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- [00:00]
Narrator
The History Channel Original Podcast
- [00:05]
Historian/Narrator
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 remains. Requires enormous effort from America and its allies.
- [00:37]
Tom Hanks
This is World War II with Tom Hanks. Episode 17 no Surrender,
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Historian/Narrator
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 war, the commander in chief, the most powerful man in the world, must seek the approval of voters.
- [01:11]
Expert Commentator
Franklin Roosevelt is trying to do something no American's 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.
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Narrator
Roosevelt wasn't in robust health when he first ran for president in 1932. He's a polio victim. As a young man, he's in a wheelchair. Those who've known him before the war always come away a bit shocked at how dramatically he seemed to age.
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Military Historian
The stress of the war has ground him down, so he's got to demonstrate to the American people that he is still firmly in command in this war and can bring it to a successful close. 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 war started for the Americans, he has the ability to project an image of continued vitality and strength.
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Historian/Narrator
The primary purpose of the Pearl harbor conference is to determine American strategy against Japan in the Pacific.
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Narrator
Roosevelt looks at Japan and sees a country infected with a kind of militarism, a desire to conquer its neighbors, a notion of racial superiority over all the other peoples in Asia. To prevent another Pearl harbor, he's going to have to stick to the policy he declared in 1943, unconditional surrender.
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Historian/Narrator
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.
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Military Historian
Douglas MacArthur is one of the most famous American generals in history, also one of the most controversial.
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Veteran/Analyst
He's got an ego that is unbelievable.
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Military Historian
In Hawaii, when he shows up late,
- [03:26]
Veteran/Analyst
he keeps the President waiting on purpose
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Military Historian
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.
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Narrator
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.
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Historian/Narrator
MacArthur insists American forces must return to the Philippines for reasons both strategic and personal.
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Military Historian
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 war, 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 war,
- [04:25]
Historian/Narrator
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 killed. Women are forced into sex slavery. Entire villages are destroyed in mass executions.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
As he is about to leave, MacArthur makes this famous pronouncement,
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Actor portraying MacArthur
I shall return.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
It's not we shall return. It's I shall return.
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Military Analyst
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 at Pearl Harbor.
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Historian/Narrator
MacArthur presses the president to strike Japan through the Philippines instead of Formosa.
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Military Historian
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.
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Narrator
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.
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Historian/Narrator
Roosevelt leaves the conference without making a decision. A week later, though, he sends a letter to General MacArthur agreeing to his plan. On October 20th, over 100,000 US troops, backed by the 7th and 3rd US fleets, land on Leyte, a central island in the Philippines with a protected gulf. MacArthur's campaign to retake the country has begun.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
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.
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Actor portraying MacArthur
People of the Philippines, I have returned.
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Expert Commentator
The fact that MacArthur is 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.
- [07:20]
Narrator/Voice Actor
The Japanese know that General MacArthur has promised to return, and so they anticipated the next decisive battle may be over the Philippines.
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Historian/Narrator
The Philippines sit between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, Japan's primary source of oil.
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Military Historian
So if the Philippines get captured, it will cut off the supply lines and the military runs out of oil.
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Historian/Narrator
The Japanese already have a plan to defend the Philippines. Operation Shogo or victory. They will send all their warships to destroy the US fleets in Leyte Gulf, then trap General MacArthur's troops on the island.
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Military Historian
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.
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Historian/Commentator
This is almost like one last banzai charge at sea that can have a material effect on the outcome of the war. That's the kind of spirit in which the Japanese are heading into this battle.
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Narrator
The Allies have promised the Japanese that the war is going to 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.
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Historian/Narrator
As MacArthur and his troops land on Leyte, the Japanese fleet move towards the Philippines.
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Historian/Commentator
At this point in the war, the Japanese have suffered terrible losses in the Pacific, from Medway to Guadalcanal, but they still have a tremendously powerful fleet. They have these super battleships, the Musashi and the Yamato.
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Naval Expert
These are the biggest battleships ever built. And this has always been the US Navy's fear. If these massive Yamato class battleships get loose in amongst MacArthur's troopships, the invasion support vessels, the devastation could be immense.
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Historian/Narrator
Two Japanese fleets, a central fleet and a southern fleet, will converge on leyte Gulf. While US naval forces are protecting MacArthur's landing. Success depends on a third fleet moving towards the gulf from the north, a decoy fleet.
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Military Analyst
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.
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Veteran/Analyst
And this is the brilliant of the Japanese move. They decide to use the carriers as bait.
