We have witnessed this
morning the distant view
of the Seattle Hospital Harbor and a severe
bombing of the hospital
harbor by enemy planes,
undoubtedly Japanese.
I was up in the compartment
reading a comic book.
That's when I realized
we were under attack.
Buddy, this is the real McCoy.
It's the g*dd*mn Japs.
The unprovoked and dastardly attack
by Japan, a state of w*r, has existed.
Can you envision a million
pounds of TNT blowing up?
I could see the pilot and the co -pilot
and they were laughing for all they
were worth.
It was horrifying.
5 a.m., Sunday 7th December 1941.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii lay still and quiet.
The mighty warships of
America's Pacific fleet were
anchored in battleship row.
At that time the Navy,
the personnel thought
the battleships were
the greatest thing going.
Nothing could defeat them.
Oklahoma was outboard, the
Tennessee was inboard, the
West Virginia was outboard.
And right behind us was the Arizona and
then right behind the
Arizona was the Nevada.
Were two battleships, then
two battleships, then two
battleships, all sitting
there like sitting ducks.
On air bases, aircraft
were tightly grouped to
guard against potential sabotage from
Japanese sympathizers on the island.
Unbeknownst to those
at Pearl Harbor, 230 miles
to the north, Japanese
forces aboard the carrier
Akagi were preparing for an attack.
As dawn approached, the first wave of 180
aircraft took flight.
The fate of Pearl Harbor was sealed.
At 6.30 a.m., Navy sailors aboard
the anchored warships
at Pearl Harbor began their
routine, waking up to what
seemed like an ordinary Sunday.
Unaware of the catastrophe
about to unfold, these
men went about their
duties, oblivious that in
mere minutes they would face one of the
most devastating and historic
battles in American naval history.
Fifteen minutes later,
signs began to emerge that
this would be no ordinary day.
One of the advanced guard Japanese
submarines had just been spotted.
The USS Ward had been patrolling outside of
the harbor when it saw a
periscope above the water.
The ship attacked the
unidentified submarine and sent
back notification of the
incident to the mainland.
His message, when I broke it down,
said, sunk enemy submarine
one mile south of Pearl Harbor.
Well, our communications officer,
when he looked at that, he was aghast.
He was certain they didn't mean
sunk a submarine, they meant sighted it.
This vital early warning was neglected.
Had the message been
relayed properly, aircraft and
battleships could have been
prepared in advance, and
the U.S. Navy could have diverted the
catastrophe which would soon unfold.
By 7 a.m., the first wave of
Japanese aircraft was approximately
130 miles away from Pearl Harbor.
The commander of the
strike force used music
from an Hawaiian radio
station to home in on the target.
However, by this time,
American forces on the
ground had spotted the Japanese attackers.
One of the men at an Army radar
post noticed some blips on his radar and
alerted military HQ.
This was the Americans'
final chance to avert
disaster, but unfortunately, the
intelligence was not taken seriously.
At 7.20 a.m., an Army lieutenant
disregarded the radar report,
believing that it indicated
a flight of U.S. planes, possibly B
-17 bombers, scheduled to arrive that day.
I told them not to worry about it
because it was a flight of B-17s
coming in from California.
Well, when you're approaching
Oahu from California, you
don't come from the north,
you come from the east.
7.40 a.m., the first wave of Japanese
aircraft reaches the island of Oahu.
The quiet morning was shattered by the roar
of planes, and a rush of fear and
panic spread across the naval base.
Out of the mystic Pacific skies, like tiny
locusts, they swarmed in from the sea.
Without knowing it, a reluctant U.S. would
soon be plunged into World w*r II,
forever altering the course of history.
Until December 1941,
America is adopting this very
kind of tricky policy of staying out of
the w*r, because
domestically, a lot of Americans
don't want to be sucked into a conflict.
They don't think it's got
anything to do with them.
And at the same time,
the American president,
Roosevelt, is keen
to help the Allies fight,
by supplying supplies across the
Atlantic, and also supplying battleships.
So there is a very fine line the
Americans are having to tread.
