01x17 - No Surrender

[bunniefuu]

[ominous music]

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

is a transformative figure
in American history.

He steers the country
out of the Depression

and away from isolationism.

In the summer of 1944,

Allied forces are
battling across France,

and heavy bombers are striking
the Japanese home islands,

but forcing the Axis powers
to submit to FDR's demand

unconditional surrender
still requires enormous effort

from America and its Allies.

All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World w*r did.

Japan's on the march;

Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine the nightmare

they're about to unleash.

The most destructive
w*r in human history.

Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

The West is stunned by
the speed of the advance.

You get the Allies
led by the Big Three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with
immensely complicated questions.

It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

The Allies have to come together,

not just militarily,
but industrial scale.

It's a global perspective.

They have to fight in every climate,

from the Arctic to the
jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa,

and the depths of the ocean.

[triumphant music]

But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.

We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings,

and we see them at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

World w*r II was a struggle

in which there could be one victor

and one vanquished.

[triumphant music continues]

[weapons thundering]

[group cheering]

[tense music]

[Tom] Summer, 1944.

While American forces
combat Germany in Europe

and Japan in the Asia Pacific,

in the United States,
it's an election year.

Even though his nation is at w*r,

the Commander In Chief, the
most powerful man in the world,

must seek the approval of voters.

Franklin Roosevelt is
trying to do something

no American has ever done,

which is be elected to a
fourth term as President,

and the country is not ready

to turn Franklin Roosevelt out,

but they're not thrilled
about rehiring him either.

Roosevelt wasn't in robust health

when he first ran for
President in 1932.

He was a polio victim as a young man;

he's in a wheelchair.

Those who've known him before the w*r

always come away a bit shocked

at how dramatically he seemed to age.

The stress of the w*r
has ground him down,

so he's got to demonstrate
to the American people

that he is still firmly
in command in this w*r

and can bring it to a successful close.

[intriguing music]

Roosevelt decides to
sail over to Hawaii

to hold a wartime conference
with his top leaders.

By being on a warship at the
site where the w*r started,

for the Americans,

he has the ability to project an image

of continued vitality and strength.

[Tom] The primary purpose
of the Pearl Harbor Conference

is to determine American
strategy against Japan

in the Pacific.

[Robert] Roosevelt looks at Japan

and sees a country infected

with a kind of militarism,

[crowd chanting]

a desire to conquer its neighbors,

a notion of racial superiority

over all the other peoples in Asia.

[soldier shouting in foreign language]

[Robert] To prevent another
Pearl Harbor,

he's going to have to
stick to the policy

he declared in 1943:
unconditional surrender.

[Tom] The United States
controls most of the Pacific,

including New Guinea and the
recently captured Mariana Islands.

The Navy wants to push
on and take Formosa,

modern-day Taiwan,

as a prelude to invading Japan.

General Douglas MacArthur
has other ideas.

[dramatic music]

Douglas MacArthur is
one of the most famous

American generals in history,

also one of the most controversial.

He's got an ego that is unbelievable.

In Hawaii, he shows up late.

He keeps the President
waiting on purpose,

[Jonathan] And then rolls in,
in this leather jacket,

decidedly casual,

in complete contrast to the Navy,

which is all turned out
in their dress whites.

[Robert] MacArthur believes
he's more important

to the country than the President.

In fact, he believes he is the country,

that his will and his
desires in some way

embody the will and desire
of the American people.

[Tom] MacArthur insists
American forces must return

to the Philippines

for reasons both
strategic and personal.

[solemn music]

[Jonathan] Douglas MacArthur
had a long-standing affiliation

with the Philippines.

He had a real affinity
for the Filipino people.

He had lived there before the w*r,

and then in 1941 and 1942,

he was the commander in
chief of that garrison

when it was attacked by the Japanese

at the very beginning of the w*r.

[tense music]

[Tom] When Japanese forces
overran the Philippines

in 1942,

Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur

to evacuate to Australia.

He understood MacArthur's
personal value

to the morale of the American public.

After months of bitter fighting,

American and Filipino troops
surrendered to the Japanese.

In the cruelest conditions,

they were marched off
the Bataan Peninsula

and into captivity:

the Bataan Death March.

During the Japanese occupation,

hundreds of thousands
of Filipinos are k*lled.

