sh**ting w*r (2000)

[bunniefuu]

Other wars had been photographed.

World w*r II was covered

from start to finish

in every service, in every theatre.

For the first time,

civilians knew something

of how their sons, husbands

and brothers lived and died

in this vast crucible.

The images of this w*r

burned our eyes and spirits

and welded us together.

I loved it because it was dangerous.

I'm a fraidy-cat,

but if there was a job to do, I did it.

No matter how horrible the action was

that you were covering,

when you looked through,

that glass was your filter.

I got carried away one time

and got out in front of the g*n,

sh**ting the g*n firing.

That was a big mistake.

The muzzle blast knocked me 40 feet,

ass over teakettle.

We hit an intersection

where we were shot at.

The b*ll*ts whizzed by

into the cab of the truck.

When you're baling out of that aeroplane,

on the way down, you say, "Oh, no."

But shells, you can't say anything.

It comes and you wanna yell,

"Stop. I'm here."

Those are men who took the pictures

by which we remember World w*r II.

Some of their images are immortal.

Many have been hidden

in the archives for decades.

Whether their pictures

are famous or not,

what you are about to see is unique:

w*r stories backed by the irrefutable

evidence of the films they made.

In their hands, the camera became

a w*apon more potent than the r*fle,

a w*apon whose impact resonates

even more powerfully now,

as memory is transformed into history.

In 1941, we were as unprepared

to photograph w*r as to wage it.

When John Ford made his film

on Pearl Harbor,

the Japanese attack was recreated,

intercut with old newsreel footage

and a few feet of the real thing.

Men, man your battle stations.

God bless you.

Hollywood cameraman Gregg Toland

re-staged these scenes

months after Pearl Harbor.

The actors are obviously amateurs,

but they are real sailors.

The planes were the contribution

of 20th Century Fox special effects.

In this out-take, you can see the wires

supporting the model Zero.

Ford organised his photographic branch

before the w*r, as part of the OSS.

Toland's crew set fire to crashed planes,

adding drama to his footage,

but his feature-length parable

about American unpreparedness

was judged unreleasable.

Ford now took a more active hand,

cutting December 7th to 34 minutes.

He retained much of the miniature

footage, also made at Fox.

This material, never before seen,

was shot in colour,

though the film was released

in black and white.

This is Hollywood's version

of Pearl Harbor's battleship row

and the Ford-Toland version

of the attack on it.

There was authentic footage

of the Nevada trying to escape,

but Ford preferred this reconstruction.

It matched the rest

of his fake footage better.

His goal was not strict authenticity.

He was out to stir the nation.

There was enough reality to win an

Academy Award for best short subject.

As Toland and Ford worked

on their film in spring 1942,

America mounted its first

aggressive response to Pearl Harbor:

A navy task force

under Admiral "Bull" Halsey.

It carried James Doolittle's flyers

and 16 B-25s aboard the Hornet.

Hal Kempe was

a photographer's mate on the ship.

I've heard many stories. Some say

we slipped out under cover of darkness.

We went under

the Golden Gate Bridge at noon.

We had the planes

lined up on the flight deck.

It looked like it was a ferry trip.

After we were at sea

for about two or three days,

they re-spotted the flight deck.

They took each B-25,

with tricycle landing gear,

and placed them with their tails

extending out over the edge.

They put one on each

port and starboard side

until the lead plane had

sufficient run for his take-off.

That was one third

the normal take-off distance.

The raiders were spotted

by Japanese picket boats.

They were sunk but might

have radioed a warning.

There was no choice

but to launch the attack.

So they said, "Man your planes.

We're gonna launch."

So we were launching

eight hours too soon.

Doolittle was first.

He went and the rest

of the crews were wondering,

"Can it be done?"

The raiders, volunteers, had practised

short-run take-offs on land,

a few from a carrier deck,

but never in bad weather.

Yet all were safely launched

for their 30 seconds over Tokyo.

Halsey's concern: The early launch

made it impossible

to make safe landings in China.

Yet all but three flyers survived the raid.

It did little damage,

except to enemy morale.

They carried four 500lb bombs each.

That's not very much,

when you really look at it,

but enough to put the fear

of God into them for a while.

The Doolittle raid provoked

a Japanese counter-attack

aimed at destroying the US Pacific fleet.

But we had broken their code and

knew they would attack Midway Island.

This evened the odds for the carriers

as they approached

the w*r's first great naval battle.

Midway was a pair of tiny coral atolls

vital to the defence of Hawaii.

This time, John Ford

was present with a film crew.

Ford himself operated a camera and

was wounded getting these pictures.

He would win another Oscar

for the film he fashioned.

The crucial battle was at sea between

ships that never saw one another.

They didn't know exactly

where the Japanese fleet was,

but the torpedo-squadron skipper had

an idea it was in a certain direction.

He went off there.

He ran into the whole bunch of 'em.

And 15 or 16 torpedo planes went down.

These men of torpedo squadron eight

found the Japanese carriers.

They scored no hits,

but they distracted enemy gunners,

allowing our dive bombers

to sink four carriers.

Only one man, George Gay,

on the right, survived.

One of Ford's crew shot these pictures.

The director made them into a short

memorial film for the next of kin.

Midway shifted the balance

of naval power in the Pacific.

It cost the Japanese

almost half their carriers.

Still, their wounded navy

continued to pose a deadly threat.

October, 1942. The Hornet steams

toward the battle of Santa Cruz

near Guadalcanal.

With the Enterprise, she was soon

fighting off assaults from the air.

How close the combat often was

is demonstrated by this sequence,

shot from the Enterprise.

A near miss shakes the Enterprise.

An enemy shadow is cast

on the flight deck as the ship fights on.

The camera catches the wild swing of

the huge ship as it takes evasive action.

But still the bombs rained down.

The camera survived this hit,

but not the cameraman.

The Hornet did not survive either.

We were listing to the starboard.

Real heavy list.

I went to the fantail

to help with the wounded,

where I stayed until

we finally abandoned ship.

I swam out about 45 degrees this way.

Got out so far

and here come the destroyers.

I figured, "This is gonna be

a piece of cake. Pick us up real quick."

Then they backed down and took off.

The destroyer starts circling

around the ship and firing.

"What are they firing at?"

We looked in the sky.

Coming in was a V formation

of twin-engine bombers.

You could see the five-inch

anti-aircraft bursts up there.

They came in, went right overhead,

and one hit the fantail back here

and the rest was in a pattern

round the stern of the ship.

It continued on and never came back.

I got picked up right after that

by the 411 Anderson.

That final bombing run

was a coup de grce.

The Hornet's short,

brave life was ended

when American destroyers sank her.

Our ship had been in commission

for one year and six days.

But the carrier w*r

in the Pacific never ceased.

We didn't have motors

but you had to hand-crank.

