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00:01Desperate to end the war, the U.S. is planning to invade Japan.
00:05The largest invasion in World War II would have dwarfed D-Day.
00:09The military is talking about the suicide of the 100 million.
00:13A recipe for a mass bloodbath.
00:15But unleashing the elemental power of the atom offers another way out.
00:20Pro-bomb people say, look, this is a weapon like any other. Let's use it to end the war.
00:24President Truman makes a fateful decision to deploy the most deadly weapon ever created.
00:31Nothing in the human experience had prepared anybody for such totalizing damage so instantaneously.
00:38I knew I was facing death.
00:41The final hours of the Second World War changed the course of history.
00:46Now, rarely seen archived from around the world, expertly restored and brought to life in full HD color,
00:53tells the story of one of the most destructive events of World War II,
00:57as you've never seen it before.
01:05By early 1945, the war in the Pacific is reaching new levels of savagery.
01:11Fighting is vicious and cruel.
01:14It was a war without mercy.
01:16The war was brutal on both sides.
01:18Prisoners are not taken in many cases.
01:21The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor dragged the U.S. into the conflict.
01:26Believing the American Navy crippled,
01:29the Japanese embarked on a massive campaign across Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.
01:34But the tide turned at the Battle of Midway.
01:37And now, the Americans are hitting back with a bloody ward of attrition.
01:42Island hopping across the ocean,
01:44the U.S. forces have been capturing occupied territories and steadily pushing the Japanese back.
01:49In early 1945, the Americans are closing in on Japan itself.
01:54Every time that the Japanese strategic positions were taken away and the Americans inch closer towards the Japanese islands,
02:02then they realized that their days were numbered.
02:06An island with no natural resources, Japan is totally dependent on imported oil.
02:12By systematically targeting their shipping routes, the U.S. Navy has virtually cut off the country from vital supplies.
02:20We've choked off their economy.
02:22We've sunk most of their merchant fleet.
02:24We've sunk most of their Navy.
02:27They were essentially done.
02:29The blockade has left ordinary Japanese civilians facing something approaching famine.
02:34The situation in the cities was dire.
02:38The evacuated children were slowly starving to death.
02:42And if they had sores, they would suck on their sores because pus is sweet, tastes sweet.
02:49But even such hardships are not enough to turn the Japanese against the war.
02:54That didn't reckon with the peculiar national character of Japan.
02:58People that saw Emperor Hirohito as the son of God, saw this war as something divinely ordained and sanctioned.
03:05Saw their duty as being to die for the emperor.
03:09Most people are willing to put up with what is necessary for the war to be won.
03:15As a consequence, the final stages of the war are becoming increasingly frustrating for the Americans.
03:22As the war gets closer to Japan, and as Japan gets closer to defeat, the Japanese fight with greater intensity
03:29and greater bitterness.
03:30The Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines sees the most extreme measures yet.
03:39A very ominous turn happens in late 1944 when the Japanese go to full suicide.
03:53The infamous kamikaze strike.
03:57The tactic is an act of desperation.
03:59The best Japanese pilots had long since been killed, and the rest were poorly trained.
04:05If you have a very limited supply of airplanes, a limited supply of fuel, and a very limited ability to
04:11train pilots,
04:12you can probably train them to crash into a ship.
04:17Portrayed as fearless warriors, those undertaking these missions were not always willing volunteers.
04:23A lot of the kamikaze pilots were not allowed enough fuel to come back.
04:28They were used as human bombs.
04:31With this the ultimate sacrifice, the Japanese are determined to send the Americans a message.
04:37What the Japanese were trying to do was to demoralize the Americans, but also destroy their naval assets.
04:50In total, 34 US ships are sunk, and 10,000 men casualties of kamikaze attacks.
04:59It speaks to and it redoubles the idea of a Japanese fighter as a fanatical fighter, as one who will
05:06never give up.
05:08The US soon gets the opportunity to strike back.
05:11They're captured at the Mariana Islands, means their bombers can now reach Japan itself.
05:20General Curtis LeMay orders low-altitude area bombing, using napalm-style incendiaries.
05:28Their first target is Tokyo.
05:31The wooden structures of the city don't stand a chance.
05:35The 314th is airborne.
05:38145 planes, one minute apart, 67 tons each.
05:43The Japanese defenses by this point were terribly denuded.
05:47They were out of fuel, they didn't have enough pilots to defend their cities.
05:51And so the bombers could go in almost with complete impunity.
05:55Eight minutes after midnight on March the 10th, 279 B-29s descend on the sleeping city.
06:04The incendiary bombs ignite fires that are so intense that buildings and people vanish in a matter of moments.