Women are forced into sex sl*very;

entire villages are
destroyed in mass executions.

As he is about to leave,

MacArthur makes this
famous pronouncement:

I shall return.

It's not "we shall return";

it's "I shall return."

This is a vow that becomes
really a rallying cry for Americans,

not only in the Philippines
who are captured,

but also for Americans back home.

[Tom] At Pearl Harbor,

MacArthur presses the
President to strike Japan

through the Philippines
instead of Formosa.

[dramatic music]

The problem with the Philippines

is it's not just an island;

it's an archipelago.

And there's a very large
Japanese army on these islands,

hundreds of thousands of troops

that could lead to protracted
fighting with the Japanese.

[Robert] But MacArthur has some
arguments on his side as well.

The Philippines are an
American possession.

They're a commonwealth.

To simply bypass the
Philippines and go to Taiwan

will make America look like
a very inconstant partner,

not to mention abandoning the survivors

of the Bataan Death March.

[Tom] Roosevelt leaves the conference

without making a decision.

A week later, though,

he sends a letter to General
MacArthur agreeing to his plan.

[weapons firing]

On October 20th,

over a hundred thousand U.S. troops

backed by the Seventh and Third
U.S. Fleets land on Leyte,

a central island in the Philippines

with a protected gulf.

MacArthur's campaign to
retake the country has begun.

[triumphant music]

[A.J.] He had the Army Signal
Corps of Engineers

go ahead on the beach ahead of him,

so by the time he got there,

he gives his radio address.

[MacArthur] People of the
Philippines, I have returned.

[Jon] The fact that MacArthur
is able to return

to fulfill that promise
is a morale boost.

But the theater of MacArthur saying,

"I have returned,"

does not translate into
straightforward Allied victory.

[suspenseful music]

The Japanese know

that General MacArthur
has promised to return,

and so they anticipated
the next decisive battle

may be over the Philippines.

[Tom] The Philippines sit between Japan

and the Dutch East Indies,

Japan's primary source of oil.

[Jonathan] So if the
Philippines get captured,

it will cut off the supply lines,

and the military runs out of oil.

[Tom] The Japanese already have a plan

to defend the Philippines:

Operation Sho-Go, or victory.

They will send all their warships

to destroy the U.S.
fleets in Leyte Gulf,

then trap General MacArthur's
troops on the island.

[Jonathan] The Japanese position is

it's absolutely imperative to
carry out this operation now.

We've got oil, we've got warships.

We better use them or lose them.

This is almost like one
last banzai charge at sea

that can have a material effect

on the outcome of the w*r.

That's the kind of spirit

in which the Japanese are
heading into this battle.

[Robert] The Allies have
promised the Japanese

that the w*r's gonna go on

until unconditional surrender
of the Japanese empire.

But deep down inside,

I'm not sure the Japanese believe that.

They still think they can
inflict enough casualties

on the United States that eventually,

despite all the talk of
unconditional surrender,

the Americans will be willing to talk.

[Tom] As MacArthur and
his troops land on Leyte,

the Japanese fleets move
towards the Philippines.

[Christopher] At this point in the w*r,

the Japanese have suffered
terrible losses in the Pacific

from Midway to Guadalcanal,

but they still have a
tremendously powerful fleet.

They have these super battleships,

the Musashi and the Yamato.

These are the biggest
battleships ever built,

and this has always been
the U.S. Navy's fear.

If these massive Yamato-class
battleships get loose

in amongst MacArthur's troop ships,

the invasion support vessels,

the devastation could be immense.

[Tom] Two Japanese fleets,

a central fleet and a southern fleet,

will converge on Leyte Gulf,

where U.S. naval forces are
protecting MacArthur's landing.

Success depends on a third fleet

moving towards the gulf from the north:

a decoy fleet.

[Bradley] There's another aspect.

There's essentially
a carrier task force

that sails towards Leyte
Gulf from the north.

It has four aircraft carriers in it.

It's designed to try to
lure American ships away

from protecting MacArthur.

And this is the brilliance
of the Japanese move.

They decide to use
the carriers as bait.

The entire Japanese strategy
is to trap MacArthur,

trap this famous general
himself, potentially.

They're gonna bring
these two heavily armed

and armored pincers against
the American landing force

while it is still unloading cargo

and supplies and troops at Leyte

and annihilate it.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] General MacArthur has
landed 130,000 troops on Leyte,

the first step in the
American liberation

of the Philippines.