When we did flight-deck operations,

we did not hand-crank at three turns

per second on the small crank.

We used the big crank

and would start going up to high speed

because we wanted

slow motion of the crash.

The pilot coming in for landing.

If you ever see the photographer

start that big crank,

look out, you bought the farm.

The footage taken on the flight decks

forms an eerie ballet of destruction

and of unlikely survival.

By late 1942, we were officially

training combat cameramen.

Standard army issue

was the 35mm Eyemo for movies

and the 4 x 5 Speed Graphic for stills.

Many cameramen had been

photographers in civilian life.

Hal Roach's Culver City studio was

a major production and training centre.

Naturally, the students took pictures

of themselves taking pictures.

Eventually, about 1500 men,

not a lot for a w*r this huge,

would become motion-picture

combat cameramen.

Many served in the air force.

On bombing raids over Europe,

they worked as b*mb spotters,

recording damage

for intelligence analysts.

The oil fields at Ploieti in Romania

were vital to the Germans

and among the most

bombed targets of the w*r.

On August 1 st 1943,

these B-24s, based in Libya,

mounted the first major attack on them

at a daring 500 feet.

Then, as later, results were poor.

Ploieti was never knocked out.

Doug Morrell flew

higher-altitude missions over Ploieti.

This mission can be ten hours long,

but the combat part's only ten minutes.

Ten minutes is a long time.

Try holding your breath.

The Eyemo had a hand-crank wind on it.

When the most important

thing happened,

you're winding that thing,

trying to get it going.

I had to reload up at 20,000 feet.

Your fingers get a little cold.

When you come into the target,

they put up so much flak

that the enemy fighters

won't come in, they'll get hit.

b*mb spotting

is when the bombs release,

then you follow 'em

and pick up their hits.

When you get those hits,

intelligence can use those.

We were bombing Ploieti

and flak hit us.

We had to drop out of formation.

Then six ME-109s jumped us

when we got out of formation.

We were all by ourselves.

They set us on fire.

I opened up the b*mb-bay door

to jump out, instead of out the back end.

There's this fire coming.

I raced over, grabbed

one of those little fire extinguishers.

I said, "I'd better leave!"

I went out the back end

and just as I left, it blew.

We average about five out.

When I baled out, I was the last one out.

The other five got k*lled in there.

Another cameraman who survived

the air w*r was Dan McGovern.

You were so busy,

you weren't thinking about the battle.

You were thinking about

helping others and sh**ting.

You couldn't become a spectator.

You had to sh**t.

There's ten crew members

on a bomber.

You're the 11th man.

We had to prove ourselves.

As a matter of fact

- this is a true story, so help me God -

I photographed my own crash-landing.

The two engines on the right side: Out.

The third engine on the left side: Out.

One engine.

So I cut to the right, cut to the left,

look over the top.

The aeroplane's coming in

for a crash-landing.

You don't think about it.

You're so excited. You're not scared.

But you're scared after

when you come back. You're shaking.

We dropped two million tons of bombs

but never matched results promised

by air-power advocates.

This w*r would be won on the ground,

as Norman Hatch learned when

he made the Tarawa landing in 1943.

I was riding with Jim Crowe,

a battalion commander.

He wasn't happy having me there.

As he told me, he didn't want

any Hollywood marines.

I had to testify that I was

a regular marine, a shot expert,

that I could do something with a r*fle.

He said, "All right,

but don't get in my way."

I was sitting alongside him

sh**ting what was going on.

He observed that his amtracs,

the first three waves,

were not maintaining their course.

There was a.50 calibre buried

in the sand, sh**ting at them

and they kept edging over to the right.

Crowe could see his front disappearing

because of this.

He told the coxswain to put the boat in.

We ran up on the reef,

the ramp wouldn't go down,

so we had to go up over the side,

which was difficult with so much gear.

We were exhausted

because you can't walk through water

without having a lot of resistance.

And loaded down with gear,

it just drained you.

It took us a couple of minutes

on the beach to get oriented.

Hatch was pinned down

with the invaders.

There was nothing to do but sh**t:

Combat footage

with a previously unknown ferocity.

The Japanese emplacements

were fantastic.

They'd built a concrete bunker

and covered it with sand and logs,

and covered that with sand.

They were pretty impregnable.

The Pacific w*r

favoured the cameramen.

Spaces were confined,

the action within them tightly focused.

The brutal reality of w*r revealed itself

here as it rarely did elsewhere.

Hatch caught the marines and their

enemy in combat in the same shot.

That was luck. Somebody said,

"Here they come."

I turned and there it was,

and I just kept on sh**ting.

Had the Japanese mounted

a coordinated counter-attack,

they might have driven the marines

back into the sea.

But the fighting remained

as Hatch's film showed it:

Ferocious, yet disorganised.

Most of the Japanese

fought to the death.

The marines took only 17 prisoners.

The seas continued

to run against reinforcements.

Among them was

another cameraman, John Ercole.

We didn't even know

what was going on.

We were going nowhere. The propeller

and the tide didn't come together.

I was sh**ting whatever I could,

people in my boat and things like that.

19 hours later,

we finally made a landing.

What Ercole found to sh**t

was mostly the dead and wounded.

Their evacuation was poorly handled.

Hatch credits a movie actor

with getting things organised.

Eddie Albert was there.

He was a navy JG at the time.

He was a boat director,

and he discovered early on

that there wasn't much coordination

on getting wounded out.

He stayed on the beach

during the worst part of the fighting

and directed boats bringing supplies in

to carry wounded back to the ships.

As the battle moved inland, the futility

of the naval bombardment was obvious.

Their pounding didn't do much good.

They used armour-piercing shells

and there was no armour.

They were hitting sand

and skittering all over the island.

You'd see these 16-inch shells.

Nothing had ever happened with them.

What grabbed me and took hold of me

was the bodies, the dead bodies,

God knows how many marines,

face down, floating in shallow water.

That was the first time

that I had really seen dead bodies.

When you see these bodies floating

in the water, it grabs you.

And they all seemed to look like

a buddy of mine, Norman Hatch.

This was a piece of ground that wasn't

as big as Central Park in New York,

and in the course of that 72 hours,

6,000 people died.

5,000 of those were Japanese,

1,000 were marines,

and another 2,000 were wounded.

Passing a disabled t*nk,

Hatch heard this kitten's cry.

He thought it might be a wounded

enemy. It was just another w*r victim.

He thought he might make a pet of it,

but the kitten scampered away,

never to be seen again.

The quality of his film

earned Hatch a trip home,

where this footage of him was made

for an army-navy short subject.

We drove down Market Street

and every major theatre had my name

on it as taking the Tarawa film.

They were running it.

That's the best combat film

I've ever seen.

- And from an army man to a marine!

- It was just luck.

