mercs military top brass asked whistleblowers to reveal facts about its troops alleged involvement in prisoner abuse and backed off being denied any information by nato in the us. next tsotsi visits the tiny yet largely forgotten pacific island of told hour it's the resting place for hundreds of u.s. marines whose water and sacrifice is slipping from people's memory. in the fall of one thousand nine hundred three america began a major campaign against the japanese defenses in the central pacific. over thirty five thousand u.s. marines and naval forces were assembled for an invasion. on nov twentieth america launched in assault against one of the most heavily fortified japanese islands in

the world. tyrone. on board a higgins landing craft in sydney on cooper was responsible for the lives of hundreds of men. for the thousands of marines riding to the shores that morning no one could imagine the ferocity of the battle to come or the death and destruction it would soon face. in february of two thousand and eight the young cooper a navy veteran of the tower of babel and a film crew left los angeles on a journey that took sixty five years. to. be looked. on.

while doing research for my recent book the war in the pacific of retrospective i happened across an associated press report that said in effect. where hundreds of marines died there are now millions of plastic bags crumpled paper boxes and when i saw that of course. since i have been a party to. our witness to all of the killings that took place i felt a special way. and i need to do something about this. i was. in my parents' apartment building in chicago remember soul well. that the manic announcement. really shook me up as was practically all of them. america including all the big shots in washington imagine a tiny country like japan. attracting are pleased infertile her

but indeed roland tresham purpose is making america the giant a people major. world most. oh so i live. life fully was. oh a lot. close to the united states. all right it was my brother and my brother said. he was trying to decide whether to order me to get out of the country. or to find a safer occupation than being him an infantry man joe it was his thought that i could become an officer around that i don't face and of course i had known of the

time i bombed as a. navy officer training program called b seven so i volunteered for it. within ninety days civilian leon cooper would become navy ensign leon cooper and begin training as an infamous boat commander. tarot was a series of coral reef atolls in the go bird island group strategically located halfway between the hawaiian islands in the philippines. the goldberg islands had been under the jurisdiction of the british government to december one thousand nine hundred forty one two days after the attack on pearl harbor japanese soldiers came ashore at bay sheo the governing island atoll of towers and proclaimed it for the emperor. both sides understood the necessity to control islands across the pacific . the american commands tactical approach dated back to teddy roosevelt's assessment of world sea diplomacy devised for the late one nine hundred centuries.

roosevelt always believed that if the u.s. was to contain japanese expansion they would need to command strategic island bases across the pacific. the basic strategy first of all i tell you for scotland sector getting an odd he decided the best plan for selection for the five states are set up a series called a. partnership and holiday club polling station cod purposeful mindless separate plan looking for something specific to batman that a man sprang for that. the japanese conscripted over forty one hundred korean slave laborers to build up a show's defenses as well as a small airstrip. they sent in over twenty six hundred crack japanese imperial marines to defender. massive fortifications were built including giant pill boxes some over seven hundred feet in height ten large eight

inch gun emplacements. field artillery and anti-aircraft guns. the war in the pacific was commanded by two key figures general douglas macarthur and admiral nimitz after the japanese lost the battle for guadalcanal in the south pacific macarthur and his troops focused on recapturing new guinea nimitz handled the central pacific region and plans were drawn up to send forces against the japanese strongholds in the gilbert and marshall islands groups mark knowing is a u.p.s. pilot in the world war two militaries story he heads the nonprofit organization history flights they're working to locate the over seventy eight thousand missing in action from the second world war right way saying here is a good deed to intelligence maps that the u.s. marine corps put together for what they called helen island which was the code name

for a base show atoll in tar island region and they built this very complex map with all of the difference and information that they gleaned from a number of overflights from b. twenty four craft taking photographs of the island and it has pictures of all the different and machine gun positions and the different types of large caliber weapons that would be used to shoot landing craft that has pictures of the tank traps the roads the airstrip. in june of one nine hundred forty three american recognizance flights discover that base show had been transformed into a heavily defended outpost that now included a four thousand foot airstrip capable of supporting japanese bombers this dramatically extended their pacific sphere of office. after hearing this news nimitz in the pacific fleet command decided to invade tower.