But as U.S. troops establish
a secure beachhead,

the Japanese Navy
enacts Operation Sho-Go.

[Jonathan] The Japanese
have to figure out

how to sneak their forces
close to the landing beaches

without being discovered,

because if they come
under heavy air attack,

they're in real trouble.

So they plan to lure most
of the American forces

out of the fight.

[Tom] There are two American fleets

supporting MacArthur's forces:

the U.S. Third Fleet led
by Admiral Bull Halsey

and the Seventh led by
Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.

As the Japanese cross the Sibuyan Sea,

they're spotted by one
of Halsey's scout planes.

[tense music]

[Anand] The Americans
attacked from the air,

and they better focus on
the largest ships they see,

which was the super
battleships Yamato and Musashi.

[Jonathan] Musashi is an
absolute giant.

She has 18.1-inch naval g*ns,

the largest naval g*ns ever mounted.

The Japanese have even developed

a special anti-aircraft
shell for them as well,

which explodes in this enormous cloud,

and it's supposed to
destroy any American planes

that are flying through it.

[weapons firing]

But the attacks that are

launched by these American planes

gradually start whittling away

at her defensive capabilities.

[Dr. Grant] Torpedo after torpedo

streaks towards the Musashi,

hitting and exploding
below the waterline.

[Jonathan] Seventeen to 19 torpedoes,

more than a dozen bombs,

[bombs thundering]

finally get her to go down.

[Tom] The Musashi sinks along
with a thousand of her crew.

The Japanese central fleet retreats.

That night, Kinkaid's fleet,

including battleships

that had been damaged at Pearl Harbor,

decimate the Japanese southern fleet.

But Halsey again spots
Japanese warships

north of Leyte Gulf,

including four aircraft carriers:

the Japanese decoy fleet.

[Jonathan] In Halsey's mind,

as a carrier commander himself,

any enemy carrier fleet
represents the most dire threat

to his mission, which is
protecting the invasion forces.

So Halsey takes his entire fleet

and goes charging off after it.

[Bradley] And so Halsey's
played into the Japanese hands

exactly as they had hoped.

[Dr. Grant] Halsey's taken all the
major firepower north with him,

and that puts MacArthur's
invasion at risk.

[tense music]

[Tom] Halsey moves north,

but the Japanese central fleet

under Admiral Takeo Kurita
returns to Leyte Gulf.

From the battleship Yamato,

Kurita sees that only a
portion of the Seventh Fleet

is left to protect
MacArthur's invasion.

[Jonathan] For Kurita, this is
a heaven-sent opportunity.

The dawn breaks,

and now there is an American fleet

sitting directly under his g*ns.

All he has to do is sink them.

[Dr. Grant] The American vessels

that are still around Leyte
primarily provide support

for the landing forces going ashore.

So there's only a token force

of light escort
carriers and destroyers.

[Jonathan] Escort carriers are
small, extremely vulnerable.

They can carry 25 to 30 aircraft max.

They're designed for ground support

for the troops ashore.

That's their role.

It is not to get themselves
into standup fights

against large enemy warships.

[Tom] The escort carriers
launch their planes

against Kurita's much larger fleet.

And then these escort carriers,

mostly what they do is
turn around and run,

because they are not designed
to fight a threat like this.

[Tom] The only force that
can match the Japanese,

Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet,

remains a hundred miles to the north.

His commander in chief,
Admiral Chester Nimitz,

requests his location.

[Jonathan] Halsey receives a
message from Nimitz:

"Where, repeat, where, is Task Force 34

The world wonders."

Traditionally, naval
messages begin and end

with sort of a nonsense phrase

to confuse code breakers.

The nonsense phrase they
used in this message, though,

is "the world wonders,"

[Jonathan] And the "world wonders" line

should have been removed by his
cipher officer, but wasn't.

[Robert] I've always
wondered if Admiral Nimitz

was also sticking a little
barb in Halsey as to,

"What are you doing up there?"

[Jonathan] And the result is
that Halsey

just goes into conniptions,

throws his cap on the floor,

swearing up and down.

His chief of staff has to tell him

to get a grip on this situation.

[Tom] Halsey realizes the danger.

He sends his fastest
battleships back to Leyte Gulf,

then continues after
the Japanese carriers.