A movie cameraman,

a stills man... and a driver.

That's how the Signal Corps organised

its combat photographers in Europe.

The cameras we were using

were Eyemo,

called a b*mb-spotter camera.

It had a crank on the side you wound up.

They only had one two-inch lens.

If you can believe

the running you have to do

to get your long shot, medium shot

and close-up with a two-inch lens.

It was really criminal

that they sent us there with that stuff.

Yet remarkable things

could be done with that equipment.

John Huston, one of several directors

who followed Ford to w*r,

used it to make what James Agee

thought the best w*r documentary.

Huston would write and speak

this strikingly ironic narration.

Patron saint: Peter.

Point of interest: St Peters, 1438.

Note interesting treatment of chancel.

Huston found real w*r more difficult

to direct than the Hollywood kind.

From October 1943

until the middle of December,

San Pietro was the scene of some of the

bitterest fighting on our Fifth Army front.

The Italian campaign had entered

its second phase,

to push forward again after

a static period brought on by heavy rain.

Huston came over

and he had a mission.

To make a coherent narrative

of one small battle

that would represent the entire w*r.

He realised that you have no control.

You sh**t what you can get.

You can fire three rounds then drop.

But you can't get ten feet of film

in the same way.

If you had control,

you can do a lot with an Eyemo.

They gave him two battalions,

out of the 36 divisions, who were in rest,

and said, "Here it is,"

and he staged that whole thing.

He used film that we had shot,

actual battle film,

and he intercut it with what he had.

His stuff was much better than ours.

Ed Montagne has a veteran's

tolerance of Huston's tricks.

He used picturesque munitions,

he slammed the camera

to simulate explosions,

he even posed American Gls

as dead Germans.

But he scared the poor 36th.

That was a nervous outfit.

He'd have them going up a hill,

he'd take a grenade and throw it down,

and yell, "Grenade!" and they'd dive.

Some of the stuff was great.

I admire him for what he did.

But I resented the fact

that I would get critiques from New York.

"Major Huston's men were able

to do this. Why can't yours?"

I had the same people.

Didn't speak very well of me, did it?

Some of Huston's most moving footage

was of picking up the pieces,

of life reasserting itself

in the little town of San Pietro.

The people prayed to their patron saint

to intercede with God

on behalf of those

who came to liberate them

and passed on to the north

with the passing battle.

By 1944, the combat photographers

were everywhere,

even the China-Burma-lndia theatre.

To most Americans, that was

the w*r's most obscure corner.

Hidden behind high mountains

and deep jungles,

it was both a political

and logistical nightmare.

One route was called the "aluminium

trail" after all the planes downed flying it.

When Stilwell and Merrill

met to plan a mission

against the key

Japanese airfield at Myitkyina,

photographer Dave Quaid was there.

When General Stilwell flew off,

I went up to Merrill

and I said, "Hey, General.

"Do you mind if I join you guys?"

He said, "Come on along."

Technically, Quaid was AWOL

when he joined Operation Galahad.

He had no idea

what he was getting into.

So now we're on this trail that's basically

impassable. We had to cut steps.

Even the mules that can handle

any terrain could not handle this trail.

We ourselves carried

so much equipment,

five days K ration

and amm*nit*on and r*fles.

I carried a 13lb camera

and 2400 foot of film.

It got so rugged

that the mules could not make it.

Finally, they had to take the loads

and the saddles off the mules.

They would get a GI,

and a bunch of guys

would lift this 96-pound saddle

and put it on his back

and then he would

have to climb the steps.

When we got to a more level area,

we would load up the mules again.

Quaid tired of repeating

front and back angles.

He found a precarious perch

to get this side shot.

The drop is 300 feet. I was young then,

and I jumped down and made the shot.

On the way, Merrill's Marauders

twice encountered Japanese patrols.

Here you can see an enemy b*llet

cutting through the brush.

Quaid stepped into the open

to get this shot of a fallen foe

and the American who k*lled him.

Probably the dumbest shot

I've ever made.

The Japanese were so stunned,

they didn't fire.

They didn't believe their eyes.

This wilderness trek took six days.

The method of handling malaria

was the simplest thing in the world.

It was called walking it out of you.

All our walking wounded

from the two battles

we had fought coming

over the mountains were still with us.

The weary Marauders

still took the airfield by surprise,

but the Japanese continued

to hold the nearby town.

I became fascinated

with the 88th Fighter Squadron.

They had death's heads

on their P-40F airplanes.

They were only a mile and half

from the Japanese bunkers.

They could make one turn

and come down on a bunker.

They were great support

for the American and Chinese

surrounding Myitkyina.

I was always interested in unique ways

of looking at things.

I thought it would be great

to put my camera

into the P-40 on a dive-bombing run.

I see them up there.

They make their turn and down they go.

I see him right on the back

of the captain all the way down.

The captain pulls out

after he released his b*mb,

and this guy is still

following the b*mb down.

And there's this terrific blast and I see

him trying to fly through the blast.

He can't get any altitude, but

he crash-lands at the end of the strip.

When the leader landed,

Quaid thought a retreat was in order.

He was, after all,

responsible for wrecking the plane.

He comes up to me and he says,

"Quaid, get out of here!"

He said, "Four more

and you're a Japanese ace!"

I think it was one of the funniest lines

of World w*r II.

He said, "Dave, don't take it to heart.

"We really wanna get P-51 s."

June, 1944.

The marines land in the Marianas,

within bomber range

of the Japanese home islands.

The late Richard Brooks

collected the exposed footage.

When the landing boats came in,

the cameramen came in first,

so they could photograph the marines

coming in to make the invasion.

Like Huston, Brooks would edit,

write and narrate this footage

into a great w*r documentary.

He would become an Oscar-winning

Hollywood writer-director after the w*r.

The Japs bring down

another one of our planes.

A sn*per is burned out.

A Jap makes a run for it.

Lieutenant General Holland Smith,

commanding the as*ault forces.

He was known to his men

as Howlin' Mad Smith.

Brooks was working up the nerve

to ask him a question.

I made sure to get some sh*ts

of General Smith

up against the skyline

and against the sea.

Walking back to his jeep, I said,

"May I ask you a question?"

He said, "Go ahead." I was a corporal.

I said, "Is there any way, General,

that our combat cameramen

can carry side arms?"

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "We just got the camera.

"If somebody's sh**ting at you,

it's easier if you can sh**t back."

He said, "I don't care

if you got film in it.

"I want those cameras there

and I want 'em there all the time.

"Those cameras, whether

they've got film in them or not,

"are the eyes of the world.

"And there are no cowards

in front of a camera."

John Ercole was

one of the photographers.

The sn*per, wherever he was,

I'm in his sights.

I gotta move back and forth.

He's trying to hit me in the foot.

He keeps hitting the ground.

