- 43 minutes ago
Japanese veterans kept coming back to the same hard admission: the Americans adapted faster than any enemy they had ever faced. From Guadalcanal to Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, and Okinawa, this military history story traces a Pacific War race of tactics, countertactics, and battlefield learning under fire.
At Tinian, Colonel Kiochi Ogata reported a victory that was already obsolete, while Marines came ashore through gaps he thought impossible to use. The story also follows the Thatch Weave in the air, the lessons of Tarawa turned into new amphibious assault doctrine, and Japan’s own shift from beach defense to cave warfare and tunnel systems. It is a gripping World War II documentary-style narration about adaptation, intelligence, and the brutal speed of combat innovation.
For listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, Pacific War history, military analysis, and narrated historical documentaries, this episode offers detailed battlefield context and a powerful look at how both sides learned, changed, and paid for every lesson. Ideal for fans of military history, World War II storytelling, and long-form history narration.
At Tinian, Colonel Kiochi Ogata reported a victory that was already obsolete, while Marines came ashore through gaps he thought impossible to use. The story also follows the Thatch Weave in the air, the lessons of Tarawa turned into new amphibious assault doctrine, and Japan’s own shift from beach defense to cave warfare and tunnel systems. It is a gripping World War II documentary-style narration about adaptation, intelligence, and the brutal speed of combat innovation.
For listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, Pacific War history, military analysis, and narrated historical documentaries, this episode offers detailed battlefield context and a powerful look at how both sides learned, changed, and paid for every lesson. Ideal for fans of military history, World War II storytelling, and long-form history narration.
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the morning of July 24, 1944, Colonel Kiyochi Ogata stood on the high ground above Tinian Town
00:07and watched the American invasion arrive exactly where he had promised it would.
00:12For a month, his regiment had dug in around that harbor.
00:16It was the only place on the island that made any sense.
00:19A real anchorage, a real road net, beaches wide enough to push a division through.
00:26Ogata had studied the same map the Americans had.
00:28He had reached the obvious conclusion, and he had put his strength there.
00:33At first light, the transports appeared offshore.
00:36Landing craft came down the nets, circled, formed into waves, and turned toward the beach.
00:43Ogata's coastal guns, the ones American air reconnaissance had never found, opened on the warships covering them.
00:50They put 22 shells into the battleship Colorado and 6 into the destroyer Norman Scott.
00:57But 62 Americans died in those few minutes.
01:01And then the landing craft slowed, turned, went back to the ships.
01:06Ogata did what any commander in the world would have done.
01:09He reported it.
01:11His message to Tokyo said that his men had thrown back 100 landing barges.
01:16Every word of that message was true.
01:19And the island was already gone.
01:22Eight miles up the coast, on the northwest shore, there were two breaks in the cliff line.
01:27The Americans had labeled them White Beach 1 and White Beach 2.
01:32White 1 was 60 yards wide, shorter than a city block.
01:36White 2 was 160.
01:39Ogata knew those beaches.
01:41He had walked them.
01:42He had concluded, correctly by every rule of amphibious warfare then in existence,
01:47that nobody on earth could land an army through a slot that size.
01:52He left a small detachment, some wire, and a few mines.
01:56While his victory message was being decoded in Tokyo,
02:0015,000 marines were coming ashore through those two gaps.
02:04By nightfall, on the first day, they had lost 15 men killed.
02:09Hold on to that number, because it comes back later,
02:11and it carries more weight than it looks like it does.
02:1515 dead, on an opposed landing, against a defended island.
02:20Eight months earlier, on a reef in the Gilbert Islands,
02:23the same Marine Corps had lost more than 1,000 men in 76 hours,
02:28doing the same job.
02:30Same enemy, same ocean, many of the same men.
02:36That gap is what this story is about.
02:38Because after the war, when Japanese officers who survived
02:42were finally asked to explain what had happened to them,
02:45a strange pattern shows up in the answers.
02:48They don't dwell on American numbers,
02:51though the numbers were crushing by the end.
02:53They don't concede much on courage, and they didn't feel they needed to.
02:57What they keep circling back to is something much harder
03:01for a professional soldier to say out loud.
03:04The Americans changed.
03:07Constantly.
03:08Faster than any enemy they had ever faced.
03:12And Japan had faced a great many.
03:14If what American soldiers and Marines built in the Pacific is worth your time,
03:19a like and a subscribe help this story reach the people who still care about it.
03:25Understand who was making that admission.
03:28In the summer of 1944, Japan's army was not a young army.
03:32It had been fighting without a real pause since 1931.
03:37Manchuria, then China, a war so long that the colonels commanding regiments
03:42on Pacific Islands had been under fire for a decade.
03:46They had beaten the Chinese nationalists in the field.
03:49They had gone up against the Soviets at Nomonhan in 1939
03:53and been mauled by them.
03:56They had taken Malaya and Singapore from the British in 70 days,
04:00and they had done it while outnumbered by outthinking the defender at every turn.
04:05Now look at the other side of that comparison.
04:08The army they were facing on Tinian had not fought a major land campaign since 1918.
04:14Four years before Tinian, American divisions on maneuvers in Louisiana
04:18were rolling through the pine woods in trucks with the word tank painted on the side
04:22because there were not enough tanks to go around.
04:25So when a Japanese officer writes, in 1950 or in 1970,
04:30that the Americans learned faster than anyone he had ever fought,
04:33that is not politeness.
04:35That is a professional describing a machine he ran into and could not understand.
04:41And here is the part that turns a compliment into a genuine question.
04:45Japan learned too.
04:47That gets left out of almost every telling of the Pacific War,
04:51and leaving it out makes the whole thing meaningless.
04:53The Imperial Japanese Army was not a stupid army,
04:57and it did not stand still.
04:59Over three years, it threw out its beach defense doctrine,
05:03threw out the mass suicide charge its officers had been raised on,
05:07and built something new from nothing.
05:10What it built was genuinely brilliant.
05:13It very nearly worked.
05:14It turned three small pieces of ground
05:17into the worst fighting of the entire Pacific War.
05:20So the question is not whether Japan could adapt.
05:23Japan adapted.
05:25The question is why,
05:27every single time Japan produced an answer,
05:30the Americans already had the answer to the answer.
05:34Why a defensive system that took the Japanese high command
05:3720 months to develop
05:39was being taken apart in the field
05:42by American units that had never seen it before
05:45within days of meeting it.
05:48That race did not start on Tinian.
05:51It started two years earlier.
05:53In the sky over an island,
05:55most Americans could not have found on a map.
