WEBVTT 00:32:46.984 --> 00:32:50.646 In Asia the second world war began in 1937 when Japan 00:32:50.646 --> 00:32:53.863 launched a full scale attack on China. 00:32:53.863 --> 00:32:56.796 Like Germany, Japan was driven by the need for living space 00:32:56.796 --> 00:33:00.744 and by a racial ideology that had the Japanese believing 00:33:00.744 --> 00:33:04.980 they were superior to their neighbors. Japan's military 00:33:04.980 --> 00:33:08.744 leaders exploited the devotion of their people to help 00:33:08.744 --> 00:33:12.263 them wage a savage war throughout Asia. 00:33:12.263 --> 00:33:16.473 The war would cost more than 10 million lives and ultimately take Japan's 00:33:16.473 --> 00:33:25.676 own people to the brink of destruction. 00:33:25.676 --> 99:59:59.999 Japan 1942 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In war time Japan, every boy was prepared to be a soldier. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The japanese text books glorified war and taught children that their 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 emperor was a deity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The japanese people were told they were superior 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and therefore invincible in this or any war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In the 1930's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japan's military leaders 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 go back and ransack the past and they pull out all these 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 images of purity and sincerity 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they pump them up into an ideology focusing on the emperor. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are a superior race because of our unique NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 pure qualities and that's the equivalent to the Nazi's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 pumping up master race theories in the 30's. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were in what the emperor called a holy war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We believed that we had a mission to achieve the so-called "hakko ichiu" meaning 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the 8 corners of the world under 1 roof. A world 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ruled by our emperor. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For Japan, China would be the first step towards a Japanese empire in Asia. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In December 1937, after capturing the provisional 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Chinese capital Nan Jing, the Japanese soldier went on a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 rampage against both defeated Chinese troops and civilians. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Hiromichi Nagatomi, a Japanese student was in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Nan Jing. He was invited by the army to join in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The officers said "watch carefully" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He took out his sword and poured water over it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Called one of the prisoners to step forward and order him to stick 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 his neck out. Then the officer chopped his head off. The head fell 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and blood gushed from the arteries 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Seeing this, other chinese soldiers ran into the river. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I borrowed a rifle and shot one of them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That was the first murder I committed in China. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The reverend John MgGee, an American missionary, wrote to his wife about what he saw 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The horror of the last week is beyond anything I have experienced 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were such savages. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They have not only killed every prisoner they could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Shiro Azuma kept a set of diaries during his tour of duty in Nan Jing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 deeply repentant for what he had done. He was the first former Japanese soldier to tell what happened. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Whenever we found a girl, almost 100 percent of the time we raped her. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Not just one of us, but 5 of us would rape her. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we always killed them afterwards. We simply set them on fire. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We felt no guild what so ever. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When we raped we thought of them as humans but afterwards, when we killed them 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we thought of them as pigs. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In what came to be known as the rape of Nan Jing, the Japanese army killed nearly 200,000 civilians 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and raped an estimated 20,000 women. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japanese barbarism would spread all over China. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At this one place, I came across some mothers holding their children. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There were about 20 women 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I captured them and put them all in a house. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I put logs inside the house and a burned them all alive. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The fact that I killed so many Chinese didn't even occur to me as a crime. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I regarded myself as a hero. I am loyal to the emperor and dutiful to my parents. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From China, Japan's warriors went on to conquer most of Southeast Asia. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In every country, they brutalized, exploited, and enslaved the people under the banner of liberation and cooperation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But slowly, the tide began to turn 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In mid-1942, the United States having entered the war 6 months earlier began to push the Japanese back. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The military controlled the press and didn't tell us the truth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were told that we were winning, but some how sensed we were not winning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As the allied forces ground away at the Japanese military, food and fuel dwindled. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On the Japanese homefront, younger and younger children were sent to work in factories. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 United by slogans such as "one hundred hearts beating as one" the Japanese people were called upon 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to make ever greater sacrifices to support a war they believed to be a decadent, and savage, and an unforgiving enemy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were lead to believe that Americans too individualistic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that kind of individualism should be destroyed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Let us say that the yankee devils and the british beasts or something like this and you know 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 being devils and the beasts that the American's and the British must have horns and tails and must be very brutal 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's our notion of our enemy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For 2 years, Japan lost battle after battle. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In June 1944, American forces invaded Sai Pan. Only 1,500 miles from Tokeyo. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Obey orders to fight until the last man. The Japanese troops were annihilated. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japanese civilians also refused to surrender and some were ordered by the Japanese military to commit suicide. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The civilians on the island may have been told that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we were terrible vicious people. That we would rape their women and murder them and so on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They were so convinced this was true that they finally got up to the cliffs on the North end of the island 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we saw them by the hundreds jumping into the ocean to the rocks down below 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 carrying their children with them sometimes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japanese government reports praised the civilians on the island for cooperating with the army 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japanese newspapers glorified their death as sublime self sacrafice. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But by the summer of 1944, the Japanese military leadership concluded 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that the Japanese military could not win the war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then the Japanese government said yes indeed and all the people the hundred million 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 must be ready to fight until the bitter end. The Japanese phrase at the time 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was something called "gil cou sai" meaning a shattering of a jewel. It's a beautiful death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now crazy people, crazy militarist said indeed, this is our honor 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if we are all extinguished, so be it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For the average citizen, what choice did you have. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A command given by a military superior was regarded given by the emperor. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The emperor was regarded as a living god. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were supposed to die for him and not supposed to question his authority in any way at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Exploiting the mythology of sacrifice for the emperor and the nation now turned suicide into a strategy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In October of 1944, the imperial navy formed the first cozi-unit. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Young Japanese pilots would fly one way missions to death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ralph Sacamoto trained as a kamakazi pilot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Several of my classmates actually did go on a one-way mission. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The members of the squadron who were not flying would line up outside the airfield 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to wave off the aircraft which was taking off. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I cried I guess. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I prayed for them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By April, 1945 the war had finally arrived on Japan's doorstep. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Okinawa, only 40 miles from the Japanese main land. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 1,900 kamakazi missions were unleashed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To defend the island, 15 year old students were used as human land mines. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we did was carry a small mine on our back, dig a small hole in view, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 hide, and when the noise was close enough 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we were supposed to jump out and go under one of the catipilars. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The battle of Okinawa lasted for nearly 3 months. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Many of the civilians hid in caves 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Tony Kohiga was 6 years old. She was separated from her family and wandering alone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In one cave, an old couple made her a white flag and urged the child to surrender. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I begged them, grandpa and grandma, please don't chase me away. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I want to die here. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She had been told that American soldiers would cut women and children into pieces. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I came out, I saw American soldiers and one of them was standing there with a black box. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I thought right away that they were going to kill me with that thing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My father once said to me, even if you're about to be killed by an enemy soldier, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 don't die crying like a baby. Smile for the enemy when you die. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, thinking that that was it, I waved at them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But why does the soldier look so kind when he is about to kill someone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Japanese suffered a disastrous defeat in Okinawa. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Japanese high command then issued orders for an all out mobilization at home. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A final desperate push to save the nation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's true that a hundred million people being mobilized and they leave for parish. They have to parish, you see. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Looking back and what a terrible idea 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 asking the whole population to parish for any call they see. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Japanese high command planned that the Japanese army would be joined by virtually the entire civilian population to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 defend against the Americans on the beaches in the event of an invasion. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The high command had not anticipated an attack by air. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As to make it appear that the kinds of things had happened there 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 had not been done with the kind of intention that indeed had been done with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Having dealt a death blow to Nazi Germany, the United States 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 now prepared its final assault on Japan. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The airial campaign began with a bombing of factories and military installations 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 March, 1945 Tokeyo itself was selected as a target. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We received an astounding briefing that took everyone by surprise. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I remember distinctly, that there was a loud audible gasp that went up from the crew when they realized 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we were going in to Tokeyo at 7,000 feet, not 27,000 feet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is the most heavily defended city of Japan. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were carefully briefed with the full knowledge that the area to which we were assigned 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was in the densest part of Tokeyo. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The planes were striped of their guns so they could carry the maximum bomb load 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of 10 tons. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On the evening of March the 9th, 325 super fortresses arrived over the Japanese capitol. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All of the sudden, the blast from the airplanes came over like a roar. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It shook the windows and made a sound..."bebebebe" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We all ran. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From the west came a huge blanket of black smoke. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When we penetrated that cloud, we ran into these very strong odors that seemed like it had to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 be associated with a terrible tragedy. I just describe it as the smell of death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I saw my mother trip and her hair stood on end and she screamed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then she fell off the bridge into the black smoke with my baby brother strapped to her back. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think she was trying to save my father but he went down with her into the smoke. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 After we dropped our bombs, I could look right on the city burning below us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It looked like a part of Tokeyo had dropped down into hell that night. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In one night our American fire bombs killed 80,000 civilians. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Tokeyo was only the beginning. 65 more Japanese cities would be bombed in this fashion. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japan was being pulverized. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was only a few years earlier, that Americans had...this is barbaric. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Coming through the position that we must systematically bomb civilian populations to end the war 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and this is proper and appropriate and even moral is an extrordinary moral and psychological journey 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in my view a journey toward hell. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On August the 6th, 1945, one plane and one bomb over Hiroshima. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The entire town of Hiroshima was burning and you could see the famous mushroom clouds 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I seen 500, 600 people burned, hurt, some of them dead. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot of people floating in the river. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Some of them swimming, some of them dead. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our main street was turning to a show case of human cruelty. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If the blast hit you directly, your eyes popped out. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People are walking around holding their eye balls like this. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Young children, maybe first grade or kindergarten children yelling Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then the teacher said, "Be patient. Mommy come after you" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The next morning all the children are dead. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I still in here have a clear picture of such innocent little children. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I walked through the hell, actually stepped through hell and returned. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 August the 9th, a second plane, a second bomb. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Nagasaki. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In the two atomic attacks, nearly 200,000 Japanese were killed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On August the 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The second world war was finally over. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In the last days of the war, Victorious allied soldiers arrived on a terrain few could imagine or 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even have words to successfully describe. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The enormity of Nazi atrocities demanded an accounting. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At Neurumburg, once the scene of triumphant German pageantry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 War crimes trials now made it clear to the world what Hitlor had tried to accomplish. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The rounds that we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So malignant and so devestating. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That civilization cannot tolerate there being ignored. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ernest Michelle who survived the death camps at auchowitz covered the trial 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for a German newspaper. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Everyday when I went to this trail, I looked at them sitting maybe 30 feet away from me 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and sometimes I had to stop myself from jumping at them and yelling, "What did you do to me? To my family?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "To my friends?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For the first time in history, national leaders were held responsible for their aggression. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For the first time the murder and enslavement of civilians for their political beliefs, their race, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or their religion was recognized as crimes against humanity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You must plead guilty or not guilty. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Manny Claude Van Contier was called to testify in January 1946. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I tried to look at the each of them and I thought look at me because 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with my eyes and with my mouth, hundreds of thousands of your victims are accusing you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Neurumburg was the first of more than a dozen trials in which heinza group members, SS doctors, and others 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 were made to answer for their crimes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In September 1946, 12 high ranking Nazi officials 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 were sentenced to death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A similar proceeding in Tokeyo tried 28 of Japan's highest ranking leaders. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The reverend John MgGee was a witness. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The killing began immediately, up to 30 soldiers together going about. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Each one seeming to have the power of life or death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In this case, 7 of those on trial were sentenced to death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More than 5,700 Japanese officers and soldiers stood trial throughout Asia. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More than 900 were executed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In a Chinese court, Hiromichi Nagatomi, the student who joined in the Nan Jing masecure 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was confronted by one of his victims. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He said, Nagatomi, you killed my only son. You burned my only daughter to death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When her father came home and saw what happened to them, he lost his mind and died. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'v suffered this sickness too. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I got on my knees to apologize but there was no way to make up for what I did. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There would be no apology or restitution to the estimated 1 million German and Japanese civilians 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who died in allied bombing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There deaths had become acceptable to those whose duty it was to end the war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It is hard to remember more than 50 years later, but when World War 2 began, victory for America 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and its allys was by no means assured. We will discover that on the next episode of the century. I'm Peter Jennings. Thank you for joining us.