I'm photographing this t*nk.

Our marines are carrying some badly

wounded marines on their shoulders

and using the t*nk as protection.

The tanks were a key element

in the victory.

This was shot in colour, but,

like these pictures from inside a t*nk,

it was released in black and white.

The last Japanese strongholds

were the hills,

honeycombed with caves, from which

they had to be painfully routed out.

The big thing on Saipan

was knocking these guys out.

We had people speaking Japanese

trying to get 'em to give up.

We took an oath that you were willing

to die to save your buddy

and to get shot to save your buddies.

The Japanese took it a little further.

Their oath was to die

rather than give up.

They were told we had to k*ll our own

children to get in the Marine Corps,

all kinds of stories

that these people had been told.

As always, only a handful

of Japanese soldiers surrendered.

Mostly it was civilians who gave up.

But even some of them

were too terrified to do so.

There's a shot on Saipan

where I come across a woman.

There's a cut in the cliff.

She's 50 yards away from me.

She's got a child standing here,

baby in her hand, and she spots me.

She sees the camera,

which is on a gunstock.

She doesn't know it's a camera.

As I raise it up, she kicks this kid

off the cliff, throws the baby off the cliff,

and she takes the dive.

That's all on film.

Only maybe... four seconds.

That's the fear that these people

were embedded with.

This shot of the dead child, one of

the most pathetic images of the w*r,

was not released at the time.

These paratroopers were the first

to breach Hitler's Atlantic wall.

They would land in Normandy in the

pre-dawn darkness of June 6th 1944,

forerunners of history's

greatest amphibious landing.

The bombers were next.

Every D-Day plane carried

broad identifying stripes.

This defence against friendly fire

used up all the white paint in England.

Carl Voelker remembers that morning.

We flew twice.

Went out early in the morning.

It was too dark to do much.

I was photographing the bombs

going down on the beach.

They brought sandwiches out.

We stayed with the plane.

It was re-bombed, refuelled

and we went out.

We went across the Channel

and we saw the boats and the ships

from Torquay, southern England,

all the way across.

It was quite a sight

to see so much equipment

being moved across the Channel.

They were bumper to bumper.

The troops passed the hours

in the usual pastimes of anxious waiting.

But, inescapably,

they were alone with their thoughts.

And with the equipment on which,

luck aside,

and who dared think about that,

their lives would depend.

In that whole armada, only one

creature didn't know what awaited him.

But even he was prepared for the worst.

Still, the choppy Channel

and the fear took their toll.

As it brightened, gliders appeared,

carrying more troops to as*ault

the Germans from behind their lines.

Then the bombers, flying low, returned.

But the second time we went over low,

maybe 5,000 feet.

It was exceptional for us.

We never bombed down that low.

Voelker's b*mb spotting

was also exceptional,

steady and unerring.

In most documentaries of World w*r II,

you'll see a chicken-foot impression

on the screen.

That day I got static electricity

in the camera.

The sparks appear in the gate

and it's on every foot of film.

That was my D-Day.

"It was like a thousand Fourth of Julys

rolled into one," an eyewitness said.

But the bombardment came too soon.

It was too dark for accuracy,

or for Walter Rosenblum's camera.

I couldn't go in on the first wave

'cause it was dark.

No way I could photograph.

The landing craft came back

and loaded up with another crew,

and I went into that crew.

Like you see in the movies,

you climb down a rope ladder.

I went in on one of these landing craft.

The men in these waves would

confront D-Day's grimmest reality:

The sight of their fallen comrades.

We landed on the beach

and the thing that struck me first

is I'd never seen

a dead person in my life,

but I was surrounded by death.

There were Gls in the water,

rolling up and back.

Blood in the water.

It was a very frightening sight.

The Signal Corps cameramen

live with a bitter irony:

Almost the entire surviving

photographic record of D-Day

was shot by coastguard cameramen.

The film exposed by Rosenblum

and the other men on the beaches

would be lost.

By late morning,

the beachhead was established.

At the end of the day, the cameramen

surrendered their hard-won footage.

We turned our footage in

to the beach masters.

A colonel went to each beach master

and picked up the film,

put it all in a duffel bag, put it

on his shoulder and went out to a ship.

Going up the side, he dropped it

over the side and all the film was lost.

There was one exception:

A cameraman named d*ck Taylor.

He made this great shot.

By default, these few seconds constitute

D-Day's most famous footage.

The only American film

you see from D-Day

was our motion-picture guy

that was with 1 st Infantry Division.

He got wounded

and carried his film back with him.

He got about three or four scenes

before he got hit.

Much of Taylor's footage

is of combat's aftermath.

It is of men who have

spent themselves in w*r,

trying to regather their strength.

They dig in, they tend to the wounded.

Mostly, they register

the shock of survival.

Their history has shrunk,

for the moment, to this one terrible day.

They can see nothing but the awful

shore they so recently crossed.

They're forced to contemplate the

deaths they, by some miracle, avoided.

On D Plus One, the supplies rolled in.

So did the foul weather.

Everywhere you looked, boats and

their crews were in peril on the seas.

Walter Rosenblum

was there sh**ting stills.

So was his motion-picture partner,

Val Pope.

There were sinking boats

that I presume had been shelled.

A young army lieutenant

swam out with a life raft

in order to bring back

the people off the boat.

When I started, I said,

"Walter, you're a good swimmer.

"You have two alternatives.

"You could go out with him and help him

or you could photograph."

And at that moment I realised

that my job was to take pictures,

and that's what I had to do.

These stills and the movie footage

helped fill some of the gaps

left by the lost D-Day pictures.

Tragically, Val Pope would be k*lled

in action a few days later.

A well-known picture

was this young lieutenant

who was bending over a GI

giving him first aid.

He looked like the most heroic fellow

I'd ever seen in my life.

I was very happy

to make that photograph.

It epitomised what the w*r was about:

People who came to fight

for what they believed in.

Three weeks after D-Day,

there were almost half a million

American soldiers in France.

Stephen Ambrose calls this

the great achievement

of the American people and system

in the 20th century.

Who would dispute him?

Only the Gls still struggling

to break out of their beachhead

against unforgiving terrain

and a stubborn enemy.

On the beaches,

the barrage balloons arose,

protecting the incoming supplies

against the almost

entirely absent Luftwaffe.

Everywhere, casualties were counted.

They were heavy for airborne troops,

but the planners

were ready for death, too.

It was neatly registered.

The high command

were less well prepared

for a unique and hazardous feature

of Normandy's topography.

All through Normandy,

it was hedgerow country.

They were six foot high

and six foot thick.

Trees growing out of the tops.

They're fortresses.

We could be digging in on one side

and the Germans'd be digging in

on the other side.

There would be little openings

with gates through 'em.

Guys would have to attack

through them or over the top of one.

