when they came from Pearl City over here, from that direction.
12:19I saw fellows yelling and screaming.
12:22Some of the fellows in the water.
12:24I was asking for help.
12:26It was just, it was so chaotic.
12:29I really didn't know what was going on.
12:33But the biggest blow was yet to come.
12:37Lying inboard of the repair ship, Vestal, was the battleship, Arizona.
12:46High overhead, a cape released an armor-piercing bomb
12:51that drifted down toward the Arizona's number two gun turret.
13:00It was about ten minutes after eight.
13:17A motion picture camera captured the moment of impact.
13:34In that instant, more than a thousand crewmen died.
13:48Stu Hedley was on the West Virginia, a few hundred feet away.
13:52One gigantic explosion.
13:55Now, when we fired the 16-inch, you're inside,
14:00it sounds like thunder up in the distance.
14:03But this didn't sound like no thunder.
14:06This was one gigantic explosion.
14:09The stern of our ship lifted out of the water.
14:13But at the same time, we were getting hit with torpedoes.
14:16We were starting to list.
14:17But we saw about 32 men flying through the air from the Arizona.
14:23The air from the Arizona.
14:25The air from the fully fueled Arizona began to spread and catch fire.
14:33The heat was so intense, even sailors on nearby ships were threatened.
14:38So Croson and I stripped right down to our undershorts and jumped in and swam underwater.
14:44Now, we're not underwater swimmers, but we swam underwater that day because that was the hottest breath of air we
14:51ever breathed.
14:59The bomb had penetrated Arizona's forward magazine and ignited more than a million pounds of gunpowder and ignited more than
15:16a million pounds of gunpowder.
15:22Their eyes, the white of their eyes, was just as red as they can be.
15:27I can just see it today.
15:29The skin on their face was just falling off.
15:32And on top of that, all of this oil, and they were just drenched in oil.
15:43Burt Davis went out in a whale boat to pick up survivors.
15:48Oh, God, it was horrible.
15:51Just one fellow started to reach up to try to get a hold of the gun along the boat from
15:57the outside, and I reached down to try to help him.
15:59And I took him by the arm, and as I tried to lift like that, but it scared me.
16:05All came off.
16:10He was dead by the time we got him in.
16:20Thirty-five minutes after the attack began, the first wave flew away, leaving behind more than a thousand dead American
16:29sailors,
16:30many of them teenagers, caught below deck when Arizona exploded and sank.
16:50Inside the memorial, a wall lists the 1177 servicemen who died on the battleship.
16:59Every returning survivor knew someone who died on December 7th.
17:14They never had a chance. They didn't know what was coming. Nobody knew about it. They never woke up.
17:27Aloha. Aloha.
17:29Oh, I was going to ask you for a big hug, and I'm going to get one in here.
17:32Big, big hug.
17:35I thought maybe that you wouldn't want to hug another day, old man.
17:39Oh, I do. I do want to.
17:41Carl Carson was a 20-year-old sailor on the Arizona the day she went down.
17:47He decided to come back to Pearl Harbor when doctors told him he didn't have much longer to live.
17:55Well, I lost a lot of good, dear friends over there.
18:00Just, it's just awful hard to even think about them.
18:03I almost lost my own life.
18:05I hope, I hope I can make it over there all right.
18:09Get there.
18:10Okay.
18:12I need a little support.
18:19Carl has never talked very much about what happened to him that day.
18:25Now, at last, it's time.
18:34This, this is where I came out of, Turret 3.
18:37Right.
18:37I came back on this.
18:40There used to be ladders up and down the thing.
18:42I came out of the turret and went down.
18:45Well, I was out on deck doing the morning chores.
18:49All of a sudden, this plane come along and didn't pay much attention to it because planes were landing at
18:55Fort Island all the time.
18:57And all of a sudden, the ship started flying all around me and there was a plane that was streaking
19:03me.
19:04And somebody hollered, it's the damn Japs get undercover.
