will the history be protected. return to tara while julian cooper story on our t.v. . hungry for the full story we've got it for us the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers. wealthy british scientists on. the spot on. the. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report.

if you just joined us very well welcome this is all it's a live here moscow top stories now this hour forty seven people are not confirmed dead after monday's passenger plane crash in northwest russia two more survivors of the disaster died in hospitals on sunday investigators say they found no suggestion of mechanical failure but plan to study the flight recorders will closely. the reports of mounting civilian deaths across libya with nato accused of hitting another military targets in rebel held benghazi some say that being forced to flee because of their support for colonel gadhafi. skeptics in brussels staged a fake funeral for the year of this week came as the e.u. agreed another multi billion bailout for greece but the cuts demanded in return sparked more anger in athens. well the news continues in less than thirty minutes from now but in the meantime as the scene of

a world war two battlefield is turned into a rubbish dump we follow one man's struggle to raise public awareness and preserve the site that's all special report next on auti. 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 and leon saw no empty aluminum cans or plastic bottles he found a base yos major recycling plant nearby where aluminum cans are crushed in both cans and bottles. leon paid a visit to the owner and manager of the plant derek and a war that i wrote repeatedly to the washington usual suspects the president and the white house the secretary of defense the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff members of congress so i'm here to began and hopefully an action program with

funding from my government what we've got. is a pretty startling to see how this or many can. pass the ball. and call their. way here is in a nutshell what i'm thinking is 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 saying this desecration of how the ground more than on red beach. leon had developed an action plan for base you know 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. leon's action plan could be used for any

island for some diminishing land sources but the local fiji television station taped an interview of your own story in his current mission to taro. years. so. there are two cleone 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 saying 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 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 it was this kid very happily

sitting on top of the chevron 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 so she showed a movie about the battle for tara prior to a tour of the sites. just tire. you out. with the three.

player. plays. over the years the browns have collected munitions in their back yard a number of shells are still alive. that's right rich americans for these are. some of the driving thirty six of american history are often the still a long way around. yet you get it don't kick it in place for an hour when i'm 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 a way on it's it could be like kind of a there's a whole range of stuff that just keeps turning up were coming and it's amazing what some people you know there's a five hundred pound bomb were discovered was that one sort of a chicken curry you know that's what i had standing upright. on the end of a bomb and having to detonate a bomb and i are using it as just one corner here but you can bet. 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 and munitions expert and peter scarlett has lived on the island for over fifteen years stan has done hundreds of dives off base e.o.'s and is employed by history flights on their two year program to survey the island for last graves there's there's

a plane just looking at randi that's further evidence of the waste that's obliquely fullbright it as that what's in the water of the twenty four is a picture of it that's the facia there's the whole see. the wings intersections there before. the debris from the battle still covers the island and every storm on earth new ordinance stand 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. scope the cup again we're talking flight on a stand keeps a storage container full of the weapons and munitions he's collected. this is going for sixty no more to should make your way to us more a mortar is a more mortar and edible a good. still with the fears and the flaws

just you know more than. a lot of us are still all that this is all over the place this. stuff guides of the radio portable radio that was run out of a boy named track already baked this is the fault of the job but on the supposed office of from him a can that i dug up and also. said it is a make you can see the nickel couple. of books of emanation put the japanese top on the fourth day for the main gun it's a thirty seven the room still use the whole explosion room the a lot of rooms. up on your head like this right carefully put on. 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 event 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 eeks fighters based from nearby marshall lines 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 the marines on base you see for 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 arctic. 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 that it just hours after they took over the island now did you have any and playing on a warning that japan was going to occupy the xining all of a sudden they simply showed up as a right to die is that's really what i want to finish up everything for the senate to those up till now to where they land and basically as his outreach to local officials continued leon and ted met with the minister of interior. for more than three years i've been trying to get our government to do something about they 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 just

a little. bit of hope a little it was a. the show that leon had taped for fiji television was broadcast to all the islanders. who. i made a number of trips in the big stuff i saw killings i never saw like everyone with a shilling or stuff. and never did. all the time i was coming to think surely. hell. but because i. still. i was damned thanks for letting me kill as many of the end of. the world i did something helpless for science fiction i simply because i chat

which one. 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 wounded only one japanese officer and two enlisted men survived along with fourteen korean laborers. 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 bomb. 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 tara 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 fortunately had the unpleasant duty of attending a number of burials and say 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. i can't imagine anything more that needs to be said other than they absolutely would serve ridiculous treatment in yes absolutely and different 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 from the temporary cemetery 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 building into a modern air base the basically erased some of the cemetery. that we've taken has been working for the australian government as a contractor. has made some unusual discoveries wrong rebuilding base use infrastructure and you know there was one instance we dug a lot of the water table this is the one that stain very interested in and we found it really in complete skull of them still had a partial uniform who choose to watch a lot because a lot of the the i was how much did the metal pot yes the rather what it was a little bit about in the front of the was. part of the last one i was because he

gives the side of. this and nothing else now. so you told somebody in a government the us government about this. the project engineer the project a project manager and he rubbed off to. the bone luminous organization but what happened was the law and other entities buttons in that up in the office in a rush but. allowed to bring a draft and i had to try and drop the drawing card and this bag was the title. and they would say it will box and now sample on such a letter to them as much as organization what we should do with the five. and then was our reply here which well as i. was with him for a awarded 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 at 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. present it's not simply i don't lie the things that i want to do to help you ultimately he was granted the meeting with the president of cuba i know to talk. it will want to grow with the employment of citizens of who will who will assist. in the monitoring of the refuse collection of your country and ultimately and won't be a state of the art incineration system. which will have

a number of benefits for. the brutality of the tower were campaign would soon hit home when the american public began to see the pictures of the casualties and devastation in late december nine hundred forty 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 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 doing these people up and taken 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 thousand nine hundred eighty six and winding up in. may of nine hundred forty six they had done to find the remains of approximately three hundred maybe four hundred guys but. they 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 baseball norman jr frank eggs to see and henry lott 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 bonny 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 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 peace whose respects to a special marine so much lies here he came to the coast watchers memorial a beautiful war and to those guys who gave their lives. in defense of their country

and ours too by the way and the brits the the australians it is really easy with 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 hopefully have her take the necessary action have appropriations provided to tara 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 the thirteenth island archipelago are now the most the nice 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. after nearly sixty five

years have passed many unanswered questions remain hundreds of americans are still lost in the sands of species 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.

i was just thinking about my future before the foreign companies came i dreamed of

owning a can cutting factory so much but we have less garbage now. some visitors who come here make fun of me. figure out garbage boy i'm not bad like people think. i'm a good person. it's just the people don't see me. but i feel it with time people like me. i feel people will start to appreciate us.

if. it. got if they want to order. this street still keeps its secrets but now it's time to reveal that in the soviet files on oxy.