05:57When a Japanese squadron commander
05:59landed back at his base so furious,
06:02he could barely file his report.
06:05Two American fighters had done something to him
06:08that appeared in no manual on either side.
06:12He survived it.
06:14What bothered him was that he could not explain it.
06:17Rabaul, August 1942.
06:20Lieutenant Commander Tadashi Nakajima
06:22came back from a mission over the Solomons
06:24and could not make his report make sense.
06:27He was not a novice.
06:28He was one of the most experienced fighter leaders
06:31in the Imperial Navy,
06:32flying the best carrier fighter in the world,
06:35an aircraft that had spent nine months
06:37making Allied pilots look like amateurs.
06:40Over Guadalcanal,
06:42he had done exactly what he had always done.
06:44He had picked an American fighter,
06:46slid in behind it,
06:47and put it in his sights.
06:49And then the American's wingman
06:51was coming at him head-on from the side.
06:54Nakajima broke away.
06:56He tried it again,
06:57and it happened again.
06:59He got on a tail,
07:00and before he could fire,
07:02the second grumman was there
07:03at an angle he had not seen a fighter use before.
07:07He dove out and ran for home.
07:10Saburo Sakai, who flew with him,
07:12wrote afterward that Nakajima was raging
07:14when he landed at Rabaul.
07:16Now, what had happened to him has a name.
07:20The Americans called it the Thatch Weave.
07:22Two fighters flying a loose pair,
07:25and the instant one of them is attacked,
07:27the two of them turn toward each other and cross.
07:30The attacker chasing the first aircraft
07:32is delivered nose-on into the guns of the second.
07:37It does not require a better airplane.
07:39It does not require a better pilot.
07:41It converts the Zero's greatest advantage,
07:44its ability to turn inside anything in the sky,
07:48into the thing that kills it.
07:49Because the tighter you turn to stay on your target,
07:53the more perfectly you line yourself up for his partner.
07:57Here is what matters about it for this story,
08:00and it is not the tactic.
08:01A naval officer named John Thatch
08:04had worked the problem out on his kitchen table in 1941,
08:08before America was in the war,
08:10using matchsticks,
08:11because intelligence reports said
08:13the Japanese had a fighter
08:15that could outturn anything the Navy owned.
08:17He tested it,
08:19he wrote it up,
08:20it went into the system.
08:22And by August of 1942,
08:24a Marine squadron on a dirt strip in the Solomons,
08:276,000 miles from that kitchen table,
08:31was flying a man's kitchen table idea
08:33against the finest fighter pilots Japan had.
08:38Nakajima never solved it.
08:39Japanese pilots were still flying into it two years later.
08:44Hold that thought.
08:45Because 600 miles south of Rabaul,
08:48on the ground,
08:49the exact same thing was about to happen to a colonel,
08:52who was even more certain than Nakajima was.
08:56Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki commanded a reinforced regiment
08:59that Tokyo had originally earmarked to occupy Midway.
09:03When Midway was lost,
09:05he was given Guadalcanal instead,
09:06and he was told the Americans there numbered perhaps 2,000.
09:11There were 11,000.
09:14Ichiki did not check.
09:15He had fought in China since 1937.
09:18He had said openly that American Marines were soft.
09:23He landed at Taivu Point on the 18th of August,
09:26and rather than wait for the rest of his own detachment,
09:29he took 917 men west along the coast,
09:33toward the American perimeter.
09:35He never got the chance to be surprised.
09:37And that is the point.
09:39On the 19th,
09:40a Marine patrol under Captain Charles Brush
09:43ran into a Japanese party of 38 men on the coastal track
09:46and killed almost all of them.
09:49The Marines searched the bodies.
09:51What came back to the perimeter
09:53was a bundle of maps and papers.
09:55And the papers showed detailed knowledge of Marine positions,
09:59which meant an attacking force was behind them
10:02and knew where it was going.
10:04That bundle went to General Vandegrift's staff the same day.
10:08Within hours,
10:09the Marines had thickened the line along the sandbar at Alligator Creek,
10:13laid wire,
10:14and registered artillery on the approaches.
10:16At roughly 2 in the morning on the 21st of August,
10:19Ichiki's first wave came across that sandbar at a run,
10:23on a hundred-yard front,
10:25into a battalion that had known they were coming for 36 hours.
10:30They came again.
10:31And again.
10:33Near dawn,
10:34a Marine battalion crossed upstream
10:36and swung in behind them,
10:38closing them in a pocket against the sea.
10:40And in the afternoon light,
10:41tanks drove out onto the sandbar
10:43and went through the coconut grove
10:45where the survivors were lying.
10:47Vandegrift wrote later
10:48that the rear of those tanks looked like meat grinders.
10:51Roughly 800 of Ichiki's 917 men were killed.
10:56The Marines lost 34 dead.
10:59Now stay with me,
11:00because the important thing about the Tenaru
11:02is not the lopsided number.
11:04Japan could absorb 800 men.
11:07What Japan could not absorb was this.
11:10Everything Ichiki learned that night,
11:12that the Americans read captured paper within hours,
11:16that their artillery was pre-registered,
11:18that a frontal night assault on a prepared American line
11:22was not a gamble,
11:23but a form of suicide.
11:25Every bit of it was real,
11:27hard-bought,
11:28battle-tested knowledge.
11:30And it stayed on that sandbar.
11:33Ichiki was dead.
11:34His officers were dead.
11:36Of the men who went across,
11:38almost nobody came back to Rabaul
11:40to sit in a room and explain what they had run into.
11:44Six weeks later,
11:45a different Japanese general,
11:47with a different force,
11:48walked into the Marine lines on Guadalcanal
11:50and did almost exactly the same thing.
11:54That is the first move of the race.
11:56And for the next 15 months,
11:58Japan kept losing it.
12:00Then, in November of 1943,
12:03on a coral island 600 yards wide,
12:06the old Japanese doctrine finally got the fight
12:09it had been designed for.
12:11And it beat the United States Marine Corps so badly
12:14that Congress demanded an investigation.
12:17It won the argument.
12:19That is exactly why it destroyed Japan.
12:22November 20th, 1943,
12:25Beishio Island,
12:27Tarawa Atoll.
12:29Two miles long,
12:30800 yards across at its widest,
12:32and nowhere on it can you stand
12:34more than 300 yards from salt water.
12:37The man who had fortified it
12:38was Rear Admiral Keiji Shibazaki,
12:41and he had said,
12:42of this piece of coral,
12:44that a million men
12:45could not take it in a hundred years.
12:47Look at what he had actually built
12:49before you decide that was a boast.