19:13Bomb went off, I learned later, it went back by turret number four about where I'd been working about 10
19:19or 15 minutes before.
19:22And evidently, it knocked me out, ruptured both my lungs and I got smoke inhalation and all the lights went
19:30out.
19:31I don't know how long I laid there, but when I woke up, there was no panic down there or
19:35anything.
19:36But there was smoke and water, knee deep.
19:39I run into a friend of mine that he was crying and asking me for help.
19:46And I looked at him in horror.
19:48And the skin on his face and his arms and everything was just hanging off like a mask or something.
19:57And I took hold of his arm.
20:04Skin all came off with my hand.
20:07And there was nothing in this world I could do for it, boy.
20:11And that had bothered me all my life.
20:21Well, I gave the word to abandon ship.
20:25And we just practically stepped off of the quarterdeck into the water.
20:29And I guess I must have passed out.
20:33And went down in the water and everything was just peaceful and nice.
20:37And it would have been so easy to just let go.
20:40And I saw this bright light.
20:42And something made me come to.
20:44And so I got back up the surface of the water and oil all around.
20:50I had oil in my teeth and down in my throat and everything.
20:55It tasted horrible.
20:57I still taste it today.
21:00The oil was a fire all around.
21:07The man saw me down there and the fire was approaching me.
21:10It wasn't but two feet from me.
21:13And he reached down and pulled me up out of the water.
21:15And that man saved my life.
21:33The blow to death was moved.
21:35ו Environment
21:37December 7th 8.30 a.m,
21:40And the beginning of a brief 20-minute lull in the action.
21:46At airfields all over the island,
21:49And crews scrambled to clear the runway so American planes could get in the air.
21:56Anti-aircraft guns were made ready.
22:02Field hospitals were set up to take care of the wounded, many of them burned victims.
22:11The first stories of individual acts of heroism began to make the rounds.
22:18One of them was about a mess attendant on the West Virginia, named Dory Miller.
22:24Miller had carried the wounded captain of his ship to safety,
22:28then taken up a machine gun and shot down at least two Japanese planes.
22:45What made this story remarkable is that Dory Miller had never handled a machine gun, much less trained on one,
22:51because he was black.
22:53And like all African Americans in the 1941 Navy, restricted to the lowest ranking jobs.
23:04Fourteen men received America's highest military award, the Medal of Honor, for their heroism on that day.
23:12But Dory Miller wasn't one of them.
23:16He got the Navy Cross instead.
23:20And the only reason why he didn't get to the congressional vote was because he was black.
23:24You know, and the Navy being what it was at that time.
23:28There only could be a servant to the officers.
23:34He never gave any thought for his life or anything.
23:37He grabbed a machine gun, and he just started blasting away over the side of the ship.
23:42What he did was courageous, and many of us thought that man should have been given the Congressional Medal of
23:48Honor.
23:51Two years after Pearl Harbor, Dory Miller died when his ship went down, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
24:10Pearl Harbor, 855 AM.
24:13The seas were still boiling with smoke and flame when the second wave of the Japanese attack struck the island.
24:26This time, 167 aircraft split into two main groups.
24:32One headed inland.
24:34The other hugged the eastern coast and continued south to Pearl Harbor.
24:44But this time, the Americans fought back.
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25:18The smoke in the harbor was now so thick the Japanese pilots had trouble seeing their targets.
25:26One of the targets was the battleship Nevada, with a hole in her side, steaming toward the
25:32channel.
25:38Dive bombers honed in on the crippled giant.
25:41If they could sink the battleship now, it might block the channel and trap the fleet
25:47in the harbor.
25:50With all of these planes coming in, when the Nevada got underway, the planes come in, dive
25:56bombing that.
25:57It looked like bees coming back to the hive.
26:00There were so many of them in there at one time that it was amazing that they didn't
26:04collide.
26:09With bombs falling all around, Nevada's commander was able to run his ship aground on hospital
26:16point, which kept her from sinking and left the channel clear.
26:25By 10 o'clock, it was over.
