denmark's military top brass also whistle blowers to reveal facts of its troops alleged involvement in prisoner of peace in iraq after being denied any information by nato and the u.s. . next visits the tiny yet largely forgotten pacific island of tara it's the resting place for hundreds of u.s. marines whose wartime sacrifice is slipping from people's memory. the large concentration of litter on the beach poses an additional health hazard when the refuse is swept out to sea during a storm despite this danger leon saw no empty aluminum cans or plastic bottles he found a base yos major recycling plant nearby where aluminum cans are crossed and both came from bottles. leon paid a visit to the owner and manager of the plant and reward i wrote repeatedly to the

washington usual suspects the president and the white house press secretary. ridge chairman of the joint chiefs of staff members of congress so i'm here to began and hopefully an action program with from being from my government but we've got. to be starting out there are many. paths to. call their. way here is there not show what i'm thinking that we should expand your operation clean up the beach on red beach one would be my primary objective because my salty language but you can understand my anger and having seen this desecration of hallowed ground on red beach. leon had developed an action plan for be sure that included two phases. the first would be to set up refuse containers and collection centers throughout the beaches and employ local citizens

the second phase would be to establish state of the art incineration systems that would recycle trash as well as provide electricity for the island the ons action plan could be used for any island face of diminishing land sources but the local fiji television station taped an interview with leone story and his current mission to taro. derek took leon out in his boat to revisit the scene of the battle. i used to have a nightmare. i granted for years afterwards. i had somehow. fallen into the water and i had sunk down and there was a kid sitting on i am on a tank. he was a he he waved at me he and i are about twenty maybe thirty feet under water

and i was looking at i'm wondering what the fuck are you doing here and he was sitting on top of the sherman tank and the corals all round this bright yellow red blue car all was all around us and here was this kid very happily sitting on top of the sherman tank and that's a dream that i had for years. i had told my wife. if i start threatening ron but just leave the bread because i get. back kind of crazy i'm not aware of it but anyway. she she knew when i made those morning sounds i couldn't talk because of i began to speak i would drown i would swallow water. later that day leon visited the residence of john and molly brown she showed a movie about the battle for tara prior to a tour of the sites. just

tired of her couch. that's three. plays. over the years the browns have collected munitions in their back yard a number of shells are still alive. that's right in the river just are these are. live in thirty minutes from american history are often the still a long way around. yet you really don't kick a place for an hour when i am right those are dangerous shells and weapons of all

shapes and sizes a majority of them american constantly turn up on base she'll although these of cause deaths and injuries to the local population over the years there is no exact figure provided by the kid about government. mike corder the local australian naval commander on the island still has the difficult task of dealing with world war two war yes. the issue here is that no one escapes turning out how they got rid of all we want it's it could be like kind of a there's a whole range of stuff that just keeps turning up or whatever and it's amazing what some people you know the senate foreign affairs bomber discovered it was one sort of a chicken curry you know that's what i had standing upright. on the end of the bomb and nothing to detonate a bomb and are using it as just one corner of the to invent. the wheel you know leon was introduced to two australian ex-pats involved in exploring the history of the battle of tara stan ghosh to his professional diver initials expert and peter

scarlett has lived on the island for over fifteen years stan has done hundreds of dives off base yo and is employed by history flights on their two year program to survey the island for lost graves there's there's a plane just sticking up for the let's further to the waist that's a basically over a. a sack what's in the water a b. twenty four is a picture of it that's the station there's the whole see. the waves into sections there before. the debris from the battle still covers the island and every storm on earth new ordinance stan showed leon a fifty caliber machine gun sitting in the water a few yards from the beach front home. i said that's a fifty fifty caliber machine. still the cup again helping fight on the stand keeps a storage container full of the weapons and munitions he's collected. this is going

for sixty no more to choose the c.e.o.'s the u.s. more a mortar is a more mortar and edible a good. still with the fuse and the flaws you need to know more than. a lot imo still on the piss is full of the play this. still binds of a double radio portable radio that was run out of a boy named track on red lake stood this is the fault of the jewel but from the supposed officer from immigrants that i dug up and also now tells have been making you can see the nickel couple. of books of in the nation of the japanese talking on the fourth day with a mind going to thirty seven the room still use the whole explosion room there a lot of room. up on your head like this right carefully but i'm not.