[Bradley] Now, what the
Americans don't know

is that the Japanese carriers
lying to Halsey's north

don't have many planes on them.

In fact, most of the planes have
been offloaded already

and flown to the island of Luzon

for what is about to come,

because a new and terrifying weapon

emerges from this battle:

[plane buzzing]

the kamikaze.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] At an airfield on Luzon,

Japanese pilots are assembled
for a unique mission.

[Dr. Grant] Japanese pilots at
the beginning of the w*r

were the cream of the crop,

elite, hand-selected,
and carefully trained.

But by this point in the w*r,

Japan just doesn't have the time

or the resources to train its pilots.

[Noriko] The Japanese military
leadership

has to make a tough decision

to make a cost-efficient way

of destroying American enemy ships.

And one way to do it is to
undertake one-way flight

that will end with crashing a plane.

[Tom] This new unit of 24 pilots,

led by 23-year-old
Lieutenant Yukio Seki,

is Japan's first organized
special attack unit.

They will soon become
known as kamikaze:

the divine wind.

[Bradley] So the kamikaze in
some ways represents

a perversion of traditional
Japanese bushido doctrine,

the samurai code,

this idea of sacrificing
one's life for Japan

and for the emperor.

[Christopher] It's hard to generalize
about their motivations.

You find some of them saying,

"I'm doing this for the emperor."

Other pilots talk about their village,

they talk about families,

and they say, "I'm doing this for you."

For the Japanese, what they're doing

was not regarded as suicide.

It's a death in combat.

So it's this sense that

these young men are becoming
something really special,

that almost to give this
level of self-sacrifice

makes you a samurai.

[solemn music]

[Tom] In Leyte Gulf,

the American escort carriers
of the U.S. Seventh Fleet

confront a new and lethal
threat from the air.

[plane buzzing]

[plane buzzing]

[Dr. Grant] Stopping a kamikaze
plane is almost impossible.

The American carriers
can only do two things.

One is maneuver away,

and the second is put up
a huge curtain of flak.

But oftentimes the kamikazes
can break through that flak curtain.

[Robert] You could fire every
anti-aircraft g*n in the world,

but unless you get
something like a direct hit

that kills the pilot,

that plane's gonna hit your ship.

[tense music]

[Bradley] There's a
psychological effect as well.

Japanese kamikaze are
giving up their lives

in the most violent ways possible

simply to k*ll Americans.

This is something that is difficult

for Americans to understand,

that this is a human being

who has chosen to do this to you.

How do you fight against
an enemy like this?

[Tom] Lieutenant Seki crashes his plane

into the flight deck of an
American escort carrier,

the USS St. Lo.

It's the first ship to be
sunk by kamikaze attack.

Six other vessels are struck
and barely stay afloat.

But Admiral Kurita's central fleet

also faces an aerial attack.

[Jonathan] Despite the pounding
the Americans have taken,

it is actually Kurita

who is under a major disadvantage here.

He's up against 350 American planes,

and because Kurita is
being constantly attacked

by American aircraft,

he becomes increasingly paranoid

that he is now surrounded
by American carriers.

[Bradley] So after these
moments of tension

where Kurita could have
potentially wreaked havoc

on the American fleet in Leyte Gulf,

he actually withdraws.

[Tom] Kurita retreats ahead

of Admiral Halsey's returning warships,

but the Japanese have lost
a third of their navy.

[Bradley] It's the largest
naval battle in human history.

More than 200,000 combatants involved,

and the American victory really knocks

the Japanese Imperial Navy
out of the w*r in the Pacific.

[Col. Douds] But without a doubt,
the Japanese are not gonna surrender.

This perversion of the bushido code,

it has manifested itself on
islands throughout this w*r,

and now it's manifesting itself
in the sea and in the air.

So it's starting to get
in the mind of the Allies

about how costly it will be to

achieve that unconditional
surrender of Japan.

[weapons firing]

[Tom] Over two months of
fighting in dense jungle terrain

against fierce Japanese resistance,

General MacArthur's
troops retake Leyte.

Luzon is next.

[Jonathan] Luzon in particular

is gonna be a very tough nut to crack,

because not only is it a large
island with mountain chains

the Japanese can fortify,

but there's also this
enormous capital of Manila

with about a million people

sitting in the middle of the island.

