Jerome Connolly, U.S. Army Medic: Oh man. The island of Okinawa, once secure, would be a staging area for the invasion. "Banzai". Library of Congress She must have died in agony. 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.". Once in a while you would hear a gunshot someplace, but nothing happened. Wonderfully dramatic metaphor. I heard that, the next morning when the tanks came, they armed the bombs and made suicide attacks into the tanks. There's no way Japan can win. A 1986 article by Joe Conason and Ellen McGarrahan in The Village Voice. Robert Rodenhouse, B-29 pilot Alongside civilians, armed with sharpened bamboo spears. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, historian He developed the way they did their bomb runs. Robert Rodenhouse: I'm sort of a religious person. 72 comments 92% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a comment Log In Sign Up Sort by: best We had been told not to be captured. And they wouldn't come out. Anami's last act was that of a proud Japanese warrior who had fought his battle and lost. Narrator:These questions faced America's new President, Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt after he died in April. You enjoyed it. Paper City Bombing of Tokyo, (March 9-10, 1945), firebombing raid (codenamed "Operation Meetinghouse") by the United States on the capital of Japan during the final stages of World War II, often cited as one of the most destructive acts of war in history, more destructive than the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. Midori Yanagihara, Voiceovers Narrator:That same morning, a Japanese battleship slipped her moorings in Japan's Inland Sea and headed for Okinawa. 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. It was intense. How do you end it efficiently? Paper City explores what we choose to remember, and aim to forgetand what the consequences of that are. The Manhattan Project informed him at least seven would be ready by November 1st. Book Review: 'The Sullivanians,' by Alexander Stille - The New York Times American casualties at Sugar Loaf Hill were more than 2,500. Robert Rodenhouse:When we got over the target it was like a thousand Christmas trees lit up all over. If at Potsdam he had allowed Japan to keep the Emperor, many historians have argued, Japan might have surrendered before the atomic bomb was dropped. On Nagoya, with its huge aircraft plants. Walt Moore, 1st Marine Division:Absolutely awesome. And we, the Yamato crew, should take the lead. And what Truman is doing with that entry is leaving a cryptic message to us, down through the years: I saw, I saw, I saw. In the suburbs of Tokyo is the huge Nakajima aircraft plant. ", Donald Miller:And Nimitz wired back, "Delete everything after 'I may be crazy.' So that's the purpose of unconditional surrender. In April he had agreed to a strategy of invading Japan. The army called the plan Ketsu-Go. From the maintenance crew." The Kyushu bases would facilitate air support for an assault on Tokyo in 1946. Yoshio Emoto: Westerners often ask me how the Japanese could choose death over surrender. "From the moment of surrender," it read, "the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government shall be subject to the Supreme Commander Allied Powers" When Byrnes's response arrived in Japan, the war cabinet was once again split. Kamikazes had attacked the Navy before, but never on such a scale. We got all this big buildup on the boat. Well, okay. National Archives Even after the devastating firebombing, Japanese leaders did not yield. But they don't give up. Donald Miller, Historian:These are, to a lot of American troops, you know, monkeys with machine guns. "What worries me," he confided, "is whether the nation will be able to endure it until then." George Niland, 6th Marine Division Richard B. Frank, author "That is my hardest decision to date." Narrator: And to the Japanese, the Americans are big hairy red beasts, who are going to defile our culture, rape our women. Post Production **FAIR USE NOTICE**These Videos May Contain Copyrighted ( ) Material. There was no resistance at all. When I wrote my farewell letter in the barracks, I cut my little finger, used the blood to paint a Japanese flag on the headband, and wore it when I flew out the next day. Major General Curtis LeMay arrived in the Mariana Islands in mid - January 1945 to take over the 21st Bomber Command the B-29s. Edward Drea:If this would have happened, the invaders of the land of the gods would have entered the world of the dead on both sides. Donald Miller: When you're fighting an enemy that will not surrender, that considers surrender disgraceful, and punishes prisoners who do surrender for being unmanly, and treats them that way, this is a war that's going to fly out of control, and the atrocities really begin to mount. And if we keep on fighting, what is dangerous is says, oh, well, of course a nation will be in smithereens. You read the contemporary planning documents, and you see that there is no appreciation of the potential danger of immediate or lingering radiation. Donald Miller: When you're fighting an enemy antithetical to all the values that you stand for, these systems have to be expunged by wars that are, in a sense, revolutions, that overthrow regimes, that don't just defeat the regime, but that eliminate them entirely so Japan never goes on another war of conquest in Asia again. What would have come out later if all of a sudden the invasion went in and had all these casualties, and American public found out later that, well, we had this super-bomb but we didn't want to use it because we thought we were going to kill too many Japanese? It sucks out all the oxygen. US Marine Corps Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. Japan's response to the Potsdam Declaration arrived in Washington August 10th. If they could stop an invasion that would destroy their country, their culture, their Emperor, and their villages, they will have done great things. Conrad Crane:I think the best explanation of why the Japanese surrender is it's because a whole series of shocks that occur. The plan was to destroy troop ships before they reached the beaches. PAPER CITY | Documentary Australia But it was