12:51Nearly 500 pillboxes and bunkers,
12:54roofed with coconut logs and coral and sand,
12:57sighted so that the fire from one
12:59covered the doorway of the next.
13:01Eight-inch naval guns,
13:03tank turrets set in concrete,
13:06a seawall of coconut logs four feet high
13:08running the length of the landing beaches,
13:10so that a man who got ashore
13:12had to stand up in the open to get over it.
13:154,800 men,
13:17most of them special naval landing force troops,
13:20the best defensive infantry Japan had.
13:23And in front of all of it,
13:24a coral reef 500 yards out.
13:27The Americans knew about the reef.
13:29What they did not know was the tide.
13:32On that morning,
13:33the water over the coral
13:34ran about three feet deep instead of five,
13:37and the Higgins boats
13:38carrying most of the assault waves
13:40ground to a stop on it
13:41half a mile from the beach
13:43and could not go further.
13:45So the Marines got out and walked.
13:48Remember that image,
13:49because everything that follows in this story
13:51comes out of it.
13:53Men in green dungarees,
13:54holding rifles over their heads,
13:56wading 500 yards through chest-deep water
13:59toward machine guns that had been sighted
14:01on that exact water for a year.
14:04Staff Sergeant William Bordelon
14:06of San Antonio, Texas,
14:0822 years old,
14:09was in one of the amphibious tractors
14:11that did make it across the reef.
14:13It was hit coming in.
14:15Four men got out of it alive.
14:17Bordelon made demolition charges on the beach
14:19out of what he was carrying,
14:21went at the pillboxes one at a time,
14:23knocked out two,
14:24was hit,
14:25knocked out a third,
14:26went back into the water
14:28to pull out a wounded man,
14:29came back,
14:30and was killed going after the fourth.
14:33He was an engineer.
14:35Nobody had told him
14:36he was going to be the anti-bunker system,
14:38because nobody on the American side
14:40had yet worked out
14:41that an anti-bunker system
14:42was the entire problem.
14:45Ashore,
14:46Colonel David Shoup
14:47put his command post
14:48against the side of a Japanese bunker
14:50that still had Japanese soldiers alive inside it,
14:53because there was nowhere else
14:54on that beach to stand.
14:56He had shrapnel in his legs.
14:58His radios were failing.
15:00Every time the battleship Maryland
15:02fired her main guns offshore,
15:04the concussion knocked more
15:05of the landing force radio nets off the air,
15:08which meant the general commanding the division
15:10spent the first 30 hours of the battle
15:12essentially unable to talk to his own men.
15:15On the second day,
15:16Shoup sent out a message
15:17that says more about the state of things
15:19than any report ever written.
15:22Casualties, many.
15:24Percentage of dead not known.
15:26Combat efficiency.
15:28We are winning.
15:2976 hours.
15:31That was the whole battle.
15:33At the end of it,
15:35Beishio was American.
15:36Shibazaki was dead,
15:38killed with his staff
15:39by naval gunfire on the first day,
15:41which meant the man
15:42who had designed the defense
15:43never sent anyone
15:44an assessment of how it had performed.
15:47Of his 4,800 fighting men,
15:4917 were taken alive,
15:51and more than 1,000 marines were dead.
15:542,000 more were wounded.
15:5776 hours.
15:59Now, here is where this stops being a battle story
16:02and becomes the thing this video is about.
16:04When the photographs came home,
16:06American bodies rolling in the surf,
16:09floating against the seawall,
16:11the country came apart over it.
16:13Newspapers demanded to know
16:15who was responsible.
16:16Members of Congress
16:17called for an investigation
16:19of the Marine Corps.
16:20Nimitz received letters from mothers
16:21telling him he had murdered their sons.
16:24The Marine Corps did not defend itself.
16:27It did something stranger.
16:28It wrote the failure down.
16:31In detail.
16:32With numbers.
16:34And mailed it out.
16:36The 2nd Marine Division
16:37after-action report on Tarawa
16:39is not a document that protects anybody.
16:42It says the naval gunfire
16:43stopped 25 minutes too early.
16:46It says the radios were wrong.
16:48It says that for atoll operations,
16:51amphibian tractors are not an accessory,
16:53but a requirement.
16:54And it names a figure.
16:56A minimum of 300 per division,
16:59plus 75 of the armored kind
17:02that can shoot back.
17:03It says that engineer units
17:05need to carry far more demolitions
17:07and flamethrowers,
17:08and that every landing team
17:10needs that capability with it.
17:13Bordelon's death
17:14converted into a line item.
17:16It even says,
17:18consider landing at low tide on purpose
17:20because a tractor moves faster
17:22on dry coral than in water.
17:24That report went up the chain
17:26was combined with the navies
17:27and came back down
17:29through the Pacific fleet
17:30as printed bulletins
17:31distributed to every officer
17:33who might ever have to do this again.
17:36Ask yourself what the equivalent document
17:38on the Japanese side
17:39would have looked like.
17:40Then remember that on Beishio,
17:42there was no Japanese side
17:44left to write one.
17:45Everyone who had learned anything
17:47had died learning it.
17:48What reached Tokyo from Tarawa
17:50was not a lesson.
17:52It was a casualty list.
17:53The American one.
17:564,800 defenders
17:58had cost the United States
17:593,000 men in three days.
18:03Read that the way
18:04an officer in Tokyo read it
18:05in December of 1943,
18:07and it says something very clear
18:09and very encouraging
18:10and completely wrong.
18:13It says,
18:15The doctrine works.
18:16Hold the beach.
18:18Make them pay.
18:21Ten weeks later,
18:22on an island in the Marshalls,
18:23a Japanese garrison did exactly that.
18:26And what came at them across the reef
18:28was not the thing
18:29that had come at Beishio.
18:31January 31, 1944.
18:34Kwajalein Atoll,
18:35in the middle of the Marshalls,
18:36600 miles northwest of Tarawa.
18:38The first American troops
18:41ashore that morning
18:42did not land on the objective.
18:44They landed on four islets
18:46so small
18:46they had no names anyone used,
18:49a mile or two
18:50from the islands that mattered.
18:51And the moment they were ashore,
18:53the landing craft behind them
18:54started putting howitzers
18:56on the sand.
18:57By dark,
18:58there were more than
18:59200 artillery pieces
19:00dug in on specks of coral,
19:02laid and registered
19:03on the two islands
19:04the Americans actually wanted,
19:06ready to fire at first light,
19:08from a range
19:09at which they could not miss.
19:11That is Tarawa,
19:12converted into a procedure.