The hedgerows,

planted in the Middle Ages,

frustrated the w*r of movement,

but not for long.

An ordinance sergeant figured out

that he could weld two big prongs

on the front of a t*nk.

They'd dig into the hedgerow and

the t*nk'd shove its way right through.

After we got that, it made it a lot simpler.

Some 60 years ago,

an anonymous German bureaucrat

poked his finger on a map

and decreed that this French field

would be the site

of these coastal batteries.

They're still there today,

silent yet ominous reminders

of the way in which w*r intrudes itself

on ordinary human life.

And, yet, that life

has an amazing stubbornness.

The g*ns may thunder,

but the fields must still be harvested.

The geese have to cross the road,

even if it's choked with military traffic.

The ordinary scheme

of human life goes on.

Our cameramen recorded that, too.

The young liberators were bored,

restless, coltish, when off duty.

These airmen discovered

these horses in a Norman pasture.

One was an Oklahoma cowboy

who for a moment gracefully recaptured

one of civilian life's lost pleasures.

It was little known that

our pre-invasion bombardment

k*lled a lot of French people

living behind the line.

I was amazed that

the French people I photographed

didn't blame the Americans.

They regarded us as the liberators,

even though our bombs k*lled people.

There was a sweetness

in these welcomes and a certain haste.

After the Normandy breakout,

it finally became a w*r of movement.

For this Free French t*nk battalion,

it was a personal w*r,

as Russ Meyer learned

when he joined them.

Took our jeep right with the French t*nk.

We'd go right between them.

His best wartime buddy, Bill Teas,

was already with the French unit.

He would lend his name to Meyer's

first post-w*r erotic hit,

The lmmoral Mr Teas.

Needless to say, the French tankers

were welcomed with special warmth.

The Americans were included

in that welcome.

They would all say,

"Amricain. Trs bien."

There was danger on these roads.

We go down the street

and the guy says, "Stop!

"Don't go! There's a bunch of Germans

down that road.

"Get the hell out of there."

Forewarned, they engaged

in a brief, violent firefight.

This time, they took prisoners.

I'd love to know the guy today,

'cause if we hadn't been warned,

somebody'd have gotten our tonsils.

But they weren't always so lucky.

In a later engagement,

they took heavy losses.

As was often the case in t*nk battles,

the wounds were ghastly

and hard to accept.

As tankers struggled

to free a trapped comrade,

others rethought the battle

and re-fought it.

There was a desire

to protect the home front.

If these had been Americans, these

pictures might not have been taken.

You didn't wanna get Gls, though.

Or I would get something where at least

the American wouldn't be

readily recognised.

I was concerned about their family,

that they'd see them in the newsreels.

But Paris was nearly at hand,

less than three months after D-Day.

As the liberators approached, the

underground rose against the Germans.

German tanks were opposed by

the Resistance carrying only small arms.

Amazingly, they forced an uneasy truce.

It is possible they prevented

the destruction of the city.

The honour of entering Paris first

was given to Free French forces,

but as their leaders

showed themselves, g*nf*re erupted.

De Gaulle and other officers were there.

I'm sure Leclerc had to be there.

The city had not been fully cleared

of German troops.

They all came marching

down the Champs lyse

as part of this parade.

There were sn*pers, and there were

sh*ts fired and everybody ducked.

The street fighting was actually

intense and deadly.

People were pinned to the ground,

unable to move.

The terror was palpable.

Reprisals against French collaborators

were swift and harsh.

That was not the end

of French vengeance.

We were advised of activity

regarding collaborationists.

They were taking, in this case,

women collaborationists

and shaving their heads.

These are, I guess, women who had

socially gone out or played around

with some of the German soldiers.

The idea, as I understood it,

was that for months afterwards

everybody would know

who the collaborationists were.

Mostly, they said nothing.

Some smiled

and some just stared straight ahead

and, I guess, tried to make the best

of what they were faced with.

The Allies intended to bypass Paris,

but it was unavoidably in their path.

Most soldiers did not stop.

For them, Paris was just a quickly

glimpsed place on the road to victory.

In a smaller French city,

Fred Bornet found the joy of liberation

more freely expressed

and more directable.

The people were out in the street

and they were just absolutely ecstatic,

hysterical with delight.

They hung bunting

and they'd lift glasses of wine.

What is so great

is that you don't have a script.

You seize those wonderful moments.

And there were lots of girls,

flowers in their hair.

They were waving and greeting.

But they were not doing it...

with enough enthusiasm.

I thought, "This is such a great moment.

"It should be like the big parade."

So I said to the girl, "Look,

"when that stream

of soldiers is walking by,

"run against that stream and kiss them."

And I cried. That was a release.

And then they offered me

soup and fried eggs,

and they were waving flags.

You have a feeling

that you're doing something

that is worthwhile.

In the fall of 1944,

American eyes were fixed on Europe,

where headquarters spoke,

overconfidently as it turned out,

of the w*r's end being in sight,

almost within reach.

No such claims

were made for the Pacific.

Combat there was as brutal as ever.

Many of its fighting men

felt isolated and ignored.

Navy cameraman Sam Sorenson.

The marines I worked with were happy

to have pictures taken of them.

In the Pacific they were so lonely.

You never saw a woman.

One of the reasons I was happy

to work with the marines

was because we got better pictures

of combat action.

Peleliu, September 1944.

The fury of the naval and air

bombardment was unprecedented.

For three days, we shelled that thing.

When we approached those islands,

it looked like nice, green, rolling hills.

When we got through, it looked like

rugged, jagged mountains.

There were little coral mountains

sticking up all over.

I couldn't believe

anything could live on there.

But the bombing was ineffective.

The enemy remained safe

in their bunkers.

So when the marines started in,

it was not only

that they got hung up on that reef,

they were caught in Japanese crossfire.

A lot of 'em had to unload there

and go on in with

amphibious tractors and g*ns.

And then when they hit the beach,

they got right on this point, they call it.

Ironically, Peleliu was unnecessary.

MacArthur thought he needed it

to shield his invasion.

Historians now agree that he did not.

The marines took 50% casualties.

They holed up in caves.

They never made charges.

And they had little spider holes

where one sn*per would stand.

They finally would close 'em up.

They'd blow 'em up

and close the entrance.

Then the Japanese

would come out of another hole.

It took two months to get 'em out.

They took maybe 100 prisoners

out of this.

In the end, we had lost

something like 1900 marines

and we had to k*ll

nearly 13,000 Japanese.

Meantime, the w*r in the

China-Burma-lndia theatre continued.

Dave Quaid soldiered on.

There was a Thanksgiving air drop.

President Roosevelt said, "No matter

where your son or daughter is,

"he's gonna get a turkey dinner."

I said, "That's hogwash.