upon his arrival at fiji leon was interviewed by reporters for a fiji sun article on his visit to the nation of cuba my job was to bring assault troops in and my boat. during many trips into the red beach. so. a three days of savage or a. top of the japanese how to kill more americans. and taught us. how to kill more stupid thing. what the hell does that mean. leon's first official meeting with american authorities would be with deputy assistant to the u.s. ambassador in cuba ted may. first of all we're here to meet with the ambassador and staff ambassador. especially wanted to have. a speak with him before we want to tear off the promise that he would do his best to

join us and taro and introduce us to. be president of. the country that includes taro i say i need my grammar's license back maybe to get that i know there's no guarantee and. thanks to ambassador new staff again i feel very confident it will be on the road to achieving something even minimal objectives at least we'll get an action program going under way. with ted man a company leon boarded a jet for the highlight of his journey a return to tower. as the fortifications of base year were told the tower will continue the japanese commander admiral should have saki boasted to his troops that one million americans could not take the island in one hundred years. however american naval and marine forces would soon test that place on november twentieth one thousand nine hundred

three the united states launched a major and furious offensive against our. a massive naval bombardment the place starting at dawn. by nine am this wave after wave of marines were launched from the ships the logistics of the battle took a bad turn. the tide is not as deep as what they had projected a project there would be about six to seven feet above the fringing reefs that they would land and there was a lot of confusion between the naval bombardment they were supposed to cease fire and they were supposed to be an aviation detachment of a van or a craft a fighter aircraft to bomb the island and there was some confusion and they actually had a cease fire there was about thirty minutes when there was no firing at all and it enabled the japanese to take a lot of their soldiers from the south side of the heavily defended part and move

them up to the north side of the aisle. and in doing so they were able to to bring considerable devastating fire on the marines as they entered the league in. the japanese a kind of defense strategy that covered every inch of the on the perimeter hundreds of marines were killed by the accurate mortar and heavy gunfire at the reefs age many had to disembark offshore and slog through withering machine gun fire dangerous mines and deep bomb craters and hope to make it to shore. among the first waves of many heroes saved the day one was a young lieutenant alexander bonnie who really does meant to push him and be on the pier to the sea wall. after sixty five years leon cooper finally returned to that fateful stretch of sand that had shaped his destiny.

ironically his first encounter at the airport would be descendants of his former adversaries. i'm i'm from the united states. teleport all bets are. off i was fair sixty five years ago. i was a member of the vote that i taxed as the japanese who are here defending the dialer . and we were not very finally starting to gather. we were wrangling toward each other and a lot of people got killed including over four thousand of your home and i'm sure your people are you live here and want to honor your country manhole was dying in

the battle of carolina. so they all of a sudden i see things happening. and i feel like. i'm not really fair at all. the first item of business was for leon and ted to meet with the assistant to the president of cuba but in the hopes that they could access the president of the police in the first in the. short list of titles this is but if you unable to meet with the person with the least two percent of the ministers despite the fact that because of what happened sixty five years guy had no desire whatsoever to return but after giving a great deal of thought to the matter i felt i could do something that would be of benefit both to the citizens of your country as well as to honor the memory of all those guys. died and a war in a battle that really was the beginning point of the defeat of japan. i had

a small part to play in that victory. and i'm glad i had the opportunity all that time i didn't think very much of my participation i wanted to be somewhere else. i know that's pretty sure but their face i recognize her from here we drove to the beach that haunted for many years and we know we came and from here we came and from here. i know damn well we could. smell the stench of all those bodies running in the sun sills comes back to me. all that stink of guys decomposing. and i came ashore about here. and i know why the bed the beach master as i

remember cote motioned to me come on the shore and i was to go to the pier you see what sticking up there is the remains of the pier i came ashore about here between here and the pier and i crouched behind the sea well. and the chaps were shooting at me from up there some water. they were shooting at me from every angle there was you see they had this whole thing enfiladed and designed sort of that all the approaching boats came in under murderous crossfire so there wasn't any wood getting them out of the line of fire they were shooting out from here from there and from there every goddam angle was covered and we own will and stumble right into all this. slaughter. by the end of the day the marine second battalion was holding on to seventy to three hundred foot stretch of sand and fifteen hundred of the five thousand american to be cheated

with your dad who. i'm just. i can't stand it. look at the look at this sand here i couldn't get anywhere near the sand i was going up on the reef. there was a tank right about here half in the sharman tank. gone. we got stuck on the relief and i went all the guys on my boat i said i remember saying let's go i left both and i said no because i knew these guys would have drowned because we were over a hundred yards from the sand and they would have gone with their every packs not that this happened i don't know i think i did i think i said knowledge say in the