19:14Nobody had ever done it before.
19:16It exists because a report
19:18written in the weeks
19:19after Beishio said,
19:20in effect,
19:21naval gunfire
19:22from a moving ship
19:23at long range
19:24cannot reliably kill
19:26a coconut log bunker.
19:27And the solution
19:28is land-based artillery
19:30already zeroed on the target
19:32before the first man goes in.
19:34Ten weeks
19:35from the writing
19:35of that sentence
19:36to guns in the sand.
19:39Rear Admiral Monzo Akiyama,
19:41commanding the Japanese
19:426th Base Force
19:43at Kwajalein,
19:44had spent his winter
19:46preparing for a different war entirely.
19:49Tokyo's reading of the map
19:50said the Americans
19:51would come at the outer atolls first.
19:54Woce,
19:55Maloelap,
19:56Mile,
19:57Jaluit,
19:58the ring of airfields
19:59on the edge of the marshals.
20:01That is where the strength went.
20:03Kwajalein,
20:04in the center,
20:05was a headquarters
20:06and a supply base,
20:07and its fortifications
20:08were unfinished.
20:10Nimitz looked at the same map
20:12and decided to skip
20:13the ring entirely
20:14and go straight
20:15into the middle.
20:16Both of his principal subordinates
20:18argued against it.
20:19He overruled them.
20:21Now watch what came
20:22at Akiyama
20:23on the 1st of February.
20:25Before dawn,
20:26swimmers from an
20:27underwater demolition team
20:29under Lieutenant Commander
20:30John Kohler
20:31went into the lagoon
20:32and worked along
20:33the landing beaches,
20:34checking the bottom
20:35and the obstacles by hand
20:37while the fleet held its fire.
20:38Nobody had done that before, either.
20:41It is there in the Tarawa report
20:42as a recommendation
20:43under the section
20:44about the reef.
20:46At Batio,
20:47the naval gunfire
20:48had lifted 25 minutes
20:49before the Marines
20:50touched the beach.
20:51At Kwajalein,
20:53it did not lift.
20:55Destroyers ran in
20:56to 1,500 yards
20:57and fired directly
20:58into the bunkers,
20:59close enough
21:00that their crews
21:01could see what they were hitting.
21:02And the shooting continued
21:03until the leading wave
21:05was almost on the sand.
21:07Three days of bombardment
21:08had preceded it.
21:09An observer said afterward
21:11that the island
21:12looked as though
21:13the whole thing
21:13had been lifted
21:14into the air
21:15and dropped.
21:16And the leading wave
21:17itself was different.
21:19Not landing craft
21:21stopping at the reef.
21:22Armored amphibious tractors
21:24with cannon in the bow
21:25crawling out of the water
21:27and over the seawall
21:28while shooting.
21:29The Japanese answer
21:30at Kwajalein
21:31was Shibazaki's answer.
21:33Hold the beach.
21:34Make them pay
21:35at the water line.
21:37It was the correct answer
21:38in 1943.
21:40Against what arrived
21:41in February of 1944,
21:43it did, essentially,
21:44nothing.
21:45That is not the same
21:46as saying it was easy,
21:47and I want to be exact
21:49about that.
21:50On the moor,
21:51a Marine demolition team
21:53blew the door
21:53off a large concrete blockhouse
21:55and threw in satchel charges,
21:57not knowing the building
21:59was full of torpedo warheads.
22:01The explosion put a cloud
22:03of debris a thousand feet
22:04into the air
22:05and dropped palm trees
22:06and chunks of concrete
22:08across the island.
22:09A pilot, circling overhead,
22:12reported that the whole island
22:13had blown up.
22:1420 Marines were killed
22:17by it
22:17and about 100 wounded
22:18in one second
22:20by their own charge.
22:23Learning still cost lives,
22:25it just cost fewer
22:26of them each time.
22:28Four days.
22:30At the end of it,
22:32roughly 7,800 Japanese
22:34were dead
22:34across the atoll.
22:36American dead
22:37numbered about 370.
22:40Batio had been 76 hours
22:42for a thousand
22:44American lives.
22:45Kwajalein was four days
22:47for a third of that,
22:48against a garrison
22:49nearly twice the size.
22:51So here is the first
22:53real piece of the answer,
22:54and it is not
22:55what people usually assume.
22:57The Americans at Kwajalein
22:59were not smarter
23:00than the Americans at Tarawa.
23:02In a great many cases,
23:03they were literally
23:04the same men.
23:05Marines who had waited
23:07that 500 yards at Batio
23:08were in the assault waves
23:10at Roy Namur
23:11ten weeks later.
23:12And others had been
23:13pulled out of the line
23:14and sent back to training areas
23:16in Hawaii and California
23:17to stand in front of rooms
23:19full of replacements
23:19and tell them what happens
23:21when the tide is wrong.
23:23That is the machine,
23:25not genius.
23:27Circulation.
23:29Experience physically moving
23:30from the place where it was bought
23:32to the places where it was needed,
23:34in the form of paper
23:35and in the form of men
23:37who were still alive
23:38to talk.
23:40Now hold the two sides
23:42up against each other.
23:43Batio's garrison
23:44learned something real
23:46about American amphibious assault.
23:48Seventeen of them
23:48survived to say it,
23:50and they said it
23:51in prisoner of war compounds
23:52to Americans.
23:54Akiyama died with his command.
23:56The outer atolls
23:58Nimitz had bypassed,
23:59Wacha, Mill, Jaluit,
24:01with their airfields
24:02and their garrisons
24:03and everything those men
24:05had figured out
24:05were simply cut off
24:07and left there.
24:08They sat out the rest of the war,
24:10slowly starving,
24:12in radio contact
24:13with a headquarters
24:14that had no way
24:15to use anything they knew.
24:17Japan was not failing to learn.
24:20Japan was losing its students.
24:23And in the summer of 1944,
24:26that finally got somebody's attention.
24:29Because the Americans hit Saipan,
24:31and Saipan cost them 14,000 men.
24:35And in an office in Tokyo,
24:37the army assembled a research team
24:39and asked,
24:39for the first time,
24:41a question the Japanese high command
24:43had never seriously asked.
24:45What if we stopped
24:46defending the beach at all?
24:48June 15, 1944.
24:51Saipan.
24:52This one was not an atoll.
24:55Saipan was 14 miles long,
24:57with mountains,
24:59cane fields,
25:00caves,
25:00a civilian population,
25:02and 30,000 Japanese troops
25:04under Lieutenant General
25:06Yoshitsugu Saito.
