It was a response that Ambassador Sato had said would never come. And his great hope was that the little fires would converge and create a large fire, an all-consuming urban conflagration. Todd Lamothe General Anami was really the personification of a Japanese soldiers, soldier. But he too wanted one last decisive battle. From Kyushu, the Americans would try to launch an invasion of Tokyo. "Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing," he answered. I was just hanging there over the cliff. He really became the Air Force's problem solver. Donald Miller:These sneak attacks at night, it's psychological warfare. There was a hill on it Marines called Sugar Loaf. On Nagoya, with its huge aircraft plants. Irvin Gehret, 6th Marine division: We just went down there, and then when we got on the hill, and all this open ground behind us, they shot us up and killed a lot of people wounded a lot of people, at least a third of our company. The Allies' objective was to defeat and dismantle the old order. Narrator: Three hundred and fifty-five planes began the attack on April 6th. Victoria and Albert Picture Library National Archives We really did. (Mrs. Miyara sings Umi Yukaba, subtitles), Across the sea, corpses in the water, Across the mountain, corpses in the field. Haruo Iguchi, historian Nothing happened. Narrator:For five days, American forces were unopposed as they headed south. The Use of Which Has Not Always Been Specifically Authorized by The Copyright Owner. To be taken captive was against this principle, and the biggest shame and disgrace to us. What was the understanding? Narrator:Called the Superfortress, the B-29 was the most advanced bomber in the world. We were directed to do these missions, and we did them. I suppose if I had lost the war," he added, "I would have been tried as a war criminal." Sugar Loaf could be re- supplied by tunnels. "They were wiping out dirty animals.". " " 'It's all ashes,' another general said. This is the anniversary of my son Nicky being killed over Tokyo. He went to the Berlin suburb of Potsdam to discuss post-war Europe with Allied leaders. President Harry S. Truman and his advisors realized that Okinawa was a glimpse of what an invasion of Japan would be like. A Glorious Way to Die Do not attack the first ship you see.". This is Imperial prerogatives." 12 Lesson Abstract Students will analyze eyewitness descriptions of the firebombing of Tokyo and respond to it in a method of (mostly) their choosing. Harry Truman: I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government. Katsumoto Saotome, who as a 12-year-old schoolboy survived the American firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War and later spent decades chronicling in books and documentary films the. "It was not a weighty matter," he adds. Narrator:In his memoirs, LeMay recalled the anguish of his decision. Army Chief-of-Staff George Marshall was less concerned about casualties than ending the war quickly. John Toland LinkedIn Review: Paper City, directed by Adrian Francis In his first feature-length documentary, Adelaide-born director Adrian Francis offers a rigorous understanding of the American. Early in the morning on March 10, 1945, terrified residents of Japan's capital awoke to an inescapable inferno. The origin of Japan was the origin of the imperial house, and that was a divine event because the imperial family descended from the gods, long before any constitution existed. He was athletic. The military targets were gone. After six weeks he managed to get back to his base. Edward Drea: You know, when you kill 100,000 people, civilians, you cross some sort of moral divide. Narrator: LeMay's gamble was not using napalm. The Mariana Islands put Tokyo within range of the B-29 Superfortress, America's sophisticated new long-range bomber. Narrator:That same morning, a Japanese battleship slipped her moorings in Japan's Inland Sea and headed for Okinawa. The Yamato looked like a potato stabbed with hundreds of steel sticks. And we considered ourselves dead men. The rebels ransacked the Imperial Palace, hoping to destroy the surrender message. But nothing in the character of these battles gave any indication that the Japanese were going to surrender. LeMay, the inspiration for the demented Gen Jack D Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's anti-war satire, Dr . Intelligence predicted six Japanese divisions would have to defend the entire coastline. The sacred sword, symbol of bravery, was preserved at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya City. Narrator:In May 1945 US forces in Europe celebrated victory over the Nazis. Ruri Miyara, Okinawan student nurse That's all enshrined in black and white, in the Magic Diplomatic Summary of July 22nd, 1945. But she pulled the pin and threw it and blew him to kingdom come. The sacred mirror, symbol of the sun goddess, was worshipped at the Grand Shrine at Ise. Narrator:The Potsdam Declaration, issued July 26, 1945, was an ultimatum calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally and without delay or "risk prompt and utter destruction." That means we are going to maintain the source of Japanese militarism. They're beaten from this point on, but they don't give up. They