The Century: America's Time - 1941-1945 Civilians at War

The Century: America's Time
Episode 6 - 1941-1945: Civilians at War

World War II was the first war in history that killed more civilians than soldiers, as leaders on both sides accepted noncombatant casualties as inevitable -- and, to some, even desirable. This program studies the courage and the strength necessary to face and survive starvation, bombing, torpedoing, massacre, and extermination in camps specifically designed for that purpose.

In Asia the second world war began in 1937 when Japan

launched a full scale attack on China.

Like Germany, Japan was driven by the need for living space

and by a racial ideology that had the Japanese believing

they were superior to their neighbors. Japan's military

leaders exploited the devotion of their people to help

them wage a savage war throughout Asia.

The war would cost more than 10 million lives and ultimately take Japan's

own people to the brink of destruction.

Japan 1942

In war time Japan, every boy was prepared to be a soldier.

The japanese text books glorified war and taught children that their

emperor was a deity.

The japanese people were told they were superior

and therefore invincible in this or any war.

In the 1930's

Japan's military leaders

go back and ransack the past and they pull out all these

images of purity and sincerity

and they pump them up into an ideology focusing on the emperor.

We are a superior race because of our unique

pure qualities and that's the equivalent to the Nazi's

pumping up master race theories in the 30's.

We were in what the emperor called a holy war.

We believed that we had a mission to achieve the so-called "hakko ichiu" meaning

the 8 corners of the world under 1 roof. A world

ruled by our emperor.

For Japan, China would be the first step towards a Japanese empire in Asia.

In December 1937, after capturing the provisional

Chinese capital Nan Jing, the Japanese soldier went on a

rampage against both defeated Chinese troops and civilians.

Hiromichi Nagatomi, a Japanese student was in

Nan Jing. He was invited by the army to join in.

The officers said "watch carefully"

He took out his sword and poured water over it.

Called one of the prisoners to step forward and order him to stick

his neck out. Then the officer chopped his head off. The head fell

and blood gushed from the arteries

Seeing this, other chinese soldiers ran into the river.

I borrowed a rifle and shot one of them.

That was the first murder I committed in China.

The reverend John MgGee, an American missionary, wrote to his wife about what he saw

The horror of the last week is beyond anything I have experienced

I never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were such savages.

They have not only killed every prisoner they could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages.

I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world.

Shiro Azuma kept a set of diaries during his tour of duty in Nan Jing

deeply repentant for what he had done. He was the first former Japanese soldier to tell what happened.

Whenever we found a girl, almost 100 percent of the time we raped her.

Not just one of us, but 5 of us would rape her.

And we always killed them afterwards. We simply set them on fire.

We felt no guild what so ever.

When we raped we thought of them as humans but afterwards, when we killed them

we thought of them as pigs.

In what came to be known as the rape of Nan Jing, the Japanese army killed nearly 200,000 civilians

and raped an estimated 20,000 women.

Japanese barbarism would spread all over China.

At this one place, I came across some mothers holding their children.

There were about 20 women

I captured them and put them all in a house.

I put logs inside the house and a burned them all alive.

The fact that I killed so many Chinese didn't even occur to me as a crime.

I regarded myself as a hero. I am loyal to the emperor and dutiful to my parents.

From China, Japan's warriors went on to conquer most of Southeast Asia.

In every country, they brutalized, exploited, and enslaved the people under the banner of liberation and cooperation.

But slowly, the tide began to turn

In mid-1942, the United States having entered the war 6 months earlier began to push the Japanese back.

The military controlled the press and didn't tell us the truth.

We were told that we were winning, but some how sensed we were not winning.

As the allied forces ground away at the Japanese military, food and fuel dwindled.

On the Japanese homefront, younger and younger children were sent to work in factories.

United by slogans such as "one hundred hearts beating as one" the Japanese people were called upon

to make ever greater sacrifices to support a war they believed to be a decadent, and savage, and an unforgiving enemy.

We were lead to believe that Americans too individualistic.

And that kind of individualism should be destroyed.

Let us say that the yankee devils and the british beasts or something like this and you know

being devils and the beasts that the American's and the British must have horns and tails and must be very brutal

That's our notion of our enemy.