26:28The second wave of attackers headed back to their carriers, leaving behind a shattered American
26:34Pacific Fleet.
26:38December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
26:49The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
27:01The United States was at peace with that nation.
27:05On the mainland, Americans were stunned by the news they were hearing from Pearl Harbor.
27:12Every American alive over 65 years of age can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when
27:20they got the news.
27:21It was a unifying event.
27:24It brought us together.
27:27Nothing else could have done it in that way.
27:35President Roosevelt addressed the Congress the following day.
27:51President Roosevelt addressed the Congress the following day.
27:55The Congressional war with Germany and Japan plunging it into a conflict that would forever change its place in the
28:02world.
28:09Back in Pearl Harbor, one problem survivors faced was notifying people back home that they were okay.
28:17The Navy told us that everybody sent a postcard home to their parents,
28:22let them know everything's all right.
28:24But I got one of the last postcards out of there,
28:26and I sent it home on December the 9th, exactly, when I sent it home.
28:31And my mother didn't get that postcard until February,
28:35the first week of February sometime.
28:37I don't know why it took so long, but that's what it did.
28:40She didn't know if I was alive or dead.
28:43When the mailman got the card at the post office,
28:46he closed down the office and ran all the way to my house.
28:49He woke my mother and stepfather up at 6 o'clock in the morning
28:54and told them, your son's okay, here's a card.
28:59I still have that card.
29:01My mom, she couldn't believe it.
29:06I get emotional when I think about it, how she says she felt.
29:14I just don't know.
29:16It just turns me on.
29:25Jack McCarron had been married to his high school sweetheart, Roberta,
29:28for seven weeks when the attack came.
29:33It wasn't until Christmas Day that she found out what had happened to her husband,
29:38who was stationed on the Arizona.
29:40The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you
29:44that your husband, John Harry McCarron, gunner's mate 2nd, U.S. Navy,
29:51has been reported wounded in action in the performance of his duty
29:56and in the service of his country.
29:59This was received by me Christmas morning, 7 a.m., December 25, 1941.
30:12I hate to say this, but in my entire 81 years of living,
30:18that was the worst time in my entire life was to have received this.
30:26Because I had no idea whether or not my husband of 49 days was alive or dead.
30:36Lying in a hospital on Oahu, badly burned,
30:41Jack decided to spare his new wife the horror of seeing him again.
30:47I said, tell Roberta, tell Roberta to forget about me and go back to Saugus.
30:56Because, um...
30:59You know, I've been burned and I had, um...
31:03My...
31:03I didn't look like me.
31:05I guess my face and my hair was only like a, you know, shot.
31:11On top of which, it being Christmas,
31:14I was 3,000 miles away from my home,
31:193,000 miles away from my husband.
31:21I didn't know anybody.
31:24I guess I never did write to you for a moment.
31:28No.
31:28I didn't write to her for a long time.
31:33The state of shock I was in was almost as bad as his.
31:37But some time passed before I probably started coming out of it.
31:42And I was aboard the ship and, you know, I love this girl.
31:48And, um, I realized that if I was going to survive, it would be with her.
32:01My friends and shipmates took me over to, uh, the sick bay at Fort Island.
32:07And they laid me alongside the bulkhead over there.
32:10And I looked over.
32:12Another shipmate laying across from me against the bulkhead.
32:17And he was holding his intestines in with his hands.
32:21And he looked up at me.
32:24And he said,
32:25It sure wore sure as hell in it, shipmate.
32:29And I said, yeah, it is.
32:33Well, lately I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
32:37And I don't figure I have too many more years to live.
32:41And I thought that perhaps I might be a poor spokesman, so to speak, for my shipmates and telling my
32:51story so that they wouldn't be forgotten.
32:55And that's the one and only reason that I came back.
33:01And I'm kind of a private person.
33:03It's been hard to do.
33:05But I think it was time that it needed to be told.
33:09And, uh, I think it has been well worth it.
33:13I feel a lot better now.
33:19For three days after the attack, the Arizona continued to burn.