burned the homes of Prime Minister Suzuki and Baron Hiranuma calling them pro- American traitors. Narrator:The Battle of Okinawa was just beginning. The B-29s had been rushed into service without proper testing. Conrad Crane, another war historian, adds, "It's a lot easier to drop an atomic bomb that's going to kill fewer than that on Hiroshima.". Julie O'Brien In the suburbs of Tokyo is the huge Nakajima aircraft plant. Forty-six student nurses shared a cave with the army. Tokyo Raid and War Damages Center Production of B-29s would cost more than developing the atomic bomb. Description of the radio reports from the lead bomber on the first incendiary raid over Tokyo on March 9, 1945 are by St. Clair McKelway. When the ultimatum arrived in Tokyo, Japan's prime minister, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, said the government intended to ignore it. To establish air bases the US would invade southern Kyushu with nine divisions. Low altitudes like the mission he had sent against Holland in 1943 with B-26s. George Niland, 6th Marine Division: We had the, that feeling of confidence, because all these big guns were firing in the air. The B-29, or Superfortress, was designed to operate faster, at higher altitudes, and with heavier bomb loads than its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress. Several days after the U.S. dropped a second atomic bombon Japan, Secretary of State James Byrnes drafted the following letter to a Swiss diplomat serving as an intermediary in negotiations with the Japanese. It bothered me a lot. President Harry Truman and his war advisers hotly discussed casualty estimates for a projected invasion. I was moved by it very much. Katsuo Nagata, Okinawan Student Conscript: We student conscripts were ordered to deliver bombs to Kakazu for destroying U.S. tanks. Missouriin Tokyo Bay. He ordered more raids. Masayuki Shimada: I said, "I wish to go on another mission. No matter, LeMay was told to get results. She was nineteen when the American bombers came, just after midnight on March 10, 1945. It becomes a war of racial savagery that culminates in a decision to drop an atomic bomb as an act of liberation to end the thing. The hardships his nation was about to endure would be anything but ordinary. Katsumoto Saotome, who as a 12-year-old schoolboy survived the American firebombing of Tokyo during World War II and later spent decades chronicling in books and documentary films the largely. Now, with the Nazis it was pretty easy. Morita Photostudio/ Koyo Ishikawa "In the framework of mid-1945 no one around Truman had any sustained and serious doubts about using the bomb." "You could have run the 600 yards across that plain and up Sugar Loaf Hill," he recalled, "in a few minutes." I mean, you have to achieve an understanding. Masayuki Shimada, Kamikaze Pilot: This is a headband painted with my own blood. Barton Bernstein, historian Bettmann/Corbis Richard Frank:With Truman, we have this extraordinary entry in his diary on the 25th of July, 1945, where he talks about meeting in the morning with General Marshall and British Admiral Mountbatten, and they talked about the tactical and political situation. Lauren Prestileo, An Austin Hoyt Productions Film For Jerome Connolly, U.S. Army Medic: Oh man. Without his support, it was doomed. he wrote in his diary on June 17th. She looked old. The prospect of massive Soviet armies sweeping down across Asia and confronting them, was a very real and intimidating prospect. "This mission shows your crews have the guts for anything." Japan sent word to Washington it accepted the Potsdam Declaration with one condition that it did not "prejudice the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler." This is Edward Drea's language, p. 162, and draws on the subtitle of his Chapter 11: Intelligence Forecasting for the Invasion of Japan: Previews of Hell. And then whatever ammunition was laying out on the carrier deck, those all exploded. There was no oxygen anywhere. National Archives Post Production Their commander-in-chief was Emperor Hirohito. Paper City tells the story of three survivors of the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo as they launch one final campaign to leave behind a record of this forgotten tragedybefore the last of them passes away. Narrator:After nearly a month of attack and counterattack, Marines relieved a shattered Army division. They had not been killing "men," a veteran recalled. He ran out of bombs. Himeyuri Peace Museum Narrator: As the Imperial Army lost ground on Okinawa, Japan prepared for the final decisive battle on the main islands - Ketsu-Go. Secretary of War Henry Stimson also favored this conditional surrender. Edward Drea:Marshall is now planning to use atomic bombs as really as tactical support weapons against the Japanese beach defenses, to precede the landing by the American units almost as if it were naval gunfire support. You know, it just, it was wonderful. Then he faced the direction of the Imperial Palace, threw his hands in the air and said, "Long live the Emperor!" Haruo Iguchi, Historian:They really lacked reality picture. Victory in the Pacificprovides a rare glimpse of Japanese decision-making in the waning months of the war. The extremity