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00:00May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
00:25After years of struggle, an explosion of joy and of relief.
01:25May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
01:35May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
01:45May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
02:02We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.
02:09But let us not forget for a moment the toils and efforts that lie ahead.
02:21There was still Japan.
02:39May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
02:54May the 8th, 1945, VE Day, victory in Europe.
03:21Tokyo, just before midday on the 7th of December, 1942.
03:45The Japanese people observed the first anniversary of the Imperial Navy's destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
03:53It was one year since they learned that their nation of 80 millions had engaged the combined might of over 200 million Americans and British.
04:02Many had heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack soberly, even apprehensively.
04:11Then came victory after victory. Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore.
04:16Early affairs were lost in exultation.
04:37Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo, representative of the militarists who had made Japan into an aggressive totalitarian state, had led his countrymen into the war.
04:47Now he promised them final victory.
04:52The nation will complete the final round of this conflict.
04:56To overthrow America and Britain we will fight until the last day.
05:04Then in the greater Asian area we shall accomplish the destruction of our enemies.
05:10Now at the start of the second year, both myself and the nation are thinking about the men in the front line.
05:16And once again I express determination for final victory.
05:20War work must be pushed on and the struggle carried forward.
05:29At this time, Japan was not an industrial giant.
05:33But in this first year of war they had seen the Japanese soldiers' spiritual strength and discipline prevail over the materially stronger but morally inferior Americans and British.
05:50The same dedication on the home front would make Japan's newly won empire unassailable.
06:04For some well-informed Japanese, the Pearl Harbor attack had been an astonishing gamble.
06:10I came to work as usual about nine o'clock.
06:14And everybody was there.
06:17And there was martial music playing.
06:19And I almost fell over when I saw the newspaper Extra saying that the Emperor had declared war on the United States and Great Britain.
06:29I think the men on the street had the same feeling of being taken by complete surprise.
06:37But now propaganda film could portray jubilant Japanese aviators smashing the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
07:07Doubters were persuaded.
07:19Newsreels emphasized the humbling of the arrogant whites.
07:33The Japanese believed that their own soldiers always fought to the death.
07:38The sight of white prisoners dwarfing the Japanese who herded them into dishonorable captivity helped convince them of their own invincibility.
08:01Japan was winning.
08:03And every day we heard over the radio all the victories.
08:08And the whole nation was very excited.
08:12And the thought I had at the time when I heard the news about the war, what's going to happen.
08:20But immediately all the victories and big war songs and marches over the radio all day long.
08:28So we are quite excited.
08:32And it was almost like festival.
08:49War had been with the Japanese people for 10 years.
08:52Since 1931 their armies had been fighting an endless frustrating war in China.
08:58Victory in the Pacific had been quick and complete.
09:01Yet at last there was something to celebrate.
09:23For years before Pearl Harbor there had been mock air raid drills in every Japanese city.
09:32Not a precaution against China's almost non-existent air force, but part of the process of keeping warlike emotion at a high pitch.
09:42All took part.
10:03The neighborhood associations, the tonari-gumi, ensured that every one of the emperor's subjects at home was involved in the distant war.
10:13The neighborhood association controlled all our life at that time.
10:18And all the instructions from the government through the tonari-gumi.
10:22So we had to obey it and we relied upon the tonari-gumi.
10:35In every neighborhood, in schools, in playing field and on the streets,
10:40ordinary citizens patriotically submitted themselves to regimentation of thought and act.
10:58The inculcation of patriotic virtues began in infancy.
11:19From their earliest days Japanese children prepared mind and body to serve a cause greater than themselves.
11:25The family, the nation, the emperor.
11:37And if the nation was at war, children had to be ready for that too.
12:06If the school was over, it would be their duty and their privilege to serve their country and the imperial forces on land, on sea, in the air.
12:23High school pupils joined the air force for a day.
12:26If they were lucky, they would have the chance to join as adults before too long.