I'm gonna photograph this drop

"and I'm gonna prove

that it never happened."

Aerial resupply had been taken over

by a new unit fresh from Europe.

Their adjustment to the CBI was poor.

Coming in too fast and low,

drops were often inaccurate

and destroyed their cargo.

The plane now was directly over

the trail we were on.

So I yelled to these guys

to get off the trail.

The skinny, emaciated guy there

with the camera is me.

They scored a direct,

if accidental, hit on Quaid.

The medics assisted me,

as did my buddy Bill.

He is still moved by Bill Brown's

willingness to risk his life for him.

Here was this chute coming down

on me, right on my face.

I said, "Bill, look at that!"

And Bill got up, stepped across me,

said, "I'll get it."

So, there was a puff of wind

and it blew just past my head,

and Bill didn't have to sacrifice himself.

Dave Quaid's w*r was finished.

He spent the rest of it in hospitals,

having operations on his shattered leg.

Here I am leaving the w*r,

taken out by a bag of mule feed.

In northern France, the fighting

slowed as the snows came.

The weather masked

a huge German build-up,

24 divisions, near the Ardennes forest.

The Ardennes were cool in the sense

that it was critically cold.

It was very difficult to find

somewhere that you could hide.

The Ardennes did not have big trees.

You had to be very careful

and get down at the base of a tree trunk

and dig as deeply as you could

to protect yourself,

from the standpoint

of getting injured or... finished.

In December, the Americans on this line

were often isolated in small units.

Communications between them

were poor.

They were not expecting the battle

that began on December 16th.

Many Gls fought tenaciously,

though they were often

surrounded by the enemy.

The Bulge, Hitler's

last gamble of the w*r,

eventually extended 50 miles eastward,

but it did not burst.

It's hard to see from these pictures, but

this engagement involved more soldiers,

600,000 of them,

than any battle in US history.

20,000 Americans died in the Ardennes.

Another 20,000 were wounded.

Among them was a cameraman

named Jim Bates,

who had been in the w*r since D-Day.

At the Bulge, he did

what a lot of Gls did.

He hitched a ride on a t*nk.

Their motors provided warmth.

I asked one t*nk

if I could ride on the back.

The lid flew open.

"Can you fire a machine g*n?"

I said, "I had my basics

with 11th Armoured Division."

They picked me up and put me

in the gunner's position.

Bates didn't know he was heading

into battle with German Tiger tanks.

He grabbed sh*ts

of a German ambulance

aiding one of their wounded t*nk crews.

The number one t*nk had passed

an open area and was firing uphill.

About that time

I could hear this "kerthunk".

The commander says,

"They're sh**ting at us."

About that time,

that second boom came along.

It felt like a train hit me in the back.

I didn't know if I was dead,

and he screamed,

"If you're not hit, get up,

because he's gonna run over you."

I looked back and my camera

was under the t*nk treads.

That's what made me move.

On the radio they said, "Get up here.

"There's hardly enough photographers

left for the rest of the w*r."

I said, "I'll ride on the hood.

It'll be a warm place to be for a bit."

Ignoring his wounds, Bates kept

sh**ting as the t*nk rumbled to the rear.

Arosi saw me, the buddy

I'd normally work with.

He said, "The hospital's next door."

I said, "Not yet. I'm gonna dictate to you

what, where, why and when."

He says, "You won't quit, will you?"

I said, "No way."

The situation remained fluid for days,

especially for Doug Wood.

Ailing with flu, he took refuge

in a command post.

He sent his driver and stills man

for more film, then fell asleep.

He did not hear to order to evacuate

the CP when it came under fire.

My still guy at that time

was a new guy, a replacement.

He told the driver,

whose name was lvan Babcock,

"There's some guys in funny hats

and I think they're sh**ting at us."

The driver told me, "I could see

their tracers going past my nose."

But he wouldn't stop.

The other guys had stopped there

and they'd captured 'em.

He just drove right on through

and let 'em keep sh**ting at him.

What Babcock drove through

was the Malmedy m*ssacre.

It was the w*r's worst atrocity

visited on American soldiers.

Somewhere between 71 and 129 Gls,

the number remains in dispute,

were rounded up and shot by SS troops.

They had infiltrated our lines, some

of them wearing American uniforms.

In this last-gasp German effort,

many of their troops were teenagers.

The Germans escaped serious

punishment at the w*r-crimes trials.

The weather lifted in late December

and air operations resumed.

I was fortunate enough, or unfortunate,

however you wanna look at it,

to lead the greatest air-combat battle

of World w*r II.

Eight of us had climbed up

over the field.

We were joining up

when 900 German fighters

made an attack on the front

on January 1 st 1945.

The squadron leader - there'd normally

be 12 aeroplanes, we only had 8 -

he couldn't see him.

He said, "You take over the flight."

I dropped five of 'em right on the field.

The pilots, armed with g*n cameras,

were also combat cameramen.

Hitler had decided that he would deploy

all the fighters he had

to knock out the fighter fields

to support the Battle of the Bulge.

They planned it for early December,

which would have been effective,

weather wasn't good.

They put it off and said,

"January 1 st, these guys'll all be in bed."

It was all over the front,

not just at our field.

It was at the British field,

at all the northern airfields.

I later got a hold

of Hermann Goering's interviews.

In those interviews,

Goering said the largest loss

that the German Luftwaffe ever had

was the loss on January 1 st.

Mel Paisley, also this film's

chief researcher,

was decorated with

the Distinguished Service Cross.

During the w*r,

he shot down nine planes.

The Battle of the Bulge

ended January 7th 1945.

Germany was now largely open

to the Allies.

Italy, 1945. Dictator Benito Mussolini

was deposed and exiled,

the government surrendered,

and the populace turned viciously

on their former allies.

I went over to the CP and I was told

they had captured Mussolini.

General Crittenberger

was to take his surrender.

I went down to the CP

the following morning.

Here's a limousine

with three German officers in it.

They'd run into a roadblock

and been captured.

Critt said, "I'm gonna get

this bird's surrender."

I said, "What about Mussolini?"

He said, "Mussolini will have to wait."

And he said, "General,

we're both professionals.

"You can't get out.

The passes are closed.

"The smart thing to do

is surrender the Ligurian Army,

"which is the last intact enemy army."

Went back to see Critt

and he was sitting on a rail, dreaming.

He said, "Montagne,

every cadet at West Point

"dreams of the day when

an enemy army surrenders to him.

"Today it happened to me."

Crittenberger's decision doomed

Mussolini and other Fascists

to death at the hands

of partisan guerrillas.

Their bodies were displayed in Milan.

It had been going on

for some time when we got there.

We photographed what we could:

Crowds, Mussolini hanging upside down,

Petacci alongside him.

I remember her skirt

had fallen over her face.

A woman pinned her skirt between

her legs so she wasn't exposed.