33:27The final totals from the surprise assault were staggering.
33:35More than 2,400 deaths and almost 1,200 wounded.
33:4421 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been sunk or damaged, including all eight battleships.
33:57Over 300 airplanes had been put out of commission.
34:05Admiral Yamamoto had accomplished everything he set out to do.
34:10Except, destroy the American aircraft carriers.
34:14And in the fighting to come, that would prove to be a critical failure.
34:24One of the best things that ever happened in the United States was our carriers were not involved in the
34:30attack.
34:32The Yamamoto sank battleships.
34:34But the battleship was not the queen of the seas any longer.
34:38After that day, from now on, it's the aircraft carrier.
34:42And the attack on Pearl Harbor, for all of the losses of lives, which comes first, of course,
34:51and the losses of ships, they didn't sink any aircraft carriers.
34:56And that made what was already a very bad mistake on Japan's part, even worse.
35:04But perhaps the greatest miscalculation was how the defeat would affect the American fighting spirit.
35:11Instead of being a crippling blow, it became a rallying cry.
35:17The next morning, the fire was still burning.
35:20And there was a ship, some of them, not for sure, that some of them that still had the flag
35:25flying from yesterday.
35:27And at 8 o'clock, guess what?
35:29These ships are sitting there in the mud.
35:32It's time to raise the flag.
35:33And there's the American flag flying.
35:36Everything is fine.
35:45And then, the Americans went to work.
35:52Every ship that had been hit, except the Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma, was refloated, repaired, and put back into service.
36:02Many would take part in the battles yet to come.
36:06What a canal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and so were the men who survived that day.
36:16I grew up in the Navy.
36:18I learned a lot.
36:20When I came out of the Navy, I was 6 foot even, weighed 200 pounds.
36:26I actually grew up.
36:27I learned to be, say, a man.
36:35When I walk as a Pearl Harbor survivor, especially when I have my uniform on, I walk very proud.
36:41I represent the country, and I will represent it to the day I die.
36:46And then, I will always be proud to be part of it.
36:54Well, Pearl Harbor, to me, is like beginning a new life.
36:58I may be a certain age, but it seemed that I was reborn that day.
37:06Pearl Harbor survivors are special.
37:10They have a feeling for each other and for their country.
37:13They have a comradeship that is not matched anywhere in the civilian world.
37:20The only people that I've ever met who have that kind of comradeship are foxhole buddies.
37:28These guys were out of foxholes together.
37:30It's not a feeling of we showed them.
37:34It's not a feeling of triumph.
37:36It's a feeling of we did it together.
37:38We were there.
37:40And that's what matters.
37:48It's kind of a hallowed place, and it's very beautiful.
37:54I'm amazed that it's this beautiful.
37:59And I understand that there's millions of visitors every year that come by and pay respect to my shipmates.
38:05To lots of them, I know a lot of them, those are just names.
38:10But to me, they'll always be my shipmates.
38:26I don't think we'll ever be done with Pearl Harbor.
38:29I think Pearl Harbor is like Gettysburg.
38:31It's like Appomattox.
38:32It's like Lincoln's assassination.
38:34It's like Yorktown and the surrender to General Washington.
38:39God help our country if it's ever forgotten.
39:06Four years after Pearl Harbor,
39:07the Japanese surrender was signed here on the USS Missouri.
39:12America was victorious in a war that began the stunning military defeat.
39:17But in many ways, it was a defeat that strengthened us.
39:22Pearl Harbor holds a special place in our collective memory
39:25because it redefined the role of America in the world.
39:29It brought us together and set the United States on a course that would make it a superpower.
39:34It redefined the American spirit for the modern age.
39:39Like the Pearl Harbor survivors,
39:41a million Americans make a special pilgrimage to this place every year.
39:46Sixty years after the battle,
39:48they come to honor the dead,
39:50but also to reflect on how that singular Sunday changed us as a nation.
39:58I'm Tom Brokaw.
39:59Thank you for joining us.
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