12:36Of course the Japanese were brought up in three or four cardinal truths from cradle to grave.
12:42That the emperor was divine, the country was invincible and consisted of a chosen race.
12:51Things like these which were drummed into the Japanese mind from kindergarten up.
12:59Japanese boys were taught to imitate the martial code of the samurai.
13:04Archaic and ferocious, devoid of pity for enemy or for self.
13:13For the samurai, to die in battle was to fall at the moment of perfection, as the cherry blossom does.
13:30The worship of Buddha had coexisted in Japan for centuries with the ancient Shinto worship of spirits, of ancestors, of the sun goddess Amaterasu.
13:55But in the 1920s and 30s, the nationalists and militarists had insisted that Shinto be made the state religion.
14:07Shinto was pure. It was strictly Japanese.
14:11And it was from the Shinto sun goddess the Japanese devoutly believed that the nation's high priest was directly descended, the emperor.
14:24The emperor was a god and a warrior chief.
14:27The mystic belief that through him the Japanese race was destined for conquest was systematically propagated.
14:42The military acted in the emperor's name, but they contrived that in spite of appearances he retained little real power on earth.
14:52The emperor was deeply solicitous of peace, which means that he was opposed to starting hostilities with America.
15:05But his position was such that if the cabinet recommended unanimously a certain line of policy, he could not disapprove of it, although he might dislike it at heart.
15:22In a government headed by a general, this meant doing what the army wanted.
15:28The ashes of Japan's war dead were carried home, packed in boxes.
15:35Relatives of the fallen, widows and mothers, had no more occasion for pride, no more right to tears than the day they had said goodbye.
15:46To send sons or husband to die for the emperor was the highest duty.
15:52We'll meet at the Yasukuni shrine, where the ashes of the war dead were consecrated,
15:56was the traditional farewell of the soldiers leaving for the battlefront,
15:59wrapped in haramaki, a protective belly band of a thousand stitches.
16:07A girl stands on the corners of the street, say, if in Tokyo, along the Ginza,
16:12and asks each passer-by woman to make a stitch, and she must collect a thousand stitches.
16:18And this is given to a soldier. I got one.
16:21And you wrap this around your belly.
16:23It's supposed to keep your stomach warm so that you don't catch a cold or this or that, but also to ward off bullets.
16:30Now, we all know this cannot be done, but this is like a charm also.
16:34And I used to think, I don't know whether I should say this, but I felt this is very unfair,
16:44especially when I got the order to go overseas.
16:46The Japanese girls are giving me this thousand stitches.
16:50I'm going to die. I have not experienced a woman.
16:54Why can't they give me their body for me to enjoy,
16:58and let me live however short my life is to enjoy the fullness of it?
17:02Because sleeping with me is not going to kill the girl, you know?
17:06Maybe she likes it, I don't know.
17:08But here I am, about to die, and all I get is a thousand stitches.
17:16Wartime farewells for men and women were supposed to be a spiritual experience,
17:20ceremonial, unsentimental.
17:38♪
18:07Men recovered from wounds left hospital to the singing of the Umiyukawa.
18:12I go to a lonely grave far across the sea, they sang, and went off to the war again.
18:18♪
18:24But suddenly, less than five months after Pearl Harbour,
18:31the war was not so far away.
18:33♪
18:41The 18th of April, 1942.
18:44Sixteen Mitchell medium bombers, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle,
18:48set out from the US aircraft carrier Hornet for the first ever air raid on Japan.
18:55The American aim was to make a token, but early,
18:59demonstration of Japan's vulnerability to air attack.
19:02In this they entirely succeeded.
19:06When Doolittle raid was conducted over the sky of Tokyo,
19:15When Doolittle raid was conducted over the sky of Tokyo,
19:23that produced a sort of consternation,
19:28because the military repeatedly assured the public
19:37that the Japanese sky was impenetrable.
19:42Doolittle's bombers did penetrate Japan's skies to drop a mere 16 tons of bombs on her city.