If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers
will control the continents
of Europe, and Asia,
and Africa, and Australasia,
and the high seas.
And they will be in a position to
bring enormous military and naval
resources against this hemisphere.
Thinking in terms of today and tomorrow, I
make the direct statement
to the American people
that there is far less chance of the
United States getting into w*r, if we do
all we can now to support the nations
defending themselves
against attack by the Axis, than
if we acquiesce in the
defeat of those nations.
That is all going to change in December
1941, when suddenly, out of the middle of
nowhere seemingly, the
Hawaiian port of Pearl Harbour
is suddenly attacked by the Japanese.
At 7.49am, the First
Waves commander ordered
the attack on Pearl Harbour to proceed.
I was in bed with a
beautiful blonde, my wife.
That's what I was doing
on December the 7th.
All of a sudden, I heard a commotion.
By now, my gut had just
turned up to a little ball of lead.
Six minutes later, the coordinated
attack on Pearl Harbour began.
The Japanese dropped bombs,
torpedoes and fired mercilessly
at the Pacific fleet and aircraft bases.
About that time, I began
to hear our g*ns firing.
I mean, they would really fire fast.
They had a lot of g*ns and more
ammunition, they could
have shot in a thousand years.
Dive bombers attacked
American air bases across Oahu,
starting with Hickam Field,
the largest, and Wheeler
Field, the main United States
Army Air Force's fighter base.
The men on the air bases tried desperately
to fight back, but the close grouping of
the planes made them easy
targets for the Japanese bombers.
Over at Pearl Harbour, around 15 miles away
to the west, the Japanese
aircraft had America's
Pacific fleet in their sights.
On the morning of the 7th, that was
my third anniversary in the Navy, and I
was sitting in my bunk, reading the paper
when they sounded general quarters.
The thoughts went through people's heads.
What in the world is going on now?
Why are they doing a
drill on a Sunday morning?
And they said it in a different manner,
you know, they got a little hot-tempered.
When it all started, we kept hearing some
thud noises and explosions, but they
were deep sounding, they got louder.
And I got up, I told my buddy, I
said, let's go out there and see
what's going on.
I said, that sounded big.
And looked up there and saw those planes
screaming around, and
we saw the big red dot.
Well, that's when we
realized it was Japanese.
An emergency message was flashed out.
Air Raid Pearl Harbour,
this is not a drill.
Unprepared for the attack, the
warships had only a minimal power supply.
Ammunition from the stores had
to be brought up manually by crew.
The odds were not in the U.S.'s
favour, and the Japanese
had total domination of the sky.
As I was going up the ladder, a plane
came flying right down the port side
of the ship, and I could see the
pilot and the co-pilot, and they were
laughing for all they were worth.
The Americans believed
that the water was too
shallow for a torpedo
attack, but the Japanese
had created a brand new kind of torpedo,
specifically designed for
the waters of Pearl Harbour,
and it had a devastating effect.
By 8 a.m., the USS
West Virginia had been hit.
The West Virginia was torn apart
by six torpedoes and two bombs.
Chaos and confusion soon ensued.
The attack on Battleship
Row moved at a sudden pace.
Within the first five
minutes of the attack,
four battleships were hit, including the
USS Oklahoma and the USS Arizona.
Minutes later, the Arizona exploded
after a b*mb hit its gunpowder stores.
The ship was sunk, and
it took the lives of 1,177.
It was horrifying, because as the b*mb hit
the starboard side of the Vauxhall
deck, it was just a gigantic expl*si*n.
Can you envision a million
pounds of TNT blowing up?
You had burning oil all over the top
of the water, and you had black smoke,
and then you had fire in the ship.
And so those young kids were trying to
jump into the burning water from the mast.
Some of them made
it, some of them didn't.
By 8, 10 a.m., the
USS Arizona was in bits.
The Japanese had swiftly
pulverized Battleship Row.
The USS Oklahoma, containing 1,000
men, was experiencing a horrifying fate.
The Japanese had fired three
torpedoes, causing the ship to turn over.