For 2 years, Japan lost battle after battle.

In June 1944, American forces invaded Sai Pan. Only 1,500 miles from Tokeyo.

Obey orders to fight until the last man. The Japanese troops were annihilated.

Japanese civilians also refused to surrender and some were ordered by the Japanese military to commit suicide.

The civilians on the island may have been told that

we were terrible vicious people. That we would rape their women and murder them and so on.

They were so convinced this was true that they finally got up to the cliffs on the North end of the island

and we saw them by the hundreds jumping into the ocean to the rocks down below

carrying their children with them sometimes

Japanese government reports praised the civilians on the island for cooperating with the army

Japanese newspapers glorified their death as sublime self sacrafice.

But by the summer of 1944, the Japanese military leadership concluded

that the Japanese military could not win the war.

Then the Japanese government said yes indeed and all the people the hundred million

must be ready to fight until the bitter end. The Japanese phrase at the time

was something called "gil cou sai" meaning a shattering of a jewel. It's a beautiful death.

Now crazy people, crazy militarist said indeed, this is our honor

if we are all extinguished, so be it.

For the average citizen, what choice did you have.

A command given by a military superior was regarded given by the emperor.

The emperor was regarded as a living god.

We were supposed to die for him and not supposed to question his authority in any way at all.

Exploiting the mythology of sacrifice for the emperor and the nation now turned suicide into a strategy.

In October of 1944, the imperial navy formed the first cozi-unit.

Young Japanese pilots would fly one way missions to death.

Ralph Sacamoto trained as a kamakazi pilot.

Several of my classmates actually did go on a one-way mission.

The members of the squadron who were not flying would line up outside the airfield

to wave off the aircraft which was taking off.

I cried I guess.

I prayed for them.

By April, 1945 the war had finally arrived on Japan's doorstep.

Okinawa, only 40 miles from the Japanese main land.

1,900 kamakazi missions were unleashed.

To defend the island, 15 year old students were used as human land mines.

What we did was carry a small mine on our back, dig a small hole in view,

hide, and when the noise was close enough

we were supposed to jump out and go under one of the catipilars.

The battle of Okinawa lasted for nearly 3 months.

Many of the civilians hid in caves

Tony Kohiga was 6 years old. She was separated from her family and wandering alone.

In one cave, an old couple made her a white flag and urged the child to surrender.

I begged them, grandpa and grandma, please don't chase me away.

I want to die here.

She had been told that American soldiers would cut women and children into pieces.

When I came out, I saw American soldiers and one of them was standing there with a black box.

I thought right away that they were going to kill me with that thing.

My father once said to me, even if you're about to be killed by an enemy soldier,

don't die crying like a baby. Smile for the enemy when you die.

So, thinking that that was it, I waved at them.

But why does the soldier look so kind when he is about to kill someone.

The Japanese suffered a disastrous defeat in Okinawa.

The Japanese high command then issued orders for an all out mobilization at home.

A final desperate push to save the nation.

It's true that a hundred million people being mobilized and they leave for parish. They have to parish, you see.

Looking back and what a terrible idea

asking the whole population to parish for any call they see.

The Japanese high command planned that the Japanese army would be joined by virtually the entire civilian population to

defend against the Americans on the beaches in the event of an invasion.

The high command had not anticipated an attack by air.

As to make it appear that the kinds of things had happened there

had not been done with the kind of intention that indeed had been done with.

Having dealt a death blow to Nazi Germany, the United States

now prepared its final assault on Japan.

The airial campaign began with a bombing of factories and military installations

March, 1945 Tokeyo itself was selected as a target.

We received an astounding briefing that took everyone by surprise.

I remember distinctly, that there was a loud audible gasp that went up from the crew when they realized

we were going in to Tokeyo at 7,000 feet, not 27,000 feet.

This is the most heavily defended city of Japan.

We were carefully briefed with the full knowledge that the area to which we were assigned

was in the densest part of Tokeyo.

The planes were striped of their guns so they could carry the maximum bomb load

of 10 tons.

On the evening of March the 9th, 325 super fortresses arrived over the Japanese capitol.