And if the American forces get involved

in urban combat there,

the casualties are likely
to be very, very heavy.

[group cheering]

[Tom] Twelve days after
the victory at Leyte Gulf,

it's election night
in the United States.

[Reporter] At Hyde Park,

a victorious President
greets townspeople

on election night.

[Tom] Franklin D. Roosevelt wins

an unprecedented fourth term.

The unconditional surrender
of Japan and Germany

remains his highest priority.

[dramatic music]

On January 9th, 1945,

MacArthur's troops land on
Luzon in the Philippines.

Quickly, special operation forces

trek inland to liberate
Japanese POW camps.

[weapons firing]

[Jonathan] At the end of two years of
captivity in Japanese hands,

these men are in terrible condition.

A third of them have already died.

There are also a number of
American civilian detainees

that are in camps that are near Manila,

so there's a ticking clock here

as far as MacArthur is concerned.

He needs to liberate these
camps as rapidly as possible.

[weapons firing]

[Tom] In early February,

American forces surround
the capital of Manila.

Most Japanese troops
have retreated north

to create an extensive defensive line,

but one group stays with orders
to fight to the last man.

[tense music]

[Robert] The real problem of
urban warfare in the modern era

is that the city is a gigantic sponge.

You can have a million-man army,

and suddenly it's split
up all over the place.

[Christopher] So the Americans
find themselves having to fight

street by street, building by building,

and it really turns Manila into
the Stalingrad of the Pacific.

[weapons firing]

[Tom] MacArthur's men are supported
by Filipino resistance fighters

who provide intel,
disrupt Japanese supply lines,

and help secure key
routes into the city.

[Jonathan] There have been
active groups of

Filipino guerrillas in existence
since 1942,

and those guerrillas
have been carrying on

a very successful
campaign of resistance

against the Japanese occupiers.

[weapons firing]

[Robert] The Japanese response,
like the Nazis in Europe,

was to use guerrilla activity

as an excuse to m*rder civilians.

[tense music]

[Christopher] So whether it's a
school, a hospital, homes,

Filipino people are being bayoneted,

they're being shot, beheaded,
sometimes burned alive,

corpses left to rot.

There's a sense of scorched earth,

a sense that we will leave
nothing for the Americans.

[Bradley] The Japanese will
ultimately take the lives

of a hundred thousand
Filipino civilians.

The Battle of Manila, in a lot of ways,

is a harbinger of what's to come.

[Christopher] Roosevelt and his
top military advisors are aware

of the increasingly dire implications

of a longer w*r with Japan,

but the American
people are very focused

on what's going on in Europe,

and they think the w*r
is now winding down.

President Roosevelt's
just been reelected.

He's looking at the horrors,

the brutality of the
fighting in the Philippines,

and he's been peppered with letters
from the moms of America saying,

"Where is my boy? What is he doing?

What God-forsaken island is
he fighting on this time?"

He needs to find a way
to strengthen the will

and resolve of the American people,

because he knows things are
going to get a lot worse

before they get better.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] Roosevelt meets
with British Prime Minister

Winston Churchill in Malta

to discuss the strategy for
ending the w*r in Europe

and in the Pacific.

[Bradley] The question is,

if we have an enemy willing
to sacrifice young men

in kamikaze attacks,

an enemy that seems willing
to fight on beyond reason,

how are we going to
bring this to an end?

Roosevelt's advisors are arguing

that the Japanese will not give up.

This w*r will not end

until there is actually an invasion

of the home islands.

[A.J.] Churchill and
Roosevelt are in Malta

on the way to Yalta early in 1945,

and this is where Operation
Downfall first crystallizes:

the invasion of Japan.

The sense is that after the
w*r in Europe would be over,

and all of the resources, all the men,

all the equipment
that they could muster

would be transferred
into the Far East theater

for a massive, massive operation,

the kind of which history
has never seen before.

This would occur

after a protracted
strategic bombing campaign,

which as of early 1945

is beginning to take
more and more effect.

[Tom] At first, the Marines
are ordered to take Iwo Jima.

[Dr. Grant] Japan has an
airfield on Iwo Jima,

and as the B-29s start operating

out of Saipan and the Marianas,

they're using it to
spot the B-29 formations

on their radar scopes.

[Col. Douds] Iwo Jima becomes a
logical place to, first of all,

remove something from
the Japanese control.