19:48The actual damage was not great.
19:51The shock was.
19:53The Japanese press were told how to display the news.
19:57The complexion was put on as a cruel act,
20:01indiscriminate bombing of civilians and women and children.
20:06Eight Doolittle flyers were captured.
20:17The Japanese bombing was something that happened to other people.
20:21They were angry that this barbarity had happened to them.
20:30The prisoners were tried by a military court.
20:33Three were executed.
20:43The main function of Japanese women was to bear sons.
20:48Skilled only in such feminine arts as the tea ceremony,
20:51they stayed in the background.
20:53Now, with the battle fronts taking the men away,
20:55they were directed to sterner things.
21:03MUSIC
21:24Country women were used to taking their place in the fields alongside their men.
21:29But for the women from the cities, the war meant a complete change.
21:33To stock the nation's depleted larder,
21:35they too were conscripted to labour long hours.
21:46They mined coal to make the utmost use of Japan's scanty resources
21:50and keep the war machine moving.
22:00MUSIC
22:09City girls were brought up to be wives and mothers,
22:12to be known as the Honourable Hidden One.
22:15Now they came out of their seclusion and learned new skills.
22:24The women of Japan must take over men's work, they were told,
22:28as their enemies had done, to ensure victory.
22:32MUSIC
22:59MUSIC
23:10When we worked at the factory,
23:13every other week we had to work from 3 o'clock in the afternoon until 11 o'clock.
23:18And at 11 o'clock, when we finished our work,
23:22they would take us to a dining room
23:25and they would give us one bowl of soup,
23:30hot salt water with maybe two or three soybeans.
23:36But we were very hungry,
23:39or maybe just one noodle at the bottom.
23:44Everything we got through ration,
23:47unless we had a card for ration,
23:50we couldn't get anything.
23:52We had to do some self-supply,
23:55and we grew potatoes in our gardens.
23:58We worked very hard to grow our own vegetables.
24:03Our everyday life was very, very hard.
24:10The Empress herself took on a new role,
24:12urging the nation to more effort, more sacrifice.
24:15Sacrifice was necessary for victory,
24:18and in final victory their belief was still unshaken.
24:21None knew that by June 1942,
24:24the battle had already become one simply for survival.
24:41June 1942.
24:43United States warplanes take off
24:45to intercept a Japanese armada attacking the island of Midway.
24:52EXPLOSIONS
25:05To this battle, Admiral Yamamoto,
25:08the Japanese naval commander-in-chief,
25:10had committed the four largest aircraft carriers
25:13in the Japanese fleet.
25:15When the battle ended on the 5th of June, 1942,
25:18Yamamoto's four carriers were blazing wrecks, or sunk.
25:23Midway was a defeat from which Japan's navy never recovered.
25:27But the Japanese people were told that Midway was a victory.
25:32The truth was concealed even from members of the government.
25:40We were told that one aircraft carrier was sunk
25:43and one was severely damaged,
25:45since there were four carriers involved in the battle,
25:48the way we heard it.
25:50Three had come back, although one was severely damaged.
25:54But the Anglo-American side was saying that all four had been sunk.
25:59This left some doubts in our minds.
26:02We pressed the navy to give us more details,
26:05but they stuck to their original announcement.
26:08I was a news cameraman in a Midway battle.
26:12When we got back to our base in the Japan Sea,
26:15we were not even allowed to write any letters.
26:18The wounded were kept in the isolation wards.
26:22A top-secret order said that nothing could be talked of the Midway battle,
26:27not even within the navy itself.
26:30I was virtually kept prisoner for about a month
26:35for about a month and a half after returning to Japan.
26:40As a journalist, I was kept under particularly strict surveillance
26:45because we were reputedly great talkers and loose with our tongues.
26:50And I was kept from going back to Tokyo while the rest of the war lasted.
26:55The situation was never broadcast from NHK.