06:15Flames are leaping from building to building, and because so much of it's wood, the fires are spreading faster than
06:21people can run.
06:23And the winds created by the firestorms are so intense that children are taken from the grasp of their parents
06:30and disappear.
06:32In one night, the US drops 1,600 tons of bombs, kills over 100,000 people, and flattens 16 square
06:42miles of city.
06:43It is the single most destructive air attack ever carried out, and the start of a campaign that destroys 67
06:50cities.
06:51The act dwarfs any aggression seen in the European theater.
06:56It just seems to be that the Americans would consider doing things against the Japanese they wouldn't do against the
07:01Germans.
07:02From the start, the war in the Pacific has a pronounced racist element.
07:07Anti-Japanese feeling had been high in the US for decades before the conflict.
07:12The language used by the US and its allies in describing Japan was highly racialized or characterized as vermin.
07:23Apes, monkeys, it is just a representation that devalue and dehumanizes the individual,
07:30and in turn reinforces this idea that you can be more brutal to them.
07:36For the Japanese too, race is all important.
07:40The Japanese saw themselves as superior, as pure, aesthetically refined.
07:46They regarded the Americans as being decadent, pleasure-loving, and simply unable to bear up under the harsh demands of
07:54combat.
07:55This entrenched racism leads both sides to treat human life with disdain.
08:02The war in the Pacific is just seen as more exterminatory.
08:06This goes back to Pearl Harbor. Japan is a duplicitous, evil, alien, Asiatic people.
08:12You therefore can fight them more dirtily, more aggressively.
08:17The rules of war have somehow been suspended.
08:19The Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war is also brutal.
08:24They face starvation and disease, forced labor, beatings and beheadings.
08:30In Manchuria, civilians are subject to horrific medical experiments,
08:35as the Japanese seed entire villages with bubonic plague and cholera.
08:40But the Allies also commit atrocities.
08:45U.S. troops collect Japanese body parts as war souvenirs, boiling the flesh off skulls before sending them home.
08:53In some parts of the Pacific, surrendering soldiers are even executed in vengeance.
09:01From the American standpoint, Japan had fractured all prior restraints on the use of firepower and terror against civilians.
09:09And therefore, what the Japanese were now receiving was simply the whirlwind they had reaped.
09:17With some three and a half million men committed, U.S. forces are carrying the burden of the fight in
09:23the Pacific.
09:23The human cost is proving high.
09:27The Soviet Union, a key ally in the European theater, is not at war with Japan.
09:33But President Roosevelt is determined to get their help.
09:37It's Roosevelt who raises the issue with Stalin.
09:41And he says, I need Russian help in the Pacific.
09:45Could you take on the last, largest remaining Japanese force in the Far East?
09:49That's the Kondung Army in Manchuria.
09:51But Stalin's armies are still battling the Germans.
09:54And Roosevelt finds the Soviet leader difficult to pin down.
09:58Re-elected in late 1944 as President for an unprecedented fourth term, Roosevelt is seen as indispensable to U.S.
10:07war strategy.
10:09But few know how much authority the President is now delegating to his close friend, Chief of Staff Fleet Admiral
10:16William Leahy.
10:18He very much likes to serve Franklin Roosevelt, his friend, and he likes to exercise power, though he doesn't need
10:25people to know he's exercising power.
10:27That's one of the reasons Roosevelt trusts him. Roosevelt trusts nobody.
10:32What only a handful of people know is that the President is dying.
10:36He has to take weeks off. At one point he has to take an entire month away from the office
10:42because he's simply too weak to work.
10:44Roosevelt, though, is determined to see the war through to its bitter conclusion.
10:49In the Pacific, we are pushing the Japs around. We shall not settle for less than total victory.
10:58The question now is how to end the conflict. Opinions within the U.S. leadership are strongly divided.
11:06Leahy and the Navy favor continuing the current tactic of bombardment and blockade.
11:12William Leahy says, look, we've cut Japan off from the world.
11:16The Japanese economy has collapsed. They won't be able to fight this war in any way.
11:21We just need to do what we're doing. The Japanese will realize they've lost eventually.
11:26It might take longer, but the war will end.
11:29This strategy will sacrifice the least number of American lives.
11:32But many don't believe it will force the Japanese to surrender.
11:36As far as the Japanese are concerned, if the Americans want to win this war, they need to come outside
11:43the Imperial Palace and knock at the door.
11:46And we'll make that job impossible to achieve.
11:49The Army, led by General Marshall, insists the only way to force capitulation is a full-scale invasion of Japan
11:57itself.
11:59Codenamed Operation Downfall, the proposed invasion has already been months in the planning.