coming from all sides. Edward Drea:Hiranuma's argument was the constitution was irrelevant. Carl Bakal Archives The hardships his nation was about to endure would be anything but ordinary. Professor Fedman would introduce the film and . Okinawa's main line of defense began to crumble. Narrator:The emperor broke the deadlock. I don't remember waking up, but my friend told me later that I was buried under dead bodies. Female Voice:"Dear General. What was the firebombing of Tokyo? I mean, you have to achieve an understanding. We had a lot of bombs miss the target. "Not one B-26 came home that day," he remembered. God, did we hate them. Narrator: Marines encountered fire from positions dug into the front of the hill, mortars lobbed from the back of the hill, fire from neighboring hills and artillery from Shuri Castle almost a mile away. Haruo Iguchi, historian And you could feel the heat when you're there, and-and you could smell the smoke and the stench of human and animal flesh as that city is being consumed by millions of fires all over. 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. Mainichi Photo Bank The Nazis had surrendered unconditionally, and he believed, Americans would demand the same of Hirohito. It drove a lot of Marines nuts. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as they began to retake the Pacific, they saw it in the Gilbert Islands where, of a Japanese garrison of almost 2600 on Tarawa, only eight did not fight to the death. He urged Truman to accept the Japanese offer. We had also been told that the Americans would kill men instantly and women would be raped and run over by tanks. 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. Narrator: LeMay stayed up that night for the radio reports from his lead pilot. George Niland:You couldn't believe how happy we were. It is considered the single most deadly bombing raid in history. Truman's diary entry that night read: "Fini Japs when that comes about." Donald Miller:Ushijima was very smart. Moscow approach, I think, is crucial to terminate the war. Donald Miller, Historian: Sacrificial charges. Narrator: Two kamikazes attacked the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill on May 11. Okinawa Harbor View Hotel. 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. Film Announcer:This quaint looking jellyfish contains enough gasoline to spread fire of 1000 degrees over 30 square yards. ", "I can't breathe!" Narrator:As Americans approached General Ushijima's cave, he retreated to its depths. I could no longer hold in my emotions and shouted out with the loudest possible voice, "Mother!" So he builds steel, concrete, and coral garrisons inside the mountains. Narrator:Torrential rains and mud also hindered their advance. Fotosearch/Getty Images. Narrator: In explaining Japan's defeat, Hirohito wrote to his son, "Our military men placed too much weight on spirit and forgot about science." There's beginnings of popular unrest, the way this war has gone. After seven days, the battle of Sugar Loaf Hill was over. Emperor Hirohito inspected the ruins nine days after the firebombing. Fearing the atomic bomb would end the war before he entered, Stalin advanced the date. On the seventh day, the artillery fire that softened up Sugar Loaf Hill and its neighboring hills was unusually heavy. Up-and-coming Australian documentary filmmaker makes - And in the Marianas, they saw 30,000 on Saipan reduced to 1,000. In Potsdam, Truman received word from the director of the Manhattan project. In the Service of the Emperor No bombing raid in the war had been more destructive. Harry Truman, U.S. president:It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July the 26th was issued at Potsdam. 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. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 called Operation Meetinghouse by the Americans would become the deadliest air raid in human history. 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. Anthony Pompliano, 'The Pomp Podcast' host and Pomp Investments founder, joins 'Last Call' to discuss Bitcoin's rally, the new BlackRock crypto ETF, and more. The imperial line predated the Meiji constitution of 1868. I mean, thick. It was June 22nd, the day Okinawa fell to the Americans. Hirohito's concern about the nation's "enduring" until it won a decisive battle and his concern about the "ordinary hardships" of war draw on Bix's language, p. 489-90 and 523. Narrator:Emperor Hirohito shared the concern about revolution. George Niland: And we started getting instructions on invading Japan. For the first time I realized that I was regarded merely as part of the plane. Among the targets in the Sumida district of Tokyo were several large factories that made airplane parts. ", "Teacher, help me! The best you're going to get out of this is what he calls unconditional surrender, and then he thinks better of that and refines it to mean: Of course we would retain the imperial institution. Narrator: Byrnes got support from an unexpected quarter. Without his support, it was doomed. I do not think that Westerners can fully understand this behavior. On beaches in the south, invaders would outnumber the defenders by three to one. Kimberly Langley, Sound & Assistant Camera Low altitudes like the mission he had sent against Holland in 1943 with B-26s. And they told us about the ferocious snakes and the Japs are worse than the snakes, and we're going in there and it's going to be maybe the final battle. Both bombs were important. When the emperor's inner circle met with him that night, Baron Hiranuma, a Shinto fundamentalist, tried to further solidify the emperor's powers. It's going to kill you, if a bomb doesn't. In Paper City, Japanese survivors recount their experiences of the 1945 And if were going against it, the bombs would be short of the target. Japan was dependent on oil and food from its Asian Empire. If there were bombs in the bomb bay, they would go off. 