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Military Analyst
The entire Japanese strategy is to trap MacArthur, trap this famous general himself. Potentially.
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Military Historian
They're going to 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.
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Historian/Narrator
General MacArthur has landed 130,000 troops on Leyte, the first step in the American liberation of the Philippines. But as US troops establish a secure beachhead, the Japanese Navy enacts Operation Shogo.
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Military Historian
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.
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Historian/Narrator
There are two American fleets supporting MacArthur's forces. The US 3rd Fleet led by Admiral Bull Halsey, and the 7th led by Admiral Thomas Kinkaid. As the Japanese cross the Sibuyan Sea, they're spotted by one of Halsey's scout planes.
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Veteran/Analyst
The Americans attack from the air and they're going to focus on the largest ships they see, which was the super battleships, Yamato Musashi.
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Military Historian
Musashi is an absolute giant. She has 18.1 inch naval guns, the largest naval guns ever mounted. The Japanese have even developed a special anti aircraft shell from the them as well, which explodes in this enormous cloud and it's supposed to destroy any American planes that are flying through it. But the attacks that are launched by these American planes gradually start whittling away at her defensive capabilities.
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Naval Expert
Torpedo after torpedo streaks towards the Musashi, hitting and exploding below the waterline.
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Military Historian
Seventeen to 19 torpedoes, more than a dozen bombs, finally get her to go down.
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Historian/Narrator
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, decimates the Japanese Southern fleet. But Halsey again spots Japanese warships north of Leyte Gulf, including four aircraft carriers. The Japanese decoy fleet.
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Military Historian
In Halsey's mind, as a carrier commander himself, any enemy carrier fleet represents the most dire threat to his mortal mission, which is protecting the invasion forces. So Halsey takes his entire fleet and goes charging off after it.
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Military Analyst
And so Halsey's played into the Japanese hands exactly as they had hoped.
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Naval Expert
Halsey's taken all the major firepower north with him, and that puts MacArthur's invasion at risk.
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Historian/Narrator
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.
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Military Historian
For Kurita, this is a heaven sent opportunity. The dawn breaks and now there is an American fleet sitting directly under his guns. All he has to do is sink them.
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Naval Expert
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.
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Military Historian
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 stand up fights against large enemy warships.
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Historian/Narrator
The escort carriers launch their planes against Kurita's much larger fleet.
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Veteran/Analyst
And then these escort carriers, mostly what they do is turn around and run because they are not designed designed to fight a threat like this.
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Historian/Narrator
The only force that can match the Japanese Admiral Halsey's third fleet remains 100 miles to the north. His commander in chief, Admiral Chester Nimitz requests his location.
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Military Historian
Halsey receives a message from Nimitz. Where, repeat, where IS Task Force 34? The World War?
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Military Analyst
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.
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Military Historian
And the world wonders line should have been removed by a cipher officer, but wasn't.
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Narrator
I've always wondered if Admiral Nimmus was also sticking a little barb in Halsey as to what are you doing up there?
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Military Historian
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.
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Historian/Narrator
Halsey realizes the danger. He sends his fastest battleships back to Leyte Gulf, then continues after the Japanese carriers.
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Military Analyst
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 the new and terrifying weapon emerges from this battle. The kamikaze.
- [16:37]
Podcast Host
Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History that Doesn't Suck is a chart topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade, from the 18th century to the 20th. Original music and immersive sound design accompany us on our storytelling journey. Listen to and follow History that Doesn't Suck. An Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:14]
Historian/Narrator
At an airfield on Luzon, Japanese pilots are assembled for a unique mission.
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Naval Expert
Japanese pilots at the beginning of the war were the cream of the crop elite, hand selected and carefully trained. But by this point in the war, Japan just doesn't have the time or the resources to to train its pilots.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
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 a crashing of plane.
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Historian/Narrator
This new unit of 24 pilots led by 23 year old Lt. Yukio Seiki, is Japan's first organized special attack unit. They will soon become known as Kamikaze, the divine wind.
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Military Analyst
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.
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Historian/Commentator
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.
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Historian/Narrator
In Leyte Gulf, the American escort carriers of the US 7th Fleet confront a new and lethal threat. From the air,
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Naval Expert
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.
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Narrator
You could fire every anti aircraft gun in the world, but unless you get something like a direct hit that kills the pilot, that plane's going to hit your ship.
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Military Analyst
There's a psychological effect as well. Japanese Kamikaze are giving up their lives in the most violent ways possible simply to kill 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?
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Historian/Narrator
Lt. Seki crashes his plane into the flight deck of an American escort carrier, the USS San 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.