Water started to spill
through into the interior.
And I looked around,
and there was a big whale.
I said, what on earth is that?
That's the Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma had capsized,
and we didn't even know it.
And it was right so close I
could have hit it with a ball.
I felt like somebody kicked me in the
stomach with a boot or
something, because that's
the worst I ever felt in the
whole w*r, to see the Oklahoma.
You just don't k*ll a battleship.
They're impregnable.
Tough!
The Oklahoma's hull
had been torn apart, and
the crew desperately tried
to stop the water pouring in.
We took these soles and the blankets and
stuffed them in the vent system to
try to stop the water from coming in.
Well, we'd plug it up in one place
in the vent, then it'd start coming in
somewhere else.
More than 30 soldiers
were trapped inside the
battleship, fighting for their lives.
Meanwhile, Kanyohi Naval
Air Station was also in flames.
But the sailors stationed
there attempted to fight
back against the Japanese bombardment.
I was angry, so damn mad, that I
didn't have a sense enough to be afraid.
Of course, during this time, I was being
wounded, because the Japs, they
ain't joking, they were there to k*ll us.
The first wave of attacks was ending.
However, one Japanese pilot
made a final daring run on the base.
I saw a speck way up there.
Boy, he was coming like hell.
Then he came boiling out of that smoke.
I didn't have to move that g*n, I
just swung it around and I let him
have it.
The air station lay in
complete devastation.
Charred wreckage of airplanes
and shattered propellers were
strewn across the landscape,
mingled with lifeless bodies.
The American troops felt
a crushing sense of defeat.
I know some of them cried.
Some of them were angry.
Some of them just couldn't understand.
None of us really understood
why we were hit at that time.
The surprise attack
had taken a massive toll.
At 8.54am, the second wave of 170
aircraft began their attack.
They were separated into
three groups, focusing in
on mostly the same targets.
But with the base now on high
alert, their plan was less successful.
At the airbase and the ships, the
Japanese faced a barrage of fire.
Resistance was better coordinated.
The sky was very full of
planes, plus exploding shells.
At times, it was just
like a flock of birds.
Having devastated battleship
Roe over the last hour,
Japanese pilots set their sights on
the warships moored in the dockyards.
There were three airplanes
coming down, and dive bombers.
And these three planes
dropped their bombs, and
I saw them coming, and I started screaming
and screaming, and I said, they're going to
get us, they're going
to get us this time.
The USS Cassin and USS
Downs, both destroyers,
were heavily damaged
during the second attack.
Stationed in dry dock
number one, alongside the
battleship USS Pennsylvania,
they were hit by bombs
and engulfed in fires
from ruptured fuel tanks.
At 9.30am, the Japanese also set their
sights on the USS Shore,
dropping several bombs on the ship.
The spectacular expl*si*n of
her forward magazine provided
one of the most iconic
photographs of the attack.
While the shore burned,
another warship, the Nevada,
made a break for open water.
As we moved down the channel, the second
wave of planes came over, and we
were hit by five to seven bombs, and many,
many near misses.
The explosions, we could feel them, and we
just were holding our breath,
hoping that all went well up there.
Bombs hit the forward
and mid-section of the ship.
If the crippled Nevada sank, it would
block the escape route to the sea.
The rest of the ships in Pearl
Harbor would be like sitting ducks.
The Nevada eventually beached
on Hospital Point, escaping
the inferno and keeping
the vital channel clear.
At 10am on the 7th of December, 1941,
the Japanese strike force
decided to withdraw, leaving
behind a devastated Pearl Harbor.
Concerned about potential
American counterattacks and the risk
of exposing their fleet to
greater danger, Admiral
Nagumo ordered the retreat.
Although the attack was
highly successful, key targets
like oil storage facilities and
shipyards remained intact,
which later proved crucial to the U.S.
recovery.
Within two hours, 21
American warships had been
sunk or damaged, 188
aircraft destroyed, and 2
,403 U.S. servicemen and women k*lled.
Many of the ships were
repaired and fought in later battles.