25:08Two marine divisions
25:09and an army division
25:10went ashore against it.
25:11And for three and a half weeks,
25:13the fighting ground north
25:15through terrain
25:15where none of the tricks
25:16from the marshals applied.
25:18It cost the United States
25:20about 14,000 casualties.
25:22More than 3,000 Americans
25:24were killed.
25:25That was more than the entire
25:27Central Pacific campaign
25:28had cost up to that point.
25:30And at the end of it,
25:32Saito did something
25:33that has been described
25:34ever since as fanaticism
25:36and was actually something
25:38much colder than that.
25:39He was beaten
25:40and he knew it.
25:42On the 6th of July,
25:44he issued a final order,
25:45drank sake,
25:46and killed himself.
25:48The next morning,
25:49before dawn,
25:50everything left of his army
25:51came down the coastal plain
25:53at the American line
25:54in one mass.
25:55Somewhere between
25:57three and four thousand men,
25:59and not all of them
26:00soldiers in any condition
26:01to fight.
26:02Men with bandaged heads,
26:04men on crutches,
26:06men carrying bayonets
26:08lashed to wooden poles
26:09because there were
26:10no rifles left.
26:12They hit two battalions
26:14of the 105th Infantry
26:15and went straight through
26:17the gap between them.
26:19Lieutenant Colonel
26:20William O'Brien
26:21had already been wounded twice
26:22and had refused evacuation.
26:25When his position was overrun,
26:27he emptied a pistol
26:28in each hand,
26:29then climbed onto a jeep
26:31and fired the mounted
26:32.50 caliber
26:33until they killed him.
26:35Around 30 Japanese bodies
26:37were found
26:37where he had been standing.
26:39Sergeant Thomas Baker,
26:41of the same regiment,
26:42was shot
26:43and could not walk
26:44and asked to be propped up
26:46against a telephone pole
26:47with a pistol
26:48and eight rounds in it.
26:49When Americans retook the ground,
26:51the pistol was empty
26:52and there were eight dead
26:54Japanese soldiers
26:55in front of him.
26:56Both men received
26:57the Medal of Honor.
26:58Neither lived to hear about it.
27:01Now,
27:02why does that mourning matter
27:03to the question
27:04we are chasing?
27:06Because the Banzai charge
27:07on Saipan
27:08was not the beginning
27:09of Japanese doctrine.
27:11It was the funeral.
27:14Saito was not throwing
27:15his men away
27:16out of stupidity.
27:17He had watched
27:18the beach defense doctrine
27:19that had beaten
27:20the marines at Tarawa
27:21get taken apart
27:22in the marshals
27:23and taken apart again
27:24on his own island.
27:25And he had nothing
27:27left to try.
27:28The last charge
27:29was what a Japanese
27:30commander did
27:31when the system
27:32had run out of answers.
27:33And in Tokyo,
27:35for the first time,
27:36somebody with authority
27:37admitted that in writing.
27:39The army assembled
27:40a research team
27:41and set it to work
27:42designing an entirely
27:43new way
27:44to defend an island.
27:46Hold that.
27:47It matters enormously
27:48in a moment.
27:49Japan's answer
27:50was now being drafted.
27:52Because three miles
27:53across the water
27:54from Saipan,
27:55while the last shooting
27:56was still going on,
27:57the Americans
27:58were already redesigning
28:00an amphibious assault
28:01from scratch.
28:02And they would finish
28:04theirs first.
28:05The island was Tinian,
28:07and it had one good
28:09landing area
28:09at Tinian Town,
28:11which Colonel
28:12Kiyochi Ogata
28:13had fortified.
28:14Everyone agreed
28:15it was the only option.
28:17Admiral Turner,
28:18who commanded
28:19the amphibious forces,
28:20was firm on it.
28:22On the night
28:22of the 10th of July,
28:24Marines from
28:25the Amphibious
28:25Reconnaissance Battalion
28:26under Captain James Jones
28:28went into the water
28:29off the far side
28:30of the island
28:31from a submarine
28:31and a pair
28:32of rubber boats.
28:34They swam onto
28:35a Japanese-held island
28:36in the dark,
28:37crawled up two gaps
28:38in the cliffs
28:39on the northwest shore,
28:40measured them by hand,
28:42examined the coral,
28:44checked for mines
28:45and wire,
28:46and swam back out.
28:48What they brought back
28:49was the number
28:49that broke the problem.
28:51Sixty yards wide,
28:53barely defended.
28:55Turner said
28:55it could not be done.
28:56The reconnaissance
28:57said it could.
28:59The reconnaissance
29:00won.
29:01On the 19th of July,
29:03American aircraft
29:04dropped the first
29:05napalm ever used
29:06in combat
29:07onto the cane fields
29:08and the cliff faces
29:09of Tinian,
29:10burning off the cover
29:11that hid the defenses,
29:12a weapon that had not
29:13existed in the field
29:14a year earlier.
29:16On the 24th,
29:18two marine regiments
29:19in landing craft
29:19made a slow,
29:21visible,
29:21thoroughly convincing
29:23run at Tinian town,
29:24absorbed the fire
29:25of Ogata's hidden guns,
29:27and turned around.
29:29And 15,000 marines
29:31came through a hole
29:32the width of a city block,
29:33carrying wooden ramps
29:35built to order
29:35and hauled in
29:36on the tractors
29:37to get vehicles
29:38up over the coral shelf,
29:39because somebody
29:40had thought about that,
29:41too.
29:42That night,
29:43Ogata did the only thing
29:44available to him.
29:45He counterattacked
29:47in the dark
29:47with everything
29:48he could pull north
29:49in time.
29:50By morning,
29:51the marines counted
29:521,241 Japanese dead
29:55in front of their lines.
29:56The island was declared secure
29:58nine days after the landing.
30:00Total American dead?
30:02About 200.
30:03Set the two operations
30:05beside each other,
30:05because they are
30:06three miles apart
30:07and they are the same enemy
30:08and the same doctrine.
30:11Saipan,
30:1224 days,
30:1314,000 casualties.
30:16Tinian,
30:17nine days,
30:18roughly 1,100.
30:20And the time
30:20between the end of one
30:21and the start of the other
30:23was 15 days.
30:25That is the thing
30:26Japanese officers
30:27could not get past afterward.
30:29Not that the Americans
30:30used a feint.
30:31Everybody uses feints.
30:33It was that the Americans
30:34absorbed the most
30:35expensive battle
30:36of their Pacific War
30:37so far,
30:38rebuilt their entire
30:40approach around
30:41what it taught them
30:41and executed
30:43the rebuilt version
30:44in two weeks.