26:59Of course, every news broadcast was strictly censored in those days.
27:15The general public only knew that the Japanese army and navy
27:20kept winning every battle they fought.
27:29No news, just propaganda.
27:37Only one outcome was imaginable in the conflict
27:40ceaselessly portrayed in the propaganda films,
27:43the white oppressors of Oriental people
27:46overcome by the brave Japanese soldier.
27:59The Spartan Japanese soldier, in turn,
28:02overcome by contempt and rage at his white enemy's soft living.
28:30Tokyo, the 5th of June, 1943.
28:35The state funeral for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,
28:39the great commander who had masterminded the victory at Pearl Harbor.
28:44Yamamoto died a hero, the Japanese people were told,
28:48in the front line, meeting death gallantly in a war plane.
28:52His loss was greater than many battleships.
29:00But this first public admission of a defeat,
29:04although represented as only symbolic of heroism,
29:07hid grimmer truths of which Yamamoto himself had been well aware.
29:11He knew that the enemy's material superiority,
29:15once fully mobilized, would be overwhelming.
29:18At Pearl Harbor, he had gambled that the war would be a short one.
29:23At Midway, the gamble was lost.
29:26At Midway, the gamble was lost.
29:40Yamamoto had been shot down in skies now swarming with enemy planes,
29:45overseas now dominated by the enemy's navy.
29:49By 1944, the scales had tipped fully against Japan.
29:55Metal had become a precious war commodity,
29:59too valuable for ornament or ceremony.
30:03The war had been fought to secure raw materials
30:07for a land where they were scarce, above all, for oil.
30:11But now the resources General Tojo had boasted
30:16would flow from their conquests were getting no nearer to Japan
30:20than the bottom of the ocean.
30:22Not enough got through to keep the war machine going.
30:26And food was scarce.
30:28The official daily ration of 1,500 calories, subsistence level,
30:32was often not met.
30:34The rice harvest was the worst for 50 years.
30:37Starvation hovered close.
30:41The victories of 1941
30:44had placed Japan behind a vast protective ring,
30:47defended in depth.
30:50By the middle of 1944,
30:52General MacArthur's amphibious armies
30:55had reduced this to an inner ring
30:57hinging on the island of Saipan.
31:01Saipan, within flying distance of Japan,
31:04was claimed by the Japanese military
31:07to be a shield and an impregnable one.
31:10It was vital that it should be.
31:17It was realized that if Saipan was lost,
31:20we would be in a very difficult position.
31:23The importance of Saipan was that, once it fell,
31:27the war would be right in front of Japan's eyes.
31:31Japan would come within bombing range of U.S. planes.
31:35It was an absolutely vital defense area for Japan.
31:51On the 15th of June, 1944,
31:53after five days of saturation bombardment by sea and air,
31:58American assault troops stormed ashore.
32:13As always, the Japanese garrison fought to the last.
32:28Here, for the first time, Japanese civilians,
32:31women and children were caught up in the battle.
32:34Some dazed and docile submitted.
32:46Saipan had deep water harbors.
32:49It had two airfields.
32:51Every rock was defended.
32:58EXPLOSIONS
33:21In three weeks, to take an island only 85 square miles in area,
33:26the Americans lost 15,000 dead and wounded.
33:3625,000 Japanese defenders died to a man.
33:57And some civilians, like many soldiers,
34:00chose suicide rather than surrender.
34:13They died in vain.
34:15Saipan was taken.
34:22Even before the last Japanese had died,
34:25American bombers were ready to take off for the mainland.
34:29The truth was now too close
34:31even for the Japanese high command to conceal it.
34:43The situation, they told the people, was grave but not hopeless.
34:47But the sacred homeland itself was now directly threatened.
34:52The enemy, schoolchildren learned, was within striking distance by air.
35:02The time had come for all, young and old,
35:06to meet the threat with the same defiance as their fighting men.
35:12Only a handful of trained pilots remained of Japan's once proud air arm,
35:17built for attack, not defence.