12:04We're going to invade Japan itself, starting with the large southern island of Kyushu.
12:10And we will have the largest invasion in World War II, something that would have dwarfed D-Day.
12:16Cautious of committing so many men, Roosevelt has yet to authorize the massive assault.
12:24In the quiet of the New Mexico desert, the president funds the Manhattan Project, a top-secret weapon, one he
12:32believes could bring any country to its knees.
12:36Physicists are working to release the incredible forces within atoms.
12:43If a nuclear chain reaction can be harnessed to weapons, this could become a weapon of incalculable power.
12:49But the intended target is not Japan.
12:52In response to reports that Germany had started an atomic weapons program, Einstein and fellow scientists urged Roosevelt to respond.
13:03And they say, hey, look, you know, the Germans have a nuclear program.
13:06This has military uses. This is a real threat, a kind of super weapon that could turn, you know, all
13:11the military calculations on their head.
13:13With 125,000 staff working across three secret cities, the new weapon is one of the most expensive projects of
13:22the war.
13:24Leahy has grave concerns about the ethics of a potential bomb which he shares with Roosevelt.
13:29He just hates everything about the bomb. He hates the costs, he hates the science, but most of all, he
13:35hates what it means. He hates it as a weapon.
13:38The president listens, but is silent on the topic.
13:41He obviously finds the atom bomb something difficult that he's wrestling with.
13:47I think that's partly because the man he trusts more than anyone else in the world in late 1944 is
13:53relentlessly negative about the bomb.
13:55To the physicists involved, this is primarily a great scientific, not model, challenge.
14:01They didn't know how to create these nuclear chain reactions.
14:05They didn't know how to build the actual device.
14:07They didn't know how to then weaponize it in a way that it could be delivered to a target, exploded
14:12to inflict its damage.
14:13So all of this was probably the supreme scientific challenge of all of their lives.
14:17But so far the weapon is still theoretical. Nothing is ready.
14:23No one was confident that a usable bomb would be created before the end of the war.
14:29As the fighting inches closer to Japan and the U.S. grows stronger, invasion looks inevitable.
14:35The first stage, Operation Olympic, would see 650,000 troops storm Japan's southern island.
14:44Six months later, another amphibious invasion involving over a million men would take Honshu, the main island.
14:52But the Americans worry about fanatical Japanese resistance.
14:57Following economic and political upheaval in the 1920s, a rise in right-wing patriotism saw the country turn into a
15:05fascist state.
15:06Between the middle 1930s and 1945, there were 63 separate episodes of political violence ending in assassination of people who
15:15opposed the policies of the Japanese military.
15:18Everyone was conscious of the fact that if you spoke up, your next meeting could be with an assassin.
15:25Though Emperor Hirohito is head of state, the military effectively rule the country through fear, censorship, and fierce indoctrination.
15:36The wartime Japanese society was organized by units called Tonareigumi, that's neighborhood associations.
15:44That unit really controlled every aspect of civilian life during the wartime.
15:50Neighborhood associations became a way to monitor support for the war in local communities.
15:58So if you said something against the war, the head of the Tonareigumi would report disloyal citizens to the special
16:05police.
16:06So there was this snitching and mutual surveillance basically in place down to the level of the neighborhoods.
16:13The authorities demand unswerving loyalty to the emperor as a pure being and a living god.
16:20You were not to look upon the emperor.
16:23When the emperor's carriage moved about the city, people would line up, but they would avert their eyes.
16:29But the concept of emperor as a divine being is a manufactured myth.
16:34That kind of deification of the emperor was surprisingly of a recent invention.
16:40And that kind of public ritual of really treating him as this sacred being actually began in the 1930s.
16:50The military also hijacked the Bushido warrior tradition of the samurai and use it to manipulate the ordinary soldier.
16:58That code of the warrior was adopted and repurposed for the modern military.
17:06It was a bastardized version to be sure.
17:10Sacrifice and fighting to the death are glorified.
17:14The process is very much a way to romanticize and highlights a sense of commitment and a sense of purpose
17:25related to serving a master, serving the emperor.
17:29And if that means that you're going on a suicide mission, that's because the emperor is asking of you and
17:35that's because that's what's required of you.
17:37The authorities do everything they can to cement this sense of devotion.
17:43The Japanese government had been creating these moments of silence where the entire country would face the imperial palace and
17:54observe a minute of silence and bow.
17:56The Japanese are so primed to defend that the Americans fear the invasion will turn into a Pacific version of
18:04Stalingrad.
18:05Resistance so bitter, the battle will be fought street by street.
18:10The worries seem more than justified.
18:13The Japanese authorities have devised an all-encompassing defense strategy entitled Ketsu Go, Operation Decisive, to fend off invaders.