of their situation actually propels them to seek a decisive battle before their condition becomes so hapless, they can't even do that. The US blockade and firebombing had taken a toll. Narrator:There was no decision on what peace terms Japan might offer. Everyone said that to see a burn victim in a state of agony was-was the worst kind of experience anyone could have in the war, except to be the victim himself. Narrator: In explaining Japan's defeat, Hirohito wrote to his son, "Our military men placed too much weight on spirit and forgot about science." He said there was no message to leave. The Japs would then lay into them, and we'd try to keep them down with our machine guns. Several hundred piloted bombs. Narrator:Japan's military government had expanded its empire from Korea and Manchuria to China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and the southwest and central Pacific. It's awesome. Within days after these optimistic diary entries, intelligence from intercepted Japanese military cables, called Ultra, was alarming. Donald Miller:Death on these ships was really awful. Midori Yanagihara, Voiceovers The Kyushu bases would facilitate air support for an assault on Tokyo in 1946. And it bothered me a lot. I don't remember waking up, but my friend told me later that I was buried under dead bodies. The troops who landed knew this could be the Imperial Army's last battle before it defended the main islands. Intercepts, codenamed Magic, of the exchange between Foreign Minister Togo in Tokyo and Japan's Ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, tell a different story. For Marshall, it was a preview of hell. Conrad Crane, Historian: We tend to focus today on the bomb as some kind of key decision of 1945, that all these leaders are agonizing whether to use the bomb or not. "Remember the carriers," their commander urged. Narrator:Their reward would be a place of honor among the spirits of the war dead who dwelled at Yasukuni, the great Shinto shrine in Tokyo. He repeated the call again and again, but no one responded. At the same time, 1 million were rendered homeless and over 41 square kilometers of. Osaka, with its shipyards and steel mills. Yoshiko Hashimoto's family lived in the Sumida district. They knew the Japanese would fight to the death. "It is my belief," he said with sadness, "that continuation of the war promises nothing but additional destruction." Well, okay. He wanted actual power. Narrator:The emperor broke the deadlock. And what is astonishing is, when you go back to the records of their meetings, you can go through this entire period and find but one perhaps stray reference by one of these men to the fact they are watching Tokyo burn down around them, and it's having no effect on their position with respect to what to do. But it would still be a surrender. They were quite aware that they couldn't afford to have two-front war. In retrospect though, some divide had been crossed. Narrator:The Emperor had hoped the final decisive battle would be on Okinawa. Mainichi Photo Bank Nobody around him had any sustained and serious doubts about using the bomb. Carl Bakal Archives Well, Japan hadn't been walked over. To make this film, producers Austin Hoyt and Melissa Martin spoke to many survivors, whose memories reveal the horrors of war. One remembers it as "a pimple of a hill." And then he turned his plane and dove into the carrier. US Navy NewsweekMagazine How do you end it efficiently? And that's an analogy to a casualty figure somewhere between 600,000 and almost a million. Well bud, what are you waiting for? Secretary of War Stimson dropped vacation plans to attend a cabinet meeting. Edward Drea: How do you end this, on both sides? And I saw her do it. It was the implementation of a long-run assumption, rooted in the FDR administration, and sharing many of the same advisors. American casualties at Sugar Loaf Hill were more than 2,500. So he builds steel, concrete, and coral garrisons inside the mountains. ". I cannot hold back my tears whenever I think about it, and cannot forget her sad face looking into mine. Rationale (why are you doing this?) In early May, after a month of fighting, US forces approached Japan's main defensive line. Yoshiko Hashimoto: Warehouses, lined up on both sides of the river, were burning. Japanese leaders believed with great conviction that a great deal of bloodletting in an invasion of Kyushu would compel American politicians to negotiate out an end to the war on terms that the Japanese would find acceptable. I could never remember more than 20 or something. Narrator: Byrnes was in a tough position. The Army's commander decided to storm the ridges. It didn't take great perception to read the polls of early June 1945, and discover that most Americans hated the Emperor, hated the Emperor system, wanted the destruction of both Hirohito and the system, and saw this as responsible for the war. Come out naked if you are a man and come out waving a handkerchief if you are a woman!" "When you kill 100,000 civilians, you cross some sort of moral divide," comments war historian Edward Drea. Then, at a sign from the captain, we took off right away. If you see him, shoot him. Yet at the time, it was generally accepted that