35:21When war began, their zero fighters had ruled the skies.
35:24Now they were outdated and outgunned.
35:27These men pitted their machines against the giant American superfortresses
35:31which now attacked the homeland.
35:36They were young and brave, but they were very few.
35:51I felt that the zero fighter was to me what the sword was to the samurai
35:58and I felt that I must manipulate the plane just as if it were my own body.
36:04And I also believed that the cockpit was a secret place
36:08which would be my death place.
36:12When we went on an attack, we never took parachutes.
36:16This was because we believed that we should never become prisoners
36:21when shot down over enemy positions.
36:29From ancient days, it was the belief of the Japanese warrior
36:33that to be taken prisoner alive,
36:36From ancient days, it was the belief of the Japanese warrior
36:39that to be taken prisoner alive is sinful.
36:42We too were always taught that the modern Japanese soldiers
36:47should never become prisoners because it is the greatest disgrace.
36:52With the Imperial Navy shattered, the Saipan shield pierced,
36:56the Philippines conquered,
36:58only the islands of Iwo Jima and finally Okinawa
37:01were left to bar the Allied advance on Japan proper.
37:05By April 1945, Iwo Jima had been taken.
37:10Now an American army protected by massed warships threatened Okinawa,
37:14the last island before Japan.
37:19In a desperate throw to stave off the ultimate assault,
37:22Japan once more summoned its young men to fight and die
37:25as their ancestors had done.
37:29Special squadrons were formed, the Kamikaze,
37:32men of the divine wind, named for the typhoon
37:35which had destroyed the invasion force of Kublai Khan centuries before.
37:39They drank a last cup of rice wine and set off to die.
37:53Their aircraft had been converted into flying bombs.
37:57Their mission was to crash them onto the decks
38:00of enemy warships round Okinawa.
38:27As a commander, I am often asked
38:30whether I went through hell in sending out these pilots,
38:34but actually the opposite is the case.
38:37We had a lot of pilots who volunteered,
38:40but it was only a very few who could leave on one attack,
38:44and so it was more difficult to choose the selected few.
38:48All the other volunteers said,
38:50send me, send me,
38:53so it's difficult to ask these people not selected
38:56if they'll wait until another day.
39:02On the other hand, those taking part in the day's attack
39:05were in very high spirits,
39:07and so there's no difficulty in sending these men out,
39:11but unlike an ordinary attack,
39:13these Kamikaze pilots, once they took off, they never come back,
39:18and so there was this sadness in knowing
39:21that the people you were sending out, you'll never see again.
39:38The Kamikaze were shot out of the air.
39:43They did severe damage, but failed.
39:52The Americans invaded Okinawa.
40:05Okinawa was only 350 miles from metropolitan Japan.
40:10The nearer to the mainland, the more fanatical the fighting.
40:22Gunfire
40:26Explosions
40:38Explosions
40:45Explosions
40:52On Okinawa, only 7,000 Japanese soldiers survived.
40:56Over 100,000 died, many by their own hand,
41:00and 75,000 civilians.
41:22Mrs. Yonaha, a student, was ready to die too.
41:31All around us, the soldiers and the inhabitants
41:34were running helter-skelter, obviously confused.
41:37For some reason, I followed the soldiers,
41:40and we got into a small shelter.
41:42It was more to get out of the rain than anything.
41:45We found several other soldiers already in the hideout.
41:50We could hear the U.S. Army calling us through loudspeakers to come out.
41:54Whoever it was spoke a very beautiful Japanese.
41:57But we had been taught from a long time
42:00that we should never surrender and become prisoners of war.
42:04So we let these broadcasts continue all day long without any let-up.
42:08The shouts came from the sea,
42:10come out, come out.
42:13They were saying,
42:15we will not inflict any harm on women and children and old people,
42:19so please come out.
42:21I had already decided to die and felt that I should commit suicide.