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Military Historian
Despite the pounding the Americans have taken, it is actually Kurita who is under a major disadvantage here. He is up against 350American planes. And because Kurita is being constantly attacked by American aircraft, he becomes increasingly paranoid that he is now surrounded by American carriers.
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Military Analyst
So after these moments of tension where Kurita could have potentially wreaked havoc on the American fleet in Leyte Gulf, he actually withdraws.
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Historian/Narrator
Kurita retreats ahead of Admiral Halsey's returning one. But the Japanese have lost a third of their navy.
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Military Analyst
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 War of the Pacific.
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Veteran/Analyst
But without a doubt, the Japanese are not going to surrender. This perversion of the Bushido code, it has manifest itself on islands throughout this war, 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.
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Historian/Narrator
Over two months of fighting in dense jungle terrain against fierce Japanese resistance, General MacArthur's troops retake Leyte. Luzon is next.
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Military Historian
Lausanne in particular, is going to 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.
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Historian/Narrator
Twelve days after the victory at Leyte Gulf, it's election night in the United States.
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Actor portraying MacArthur
At Hyde Park, a victorious president greets townspeople.
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Historian/Narrator
On election night, Franklin D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented fourth term. The unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany remains his highest priority. On January 9, 1945, MacArthur's troops land on Lausanne in the Philippines. Quickly, Special operation forces trek inland to liberate Japanese POW camps.
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Military Historian
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 the Manila. So there's a ticking clock here as far as MacArthur is concerned. He needs to liberate these camps as rapidly as possible.
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Historian/Narrator
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.
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Narrator
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.
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Historian/Commentator
So the Americans find themselves having to fight street by street, building by building, and it really turns manipulated into the Stalingrad of the Pacific.
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Historian/Narrator
Macarthur's men are supported by Filipino resistance fighters who provide intel, disrupt Japanese supply lines, and help secure key routes into the city.
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Military Historian
There have been active groups of Filipino guerrillas in existence since 1942,
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Carvana Customer
and those
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Military Historian
guerrillas have been carrying on a very successful campaign of resistance against the Japanese occupiers.
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Narrator
The Japanese response, like the Nazis in Europe, was to use guerrilla activity as an excuse to murder civilians.
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Historian/Commentator
So whether it's a school, the 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.
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Military Analyst
The Japanese will ultimately take the lives of 100,000 Filipino civilians. The battle of Manila, in a lot of ways, is a harbinger of what's to come.
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Military Historian
Roosevelt and his top military military advisors are aware of the increasingly dire implications of a longer war with Japan. But the American people are very focused on what's going on in Europe, and they think the war is now winding down.
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Narrator
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. With letters from the moms of America saying, where is my boy? What is he doing? What godforsaken 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.
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Historian/Narrator
Roosevelt meets with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Malta to discuss the strategy for ending the war in Europe and in the Pacific.
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Military Analyst
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?
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Carvana Advertiser
Roosevelt's advisors are arguing that the Japanese will not give up. This war will not end until there is actually an invasion of the home islands Church.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
Mitchell and Roosevelt are in Malta on the way to yalta early in 1945. And this is where operation downfall first crystallizes an invasion of Japan. The sense is that after the war 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.
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This would occur after a protracted strategic bombing campaign, which, as of early 1945, is beginning to take more and more effect.
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Historian/Narrator
At first, the marines are ordered to take Iwo Jima.
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Naval Expert
Japan has an airfield on Iwo Jima. And as the B29s start operating out of Saipan and the Marianas, they're using it to spot the B29 formations on their radar scopes.
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Veteran/Analyst
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 B29s 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.
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Naval Expert
So Iwo Jima's gotta go. That needs to become an American airfield.
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Narrator
Now, American intelligence tells the Marines that There are about 13,000 Japanese defenders, 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 is expected.
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Historian/Narrator
Japanese troops on Iwo Jima have been preparing for an American attack for over three months.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
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.
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Historian/Commentator
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.
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Military Analyst
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.
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Historian/Narrator
Looming over the Marines landing beaches, Mount Suribachi provides the Japanese with a perfect defensive position.
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Military Historian
It's going to be this defensive hive that the Americans will have to reduce cave by cave, bunker by bunker. One thing at a time.
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Historian/Narrator
On Iwo Jima, Japanese soldiers are issued orders to kill 10Americans before they die.
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Military Analyst
We see very few Japanese who attempt to surrender. There's a view that this is a great dishonor, not only to one's self and one's family, but to the Emperor as well.
