on. while doing research for my recent book the war in the pacific a 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 had been a party to or a witness to all of the killings that took place i felt especially. in 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 it really shook me up as well as practically all of america including all the big shots in washington imagine

a tiny country like japan. attacking our pacific fleet infernal higher bad blood and indeed brawn trust and purpose is making america the giant a people major. world most. totally. but i just. oh so. nice foley was. a little. close just it if. you want to state. 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 in a an infantry man showing it was his thought that. i should become an officer of

that my dog face. and of course i had all of the time of. day at a late maybe officer training program called peace about it so i volunteered for it . within ninety days civilian leon cooper would become navy ensign leon cooper and begin training as an interview as 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 coburg 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 that told our world and proclaimed 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 the spotless record anything athlete decided the best time for selection forty five states to set up a series calling him a shit and hosting a polling station odds are hispanic mother must accept that looking for something specific to batman that madness record 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 historian 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 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 you know atoll in the tar island region and they built this very complex map with all of the different 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 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 leone was interviewed by reporters for a fiji sun article on his visit to the nation of care my job was to bring assault troops in and by boat. during many trips into the red beach. so. the three days of savage are a. top of the japanese how to kill more americans. and taught us. how to build more stupid thing. what the hell does that mean. leone'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 his staff ambassador. especially wanted to have. a

speak with him before we want to throw up he promised he would do his best to join us and taro and introduce us to. a president of. the country that includes taro i say i leave my driver's license but maybe get that i know there's no guarantee and. thanks to ambassador and a 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 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 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 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 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 they were supposed to cease fire and they were supposed to play near the end aviation detachment of a bomber aircraft and 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 again. the japanese a kind of defense strategy that covered every inch of the island. 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 save the day one was a young lieutenant alexander bonnie who rallied his men 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. well of course all bets are. off i was fair sixty five years ago. i was a member of the vote that i taxed as a 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 of your your people

are you here and i want to honor your country man who or what i had in the battle of carolina. they all of a 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 of the police in the first in 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 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. 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 sure but there are three i recognized from here leo and drove to the beach that haunted for many years and we know we came in from here we came and from here. i know damn well we. 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 dead 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's 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 design 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 a seventy to three hundred foot stretch of sand and fifteen hundred of the five thousand american to be changed with the dead 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 sherman tank. gone. we got stuck in the early am i were the only guys on my boat i think i remember saying i was going i left both 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 drawn rather heavy packs did this

happen i don't know i think i did i think i had no say in the boat they were trying to climb out of the boat by the jeffers routing out i said. starboard and we found an access through the reef and that's when i landed these guys on the beach have them i don't know i don't know i think i did i think i. however despite the heavy casualties for the disaster was averted a coordinated japanese counterattack might have overrun the exhaust remains but there was no communication from the japanese command the japanese avallone charge and shipped sakena 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 in a five inch 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

amount to counterattack in the night which potentially could have driven the marines right off of the island. i've had my moment of the song. let's go take a look at those either. the legacy of the battle is still scattered across the sands of bay sheo 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 to 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 older 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 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 two and 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 horror calmly rescuing wounded marines from the water while several enemy machine gunners tried to knock him out that young lieutenant j.g. was eddie albert and he was a rising hollywood actor before in this thing in the navy he had starred in several movies and would later headline television shows including the popular series green

acres i was sitting out there with a bunch of moorings and one of them know who the fuck is that somebody asked me and i said i don't know looks at ease of a navy guy of some guy as that guy's been out there for the last fifteen twenty minutes of 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 white wonder one hundred marines going back to the transport ship for medical treatment with these guys. he saved the lives of nearly seventy marines that. i got to know a number of the medical doctors we had eight desire a member board. and the senior medical officer of an old guy and i chance conversation i want to know what his specialty was he said that my gynecologist and not seeing the may to be about as absurd a saying 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 just 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 number of other transports there took care of these guys i remarked 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 but were these guys able to deal with trauma with war warne's i doubt it. despite the initial casualties at the beach heavy naval bombardments hope to turn the tide. who tended alexander bunnymen rallied his

marine and singlehandedly launched a major assault on a large bunker filled with over one hundred fifty japanese defended. during the course of the skirmish he was mortally wounded. the marines finally work their way in and begin to push the japanese defenders back to the interview. 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 the very symbol of every thing that represents the need 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 city signification in a symbol of everything that's wrong with our goddamn government allowing not only garbage but to accumulate where so many guys died.

culture is that so much different and there's a huge we're going to share our final time mark went from spring to fall be uprisings in at least maybe states are fast becoming vicious civil wars. 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're far away from civilization sean paul has discovers fault makes on start to grow so special and attractive for many the wildlife in antarctica is a both and

a frontal. expedition to the bottom of the earth ark seems. easy you just. need to. see.

today children play war in the old keys me. but in june nine hundred forty one these walls were the first barrier from another troops on their way to moscow. funders and restless were done one by one under seize the sun to a want to elect. him a.

coup a. shelter an unnamed soldier left a few simple words farewell mother lum i'm dying but i'm not so many. of them in. the. limited. the service to. come in.

the south was.

russian investigators are shortly to begin decoding of flight recorders from the doomed thirty four plane that crashed in northwestern russia killing forty four people survived the disaster with serious injuries with the tragedy being blamed on bad weather and human error. libyan officials say at least fifteen civilians and celebrating a child's a birthday are the latest to be killed by nato in an airstrike just twenty four hours earlier nato admitted a mistake an attack in which the copy says nine innocent people die. in battle the greek government has won a crucial confidence vote in parliament this decision opens the path for new austerity cuts it needed for another new i.m.f. bailout loan but may intensify rage among the countries a public opposition. next to the kaiser report asking just what mountains of debt

can do for national self-esteem and explains the mysterious role of credit default swaps. backstabber welcome to the kaiser report as we have been reporting financial melt through. the world uninhabitable for capital and so now we live in a financial no go zone you are slaves of the talks of debt that have been created to follow in which we are mr wealth and live out of talks explodes slow cheap station herbert tell us more max well i have proof of this not only the revolution happening in greece but we have the financial propaganda to convince you the slave of this toxic debt farm to continue incurring more debts one better self-esteem

saddle yourself with mountains of credit card debt new study claims yes being crushed under a mountain of debt is typically frowned upon max but new research has suggested this could actually be a dream scenario for many young adults it claims those saddling themselves with credit card debt will feel empowered and feel more self esteem well i guess this research was financed by j.p. morgan chase. perhaps but the research was actually conducted by rachel dwyer an assistant sociologist at ohio state university and her study found that eighteen to twenty seven year olds who had huge credit card debts not just small credit card debts but huge ones and university loan debt remember this is another scheme they're pushing on us all around the world this encourage huge university top up fees and you'll be happier.