And crucially, from the point of view of
the United States, all three of the Pacific
Fleet's aircraft carriers
were not at Pearl Harbor
at the time, and so they escaped damage.
And this was to prove vital during
the later stages of the Pacific w*r.
The reason why it was so symbolic and
so successful was that
America had never been
attacked like that on their home
shores, especially in the modern era.
And it was proof that the Japanese were
this highly mechanized force,
utterly ruthless, who would
commit an act like this, I mean, you
could almost call it
terror, of absolute audacity
and absolute violence,
which had both a very
strong military and
naval purpose, but also, of
course, it basically saw
the Americans who had
spent the last couple
of years being relatively
complacent about the w*r, about a lot of
people thinking, this
doesn't bother us, this isn't
something that's going to
impinge on our backyard,
to realizing that the w*r was at
hand whether they liked it or not.
During the attack on
Pearl Harbor, 68 civilians
tragically lost their
lives, with the bulk of
the casualties being military personnel.
A total of 2,335 service members were
k*lled, bringing the
overall death toll to 2
,403.
Many civilian deaths
were caused by stray anti
-aircraft shells that fell
on Honolulu as defenders
desperately fired at the
incoming Japanese planes.
Millions of Americans
awoke on the morning of
the 7th of December,
1941, to the horrifying
news of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.
The devastating aftermath of the damage
sent shockwaves across the country.
Hello NBC, hello NBC, this
is KGU in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I am speaking from the roof of the
Advertiser Publishing Company building.
We have witnessed this
morning, the distant view,
of a brief full battle of Pearl Harbor,
and the severe bombing
of Pearl Harbor by enemy
planes, undoubtedly Japanese.
The city of Honolulu
has also been attacked,
and considerable damage done.
This battle has been going
on for nearly three hours.
It is no joke, it is a real w*r.
The scale of the tragedy began to
unravel, and President Franklin D.
Roosevelt took swift and decisive action.
On 8th December, 1941, the very next day,
he addressed a joint session
of Congress, delivering
his famous Day of Infamy speech, a show
of strength which would
go down in American history.
Yesterday,
December 7th,
1941,
a date which
will live in infamy.
The United States of
America was suddenly and
deliberately attacked by naval and
air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was
at peace with that nation,
and at the solicitation of Japan, was
still in conversation with
its government and its
emperor, looking toward the
maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
The facts of yesterday and today
speak for themselves, with confidence
in our armed forces,
with the unbounding
determination of our people.
I ask that the Congress declare that since
the unprovoked and
dastardly attack by Japan on
Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of w*r
has existed between the United
States and the Japanese Empire.
Pearl Harbor at Hickam Field in the b*mb
-popped streets of Honolulu
ever is written history,
history with a tragic,
treacherous pen, history that
130 million Americans
will never forget, and in
days to come, the Japs, too,
will remember Pearl Harbor.
Here is a tragic, unforgettable
page in the annals of America.
Here, the cunning deceit of
the Japs will never be forgotten.
Here, they hoped to score a
knockout before the w*r began.
The Arizona's g*n crews battered
and broke and fired to the last.
Their g*ns pointed skyward
from whence the enemy appeared.
Pearl Harbor was the
worst defeat the United
States had ever had, and that dug
right deep into every one of them.
This cannot happen.
Why did it happen?
And they all responded
in such a strong way.
I guess I really did know that we
would win, because when you attack a bunch
of Marines and sailors, you're in trouble.
We may lose the battle, but
we're going to win the w*r.
The attack on Pearl
Harbor had shattered the
peace, igniting a fiery
resolve across the nation.
As smoke still billowed
over the wreckage, the
U.S. transformed overnight, gearing
up for w*r on an unprecedented scale.
Factories roared to life,
soldiers rallied, and the
country united under a
singular purpose, to strike
back with relentless force.
We are going to win this w*r, and
we are going to win the peace that
follows.
I repeat that the United States can accept
no result, save victory,
final and complete.
Franklin D.