by the end of day to the ground commander colonel chute who had been wounded by shrapnel during his landing the day before rallied his troops to capture the airport runway this effectively cut the enemy defenses into. day three began with an easier landing of additional marines at the western shore as the american forces began to outflank the japanese defenders that morning a chance a vent was taking place in the skies nearby. a flight of hellcat fighter planes on routine patrol from the aircraft carrier lexington accidentally intercepted a formation of twenty japanese eat five years based from the nearby marshall islands the japanese were on a mission to bomb and strafe the tower landing force. by ten o five that morning the americans had shot down seventeen of the twenty bombers and force the remaining three back to their base in the marines on base you're safe

from potentially devastating casualties. meanwhile supported by reinforcements and artillery fire from nearby islands the marines used all means necessary to systematically take out the japanese defenders they slowly advance toward the narrow eastern tip of the ark. leon paid a visit to mother superior margaret sullivan of our lady of the sacred heart mission she showed in the declaration the japanese government is at it just hours after they took over the island now that you'll have an eye and playing on a warning that japan was going to occupy these i all of a sudden they simply showed up as a right to die is that really what i wanted to look up every day for the descendants of those up till now where they land and face. as his outreach to local officials continued leon and ted met with the minister of interior. more than three years i've been trying to get our government to do

something about the does a creation that has happened to the beach as well as so many americans died in defense of our country so i've. made was a. fight with mr foley. will be a little was. the show that leon had taped for fiji television was broadcast all the islanders. the different schools i think the number of trips and. stuff i saw telling it was like everyone but it really never stopped. and never did it. all the time coming to think surely to tell. but because i. still. listen to. this to. kill

many of the end of. the world i did some helpless person and they just. simply because i chatted. by one twelve pm on november twenty third the island was declared secured over five thousand five hundred men lay dead on the sands one thousand one hundred thirteen were american marines and two thousand two hundred ninety were going to only one japanese officer and two enlisted men survived along with fourteen korean mayberg. the entire island was a fast twisted wasteland of death and destruction. american and japanese bodies covering the island were a mute testimony to the ferocity of the battle. one marine commented that it was the closest thing to dantes inferno universe and. it was

a hellish wasteland of destruction. literally covered with thousands of bodies and ordinance. now came the grim task of collecting and bury a body. general holland smith and the marine commander was reputed to have said later that tarot was a tragic mistake. after the battle the marines would bury their dead take detailed plot maps of the grave sites and within a matter of days return to their ships. meanwhile the burial were continued gun issue. identification was made more difficult by the condition and decomposition of several bodies and a number were lost at sea. i unfortunately had the unpleasant duty of attending

a number of burials at sea i can't remember how many at least a half a dozen but one of the stands out in my memory in particular the chaplain who was in charge of the burial details i was standing next to him after he said his usual words before we dumped the guy into the date and i said the chap on the horizon who is a sky and he said we don't know and i said well his dog tags are in the sailcloth he said. and i can't imagine anything more that needs to be said other than they absolutely would serve ridiculous treatment in yes absolutely indifferent treatment was given to all these guys who had died in defense of our country. lieutenant bonny been a posthumous medal of honor winner for his valor in the battle would be buried in the eighth marines grave site number two. the navy seabee

units which were the logistic backbone of every operation would then clean up the battlefield quickly build the infrastructure to support an airfield. this is a picture of the island after the c.b.c. cleaned it up and turned it into a modern air base you can see some of the temporary cemeteries there's thirty three twenty six twenty five this is part of the old pier right here the island basically had forty three cemeteries and in and building into a modern air base the basically a race some of the senators. who we think and how it has been working for the australian government as a contractor. he has made some unusual discoveries wrong rebuilding big issues infrastructure and you know there was one instance we dumped a lot of the water title this is the one that stain is very much rooted in and we found it really in complete skull of them still had a partial uniform loose watch and it was because

a lot of the the i was how much did the metal yes or rather the rather what was a little bit on the front of the was. a lot of less water was what he gives to the side of. this and nothing else now. so you told somebody and they govern the u.s. government about. the project engineer the project a project manager and the write off to. the mon luminous organization but what happened was the the law and other a and e. buttons in that up in the office in a rush but. allowed to bring a draftsman or have a truck drop the wrong type and this bag was the title. and a.b.c. it will box and now call on such a letter to them it's not so so i think what we should do with the file. and then

was our reply yes which well as i. was with him for a war did i feel almost like he want to lie can you at all leon had spent months seeking assistance from every level of government to address the garbage situation that base you now he discovered something even more disturbing that hundreds of marines remains still lie in the sands of the island. just as we've been told by the guys we met with the. woman down on the ground and almost anywhere you walk you see the mortal remains of somebody japanese american he was introduced to the minister of health dr. presented saxon place i don't lie the things that i want to do to help you ultimately he was granted a meeting with the president of cuba i know to talk a little on the employment of citizens of who will who will

assist in the in the monitoring of the refuse collection of your country and ultimately. a state of the art incineration system. which will have a number of benefits for. the brutality of the tower or campaign would soon hit home when the american public began to see the pictures of the casualties and devastation in late december one thousand nine hundred eighty three the gruesome carnage was so disturbing that some mothers demanded nimitz's resignation what was more striking was not just the heavy casualties but the confusion regarding the burial of hundreds of marines who gave their lives ataru that the actual number of total missing people from this from this battle was five hundred eleven basically it's