18:24The Japanese believed that if they could inflict huge casualties, American will would shatter.
18:30They are convinced a final bloody battle would turn American public opinion against the war.
18:36They're banking on Ketsu Go as putting them in a negotiating position to end the war on terms they find
18:42acceptable.
18:42Even more ominously, Japanese strategists predict the exact locations U.S. forces will land.
18:49They identified Okinawa as being the likely American base, and they simply put their dividers in a map and did
18:57an arc, and that told them that the most likely place for the American landing was southern Kyushu.
19:02That was exactly where the invasion was planned.
19:05Hundreds of thousands of troops gather in readiness.
19:08They've been evacuating material from China to fortify the islands for a last holdout.
19:14They've been mobilizing everybody in Japan to fight.
19:17Ketsu Go calls for every man, woman and child to resist the Americans.
19:22The military is talking about the suicide of the 100 million and encouraging all Japanese to embrace what was called
19:30the special attack spirit, kamikaze spirit.
19:35Even children had been taught how to fight, how to throw a hand grenade.
19:39The teenage boys are taught to attach an explosive to their chests and to run out onto the beach and
19:48to fall on their backs and to wait for tanks to come over them to ignite the explosive.
19:54Even children like my own parents, they were training with a bamboo stick to spear the American soldiers if they
20:02came.
20:03Though tired and hungry, the people obeyed.
20:05I think all or most Japanese were prepared to die.
20:10By April 1945, the US have a foothold on Okinawa, less than 400 miles from Japan.
20:18Taking the island is critical.
20:21As the Japanese rightly predicted, the Americans need it as a staging post to launch their massive invasion.
20:28In the midst of the battle, America receives unsettling news.
20:34Franklin Delano Roosevelt, their guiding leader through the conflict, is dead.
20:41The task of commander in chief now falls to Vice President Harry Truman.
20:48Inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman has been excluded from decision making.
20:54Roosevelt hadn't confided with him. On the most fundamental level, he hadn't shared secrets with him.
20:59Most famously, he had not said a word to Truman about the bomb.
21:03The vice president of the United States had no idea the United States was building the atom bomb.
21:07The son of a farming family from the Midwest, Truman suddenly finds himself responsible for directing a global conflict.
21:16When he takes office, he has no staff, no one around him, no cabinet members who are his picks.
21:23He is entirely on his own.
21:25Struggling to familiarize himself with the situation, Truman looks for guidance.
21:31So right away, Truman broadens the circle of people to whom he listens.
21:36In particular, Truman really starts giving a lot of credence to a man called Jimmy Burns, James Burns.
21:43James F. Burns is sworn in as United States Secretary of State.
21:47Director of the Office for War Mobilization, Burns is a seasoned politician.
21:53But his influence has, until now, been minor.
21:56He takes a tougher line on foreign policy than Leahy and distrusts Stalin.
22:02With Roosevelt gone, Leahy loses his coveted influence.
22:08Truman views Leahy as simply one voice of many that he needs to listen to in the American government.
22:15And in many ways, Leahy is the strangest voice because Leahy has these, quote, weird positions.
22:19He's against the bomb. He's against the invasion.
22:22The new president is immediately faced with the stark reality of the war.
22:26The fighting on Okinawa is proving some of the fiercest.
22:30The losses on both sides are appalling.
22:32That is an intensely bloody battle.
22:35And the Japanese just make the Americans come and dig them out of every hole.
22:40And in doing so, they extract a horrible cost.
22:43Some 100,000 American casualties.
22:47Over 100,000 Japanese dead.
22:50150,000 civilians.
22:53Does this foreshadow what the invasion will look like?
22:58On the 18th of June, Truman calls a meeting to decide if Operation Downfall should go ahead.
23:05Everyone in that room, except for Leahy, is in favor of the invasion of Kayushu.
23:10And he's hearing George Marshall say, we can do it.
23:13On the whole, saying the casualties won't be that bad.
23:16That's what the army is saying at that meeting.
23:18Determined to press ahead, General Marshall underplays the estimated U.S. losses.
23:24If you look at Marshall's projection, you're talking 30,000 to 50,000 American casualties, which seems very low.
23:31But even these figures worry Truman.
23:34He reluctantly gives the go-ahead for the first stage, Operation Olympic.
23:39Truman comes out of that meeting actually rather depressed.
23:41And what they hear afterwards is, oh, the rosy optimism of George Marshall at that meeting is shown to be
23:48wrong.
23:50By July, Truman's anxiety grows.
23:53Fruit buildup on Kayushu is far in excess of the Allies' worst projections.