Second, don't allow them to
have any Japanese fighter

on there or early warning systems.

And third, for all those B -29s

that are making those long
flights over 1,200 miles,

it creates a place to land
if they have engine trouble,

if they run into any difficulties.

So Iwo Jima has gotta go.

That needs to become
an American airfield.

[Robert] Now, American
intelligence tells the Marines

that there are about


but there are actually 23,000,

nearly double what the
intelligence estimates listed.

As a result, you have an
American invasion force

that's going to be meeting
a much tougher defense

than it expected.

[tense music]

[ominous music]

[Tom] Japanese troops on Iwo Jima

have been preparing
for an American attack

for over three months.

[Martin] The Japanese strategy
is to make the battle last

as long as possible.

Each day that that battle lasts

is a day where the people
at the home islands

are spared of an American invasion.

[Christopher] So the commander
of the Japanese on Iwo Jima,

Kuribayashi, says,

we're going to prepare these
defensive fortifications

and wait, draw the Americans
in, and then attack them.

[Bradley] The Japanese
aren't on Iwo Jima;

they're actually in Iwo Jima.

They have miles and miles of tunnels

that they have dug out of
this soft volcanic terrain

on the island.

And they've also fortified
the most prominent

landmark on Iwo Jima,
which is Mount Suribachi.

[Tom] Looming over the
Marines' landing beaches,

Mount Suribachi provides the Japanese

with a perfect defensive position.

[Jonathan] It's gonna be
this defensive hive

that the Americans will
have to reduce cave by cave,

bunker by bunker, one thing at a time.

[Tom] On Iwo Jima, Japanese
soldiers are issued orders

to k*ll 10 Americans before they die.

[Bradley] We see very few Japanese

who attempt to surrender.

There's a view that this is a
great dishonor,

not only to oneself and one's family,

but to the emperor as well.

[Christopher] If you look at
the letters

that Kuribayashi writes
home to his family,

he's clear right from the beginning

that no one on the Japanese
side is coming home

from the Iwo Jima campaign.

And he starts to issue these orders

very clearly to his men
saying, "Fight to the death,"

but he doesn't want a banzai charge.

He doesn't want
pointless suicidal acts.

He wants to show the
Americans the cost to them

of going as far as the
Japanese home islands.

[gentle music]

[Tom] The Navy bombarded
Japanese positions

for three days.

Now the Marines plan to land 60,000 men

across Iwo Jima's southern beaches,

push north, and take the island.

[Col. Douds] So at 8:59 on the


the first 10,000 men land,

and it's quiet.

But then at 10 o'clock in the morning,

[explosions thundering]

every Japanese soldier
with a mortar, machine g*n,

or a piece of a*tillery

will now start to shell
the landing beach.

[tense music]

[explosions thundering]

[Tom] In the face of withering fire,

the Marines struggle up
dunes of 15 feet or more.

[Col. Douds] Iwo Jima is not
sand; it's volcanic ash.

Your feet just sink up to your knees.

It's like walking in coffee grounds.

It's incredibly deadly
to try and move forward.

[Tom] Bulldozers are called in
to clear a path through the dunes,

allowing the Marines to
continue their advance.

[Bradley] As the Marines
finally make their way

off the beaches, they're getting
attacked from everywhere,

people coming out of tunnels,

of mortars coming off
of Mount Suribachi,

of hidden a*tillery
emplacements all over the place

with sn*pers firing positions
they can't even see.

[Jonathan] Individual
soldier has to somehow

get up close with a grenade

that he can put through the firing slit

and k*ll the crew that's in there.

[Col. Douds] Ultimately, one of the
greatest weapons that the Marines have is

what they'd call Zippo tanks,

which are tank-sized flamethrowers

that can sh**t long distances,

and that becomes the weapon of choice
for Marines on Iwo Jima.

[tense music]

[Tom] By the end of the first day,

the Marines have secured an airfield

and prepared to attack Mount Suribachi.

[Robert] On Iwo Jima, two
strategies come into conflict.

One says, no surrender,
that's the Japanese,

and then unconditional surrender,

and that's the American position.

And on Suribachi,

the Americans make a
determined statement

that it's going to be
unconditional surrender.

There is no position on planet Earth

held by the Japanese army

that American troops cannot take.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] After securing the beaches,

U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima
attack Mount Suribachi.