42:26One of the soldiers had a hand grenade and said,
42:30let's all commit suicide, and we agreed.
42:33Once we had made that decision,
42:36I felt a great relief and a calmness come over me.
42:40At first, of course, I did not want to kill myself.
42:44I wanted to escape somehow and keep on living.
42:48But the loudspeakers began to increase in intensity and in volume.
42:53We felt that the Americans were coming in closer and closer,
42:57so I asked the soldier to kill me together with himself.
43:01Just when I was waiting for the soldier to pull the pin,
43:05one of the other soldiers took out a sword
43:08and started waving it around, saying,
43:11you women and children, get out.
43:13You shouldn't die here.
43:15We were quite startled by the sudden shouting,
43:18and so we stood up and took a step backwards.
43:22The place in which we were hiding was very small,
43:25so one step back and we were outside the shelter.
43:29We looked up and saw two American soldiers pointing pistols at us.
43:33They didn't say anything,
43:35but kept gesturing with their pistols, come out, come out.
44:05The soldiers we had left inside asked us not to tell the U.S. soldiers they were hiding,
44:10because all of them were going to commit suicide.
44:18On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
44:22The U.S. troops were forced to retreat.
44:26The U.S. troops were forced to retreat.
44:29The U.S. troops were forced to retreat.
44:32On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
44:35In the home islands, the Japanese people braced themselves for the storm to come.
44:41The first superfortresses over Tokyo a few months earlier
44:45were only the harbingers of hundreds of others.
44:51These were now to spew out fire and high explosive
44:54in a sustained aerial assault,
44:57systematically razing the cities of Japan one after the other.
45:02On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:05On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:08On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:11On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:14On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:17On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:20On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:23On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:26On 2 July 1945, Okinawa fell.
45:30In formations of up to 2,000 at a time,
45:33round the clock, virtually unopposed,
45:36they laid Japan's cities waste.
45:59SIRENS BLARING
46:08Beneath them, the rush to air-raid shelters as the sirens blew
46:13became a dreaded daily routine.
46:16I first ran into the shelter,
46:19but I didn't rely upon it
46:23because it was very small and weak.
46:27People in the shelter were so tired
46:31and always pale and silent,
46:34and, what I say,
46:38children not so crying
46:42because they were too tired and too terrible to cry, I think.
46:46So they were all in silence.
46:49SIRENS BLARING
46:58Japan's wooden cities burned easily,
47:01and their citizens in them.
47:04This man-made inferno in Tokyo was worse even
47:08than that following the great earthquake of 1923,
47:12the capital's worst natural disaster.
47:19Some distance from my house,
47:22there was a lot of men,
47:25a lot of men died,
47:28and my best friend lost her father
47:32and brother and sister that night,
47:36and her mother suicided after that.
47:42SIRENS BLARING
47:55DRAMATIC MUSIC
48:06The next morning, I thought,
48:10I want to see my house,
48:14so I crossed the bridge and went to my house,
48:19and all the houses were destroyed.
48:23I was so tired, I was...
48:27to think anything about,
48:30but I hated the war, and I hated the war.
48:34I was standing in vain and in silence too.
48:42Tokyo was a charred wasteland.
48:45Only steel and concrete survived.
48:4816 square miles of the capital were flattened.
48:51The stench of death hung heavy over the ruins.
48:54In one raid, in one night,
48:57over 70,000 perished.
49:00In air raids on Japan,
49:02nearly a quarter of a million civilians died.
49:07Eight million were made homeless.
49:22PIANO PLAYS
49:27Man and woman, boy and girl,
49:30the survivors prepared to defend their homeland,
49:33to drive the invaders back into the sea
49:36with wooden rifles, bows and arrows,
49:39bamboo spears,
49:41but the end, when it came,
49:44was to be from the sky.
49:47Irresistible, unimaginable.
49:51Mushroom-shaped.
49:55ORCHESTRA PLAYS
50:21ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
50:51ORCHESTRA FADES