23:59The Japanese have amassed over double the American estimates and are increasing them daily.
24:07So, the Americans are going to take hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of casualties trying to wrest these islands
24:14from Japan.
24:15Furthermore, after years of war, the appalling loss of life is taking its toll.
24:21And Japanese public morale is showing signs of crumbling.
24:26Lee, his bomb and blockade approach might just work.
24:31The major cities were basically gutted by the American firebombing and then that had a devastating effect on the general
24:39morale of the Japanese people.
24:41Even the vaunted Japanese armies are beginning to show signs of fatigue.
24:47They realized that the war was not going well.
24:50The rate of desertion was quite high.
24:53They did not want to fight till the bitter end.
24:56The infamous kamikaze pilots are not as fanatical as feared.
25:01Actually, they did not want to die.
25:04A lot of them, the night before their mission, they would cry.
25:07They would write some letters and then also suicide notes saying things like,
25:12I don't want to die.
25:13I want to go back to my girlfriend.
25:17The military leadership is convinced Japan can resist.
25:21But civilian politicians now worry they're losing the support of the populace.
25:26The fear is that the Japanese people are so exhausted that they will collapse and revolt against their political and
25:33military authorities.
25:34Even the emperor is nervous, fearing for his position on the throne.
25:40Bypassing the right-wing factions, he requests Stalin to be approached to negotiate with the Americans.
25:46What Japan's great hope in the summer of 1945 is using their friendly relations with the Soviet Union, they can
25:54find a way out of the war.
25:56The Soviet Union and Japan had signed a non-aggression pact in spite of years of hostility over economic interests
26:04in the Far East.
26:06The Japanese were trying very hard to keep the Soviets friendly.
26:10They would, for instance, allow the United States, a combatant, to send equipment directly to Soviet bases in Vladivostok without
26:19torpedoing them as a way of trying to keep the Soviet Union on side.
26:24In the 1930s, the two countries had fought bitterly over Manchuria.
26:29Overrun by Japan in 1931, eight years later, the Russians had exacted revenge.
26:36The Soviets had beaten the Japanese at Halkin Gol in 1939, a very bloody battle that virtually destroyed two divisions
26:44of the Kwantung Army.
26:45And so they'd given the Japanese a bloody nose.
26:48The Soviet Union holds a special place in the Japanese psyche.
26:53The Soviet Union is the ultimate arching enemy. It's the one that you fear.
26:58If Russia were to attack northern Manchuria, it would tilt the balance of power against Japan.
27:05Historically, Japan was really worried about the southern advance of Soviet geopolitical presence.
27:13And during World War II, there was always this fear that the Soviet Union was there, sitting there.
27:19Now the Japanese find the Soviets are repeatedly dodging their requests for mediation.
27:26Stalin has other plans.
27:31On May the 7th, Germany finally surrenders.
27:35The atrocities of Nazi brutality were reflected in the delirious joy of the liberated.
27:40Stalin swiftly claims the territories in Eastern Europe, expanding his reach.
27:45And he now offers the full force of Soviet might against the Japanese.
27:51To Burns and the Truman administration, the offer looks ominous.
27:57He wants influence to control a future China.
28:00He wants influence to keep Japan under his thumb.
28:04And he wants influence in terms of his relationship with the United States.
28:09For Truman now, the question is, invade without Soviet help and risk huge casualties?
28:16Or enlist Russian help and risk communism spreading through the Pacific?
28:22Now the Americans have buyer's remorse.
28:24Truman has no doubt that once the Soviets get across into Manchuria,
28:28they're going to take Japan itself.
28:30They will divide Japan the same way Germany is going to be divided,
28:34into a communist east and a capitalist west.
28:37With the future world order at stake, Truman heads to Germany to meet with Stalin and Churchill.
28:45Deep in New Mexico, Manhattan project engineers are on the verge of opening a new and even darker prospect.
28:54Their quest to unlock the vast energies trapped within atomic nuclei is complete.
29:08On July the 16th, they test the world's first atomic bomb.
29:15The blast creates a seven-mile-high mushroom cloud.
29:21In a few seconds, the terrifying elemental forces of the atom are unleashed on the world.
29:30And President Truman sees a way to avoid an invasion.
29:35The pressure to deploy the bomb is immense.
29:40He's terrified that if he doesn't use the bomb and the Americans have to invade Kyushu and suffer casualties,
29:47and the American people find out he had this bomb and didn't use it, that he will be crucified.
29:51The majority of those around Truman urge he deploy it.
29:55And pro-bomb people say, look, this is a weapon like any other.
29:58I mean, we've created a new weapon, let's use it to end the war.
30:01The ethics of this destructive weapon are not a priority for Truman.