a very nebulous number there is a huge distance here there's eleven hundred six people lost at the end of the war when the army came back to dig these people up and take them back to the states only three hundred ninety two were dug up and brought back to the states there's over. well over two hundred fifty probably almost three hundred people on the island today the quartermaster corps of the of the army made a reasonably diligent effort starting in february of one nine hundred forty six and winding up in. may of one hundred forty six they had done to find the remains of approximately three hundred maybe four hundred guys but. a report that i read issued by the guy in charge says that they could not account for almost fifty percent of the people who were brought back to the states those are real graves those are real people who were brought back but there was over three hundred that were never brought back and those people's names are still listed as missing in

action today although many of them we have pictures of their graves we have pictures of the maps of where they were buried those people those families were never told that here's your family member and return to the states those people are still lost in space this is a photograph from. bernard she leaves grave on the west side of the island near what was known as green beach and that's a photograph of his grave and he's still missing today this is someone named steve momar who no one even knows who he is and no you can't even find. a mention of him in any of the original rosters here's a picture of grave number eighteen with robert brand. norman jr frank as the sea and henry lot so they're all still missing today. this is a photograph of grave number eleven where there are one hundred forty five graves

and only thirty two were disinterred this is a plot math grave number thirty three were four hundred people were were listed as being buried but in reality only hundred twenty nine are recovered. one of those people by the way is alexander bonnie man who was who won the congressional medal of honor in the battle of sorrow and in doing so he lost his life and he was buried in one of these temporary cemeteries and never found lieutenant alexander bondman was one of four congressional medal of honor winners which also included first lieutenant hawkins william bordelon and the only survivor of the battle colonel david chu. bonnie minh and many other brave men who were on the islands mind when he paid his respects at the marine monument which has been placed in a parking lot away from the litter on the beaches. as a fitting tribute to the many missing in action and still lost on this tiny stretch of coral leon pays his respects to

a special marine so much lies here he came to the coast watchers memorial a beautiful moral to those guys who gave their lives. in defense of their country and ours too by the way and the brits the australians in a resume of there's. no more allies here but soames is not he lives here or somewhere we're i'm standing and then unmarked grave and like our government unrecognized forgotten. and of no value. god rest him. and i feel very sad about him and his relatives in the intense difficulty of world war two many people seventy nine thousand of them basically were lost in space this is an example of different branches of the service not being able to communicate effectively with each other and show where they left all

these people and this is not on usual island i mean this is an enormous mistake that happened during an enormously difficult time in american history and this was a reticence generation of people because after world war two many people does that all the time to get on with our lives and this issue is a done issue but in reality a lot of people's families don't feel that way. leon and the crew finally headed home but for him the work has just begun. he is determined to fight until action is taken by our government i'm going to present a documentary into salad or feinstein and i hope play have her take the necessary action have appropriations provided to tear off so that they garbage control program and the public education program could get underway before taro sinks under the ocean a couple of gallons in the twelve thirteen island archipelago arnaldo most of the

needs the ocean and it's only a matter of time maybe a dozen years or twenty or thirty years before the entire island group will be called the new atlantas because there won't be any tomorrow. after nearly sixty five years have passed many unanswered questions remain hundreds of americans are still lost in the sands of the show and there's a dangerous as well as disastrous environmental legacy that remains on this tiny atoll and many other islands throughout the pacific campaign. for leon cooper the battle is just beginning.

wealthy british style messiah. is not on this planet because. of. markets finance scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. culture is that so much of a given to each musician has the power to find the marquesas plane the blame game and where to go from here the west led drive to find a final peace settlement among the palestinians and israelis. they faced it this is not a provocation but a warning that. they force it and we should use scary for you sure to support your tree speak so they have no idea about the hardships to face to.

face one it's business is it of them too nice to me for any army the life of abusing them is the most precious thing in the world. is of self-sacrifice and heroism book of those who understand it fully but you have to live a. real life stories from world war two the success of victory nineteen forty five dot dot com.

faulty twenty six people suspected of plotting

a christmas campaign of terror in europe out of paul to be linked to international terrorist networks funding militants in chechnya we report. suicide rates among young u.s. war veterans soar to record levels with unemployment homelessness in the glen from the authorities among the reasons for the alarming increase. in north korea attacks with artillery and island in the south which confirms its forces before hand involved in firing missiles in exercises it insists were directed west's not nor russia's call for restraint from both sides to avert full scale war. and turning to the cause for truth ten months when a tree told brussels close to reveal facts of its troops alleged involvement in prisoner abuse in iraq after being denied any information by nato and u.s. .