boat they were trying to climb out of the boat while the japs were shooting i. had style and we found that access through the reef and that's when i landed these guys on the piece happened i don't know i don't know i think i did and i think i did. however despite the heavy casualties for the disaster was averted a coordinated japanese counterattack might have overrun the exhaust reeds but there was no communication with the japanese command bunker the japanese admiral in charge of shivah saki decided to move his headquarters from this area to the south part of the island and when they were doing that they went outside of their bunker and a five and shell exploded right near them and killed them all and in doing that in losing their tactical commander on the first day of the battle the japanese did not mount counterattack in the night which potentially could have driven the marines

right off the island. i've had my moment of. let's go take a look at those eight inch. the legacy of the battle is still scattered across the sands of base. to this day the island is covered with the rusting remains of several of the big guns including the eight inch emplacements tanks. heavily fortified pill boxes and the command post. the second day of the invasion was a precarious one for the american news although they had secured two small beaches the marines still had to fight inch by inch toward the airfield that bisected the island. after waiting nearly twenty hours in their boats the first battalion eighth marines attempted to land ashore almost half of them never made it to the beach a large number of the all the kids were knocked out of action in the first day and

after that they had to use primarily hagan's beds in the hagans boats were dropping the marines off at the fringing reef because they couldn't make it all the way after the island and the marines had to go about seven hundred yards across a title flat and in doing so they were basically wading through waist deep water all along this area from red beach three to and one in the face of tremendous japanese fire. the battle had many own some heroes in the midst of the landings a young naval officer was on board a higgins boat in the horrible calmly rescuing routed marines from the water while several enemy machine gunners tried to knock him out. that young lieutenant j.g. was eddie yogurt and he was a rising hollywood actor before interesting in the view he had stored in several movies and with major headline television shows including the popular series green acres i was sitting on there with a bunch of brains and one of them then who the fuck is that somebody asked me and i

said i don't know who looks at ease a little a navy guy of some kind and that guy's been up there for the last fifteen twenty minutes in the japs are shooting at him and he's hauling guys out of the water i said this guy is either brave or stupid or both and but he kept doing it tony made several trips back each time with a boat load of went wonderbra one hundred marines going back to the transport ship for medical treatment with these guys. and he saved the lives of nearly seventy marines that day. i got to know a number of the medical doctors we had eight desire a member aboard. and the senior medical officer of an old guy in a chance conversation i want to know what his specialty was you see that my gynecologist and that seeing the made to be about as absurd as thing as i could imagine i said you know just possibly any one of us might be prayed and he says i'll take care of you. but there was another guy among the eight he also

and a chance higher chance conversation i want to know what his specialty was he's a path by training and i said you're a natural for this you can be sure and take care of all of us so the medical doctors on my ship as well as on the a number of other transports there took care of these guys i remodeled remember distinctly on my many trips carrying the wounded back to my ship for medical treatment one of them died but how many others diag you can only guess were these guys able to deal with trauma with war warns i doubt it. despite the initial casualties at the beach heavy naval bombardments help to turn the tide. lieutenant alexander bonnie rallied his marines and singlehandedly launched a major assault on a large bunker filled with over one hundred fifty japanese defenders during the

course of this skirmish he was mortally wounded the marines finally worked their way inland and began to push the japanese defenders back to the airfield. just behind the rusting giant eight inch guns that protected the shore leon was shocked by what he saw. i'm pointing to what seems to me a very symbol of every word thing that represents to me and they reason for my trip they say we are surrounded by garbage everywhere but also there are. on this beach which of course is the most appropriate signification a symbol of everything that's wrong with our goddamn government allowing not only garbage but to accumulate where so many guys died.

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motion would be so much brighter if you knew about sound from phones to pressure. from stones on t.v. don't come. from. more news today volumes says once again flared up.

these are the images go world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all today.

they faced it this is not a provocation little warning that. they force it and we should see just everybody assured us of the critics responsible they have no idea about the hardships the face. they wanted for this is a lot of them to this and for any army the life of a using them is the most precious thing in the world. is of self-sacrifice and heroism but those who understand it fully but you have to live a. real life stories from world war two to six hundred three thousand nine hundred forty five dots on t. dot com. twenty six people suspected of plotting

a christmas campaign of terror in europe are portrayed to be linked to international terrorist networks funding militants in chechnya a report coming up. suicide rates among young u.s. war veterans saw also record levels with unemployment homelessness in the black from the authorities among reasons for the alarming increase. and also the turning into leakers for truth denmark's military top brass whistleblowers to reveal facts of its troops alleged involvement in prisoner abuse in iraq after being denied any information by nato and the u.s. . welcome this is our team from moscow my name's kevin zero in our top story at ten pm another fifteen people have been a.