30:45Tokyo's research team
30:46was still working.
30:47It would report
30:48in the middle of August.
30:50And when its answer
30:51finally reached a garrison
30:52on a small coral island
30:54in the Palaus,
30:55it produced the single
30:56most effective defense
30:57the Japanese army built
30:59in the entire war.
31:00And the marines
31:01who walked into it
31:02had never seen
31:03anything like it
31:04in their lives.
31:05September 15th, 1944.
31:08Peleliu,
31:09in the Palau Islands.
31:10A coral hook
31:11six miles long.
31:14Major General
31:15William Rupertus,
31:16commanding the
31:161st Marine Division,
31:18told his officers
31:19before the landing
31:20that it would be
31:20rough but fast.
31:22Three days,
31:24he said.
31:24Maybe four.
31:26He had reason
31:27to think so.
31:28His men had just
31:29watched the Marianas
31:30fall on schedule,
31:31and nothing
31:32in three years
31:32of Pacific fighting
31:33suggested that
31:34a Japanese garrison
31:35of 11,000 men
31:37could hold out
31:38much longer than that.
31:40Understand what had
31:41changed underneath him,
31:42because nobody
31:43on the American side
31:44knew it yet.
31:45In the middle of August,
31:47the Imperial Army's
31:48research team
31:49had finished its work,
31:50and Tokyo had issued
31:51a provisional manual
31:52on island defense.
31:54It threw out the thing
31:56every Japanese officer
31:57had been raised on.
31:58Do not stand at the waterline
32:00where the fleet
32:00can kill you.
32:01Do not spend the garrison
32:03in one-night charge.
32:04Give up the beach.
32:05Fight from inside the ground.
32:07Make them come to you,
32:09and take as long
32:10as possible to die.
32:12The colonel commanding
32:13Peleliu had already
32:14built exactly that.
32:16Kunio Nakagawa
32:17had spent months
32:18turning the Umabrogl
32:20ridges,
32:20a spine of shattered
32:22coral in the middle
32:22of the island
32:23that American maps
32:24showed as gentle rises
32:25because aerial photography
32:27could not see
32:28through the scrub,
32:28into more than 500
32:30reinforced caves.
32:32Multiple entrances,
32:34sliding steel doors,
32:36fire positions angled
32:37so that nothing
32:38could be hit from the sea,
32:40caves on levels,
32:41connected so that
32:42a position you cleared
32:43in the morning
32:44was occupied again
32:45by evening from below.
32:47The landing told the Marines
32:49something was wrong
32:50within minutes,
32:51though not what.
32:52There was no
32:53massed line at the water.
32:55There was flanking fire
32:56from concealed coral fortifications
32:58at the ends of the beaches,
33:00cutting down the length
33:01of the sand.
33:02On the left,
33:03a coral ridge
33:04the Americans called
33:04The Point
33:05held a blockhouse
33:06with a naval gun
33:07that was firing into the flank
33:08of the entire division landing.
33:11Captain George Hunt
33:12took K Company,
33:133rd Battalion,
33:141st Marines,
33:15against it.
33:16His company was split up
33:17before it reached the beach.
33:18He assaulted The Point
33:20with what he had,
33:21a few dozen men,
33:22took it with rifle grenades
33:24and demolition charges
33:25and one man firing
33:26into a gun embrasure
33:27at arm's length
33:28and then held it,
33:30cut off,
33:30for 30 hours
33:32against counterattacks,
33:33out of water,
33:34down to capture
33:35Japanese ammunition.
33:36He started the battle
33:38with 235 men.
33:40When they came off The Point,
33:4278 were left.
33:44That was the first day.
33:45Then the division turned inland
33:47and walked into the ridges,
33:49and the thing they had been trained
33:50by two years of victory
33:51to expect,
33:52a defensive line that breaks
33:54and behind it
33:55a beaten enemy
33:56who charges you at night
33:57and dies,
33:59simply never came.
34:01Nakagawa did not charge.
34:03He never charged.
34:04He let them come up the coral
34:06in 100-degree heat,
34:07in ground so hard
34:09you could not dig a foxhole,
34:10and killed them from below
34:12and from the flanks
34:13and from behind positions
34:15that had already been cleared.
34:17Chesty Puller's 1st Marines
34:19went into the Umar Brogol
34:20at a strength of around 3,000 men.
34:23They took 1,749 casualties.
34:28The regiment was taken off the island
34:30as a fighting unit.
34:32Rupertus had said three days.
34:34Peleliu took two and a half months.
34:37Nakagawa held out
34:38until the 24th of November,
34:40burned his regimental colors,
34:42and killed himself.
34:44American casualties
34:45came to nearly 10,000.
34:48I want to be honest
34:49about what that means,
34:50because this story
34:51does not work
34:52if we pretend otherwise.
34:54Japan's new doctrine
34:55was excellent.
34:57It was the right answer
34:58to the problem.
34:59Given a competent commander,
35:01decent ground,
35:01and enough time to dig,
35:03it made an American amphibious assault
35:05brutally expensive.
35:06And it did it without air support,
35:08without a fleet,
35:09without reinforcement,
35:11without any hope at all.
35:13So Japan had finally adapted.
35:16Tokyo had the answer.
35:17In print.
35:19Distributed.
35:20Now watch the clock.
35:22In the first week of November,
35:23with Nakagawa still alive
35:25in the Umer Brogol,
35:26and the battle still being fought,
35:28an order arrived at a tank battalion
35:30doing garrison duty
35:31in the Hawaiian Islands.
35:32Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McCrary
35:34was told to convert
35:35the 713th Tank Battalion
35:37into something that did not exist
35:39in the United States Army.
35:40A full battalion
35:42of flamethrowing tanks.
35:4454 Shermans.
35:45Main guns replaced
35:47with flame projectors.
35:49Work started in a shop
35:50at Schofield Barracks
35:51on the 1st of December.
35:52The first five tanks
35:54were finished by Christmas.
35:55The last one was done
35:57on the 25th of January.
35:59Three days later,
36:00the battalion was assigned
36:01to the invasion of Okinawa.
36:03Eight weeks.
36:05From an order
36:06to a weapon system.
36:07Built by mechanics
36:09on an island
36:10in the middle of the ocean.
36:12Think about what that required.
36:14Somebody in the Pacific
36:15had to read the reports
36:17coming out of Peleliu
36:18and correctly identify
36:19that the war had changed.
36:21That the problem
36:22was no longer beaches,
36:24it was holes in rock.