30:08Using an atomic bomb was not going to cross any moral lines that hadn't already been crossed.
30:14The attack on Tokyo in March had killed so many people that nothing the atomic bomb could do
30:21was going to change the nature of the bombing campaign.
30:26Rather than having tens of thousands of bombs dropped on a city, this was going to be one bomb.
30:32Of the president's team, only Leahy is vehemently against using the bomb.
30:37His opposition is on every level, but the ethics and the morality of it are the driving force.
30:43This is a bomb that can destroy a city.
30:44Something that is new and radioactive and could kill for God knows how many years afterwards.
30:51But for Burns, the bomb deals with two problems at once.
30:56It's a way to warn off the Soviets, to say, look, we can threaten the Japanese with this weapon,
31:01but if you try to get involved in further expansion in the Far East, we can threaten you with it
31:06as well.
31:07Just hours after the test, the Navy loads the components for the first of two bombs onto the USS Indianapolis.
31:16The destination Tinian, a tiny island in the Pacific where air crews are ready.
31:22Truman authorizes the Air Force to use the bomb where and when it sees fit.
31:29But some of the project scientists express grave doubts.
31:35Led by physicist Leo Szilard, 70 scientists sign a petition against the use of the nuclear weapon.
31:43They say, look, we have this weapon. It's a trump card. We now have this massive deterrent.
31:48It would be utterly inhumane to actually deploy this against human beings.
31:54Szilard takes the petition to Burns, but he never passes it on to the president.
32:00On the 26th of July, the Allies give Japan an ultimatum. At Potsdam, they demand the unconditional surrender of Japan's
32:09armed forces.
32:11The British, Chinese and United States governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for
32:20them.
32:21The statement deliberately makes no mention of the Emperor. By hinting that the Emperor can stay, the Allies leave the
32:28Japanese with a face-saving path to surrender.
32:31They could have said it more clearly. It's certainly not a clear enough statement for the Japanese to automatically know
32:38they could keep the Emperor.
32:39For military hardliners, surrender under any circumstances is not an option. The Allies go on to demand an occupation of
32:48Japan and full disarmament of their forces.
32:52Even for the peace-seeking faction, the terms are too much.
32:56The Prime Minister makes a statement that they will ignore or treat with contempt in the Potsdam Declaration.
33:01The statement all but seals the fate of millions of Japanese. The Empire has run out of time.
33:11In the early hours of August the 6th, three B-29s head towards Japan.
33:18On board the Enola Gay is the bomb Little Boy, containing 141 pounds of enriched uranium.
33:27The target, Hiroshima, a city of 350,000 people.
33:34At 8.15 a.m. during the morning rush hour, the atomic bomb is dropped.
33:43A bomb was finally released, exactly at the designated hour, and the explosion occurred as planned.
33:57It explodes 1,900 feet above the Shima Hospital.
34:03A burst of neutron and gamma radiation emanates out, along with deadly shock waves.
34:12At 8.14, it was a sunny day.
34:16At 8.15, it was a hellscape.
34:20What happens on 6th of August is absolutely shocking.
34:25People and life were vaporized, incinerated.
34:30Many died from massive doses of gamma radiation.
34:35In less than a second, 70,000 people are killed.
34:38The super-hurricane-force wind flattened buildings in instants.
34:45The giant mushroom of smoke rises from the 5,500-degree firestorm.
34:52Nothing in the human experience had prepared anybody for such totalizing damage so instantaneously.
34:59One of the eeriest effects of the atomic bomb was that the shadows of individuals who had been vaporized were
35:07preserved on concrete or stone where they had been standing.
35:12Beyond Ground Zero, the human devastation is unprecedented.
35:18Thirteen-year-old Setsuko is in her first class of the day.
35:21I saw the bluish-white flash.
35:25I had the sensation of flying up in the air.
35:29I woke up in the total darkness and silence.
35:34And I started hearing faint voices.
35:38They were saying, God, help me.
35:42Mother, help me.
35:44Those caught outside in the blast suffer hideous burns.
35:48They were begging for water.
35:51Water, please, please give me water.
35:55Flesh and skin were hanging from their bones.
35:59Skin from the upper torso, hanging like a shirt from the waist down.
36:06They didn't look like human beings at all.
36:09Setsuko is relatively unscathed.
36:12Her sister, Ayako, is not so lucky.
36:15My sister and her child were burned, blackened and swollen.
36:23Just a chunk of flesh melted.
36:26Just unrecognizable.
36:29By the end of the day, thousands more die from radiation injuries.
36:34And when the darkness fell, we just sat on the hill and watched all night the entire city burn.
36:46Setsuko loses 351 of her school friends and eight members of her family.