this was fair treatment, that the Japanese deserved this, that they had brought this on themselves. The production team would like to acknowledge Richard Frank's book,Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire(New York: Penguin Books, 1999). LeMay's fantasy scene in which he agonizes over the risks of low altitude incendiary flights is drawn from "Mission," p. 348-352. Professor David Fedman is an executive producer of a new documentary about the firebombing of Tokyo. Corporal Shimada was not one of them. After two months in the Okinawa campaign, he cabled Washington that he could no longer support it. My mother took off her protective hood from her head, put it on my head, and looked into my eyes. Robert Rodenhouse, B-29 pilot There's no question about it. "They really lacked reality picture," comments Japanese historian Haruo Iguchi. Narrator:"Congratulations," Army Air Force's commander Gen. Henry Arnold wired from Washington. 'All this is out,' LeMay then said, running a hand over several square miles of Tokyo. The Marines lived among them. Nearly 200,000 troops had boarded at 11 ports - from Seattle and San Francisco to Leyte in the Philippines. General Curtis LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor Even after two atomic bombs, no one expected surrender so soon. Since we're talking about using about 776,000 men on Kyushu, that works out to more than 200,000 casualties. The New York Times Akira Iriye, Historian: I just remember when I was in grade school, history lessons consist of us just memorizing all those 124 Japanese emperors' names, and you got the higher grade, the more names you could remember. and died. On one mission, one of the men in my unit was shot and critically wounded. Narrator:These questions faced America's new President, Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt after he died in April. And then the gasoline lines that were laid out on our deck - we were being refueled, ready to fly again - those caught on fire. Glenn Heath, Production Interns Ushijima's command post was under Shuri Castle four miles south in the main line of defense. 03/06/2015 An estimated 100,000 people perished in the firebomb raid on Tokyo in the night of March 9-10, 1945. Just couldn't make that decision. The early ones read: "Large fires observed. And you'd see people in the caves, soldiers Japanese, not a mark on them. The bombing of Tokyo, often referred to as a "firebombing", was conducted as part of the air raids on Japan by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Everybody started screaming, "Mother, help me!" Byrnes is the kind of person who worried about the electorate, who worried about domestic politics. Donald Miller:Ushijima was very smart. Narrator:Many civilians in the caves, like those on Saipan, preferred death before surrender. These pilots would help make it one of the most terrible in the history of warfare. Robert Rodenhouse: I'm sort of a religious person. Edward Drea:Ultra told a startling story in July of 1945. I mean, this is one of the classic understatements in world history, when he looks around at this ruined empire and says, "Well, it didn't, didn't quite go as we expected." Donald Miller:The idea is to bleed the Americans. Masayuki Shimada, kamikaze pilot Acknowledgements to other contributors are listed below. As Emperor Hirohitotoured the destruction in Tokyo, the largest fleet ever assembled more than 40 carriers, 18 battleships, and 200 destroyers -- approached the Japanese island of Okinawa. Back to Nagoya. "These men are watching Tokyo burn down around them, and it's having no effect on their position," says Richard Frank, author ofDownfall, The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Narrator:Marines learned not to trust those who surrendered even civilians. Those were everyday words to combat troops. Narrator:That happened to be the night Secretary of War Henry Stimson sent a wire authorizing the use of the atomic bomb. Narrator:Truman was advised he might save American lives if he dropped the demand for unconditional surrender and allowed Japan to keep the Emperor. He followed a theory the Americans called it the "cornered rat" theory. Narrator:Their mission, as the Japanese high command had predicted, was to take Okinawa, and use it as a staging area for an invasion of Japan's main islands, only 350 miles away. And so I shot her. Narrator: The Yamato's mission was to attack the fleet of Okinawa. Richard Frank, Author:This, for most Americans, placed the Japanese simply beyond the pale, not merely people of a different race but virtually aliens from another galaxy. "What worries me," he confided, "is whether the nation will be able to endure it until then." "It would be as brutal as war gets." As many as 100,000 civilians died that night. Narrator:In the ten waves of kamikaze attacks off Okinawa, Japan lost 1900 pilots. A virtual public program with Edward E. Gordon, presented for the Museum of flight on August 6th, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan during WWII. How do you end it? On August 14, President Truman received a message from the Japanese government that he deemed an unconditional surrender.
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