36:26And then find the authority,
36:28the tanks,
36:29the fuel,
36:30the shop space,
36:31and the eight weeks,
36:33before the battle
36:34that proved the point
36:35had even ended.
36:38That is the gap.
36:40Not intelligence,
36:41not courage.
36:43Turn time.
36:46Tokyo's answer
36:47took 20 months
36:48to produce
36:48and reached three islands.
36:50And on one of those islands,
36:52a general who had studied
36:54every report
36:55from Biak,
36:56Angar,
36:57and Peleliu
36:57was doing something
36:59no Japanese commander
37:00had ever been permitted to do.
37:03He was telling his officers
37:05that the Banzai Charge
37:06was forbidden,
37:07that no man was to die
37:09without killing
37:10ten Americans first,
37:12and that they would fight
37:13from inside a volcano.
37:17February 19, 1945.
37:20Iwo Jima.
37:22Eight square miles
37:23of volcanic ash and rock,
37:25650 miles from Tokyo.
37:28The Marines came ashore,
37:29and for a few minutes,
37:31nothing happened.
37:32No fire at the waterline.
37:34Some of them thought
37:35the 72 days of bombardment
37:37had done the job.
37:38Then they tried to move,
37:40and found that the black sand
37:41had no bottom to it.
37:43Men sank to their ankles,
37:45then their knees.
37:46Vehicles bogged,
37:47and the terraces above the beach
37:49were too steep to climb.
37:51That was when Kuribayashi opened up,
37:53from positions on both flanks
37:55and from Suribachi behind them,
37:57onto a beach now packed solid
37:59with men who could not run.
38:01He had 11 miles of tunnel
38:03under that island.
38:04He had issued his garrison
38:06a set of written vows,
38:07one of which was that
38:08every man would kill
38:09ten Americans before he died.
38:11He had forbidden
38:12the Banzai Charge outright,
38:14and he enforced it.
38:16There would be no night
38:17when the enemy
38:17conveniently came out of the ground
38:19and died in the open.
38:2136 days.
38:2326,000 American casualties.
38:26Nearly 7,000 dead.
38:29It is the only battle
38:30in the history of the Marine Corps
38:32where American losses
38:33exceeded the enemies.
38:35And on that island,
38:36the Marines had
38:37eight flame tanks.
38:39Eight.
38:40Built in the same Hawaiian shop
38:42that had converted
38:43the Army battalion
38:44two months earlier,
38:46holes with flame projectors
38:48where the main gun should be,
38:49able to put burning fuel
38:51a hundred yards
38:52into a cave mouth
38:53and keep putting it there.
38:56The after-action reports
38:57are unusually direct about them.
39:00Marine commanders
39:01called the flame tanks
39:02the single most valuable weapon
39:04on Iwo Jima.
39:05They were the one thing
39:07that took the defenders
39:08out of the ground.
39:10Units ashore
39:11began requesting them
39:12by name
39:12and they were never enough
39:14because 8
39:15is 8.
39:19Koribayashi radioed
39:20what he was learning
39:20back through his headquarters
39:21on Chichijima.
39:23His assessments
39:24of American methods
39:25going out over the air
39:26in his final weeks
39:27because there was
39:28no other way
39:29to move information
39:30off an island
39:30nobody was leaving.
39:32That is the whole
39:34Japanese problem
39:34in one image.
39:36A general,
39:37entombed,
39:38dictating lessons
39:39into a radio.
39:41Six weeks after he died,
39:43on the 1st of April,
39:441945,
39:45the 10th Army
39:46landed on Okinawa.
39:4860,000 Americans
39:50came ashore that day.
39:51They were opposed
39:52by almost nobody.
39:54Men walked up the beach,
39:56crossed two airfields,
39:57and stood around
39:59wondering where
39:59the Japanese Army was.
40:01It was in the south,
40:03in the ground,
40:04exactly where
40:05Colonel Hiromichi Yahara
40:06had put it.
40:07Yahara was a senior
40:09staff officer
40:09of the 32nd Army
40:11and the architect
40:12of the defense,
40:13and he had taken
40:14Nakagawa's
40:15and Kuribayashi's answer
40:16and applied it
40:17to a big island
40:18with real terrain.
40:20No beach defense at all,
40:21no counterattack,
40:23a fortified belt
40:24across the waist
40:25of Okinawa,
40:26and the sole objective
40:27of making the battle last.
40:30It lasted 82 days
40:32and killed 12,500 Americans.
40:35And this time,
40:36the blowtorch
40:37was waiting for it.
40:3954 flame tanks
40:40came ashore
40:41with the 10th Army,
40:42the battalion
40:43built at Schofield Barracks
40:44in eight weeks.
40:46General Buckner's name
40:48for the method
40:48that developed around them
40:49was blowtorch
40:50and corkscrew.
40:52Burn the position,
40:53then blast it shut,
40:55and move to the next one.
40:56All day,
40:58every day.
40:59In one five-day fight
41:01over three coral hills
41:02in June,
41:03that single battalion
41:05put more than
41:0537,000 gallons
41:07of burning fuel
41:08into the rock.
41:09On one hill alone,
41:115,000 gallons in a day.
41:13Japan's best defensive system,
41:15the thing it had taken
41:1620 months to invent,
41:18was being processed
41:19at the rate of a hill a day
41:21by equipment
41:22that had not existed
41:23six months before.
41:25Now,
41:26here is the moment
41:27this entire story
41:29has been building toward,
41:30and it comes
41:31from the Japanese side.
41:33On the 22nd of June,
41:35with the army destroyed
41:36and the Americans
41:37a few hundred yards away,
41:39General Mitsuru Ushijima
41:40prepared to kill himself.
41:42Before he did,
41:43he gave Colonel Yahara
41:44an order,
41:45and the order
41:46violated everything
41:47the Imperial Japanese Army
41:49believed
41:49about how officers end.
41:51He forbade Yahara to die.
41:53He told him
41:55to get off the island
41:56and get through.
41:57Because,
41:58in his words,
42:00if Yahara died,
42:01there would be no one left
42:02who knew the truth
42:03about the Battle of Okinawa.
42:05Read that again.
42:07Slowly.
42:07The commanding general
42:09of a Japanese army,
42:10at the end of the largest battle
42:11of the Pacific War,
42:13had to issue a direct order
42:14against his own military culture
42:16to prevent the knowledge
42:17of that battle
42:18from being buried
42:19with the men who had it.
42:21He understood the problem exactly.
42:23He was three years too late,
42:26and he knew that too.