Roosevelt led the United States into w*r in
the Pacific, with strong backing
from both the Soviet Union and Britain.
We cannot tell what the
course of this stell w*r will be.
And it spreads remorseless
to ever wider regions.
Though the Soviet Union
was primarily focused on
the European front against
n*zi Germany, Stalin supported
U.S. efforts against Japan, particularly
after the U.S. joined the Allies.
Winston Churchill and Britain,
already deeply involved in
the w*r, were key partners.
With both nations coordinating
strategies for a two-front w*r,
in response to the surprise
attack, FDR swiftly mobilized
the military, air force, and navy, with the
first waves of American
forces being deployed to
key Pacific locations, such
as Hawaii, the Philippines,
and other islands soon after.
The Japanese military fortified
its positions across island
strongholds by reinforcing defenses
and stockpiling resources, fully
aware of the impending clash with the U.S.
Elsewhere, in the West, most
of Europe was under Axis control.
Adolf Hitler had launched a
massive invasion of the Soviet Union,
but the spread of his forces did not deter
him from also declaring w*r on the
United States on 11 December 1941.
It's one of Hitler's most
perplexing decisions as
to why he decided to declare
w*r on the United States.
Actually, his reason
for doing it is because
he thinks, finally, this
is an opportunity to
show that he really wants to rid the
world of what he sees as being the
evils of international finance
and Jewish control of economies.
Of course, he's dead wrong about that.
He's also in a pact with Japan, so
he feels that Japan's a natural ally.
And so this is why, you
know, w*r breaks out.
It's Hitler saber-rattling.
He doesn't know what
it's going to lead to.
With Hitler's declaration,
the U.S. found itself
engaged in a two-front w*r.
The attack on Pearl
Harbor had thrust millions
of American citizens directly
into the heart of the conflict.
It's one thing just to say we're declaring
w*r, but also,
logistically, this is a really
tricky ask for the Americans, if you like.
They've got to fight a w*r in Europe,
and they've also got to fight a w*r
around the other side of
the planet, all over the Pacific.
This is going to require all of America's
industrial might and know-how if they can
fight a w*r both in
Europe and the Pacific.
Never in the history or the memory
of man has there been a w*r in which
the courage, the
endurance, and the loyalty of
civilians played so vital a part.
Many thousands of
civilians all over the world
have been and are being k*lled
or maimed by enemy action.
Our soldiers and sailors
and Marines are fighting
with great bravery and great skill on far
distant fronts to make sure
that we shall remain safe.
As we here at home contemplate our own
duties, our own
responsibilities, let us think and
think hard of the example which is being
set for us by our own fighting men.
The Pacific w*r turned out to be a
brutal and drawn-out
conflict marked by relentless
battles across land, sea, and air.
Spanning thousands of
miles of treacherous terrain, it
saw ferocious island-hopping
campaigns, massive naval engagements,
and devastating air
assaults as both sides fought
fiercely for dominance in the Pacific.
Seven hours on one
engine, extra belly tanks,
extra nerve and stamina in the c*ck.
When Japan and the
United States are fighting
this w*r in the Pacific, what they're doing
is fighting for island strongholds.
You've got to think of the w*r
as like a kind of to-and-fro-ing
of trying to grab stepping
stones on a big pond, if you like.
And so the more stepping
stones you control,
the more of the ponds you control.
And so you have huge battles on islands
like Iwo Jima, Peleniu,
which are very bloody,
very attritional fights in
which the Japanese are
often dug in and
fight to the last man.
And it costs an enormous amount of lives.
So it's a very bloody, very
vicious, very drawn-out combat.
And of course, as well as these battles
on these small islands, you also have these
huge naval engagements
as well, like the Battle
of Midway, which again are
very costly in men and material.
The Battle of Midway in June 1942 proved
to be a decisive
naval battle for the US.
Within the first five
minutes, the American Air
Force had hit three
Japanese aircraft carriers, with
a fourth being destroyed
by the end of the battle.
Midway marked the
beginning of a more aggressive
American military presence in the region.