36:56The Japanese are in disarray.
36:58The Japanese are in disarray.
36:58They have no idea what has hit them.
37:01They knew that it was some really, really powerful bomb, but they did not know what it was.
37:08Returning from Europe on board the USS Augusta, Truman receives word of the explosion.
37:14When Truman announces that the atom bomb has been dropped and everyone cheers, there's one person not cheering.
37:21And that's his chief of staff, William Leahy.
37:23He believes the United States has done something that was ethically wrong, it didn't have to do, and that would
37:30have been far better for the world and for U.S. security not to do.
37:35Sixteen hours later, President Truman announces to the world that the U.S. has dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan.
37:43The threat is that this was simply one of many.
37:47If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like
37:54of which has never been seen on this earth.
37:57Foreign Minister Togo urges the leadership to assemble and consider calling an end to the war.
38:04But the military diehards refuse to even meet.
38:08Most of them said this is just another bombing.
38:10It's just like any other bombing.
38:12They weren't aware this was a special kind of weapon.
38:14And they kind of poo-pooed it and said, well, you know, this is not worth surrendering over.
38:18We've absorbed much worse bombings in Tokyo with conventional weaponry.
38:22But in the Soviet Union, Stalin looks on with alarm.
38:25He brings forward his declaration of war on Japan.
38:29When the atomic bomb went in, all of his dreams of Soviet influence were subject to possible disintegration.
38:38Having just one dropped was enough to cause him to move that attack data.
38:44The Soviets want to get into it because they want to play a role in the Pacific peace.
38:48If the war ends in July 1945, the Soviets are not a combatant.
38:52They have no say seat in the peace table.
38:56On August the 9th, just before 1 a.m., the Soviets invade Japanese-held Manchuria.
39:03One and a half million troops simultaneously attack on three separate fronts.
39:08It caught the Japanese flat-footed.
39:10The Soviet attack accomplishes enough to paralyze the command and control of the Japanese.
39:16They very simply outclassed the Quantum Army.
39:22When news reaches Tokyo that the flagship of the Japanese Imperial Army has been overrun,
39:28Prime Minister Suzuki calls an emergency meeting of the Supreme War Council.
39:33But the situation is about to escalate yet again.
39:37Four minutes into the meeting, notice is brought in that a second bomb has been dropped on Nagasaki.
39:47At 11.01 a.m., the United States had deployed the plutonium bomb Fat Man on the city.
39:54Within the flash of a light, 70,000 people, dead and dying.
40:00The ground zero of that target was the Urukami Cathedral,
40:04the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in all of Asia at that time.
40:09Complete and utter devastation.
40:12Almost 10,000 Catholics perish.
40:16Alongside the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, even allied POWs are killed.
40:23The Nagasaki bomb is far more powerful than the one used on Hiroshima.
40:30The population suffer gamma radiation levels 17 times the lethal dose.
40:37Individuals who looked like they had virtually no injury at all
40:40would suddenly develop symptoms like bleeding from the mouth, nostrils and the rectum,
40:45and then they would abruptly die.
40:47The war council debate the situation for 13 hours.
40:52For the Japanese, the predicament has become infernal.
40:56They're under attack from the Americans who have unlimited conventional capability.
40:59And now you have one and a half million Red Army troops marching through Manchuria
41:04and prepared to cross to the Japanese islands.
41:07But even now the council is divided.
41:10Three favour peace and are willing to accept the Potsdam Declaration.
41:14Three refuse.
41:17There were factions within the military, particularly in the army,
41:21that believed that the surrender was just out of the questions.
41:25They would fight till the end.
41:27With the leadership at stalemate and fearing the government will be brought to its knees,
41:32Prime Minister Suzuki makes an extraordinary move.
41:36Not long before midnight on August 9th, the emperor gets word that he needs to appear because they're deadlocked.
41:43It comes down to the emperor to make a stand.
41:48Hirohito, until now insulated from the war, finds himself with the fate of the Japanese people in his hands.
41:56With no Kwantung army, there's going to be one battle left and that's going to be in Japan.
42:01It's going to be against Russians, it's going to be against Americans, and oh, by the way, a lot of
42:05Chinese hate us too.
42:08So, it's going to cost the Japanese a large chunk of their population.
42:12Kirohito makes a momentous decision.
42:15At midday on August the 15th, the emperor himself addresses the public on national radio.
42:25It was the first time people had heard the emperor speak,
42:29and so his voice was called the gyoku-on, or the jeweled sound.
42:34He tells the nation that the attack is so horrific they cannot continue the war.
42:40It is time for Japan to surrender.
42:44People just stood there in a stunned way.