[Martin] The force that
goes up the hill

fights off Japanese resistance,

and upon reaching the summit,

they find a water pipe

that had been associated
with a Japanese cistern.

They attach a small American
flag to that water pipe,

and then they raise that flag.

[epic music]

[Col. Douds] But they realize
the flag's too small.

We need a bigger flag.

So what they're gonna do
is they're gonna take a ship's flag

and they're gonna send it up there.

And about noon, it gets up there.

[Tom] Six Marines plant
the second American flag.

Joe Rosenthal,

an Associated Press
photographer, captures the moment.

- Captures the moment.
- [camera clicks]

[Martin] All the ships offshore
begin blowing their horns.

[horns blowing]

Everyone on the island can see it.

[Col. Douds] It's a snapshot in time.

The composition's nearly perfect,

although he basically
shoots it off his hip

without even using his
rangefinder as he did it.

You can't see anybody's face.

And so really it becomes
everybody's picture.

[Tom] Two days later,

Rosenthal's photograph is on the
front page of newspapers across America.

President Roosevelt
immediately understands

how inspirational this single image is.

[Jon] FDR was always a
frustrated journalist.

He had been the editor
of the Harvard newspaper.

He understood visual imagery.

[Robert] It's American determination

embodied in a single photograph.

[Col. Douds] They're all
working together,

and so it tells a national story.

It's not just those
guys on top of the hill

that raised the flag.

It's a nation that put that
flag on top of the hill.

[Jon] But it's striking that
the flag isn't fully planted.

It's as if the struggle
is still unfolding,

and that fit FDR's mood at that point.

This isn't over.

We're getting closer,

but we haven't gotten there yet.

[Tom] To FDR, these six Marines

are the perfect symbol of
America's wartime effort.

He calls the Marines and
says, "Find me these guys.

I want to bring them
to the Oval Office.

I want to send them
on a w*r bond drive."

[Martin] So the Marine Corps
sends somebody to the island,

but they find that three
men who were in the photo

were dead already.

They died within days of
the photograph being taken.

[Tom] U.S. Marines
suffered 26,000 dead,

wounded, and missing.

Almost every Japanese soldier
on Iwo Jima is k*lled.

Kuribayashi himself,

who never believed he was
getting off Iwo Jima alive,

he retreats, and he takes his own life.

[Bradley] It's the only
battle in the Pacific

where the Americans actually
take more casualties

than the Japanese take.

So for American military planners,

the lesson of Iwo Jima
seems pretty clear,

that if you're going to
launch Operation Downfall,

if you're actually going to invade
the Japanese home islands,

the cost is going to be immense,

because at this point in the w*r,

most Americans have concluded

that Japan is never going to surrender.

[Tom] After victory on Iwo Jima,

the Marine Corps sends
three surviving flag raisers

back to Washington,

but they will not meet their President.

[ominous music]

[Reporter] Ladies and gentlemen,

the tragic news of
the President's death

came to Washington today
as a complete shock,

except to a very few people
who knew of his condition.

[Sarada] Franklin Roosevelt had

loomed so large for so long.

An entire generation of Americans

really only knew him
as their President.

Supposedly during the
funeral procession,

a man is so overcome by his emotions

and another man says, "Did
you know the President?"

And he says, "No...

but he knew me,"

and that's how people felt
about Franklin Roosevelt.

[Robert] Roosevelt had been a
very, very active President,

a very, very powerful personality,

the kind of caretaker to the people,

and he knew you can't
fight an endless w*r

if you want to maintain
your democratic ideals.

He also knew how difficult
unconditional surrender can be

to put into actual practice.

[Tom] During years of
fear and uncertainty,

Roosevelt was uniquely able

to lead America's colossal
fight against fascism.

Now, this job will fall
to his vice President,

Harry Truman.

[Jon] Mrs. Roosevelt summons
Truman to the White House.

He says, "Is there anything
we can do for you?"

And Mrs. Roosevelt says,

"No, Harry, is there
anything we can do for you?

For you are the one in trouble now."

On assuming the presidency,
Truman told reporters,

"I felt like the moon, the stars,

and all the planets had fallen on me."

Harry Truman of Missouri

is now responsible for
the successful conclusion

of the largest conflict
in human history,

including

the final destruction of
Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.