Japan employed violent and
desperate tactics during the
Pacific w*r, including the
infamous Kamikaze suicide attacks,
where pilots deliberately
crashed their planes into Allied
ships in a final deadly bid
to halt the advancing forces.
By 1944, the Japanese
were using Kamikaze pilots
regularly in an attempt
to turn the tide of the w*r.
These suicide missions, launched
primarily against Allied naval
vessels, caused significant
damage and sank or damaged
hundreds of ships,
k*lling thousands of sailors.
While terrifying and disruptive,
many Kamikaze attacks were
intercepted by Allied
anti-aircraft defences, and the
loss of skilled pilots and
planes strained Japan's
already dwindling resources.
In late 1944, the bloodiest battle of the
Pacific campaign took
place on the island of Peleliu.
The US 1st Marine Division landed
on the island expecting a swift victory.
However, the Japanese had
changed their defensive strategy.
Instead of defending
the beaches, they dug into
the island's rocky ridges
and caves, creating a
complex network of fortified positions.
The temperature was around 115 degrees.
Now 115 degrees with
high humidity is insufferable
to even sit and rest, but to be
running around out
there in the scorching sun
carrying your load of
ammunition and your weapon,
trying to help carry a wounded
out, was just absolutely exhausting.
You could see Bloody Nose Ridge on the
other side, that's where we were going.
Places as many as 200 feet high, the Japs
had complete clear
vision of everything we did.
The Marines faced heavy
resistance right from the
start, with intense
machine g*n and a*tillery fire
from hidden Japanese positions.
They had heavy a*tillery up there.
The concussion from
the Jap a*tillery shells was
so loud and so constant that it was
like as though the ground
was swaying back and forth.
And here you were up running through this.
You could see guys
just falling all around us.
That was one of the strangest ways
to me that men fell when they were hit.
I suppose it depended on what type of
projectile or fragment
hit them, but some of
them just sagged down to the ground.
It was almost pitiful, like they were
just real tired, and they were dead.
And other guys threw their arms out and
fell over backwards, and
some guys pitched forward,
and some let out god-awful screams.
To me, that was the worst
part of all of seeing guys get hit.
It maybe didn't bother some people
as bad as it did me, but every one of
those guys was a damn good Marine
and a buddy and some other son.
The island was declared
secure after nearly two
and a half months of
intense fighting, though
scattered resistance continued for weeks.
However, fighting in the
Pacific would continue late
into 1945, with countless
more American lives lost.
The Allied powers secured
victory in Europe in May 1945.
The n*zi Empire finally fell after six long
years, and Hitler escaped to his
bunker prepared to die by cyanide.
However, for the United
States, the w*r was not over yet.
Trouble still brewed in the Pacific,
and American blood continued to spill.
After V-Day was declared in Europe, there
was a real problem, but America and the
rest of the Allied powers
were still at w*r with Japan.
And Japan showed absolutely
no signs of surrendering.
The difference between
Germany and Japan was that
Germany, especially after
Hitler died, knew they were
beaten, knew there was nowhere else to go,
they just basically had to settle for a
humiliating peace, the best
possible terms they could get.
The thing about Japan is that there is
no concept of surrender
in their national identity,
but the whole idea was that they
would literally fight until the last man.
Germany surrendered on May the 8th, and we
got the news on a tank radio because
we were preparing on Okinawa for a big
push on May the 9th, and granted
that we were all glad for the troops in
Europe and glad for the civilians who had
suffered so much, but as far as we
were concerned, the
general remark that I heard
was, so what, because the next day we
had to make this push and my company
got all shot up.
So, you know, n*zi Germany might
as well have been on the moon as far as
we were concerned because we had our hands
full of all kinds of
trouble where we were.
The Battle of Okinawa
took place on May the 5th.
It was the final desperate push in the
Pacific theater, bringing the w*r
closer to Japan's home islands.
As the largest amphibious
as*ault of the Pacific
w*r, Okinawa was seen as the last major
stepping stone for the
Allies before a potential
invasion of mainland Japan.