They cut him down, his head hit,

and picked him up.

The partisans were running it.

We had nothing to do with it.

They took 'em to the morgue.

There were bodies you had to walk on

to get to where Mussolini was.

I asked the morgue attendant,

"Can you get him in the light?"

He said, "If I move him,

his head will fall apart."

So we got Petacci,

put her head on his shoulder.

It became quite a famous shot.

Meantime, n*zi Germany

was in its death throes,

but it desperately fought on.

Everything that could happen to me,

photographically speaking,

did happen that day.

The place was Cologne.

The date was March 6th 1945.

The street fighting was intense.

It was often impossible

to tell soldiers from civilians.

Sometimes, victims caught

in the crossfire were innocent.

By this time we had a new T-26.

The T-26 was so far ahead of

the old Shermans, it was unbelievable.

This German t*nk was

in front of Cologne cathedral.

It had knocked out some of our tanks,

causing havoc.

They had control over that whole area.

Bates followed the t*nk,

and, scrambling for position,

got this great footage

of armoured combat.

I heard our T-26 coming up.

The first shot went in and cut the legs

off the t*nk commander in the Tiger.

You can see the armour-piercing shell

going through the bottom of the picture.

Immediately, the driver

and the gunner climbed out,

but the second shot,

shrapnel had gotten them, too.

The concussion from that 90mm g*n

was so tremendous

that it would blow me off my picture

and I'd have to get back on it.

I couldn't use a tripod.

I had to hand-hold it.

The t*nk commander

that had his legs cut off

just laid on his t*nk

and burned up in front of the camera.

That thing was burning

even the next morning.

There was still smoke coming out of it

because of all the amm*nit*on in it.

Two months and one day later,

the w*r in Europe was over.

Its crusaders,

as General Eisenhower called them,

rest in cemeteries all over Europe.

If anything, their deeds are more

revered now than at the time.

Some of their immortality derives

from the photographic record.

The combat cameramen recorded

the last days, hours, moments,

even the last breath,

of many of those who lie here.

It isn't something

they talk about very much.

It was, as they say,

just a part of their job.

But it was a more important job

than they knew.

For the film they made is now

beginning to outlive memory.

Eventually, it will be the only

recollection, made on the spot,

of how our citizen soldiers

lived, fought and died.

The cameramen in Europe

had one more duty to history.

It was unquestionably

their most important:

Recording the horrors

of the death camps.

At Dachau, Walter Rosenblum

was too shocked to sh**t.

These pictures were made by others.

There were a group of boxcars.

I climbed up to see what was inside.

The boxcar was full of dead people.

There were 30, 40 boxcars

along that road.

When I looked in, I was so shocked.

Could you imagine, not having seen

anything like that before,

to see a boxcar full of dead,

emaciated people?

At that moment,

I forgot I was a photographer.

I was just overcome by it all.

I was on an assignment with Ellis Carter.

We went into Germany to cover

b*mb damage by the Allied airpower.

On April 11th, the 3rd US Army

liberated Buchenwald.

When we heard of this,

we immediately drove over there.

What the cameramen found

was beyond their imagining,

but the inhumanity they recorded

is literally undeniable.

As a solider, I had no knowledge

of these camps.

I had not heard anything about it.

It was horrible. There were bodies

stacked up like cordwood.

We judged them to be

about 60 to 80 pounds in weight.

People were actually dying day by day,

even after the camp was liberated.

Many of the prisoners

could not speak English,

but they raised their hands and showed

their gratitude for us freeing them.

This camp had about 20,000 survivors

at the time of liberation

and about 8,000 of 'em were children.

There was a section

where they displayed tattooed skins,

which were made

into lampshades and book covers.

The German commandant's wife

would select tattooed men

to be doomed to die

and then use their skin.

After a few days, the German civilians

of the town next to Buchenwald,

called Weimar, were paraded through

on a tour of the camp

to show the atrocities and to show them

what the Germans had done.

Many of them wouldn't even look

at the t*rture or the bodies.

Some of them were crying and some

had their mouth and nose covered,

especially the women.

So, in the filming that we did,

it's evident they just kept going through

because they had to.

They weren't too interested

in looking at the atrocities.

There was a lot of people

that didn't believe it happened.

Here we had it on film.

In all the time I was over there,

this experience stood out in my mind.

It took a while to get over it.

It was something

that you wouldn't wanna see,

you wouldn't wanna go through again.

The horrors of the camp had

a more immediate effect on Art Mainzer.

After what he had seen,

he yearned for normalcy.

I met her in Paris, the day before

the Battle of the Bulge started.

Believe it or not, we were walking down

the boulevard, it starts snowing,

and my buddy and I saw these two

lovely ladies under an umbrella.

So we sneaked in under the umbrella

and introduced ourselves.

I made the decision after I covered

the Buchenwald assignment.

I said, "If I ever get back to France alive,

I'm gonna ask Germaine to marry me."

Being a camera unit,

we had three 16mm cameras

and a couple of Speed Graphics

for the still photos.

We had some cases of champagne that

the Germans looted from the French,

so we got it back to France.

A lot of French people showed up.

In this suburb of Paris, they had not had

a formal wedding during the occupation.

It was quite an event for them.

It was a June wedding,

the month after VE day.

The pictures were his unit's gift to them.

The Mainzers lived together

in the United States

until Germaine passed away in 1998,

after almost 53 years of marriage.

Iwo Jima, February 1945.

As the Americans came closer to Japan,

fighting in the Pacific

grew still more bitter.

The bombardment crumbled one side

of lwo's key bastion, Mount Suribachi,

but it took five bloody days

to reach its summit.

When the marines set out

to place a flag on Suribachi,

they still encountered resistance,

but they persevered

and the flag was raised.

It lacked properly heroic proportions.

Something would have to be done.

It was too small to be seen.

The commanding general figured

we gotta get a bigger flag.

They got some of the LSTs

that were there.

One LST commander said, We've

got a big flag but we've never flown it."

My boss said to me, "Make sure

you send photographers up.

"This will be the official flag raising."

I got in touch with Genaust

and Bob Campbell.

Bill Genaust and Bob hooked up

with Rosenthal going up the hill.

That was Joe Rosenthal

of the Associated Press,

a civilian photographer who had taken

these pictures of the landing.

These are the sh*ts

Genaust took on that climb.

A few days later he was k*lled in action.

He would not live

to see the images he made.

People would always contest whether

this was the first or the other one.

Bob Campbell didn't like the position

the other two cameramen were in.

So he moved and got a picture

of the first flag coming down

and the second one

going up at the same time.

Rosenthal, however, got the immortal

shot, and a lifetime's controversy,

for he shipped all his pictures back

unseen and undeveloped.

Joe gets on a boat about four days later

and goes to Guam.