42:28So here is the answer
42:29to why Japanese officers,
42:31writing afterward,
42:32kept landing on the same word.
42:34It was never about intelligence.
42:37The Japanese army
42:38was not slow-witted,
42:40and its final doctrine
42:41was better than anything
42:42the Americans had predicted.
42:44The difference was
42:45in how each side moved
42:47what it had learned.
42:48An American lesson
42:50traveled sideways,
42:51and it traveled on paper.
42:53A sergeant's observation
42:55went into a report.
42:56The report went up,
42:57and inside weeks,
42:58it came back down
42:59as a printed bulletin
43:01in the hands of a lieutenant
43:026,000 miles away
43:03who had never met him.
43:05Then the men themselves traveled.
43:07Wounded evacuated and returned.
43:09Veterans rotated back
43:10to training camps
43:11to stand in front of replacements.
43:13A Japanese lesson
43:15had to travel up a chain
43:16that did not want bad news,
43:18and it was carried by men
43:19under orders to die
43:21where they stood.
43:22America's teachers
43:23went home and taught.
43:25Japan's teachers
43:26were buried on the islands
43:27where they learned.
43:28Tinian.
43:29The 1st of August, 1944.
43:33Eight days after
43:34he reported to Tokyo
43:35that he had thrown back
43:36a hundred landing barges,
43:38Colonel Kiyochi Ogata
43:39had been pushed
43:40the length of his own island,
43:42from the harbor
43:42he had fortified
43:43to the cliffs
43:44at the southern end.
43:46He had perhaps
43:47a few hundred men left
43:48who could still fight.
43:49There was no evacuation,
43:51there had never been
43:52any prospect of one,
43:53and nothing he had learned
43:55in nine days
43:56about how the Americans
43:57now made war
43:58was going to leave
43:59that island with anybody.
44:01He died there
44:02with his regiment.
44:04The Marines declared
44:05Tinian secure
44:06that afternoon.
44:08Colonel Hiromichi Yahada
44:09did get off Okinawa.
44:11He changed into civilian clothes,
44:13walked north
44:14through American lines,
44:16and was picked up
44:17and identified within weeks.
44:19He spent the rest
44:20of the war in captivity,
44:22answering questions,
44:23and he went home to Japan,
44:24and he lived
44:25another 36 years.
44:28In 1973,
44:29he finally published
44:31what Ushijima
44:31had ordered him to preserve.
44:33It is a bitter book.
44:35Yahada does not spend
44:36much of it
44:36on American equipment
44:37or American numbers.
44:39What he cannot get past
44:41is watching his own superiors
44:42on Okinawa in 1945
44:44reach for the same answers
44:47that had failed
44:47on every island before it,
44:49and the way the enemy,
44:51across the line,
44:52kept arriving
44:53with something new.
44:55Major Yoshitaka Horiye,
44:57who had relayed
44:57Kuribayashi's last messages
44:59off Iwo Jima,
45:00was one of only
45:01four Japanese
45:02field-grade officers
45:03connected with that battle
45:05to survive the war.
45:06He wrote his account, too.
45:09Between them,
45:10those two men
45:11are almost the entire
45:12surviving professional memory
45:14of the last three battles
45:15Japan fought.
45:17Two officers.
45:18Out of an army.
45:21Now look at the other side
45:22of that ledger,
45:23because this is what
45:24the numbers actually mean.
45:25David Shoup,
45:26who ran the battle
45:27on Baishio
45:28from behind a bunker
45:29with Japanese soldiers
45:30still alive inside it,
45:32came home,
45:33received the Medal of Honor,
45:35and 16 years later
45:36was appointed commandant
45:38of the Marine Corps.
45:39Which means,
45:40the man who had been
45:41in the water at Tarawa
45:43spent the early 1960s
45:45deciding how the next generation
45:47of Marines would be trained.
45:49George Hunt,
45:50who took the point
45:51on Peleliu
45:52with a company
45:53that came off the hill
45:54at a third of its strength,
45:56went back to civilian life
45:57and became a magazine editor
45:59in New York.
46:01He wrote his book
46:02so the thing
46:02would be on the record.
46:04And the machine
46:05they were a part of
46:06never actually stopped.
46:08While Okinawa
46:09was still being fought,
46:10the reports coming off it
46:11were already being turned
46:12into equipment
46:13for the invasion of Japan.
46:15Armored vests
46:16designed against
46:17the specific wounds
46:18Okinawa was producing,
46:19tested in the Philippines
46:21in July,
46:21with 100,000 sets
46:23scheduled for completion
46:24by the end of August 1945.
46:27They were never needed.
46:29That is the point of them.
46:30In 1995,
46:3252 years after he was killed,
46:35clearing pillboxes
46:36on a beach
46:36800 yards wide,
46:38the remains of
46:39Staff Sergeant
46:40William Bordelon
46:41were identified
46:41and brought home
46:42to San Antonio.
46:44He was 22 when he died.
46:46The city he was born in
46:47buried him with full honors.
46:49And the men who came
46:50to stand at that graveside
46:51included Marines
46:52who had never heard his name
46:53until the year before.
46:55Because the report he became,
46:57the one that said
46:58engineers must carry
46:59more demolitions
47:00and more flamethrowers,
47:02had gone out
47:02to a fleet full of strangers
47:04in December of 1943.
47:06And strangers had lived
47:07because of it.
47:09That is the answer.
47:10And it is simpler
47:11than it looks.
47:13Japanese officers
47:14conceded that the Americans
47:15adapted faster
47:16than any enemy
47:17they had fought
47:17because Japan
47:18sent the men
47:19who knew the most
47:20into ground
47:21they were forbidden
47:21to leave.
47:23And America
47:23sent them home
47:24to talk.
47:26One army buried
47:27its education
47:27on the islands.
47:29The other one
47:29mailed it to itself
47:31and then went back
47:32for the men
47:33who had paid for it.
47:35Thank you for staying
47:36with this one to the end.
47:37If it was worth your time,
47:39a like genuinely helps.
47:40It is the main reason
47:41a story like this
47:42reaches the people
47:43who want it
47:43instead of disappearing.
47:45Subscribe and turn on the bell
47:46if you would like the next one
47:47because there is a great deal
47:49more here
47:49that does not get told.
47:51And tell me in the comments
47:52where you are watching from.
47:54If your father,
47:55your grandfather,
47:56or your uncle
47:57served in the Second World War,
47:58put his name
47:59and his unit below.
48:01The G.I.s and the Marines
48:02in this story
48:03kept records of everything
48:04and it saved lives.
48:06The least we can do
48:08is keep the names.