42:48Just stunned.
42:50There was a sense of relief.
42:53The end of war, that means peace.
42:57But after decades of being told Japan is invincible,
43:01the humiliation is unbearable.
43:05Many Japanese feel sorry for the emperor.
43:08They feel as though they've let the emperor down.
43:10I did see several soldiers just throwing themselves onto the ground.
43:17Just sobbing.
43:19That was unthinkable announcement.
43:23As expected, factions of the military refused to obey.
43:27He was immediately informed that two of the three overseas commanders initially announced
43:32they would not comply with the surrender order, even from the emperor.
43:38In a bid to avoid insurrection,
43:40Hirohito delivers a second message to the armed forces.
43:44This time, stressing the entry of the Soviets into the war against them.
43:48The emperor cites Soviet intervention as a factor on the belief that that is going to be far more persuasive
43:55to those commanders than atomic bombs.
43:59Just weeks after the atomic attacks and the Soviet invasion, all the armed forces are persuaded to lay down their
44:05arms.
44:06Which was the brutal, costly eastern half of the most horrible worldwide war in human history is now within minutes
44:13of ending for good.
44:15General MacArthur...
44:16On the 2nd of September, General MacArthur accepts the official surrender and begins a six-year allied occupation of Japan.
44:25The Americans form the atomic bomb casualty commission to assess the effects of the explosions.
44:33Staffed by some 1,000 US and Japanese medics, the commission's work draws serious criticism.
44:40The broken, surviving people were marched in front of doctors to be examined, to be inspected like rats in a
44:53lab.
44:54Their scarring was measured, their injuries were noted.
45:00They were not treated in any way, shape or form.
45:04That's a level of inhumanity that is almost indescribable.
45:12You can imagine how we felt.
45:16We were used as guinea pig twice.
45:19First as a target, second as object of medical research.
45:25But the nightmare is far from over.
45:27Victims are often shunned for fear of contagion.
45:30And the steady passage of time reveals the insidious nature of radiation's long-term effects.
45:38Birth deformities, cardiovascular diseases and deadly cancers.
45:44The violence that was initiated on August 6th and August 9th in 1945 continues to this day.
45:52Using nuclear weapons is really like waging war on the future.
45:57Chillingly, the world is not to know what the victims suffer.
46:01The US suppresses virtually all film and images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
46:08Japanese newsreel is confiscated and American military footage classified.
46:13The images that were distributed were the sort of grainy films that primarily showed the destructiveness of the blast.
46:24They did not show bodies of burned children and women and the absolute carnage that was caused.
46:31It was not until 1970 that footage showing the human suffering is broadcast on US television.
46:41By the river, people lay bleeding from their faces or hands and died without weeping.
46:47People trapped under foreign houses called patiently, meekly.
46:51Help, if I may ask.
46:54The public finally learns the true extent of the effects of deadly radiation.
47:02Serious questions are now asked about the decision to drop the bombs.
47:06There is a sense in Japan that the second bomb was the unnecessary bomb.
47:13This is no longer a science project.
47:16This is something that has brought devastation and distraction in ways that had never experienced by humans throughout the entire
47:25history.
47:25How can that possibly happen?
47:28The atomic bombs close a chapter on the deadliest conflict in history.
47:34Germany and Japan's aggression left almost no corner of the globe untouched.
47:40But their defeat came at a huge human cost.
47:44And the consequences reverberate to this day.
47:49Across East Asia, there is still great bitterness towards Japan for its violent expansionism.
47:5825 million people died in the Pacific War.
48:02Every day the war continued in 1945, at least 10,000 other Asians were dying in China, Vietnam and what's
48:12now Indonesia.
48:13About 90% of them were non-combatants.
48:1510,000 every single day.
48:19But in the aftermath of the war, it becomes expedient to downplay the barbarities.
48:24And reframe Japan in a fresh light.
48:28The world faces new threats, Stalin and the rise of communism.
48:33To maintain stability and American authority, the U.S. retains Emperor Hirohito.
48:40Japan changes from being seen as an enemy that needs to be transformed to actually a very important bulwark against
48:50communism as sort of a large American military base.
48:53Japan becomes the Pacific outpost of American democracy.
48:58But in 1949, the Soviets test their first atomic weapon.
49:05Today, there are over 15,000 nuclear weapons on the planet.
49:10We've lived for decades under the shadow of possible nuclear annihilation.
49:16And those weapons that were available in 1945 were veritable firecrackers compared to the weapons that are available today.
49:22With global tensions mounting, the threat of nuclear war is rising once again.
49:30The End
49:30The End
49:31The End
49:45The End
50:13The End
50:15The End
50:16The End
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