He's bombarded by the press

saying, "What was this picture?"

They wanna know

what he thought about it.

He says, "Maybe

it's that picture I posed

"with all the men under the flagpole

raising their r*fles."

That word "posed" got

into the lexicon of the problem.

It's hung in there for years and years.

We have fought for 50 years

to try to straighten it out.

I thought at the end of the 50th

anniversary, we got it resolved,

but I think it'll probably go on

for another 50.

The comparison with

the movie footage is definitive.

Rosenthal took the same shot Genaust

did from virtually the same position.

This controversy masks the real story

of lwo Jima, its cost.

Almost 7,000 marines died here,

along with 21,000 Japanese.

The marines won 27 medals of honour,

more than in any other engagement.

Manila, spring of 1945.

It was now "w*r without mercy",

as one historian called it.

The fires the Japanese set

destroyed 70% of the city.

They k*lled 100,000 civilians

in an orgy of destruction.

This vengeance on the innocent

was recorded by Don Honeyman.

Next day, the infantry

was moving into the city.

We got some very good street fighting.

Honeyman then joined forces

surrounding the presidential palace.

We were going to the gardens, which

included the other side of the river.

We had the north bank of the river

and they had the south bank,

so we made a crossing of the river

in as*ault boats.

One wave of boats went over.

They didn't have any trouble.

I figured it was safe

to go on the second run.

We got out in the middle

and the Japanese began to sh**t at us

from the side of the river we thought

was ours, which was hardly fair.

Armoured amphibious vehicles

brought the troops safely to shore.

Came across a BAR man

who happened to be down on his elbows,

next to a sign saying,

"Please do not pick the flowers."

In the city, fighting remained intense.

A Japanese strong point

was the legislative palace.

Eight-inch howitzers lined up

side by side, practically,

firing point-blank...

...simply taking down the building

stone by stone, practically.

Despite the firepower levelled at them,

the Japanese hung on in the palace.

Infantry would have to rout them out.

Next day I went to cover

the transfer of civil government

from MacArthur to the Filipinos.

He said very proudly

how Manila was now secure.

I said, "Except the legislative building."

Okinawa, Easter Sunday.

The idea was to stage the invasion

from this large island.

Rather innocently, Lloyd Durant decided

to sh**t a film on combat cameramen.

What better subject to put on film than

the story of the combat cameraman,

who was practically

unknown at the time?

We knew our next operation

was in the Pacific.

I said, "Let me go out there

"and let me find the cameramen

we have out there,

"and presumably

they will be in on the action.

"I wanna be there photographing them

photographing the action."

So we hit the beach at Okinawa.

There I was working with these guys,

creeping in foxholes,

squirming along the beach,

and trying to keep the sand

out of the camera and my mouth.

They're trying to do the same thing.

Also, there were

a few b*ll*ts flying around.

The battle would continue

for three months.

Among the casualties,

the worst of the w*r, was a cameraman.

He was a navy cameraman.

Somehow or another

he was hit and blinded.

They had bandaged,

in the field, his eyes.

Some of it was still hanging down.

He could not see.

They brought him up

on the side of the ship.

He got to the top

and he's reaching for help.

He can't see a thing. His buddies

reached up and took him down.

Our commentary is,

"For this cameraman,

the picture was over."

And that's exactly what it was.

He never saw again.

Later that day, the kamikazes came in.

These were guys who were dedicated

to giving their lives for their country.

They crashed into us.

Our anti-aircraft g*ns

were working at them full time.

Our other problem was

our own flak coming down

did as much damage to many of us

as did the kamikazes.

It could go right through your helmet

if it hit you directly.

Bull Halsey said, "The kamikazes were

the only w*apon I feared in the w*r."

In over 1300 of these su1c1de att*cks,

they sank 26 ships and damaged 300.

This is some of the most

astonishing footage of the w*r.

There were many near misses,

but most of the navy casualties

at Okinawa are attributed to kamikazes.

They damaged some carriers

but sunk none, yet they persisted.

The last attack was mounted

after the surrender.

These B-24s are over

Balikpapan in Borneo.

The Ploieti of the Pacific,

the huge oil refinery was bombed

for 30 days in the summer of 1945.

They were softening it up for the last

amphibious landing of World w*r II.

The American coastguard

took Australian troops ashore.

Jerry Anker was there with

his buddy Jim, also a cameraman.

He wanted a picture of himself in action.

Anker obliged with a snap that

became famous in the photo histories.

When the landing craft

hit the beach at Balikpapan,

I said, "That idiot!" and I pulled up

my 4 x 5 and shot the picture.

I only took one picture

and it turned out to be a prize winner.

Here, in the w*r's waning days,

Anker was presented with

another more terrible photo opportunity.

I had been following this Australian

infantryman with a flame-thrower

for probably a half-hour.

It just so happened that when he shot

this flame-thrower into this cave,

this Japanese soldier

came running out in flames,

and I was able to photograph

the entire sequence.

To this day, I can still smell

the stench of that burning body.

That one unknown soldier dying in

agony, symbolises the waste of w*r.

Multiply his fate 100,000 times

and you begin to comprehend

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But not entirely, for as many people

died later of radiation poisoning

as died in the initial blasts.

We are told these lives were traded

for those that would have been lost

in an invasion of Japan.

All we know for sure is the atomic bombs

brought the w*r to an abrupt end

and finally stopped

all the k*lling at over 40 million.

At Nagasaki,

as at the concentration camps,

the combat photographers

had one last service to render.

Dan McGovern speaks for all those

who entered this charnel house.

My effort was to show the world

what the atomic b*mb

had done to a nation,

what it had done to human beings.

At the school in Nagasaki,

it sucked out hundreds of kids

through the windows.

I remember one particular scene

that I shot.

I couldn't figure out what was wrong

with this particular person.

He reminded me of a monk,

or Christ with his staff.

He was standing up on a rise

looking over the hill of Nagasaki

from the valley.

He was a radiologist

from the Nagasaki teaching hospital,

which is just down below the hill.

He told me then

that he had lost his wife,

that he was suffering

from radiation sickness.

Two days later he was gone.

Where people were sitting,

permanent shadows were burned.

It was the same way with things.

You can paint over the shadows,

but you cannot erase them.

That was my effort to it,

because we showed

the burned bodies of children.

People would cry out,

"Let's not do this again."

Yet we do. These pictures have been

duplicated in every w*r

for over a half-century.

The children reach out

in their abandonment,

their incomprehensible loneliness.

The soldiers offer

what comfort they can.

These men and these children

share the terrible bond of w*r.

But the soldiers will soon move on.

They will not know the fates of orphans

with whom they shared their humanity.

These pictures ought to assure

centuries of peace.

They do not.

But it may be

that after the sh**ting stops,

the combat cameramen

achieve their finest hour.