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Historian/Commentator
If you look at the letters that Kudibayashi writes home to his family, he's clear right from the beginning that 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.
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Historian/Narrator
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.
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Veteran/Analyst
So at 8:59 on the 19th of February, the first 10,000 men land, and it's quiet. But then, at 10:00 clock in the morning, every Japanese soldier with a mortar, machine gun or a piece of artillery will now start to shell the landing beach.
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Historian/Narrator
In the face of withering fire, the Marines struggle up dunes of 15ft or more.
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Veteran/Analyst
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 incredible, incredibly deadly. To try and move forward, bulldozers are
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Historian/Narrator
called in to clear a path through the dunes, allowing the Marines to continue their advance.
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Military Analyst
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 artillery emplacements all over the place with snipers, firing positions they can't even see.
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Military Historian
An individual soldier has to somehow get up close with a grenade that he can put through the firing slit and kill the crew that's in there.
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Veteran/Analyst
Ultimately, one of the greatest weapons that the Marines have is what they call Zippo tanks, which are tank sized flamethrowers that can shoot long distances. And that becomes the weapon of choice for Marines on Iwo Jima.
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Historian/Narrator
By the end of the first day, the Marines have secured an airfield and prepare to attack Mount Suribachi.
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Narrator
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.
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Historian/Narrator
After securing the beaches, US Marines on Iwo Jima attack Mount Suribachi.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
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.
- [33:37]
Veteran/Analyst
But they realize the flag's too small. We need a bigger flag. So what they're going to do is they're going to take a ship's flag and they're going to send it up there. And about noon, it gets up there.
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Historian/Narrator
Six Marines plant the second American flag. Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, captures the moment.
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Narrator/Voice Actor
All the ships offshore begin blowing their horns. Everyone on the island can see it.
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Veteran/Analyst
It's a snapshot in time. The composition is nearly perfect, although he basically shoots it off his hip without even using his rangefinder as he did it. He can't see anybody's face. And so really, it becomes everybody's picture.
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Historian/Narrator
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.
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Expert Commentator
FDR was always a frustrated journalist. He had been the editor of the Harvard newspaper. He understood visual imagery.
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Narrator
It's American determination embodied in a single photograph.
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Veteran/Analyst
They're all working together, and so it tells a national story. It's not just a those guys on top of the hill that raised the flag. It's a nation that put that flag on top of the hill.
- [35:03]
Expert Commentator
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.
- [35:22]
Historian/Narrator
To fdr, these six Marines are the perfect symbol of America's wartime effort.
- [35:29]
Narrator
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 war bond drive.
- [35:36]
Narrator/Voice Actor
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,
- [35:46]
Historian/Narrator
US Marines suffered 26,000 dead, wounded and missing. Almost every Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima is killed.
- [35:58]
Historian/Commentator
Kuribashi himself, who never believed he was getting off Iwo Jima alive. He retreats and he takes his own life.
- [36:06]
Military Analyst
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 less of Iwo Jima seems 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 war, most Americans have concluded that Japan is never going to surrender.
- [36:30]
Historian/Narrator
After victory on Iwo Jima, the Marine Corps sends three surviving flag raisers back to Washington. But they will not meet their precedent.
- [36:42]
Actor portraying MacArthur
Ladies and gentlemen, the tragic news of the President's death came to Washington today as a complete shock. Except for very few people who knew
- [36:49]
Carvana Advertiser
of his condition, 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.
- [37:22]
Narrator
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 war if you want to maintain your democratic ideals. They also knew how difficult unconditional surrender can be to put into actual practice.
- [37:45]
Historian/Narrator
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.
- [37:58]
Expert Commentator
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.
- [38:16]
Historian/Narrator
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.
- [38:49]
Tom Hanks
World War II with Tom Hanks is produced by A and E Factual Studios, Newtopia Ltd. Playtone Productions and Back Pocket Studios in association with Motion Entertainment for the History Channel. This episode was narrated by Tom Hanks and mixed by John Lloyd. Additional voicing provided by me, Jeremy Reagan from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler for Playtone. Executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.
- [39:29]
Carvana Customer
Evening.
- [39:30]
Historian/Narrator
Buyer's remorse.
- [39:31]
Carvana Customer
Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
- [39:35]
Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.
- [39:38]
You what?
- [39:39]
Yeah, Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.
- [39:42]
So there's no.
- [39:43]
No, no Buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.
- [39:48]
I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
- [39:52]
Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.
- [39:55]
Carvana Advertiser
Limitations and exclusions may apply.
- [39:56]
Veteran/Analyst
See our seven day return policy@carvana.com.