All of the sudden, the blast from the airplanes came over like a roar.

It shook the windows and made a sound..."bebebebe"

We all ran.

From the west came a huge blanket of black smoke.

When we penetrated that cloud, we ran into these very strong odors that seemed like it had to

be associated with a terrible tragedy. I just describe it as the smell of death.

I saw my mother trip and her hair stood on end and she screamed.

Then she fell off the bridge into the black smoke with my baby brother strapped to her back.

I think she was trying to save my father but he went down with her into the smoke.

After we dropped our bombs, I could look right on the city burning below us.

It looked like a part of Tokeyo had dropped down into hell that night.

In one night our American fire bombs killed 80,000 civilians.

Tokeyo was only the beginning. 65 more Japanese cities would be bombed in this fashion.

Japan was being pulverized.

It was only a few years earlier, that Americans had...this is barbaric.

Coming through the position that we must systematically bomb civilian populations to end the war

and this is proper and appropriate and even moral is an extrordinary moral and psychological journey

in my view a journey toward hell.

On August the 6th, 1945, one plane and one bomb over Hiroshima.

The entire town of Hiroshima was burning and you could see the famous mushroom clouds

I seen 500, 600 people burned, hurt, some of them dead.

A lot of people floating in the river.

Some of them swimming, some of them dead.

Our main street was turning to a show case of human cruelty.

If the blast hit you directly, your eyes popped out.

People are walking around holding their eye balls like this.

Young children, maybe first grade or kindergarten children yelling Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.

Then the teacher said, "Be patient. Mommy come after you"

The next morning all the children are dead.

I still in here have a clear picture of such innocent little children.

I walked through the hell, actually stepped through hell and returned.

August the 9th, a second plane, a second bomb.

Nagasaki.

In the two atomic attacks, nearly 200,000 Japanese were killed.

On August the 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally.

The second world war was finally over.

In the last days of the war, Victorious allied soldiers arrived on a terrain few could imagine or

even have words to successfully describe.

The enormity of Nazi atrocities demanded an accounting.

At Neurumburg, once the scene of triumphant German pageantry.

War crimes trials now made it clear to the world what Hitlor had tried to accomplish.

The rounds that we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated.

So malignant and so devestating.

That civilization cannot tolerate there being ignored.

Ernest Michelle who survived the death camps at auchowitz covered the trial

for a German newspaper.

Everyday when I went to this trail, I looked at them sitting maybe 30 feet away from me

and sometimes I had to stop myself from jumping at them and yelling, "What did you do to me? To my family?"

"To my friends?"

For the first time in history, national leaders were held responsible for their aggression.

For the first time the murder and enslavement of civilians for their political beliefs, their race,

or their religion was recognized as crimes against humanity.

You must plead guilty or not guilty.

Manny Claude Van Contier was called to testify in January 1946.

I tried to look at the each of them and I thought look at me because

with my eyes and with my mouth, hundreds of thousands of your victims are accusing you.

Neurumburg was the first of more than a dozen trials in which heinza group members, SS doctors, and others

were made to answer for their crimes.

In September 1946, 12 high ranking Nazi officials

were sentenced to death.

A similar proceeding in Tokeyo tried 28 of Japan's highest ranking leaders.

The reverend John MgGee was a witness.

The killing began immediately, up to 30 soldiers together going about.

Each one seeming to have the power of life or death.

In this case, 7 of those on trial were sentenced to death.

More than 5,700 Japanese officers and soldiers stood trial throughout Asia.

More than 900 were executed.

In a Chinese court, Hiromichi Nagatomi, the student who joined in the Nan Jing masecure

was confronted by one of his victims.

He said, Nagatomi, you killed my only son. You burned my only daughter to death.

When her father came home and saw what happened to them, he lost his mind and died.

I'v suffered this sickness too.

I got on my knees to apologize but there was no way to make up for what I did.

There would be no apology or restitution to the estimated 1 million German and Japanese civilians

who died in allied bombing.

There deaths had become acceptable to those whose duty it was to end the war.

It is hard to remember more than 50 years later, but when World War 2 began, victory for America

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.