where hundreds of marines died there are now millions of plastic bags crumpled paper boxes and when i saw that of course. since i had been a party to. the story of the killings that took place i felt especially. the need to do something about this. i was in the home in my parents' apartment building in chicago i remember so well. that dramatic announcement. really shook me up as was practically all of america including all the big shots in washington imagine a tiny country like japan. attacking our pacific fleet then pearl harbor and indeed role on such a purpose is making america the giants a people major. world most. slowly.

but. also live. life fully was. oh a lot. close to the united states. by. the phone rang 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 showing it was his thought that i could become an officer around and i don't face and of course i had known at the time about a elite navy officers training program called the seven so i was on period for at. within ninety days civilian leon cooper would become navy ensign leon cooper

and begin training as an infamous boat commander. taro was a series of coral reef atolls in the go bird island group strategically located halfway between the hawaiian islands in the philippines. the go board islands had been under the jurisdiction of the british government to december ninth one nine hundred forty one two days after the attack on pearl harbor japanese soldiers came ashore at bay she told the governing island atoll of towers and proclaim that 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 a potluck secretary of state. i decided the best time for selection

for the five states are set up here to call a halt partnership and holiday a polling station cod our mosques a mosque a separate plan put their stomachs up at the family event that manuscript 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 cracked 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 no one is a u.p.s. pilot in the world war two military 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 wrote way of 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 different and machine gun positions and the different types of large caliber weapons that would be used to shoot landing craft that has pictures and thank traps the roads the airstrip. in june of one nine hundred forty three american recognizance flights discover that base you know 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 leone was interviewed by reporters for a fiji sun article on his visit to the nation of care my job was to bring us all troops in and by 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 us ambassador incurable ted me. first of all we're here to meet with the ambassador and have staff ambassador. especially wanted to have. a speak with him before we want to travel he promised he would do his best to join us and taro and introduce us to. the president of. the country that includes taro i say i leave my grammar's license by accident maybe

get that i know there's no guarantee of. a fang through ambassador no 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 underway. with ted mann the 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 of 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 for use offensive against our. a massive naval bombardment the place

starting at dawn. by nine am as 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 it. 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 and they were supposed to cease fire and they were supposed to play near the end aviation detachment of a bomber 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 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 island from the 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 bell it is 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. for all memoirs yet. i was here sixty five years ago. i was a member of the vote that attacked as a japanese who are here defending this island. and we were not very trying to get started each other. we were angry toward each other and a lot of people got killed including over four thousand of your of your your people are you here and i want to honor your country manhole what died in the battle of carolina. they all the sudden i see things happening. and i feel like. i'm not really fair and on. 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 will the police releasing the first. we have the short list of what. this is but if you will to live with the person with the least two percent to the ministers despite the fact that because of what happened sixty five years ago i 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 a benefit both to the citizens of your country as well as to honor the memory of all those guys. who 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 short but there are three i recognized from here we all drove to the beach that haunted him for many years and we know we came in 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 coat 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 way of getting them out of the line of fire they were shooting at from here from there and from there every goddamn 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 a seventy to three hundred foot stretch of sand and fifteen hundred of the five thousand american to beach it really 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 in the relief and i went all the guys on my boat i said i remember saying let's go i left boat and i said no because i knew these guys would have drowned because we were over a hundred yards from sand and they would have gone with their have a 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 diverged 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. a coordinated japanese counterattack might have overrun the exhaust reeds but there was no communication from 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 as counterattack in the night which potentially could have driven the marines right off of 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 whose 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 higgins boats were dropping the marines off at the fringing reef because they couldn't make it all after the island and the marines had to go about seven hundred yards across

a title flat and in doing so they were basically waiting for waist deep water all along this area from red beach three two in one into 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 wounded marines from the water while several enemy machine gunners tried to knock him out. that young lieutenant j.g. was a yogurt and he was a rising hollywood actor before in this thing in the navy 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 what's an easel a navy guy of some kind and that guy's been up there for the last fifteen twenty minutes and 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 weight wonder 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. and i got to know a number of the medical doctors we had eight as there are 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 not seeing the may to be about as absurd a thing as i could imagine i said you know just possibly any one of us might be pregnant 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 by how many others diag you can only guess what were these guys able to deal with trauma with war warns i doubt it. despite the initial casualties at the beach heavy naval bombardments helped to turn the tide. to tenet 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 a 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 and a symbol of everything that's wrong with our goddamn government allowing not only garbage but to accumulate where so many guys died.

the little. today children play war in the old piece me. but in june nine hundred forty one these walls really first barrier for the nazi troops on their way to moscow. sunders and breasts were dying one by one under siege this. was.

the last shelter an unnamed soldier left a few simple words farewell mother i'm dying but i'm not surrendering. more than a month. in one of the most extreme environments on the planet this is antarctica and people have to be aware that they are far away from civilization sean told us discovers flight makes sense arctic is so special and attractive for many wildlife in antarctica is a both an offense an. expedition to the bottom of the earth.

innovation cluster in the center of siberia one see has revolutionary ideas for the automotive industry miracle bandages that sucked in fiction straight out of software to make three d. gumball scream and the building blocks for russia's first nationwide four g. network tomes going top one take knowledge up to. the future covered.

they faced this is not a problem you should warn. them you should see everybody assured us of the pretty trees they have no idea about the hardships that we face. like one it is this is a hell of them to do things for the army the life of the use the other is the most precious thing in the world. is of self-sacrifice and heroism with those who understand it fully that you have to live a. real life stories from world war. nineteen

forty five don't r.t. dot com. tonight on r t flight recorders from the plane that crashed in northwestern russia with the loss of forty four lives of arrives here in moscow for analysis bad weather conditions and human error thought to be to play. at least fifty more civilians killed as nato bombers miss a topic duffey aid but instead the birthday party of his four year old grandson. showed out in the greek parliament the pm savage new austerity cuts face a no confidence vote for the country on the brink to becoming the first euros a nation to default. and in business are we looking at the euro facing a slow death and if so what could this mean for russia find out on the bulleted around twenty minutes time.

watching r t it's ten pm tuesday night here in moscow it's kevin zero in with you this hour with our top story and officials say that bad weather and pilot error are the likely causes of a plane crash which killed forty four left eight injured in northwestern russia on sunday night the russe air flight on route from moscow to petros of course crashed onto the road just a kilometer from its destination our correspondent tesoro city reports from the city. just before a midnight on monday a plane from moscow to that there was a village had crashed here right behind me if you can see this is in the northwest of the country it had crashed on a road it's just less than two kilometers from the actual airport according to the a police that we have talked to here the crash is actually perpendicular to the main road because it was trying to make its way to the airport which you can see just to my left over here now as we were we were going around here we still saw

pieces of the plane being picked up quoting it to the records that they have there were fifty two people on board nine crew members and forty four of those people were killed in this crash eight of them survived including a young boy and a young girl including their own mother as well now as of now the five of those survivors have been flown to moscow to receive a further medical treatment that they need for burns shock and multiple injuries three of them are still in very critical condition and have had to stay at the local hospital as to who was here first it was actually the witnesses we were walking around and there were houses just right by the road it's actually very lucky that the plane didn't hit anyone on the ground in fact reports say that only a parked car was damaged now those who had come here were trying to save as many people as they can get it was around midnight so only the locals were first on the scene.