This brutal campaign, codenamed
Operation Iceberg, was marked
by fierce ground combat, kamikaze attacks,
and heavy civilian casualties,
Japanese forces entrenched in
fortified positions fought
tenaciously, leading to a high
death toll on both sides.
Over 12,000 U.S. soldiers and an
estimated 100,000
Japanese soldiers were k*lled.
Thousands of Okinawan civilians
also perished, many through
forced suicides.
The combat at Okinawa was in a sense
worse than Peleliu because it went on for
three months and when it was over,
we were just so utterly exhausted.
It was indescribable.
I was convinced that if I had had
to invade Japan, I would never
survive because my luck had run out.
The battle marked
the cl*max of the
island-hopping campaign
and set the stage for the
w*r's end.
The catastrophic losses
at the Battle of Okinawa
convinced U.S. leaders that an invasion of
Japan's mainland would be devastating.
With Truman now as president, he weighed up
the decision to use
atomic bombs to force
Japans surrender, and
avoid further bloodshed.
At 8.15 a.m. on the 6th of August,
1945, the lead plane, Enola g*y,
released the Little Boy
b*mb over Hiroshima.
Residents awoke to the most
almighty sight in human history.
Little Boy fell almost six miles in 43
seconds before
detonating at an altitude of 2
,000 feet.
80,000 people died instantly,
some even evaporating on the spot.
A short time ago, an American airplane
dropped one b*mb on Hiroshima
and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.
You can imagine that if you are in
Hiroshima and you're going
about your daily business,
there's just this flash
of blinding white light
and then all of a sudden
everything around you is destroyed.
And it is something biblical.
I mean, you would have
genuinely imagined if
you'd seen it that this
was the end of days.
Japan at this point was faced with the
fact that one of their major industrial and
military bases no longer existed.
I mean a huge number
of civilians had been k*lled.
It was an act completely
without parallel in modern warfare.
It was literally the first atomic b*mb.
You would have expected
that they would have
thought we can't carry on, but this is
Japan we're talking about,
this isn't any other country.
And so they refused to surrender on the
grounds that they asked us,
well, you can keep bombing us.
We don't care, we are not
going to surrender to you.
But of course the problem is they didn't
really understand what
they were up against.
The b*mb obliterated
Hiroshima and its people,
and yet the Japanese government
still refused to surrender.
Three days later, a second
b*mb landed on Nagasaki.
The devastation at
Nagasaki is, make no mistake,
it's huge, but because Nagasaki is built in
sort of valleys and it's got cliffs and
things like that, the
expl*si*n was much more
contained so relatively
less, fewer parts of the
city but it is still devastating and it
is far greater than any other
single b*mb can possibly produce.
Emperor Hirohito broke the
government's deadlock, expressing that
the Japanese race will be
destroyed if the w*r continues.
And so on the 15th of August, Hirohito
announced the end to Japan's
suffering over radio broadcast.
I have received this
afternoon a message from
the Japanese government
following that government by the
Secretary of State on August 11th.
I deem this reply a full acceptance of
the Potsdam Declaration which
specifies the unconditional surrender
of Japan.
In the reply, there is no qualification.
Reporters rush out to relay the news to
an anxious world and touch off
celebrations throughout the country.
A new wave of cruelty Japan officially
signed the Surrender Act soon after.
Four years after the
devastation at Pearl Harbour,
the biggest conflict in history
had finally come to an end.
In Chicago, tears of
joy mingled with cheers
as a million people sang
and danced in the streets.
The surprise attack by Japan on the 7th
of December, 1941 led
to death and destruction
on a scale never before
seen in human history.
The relentless fighting in the Pacific.
From the beaches of Iwo Jima to the
blood-soaked hills of Okinawa
had pushed both sides to the brink.
The dropping of atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki brought the w*r to a dramatic and
tragic end, sparing the
world from further destruction.
What began with an
unprovoked as*ault closed with
a transformed world
as the hard-fought peace
reshaped nations and laid the
foundation for a new global order.
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Pearl Harbour: Minute by Minute (2024)
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