'All this is out,' LeMay then said, running a hand over several square miles of Tokyo. The B-29s had been rushed into service without proper testing. You know, it just, it was wonderful. The jet stream and bad weather over Japan forced him to try something bold, something that had never been tried before. ". Francis directed the award-winning documentary short, Lessons from the Night, about an immigrant cleaner, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.His short films have screened at major international festivals including . This is the anniversary of my son Nicky being killed over Tokyo. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall took the lead. Victory in the Pacificlooks at the terrible costof the battle. You had a tough problem, you gave it to LeMay. It was one of two touchdowns he scored in game 1, before taking over at quarterback for game 2, in which he tossed seven touchdown passes versus just one interception. In June the invasion planners projected three Japanese divisions in southern Kyushu.By July there was evidence of nine divisions - triple the number in just one month. It was based on death before surrender. On the night of March 9, 1945, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. An aerial view of a firebombed area in Tokyo in 1945. "Father, help me! 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." Civilians, attached to military units, were prepared to fight with sharpened bamboo spears. But the second one dropped his bomb into the ready room that I had just left five minutes before. Francis' film Paper City is focused on the (mostly-forgotten) firebombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945. Chester Nimitz, admiral of the Pacific fleet, was appalled. We were taught that "Yamato Damasii" was a virtue, a fundamental principle of the Japanese people. Jack Hoag:We just looked at them-- They were just- just something to eliminate. Yoshiko Hashimoto, Tokyo firebomb survivor In explaining his defeat, Hirohito wrote to his son, "Our military placed too much weight on spirit and forgot about the science. Japanese writer who documented WWII Tokyo firebombing dies Ronald Reagan: Within a radius of 15 miles of the Imperial Palace live seven million Japanese, a people we used to think of as small, dainty, polite, concerning themselves only with floral arrangements and rock gardens and the cultivation of silk worms. Almost one-third of the invasion force were casualties. I was moved by it very much. He was a transcendent being. For three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the Japanese government had not met. Akira Iriye, Historian:I was about down to 44 pounds. Walter Moore, 1st Marine Division On Okinawa the US Army and Marines were destroying the last line of Japanese resistance cave by cave. Remembering the night 100,000 died when US firebombed Tokyo To my surprise the officer was angry and yelled at me, "How could you come back alive? "Saipan is the first invaded Jap territory populated with more than a handful of civilians," Sherrod wrote. Mark Felton Productions The Allied bombing of German cities in World War II was unjustifiable Intelligence Squared The Doolitte Raid on Tokyo (1942): The US Strikes Back | Battle 360 | History. For a general death before surrender entailed a ritual. Narrator:Word of the Japanese surrender would soon reach anxious American forces poised for the invasion. In Paper City, Japanese Survivors Recount Their Experiences Of The 1945 Subtitles of first verse of Umi Yukaba continue: I shall die for the Emperor. It was one of the most densely crowded areas in the world. The idea had originated with Joseph Grew, former ambassador to Japan, now the Undersecretary of State. And Togo thought that. Dr. Frank Arian Private Collection He knelt - facing north toward the Imperial Palace. Edward J. Drea 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. The range of American fighter planes indicated where the landing would be- on the island of Kyushu. Emperor Hirohito had to intervene twice to break deadlocks in his war cabinet. He wanted actual power. It would be as brutal as war gets a death embrace between America demanding unconditional surrender. Chuck Costa Originally from Australia, Adrian Francis has lived and worked in Tokyo for 15 years. In the night, they'd come back from the back of the hill, from under the hill, from beside the hill, and they'd counterattack. It bothered me a lot. He did not react at all to the sound of the explosions. And his great hope was that the little fires would converge and create a large fire, an all-consuming urban conflagration. And I remember writing to my mother about it, and she was so upset because that sounded like a complaint, that I was complaining about something. Harry George:One hundred and forty-one foot-foot wingspan, 99 feet long, four powerful engines on it, and electronically, remote control gun sights, two bomb bays. Michael H. Amundson, Additional Sound LeMay never got the chance. 70 years ago, on the night of 9 March, 1945 the United States launched the single most deadly bombing raid in the history of mankind by devastating the. DVIC And Stimson isn't even talking about the home islands. The longer we prolong it, the longer that fleet sits out there and is susceptible to kamikaze air attack. Imperial Army troops in China had already begun pulling back to Japan to thwart the anticipated American invasion. Richard Williams, Colorist & Online Editor And that sounds bloodthirsty, but it's true. At one point, Admiral Leahy, Truman's chief of staff, suggests it'll be like Okinawa, 35% of the committed forces. "Katsumoto Saotome, chronicler of Tokyo firebombing, dies at 90. Screening of "Paper City": Memories of the Tokyo firebombing The early ones read: "Large fires observed. Al Turnbull, U.S. Navy:Both of them strafed over my head, fortunately. Narrator:Next night LeMay was shown the photos. Terrain's everything here. Stimson told Truman that if we don't use the emperor to obtain an organized capitulation of the Japanese armed forces, we could be facing a score of Iwo Jimas or Okinawas across the Asian continent, in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Narrator:In his memoirs, LeMay recalled the anguish of his decision. Jerome Connolly, U.S. Army medic It was irrelevant to discuss the emperor's prerogatives in terms of legal arrangements. Jack Hoag, 6th Marine Division On March 10, 1945, a U.S. air attack on .
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