The World at War s01e22 Episode Script
Japan (1941 - 1945)
Day IT COME, victory in the Europe.
After years of combat, a relief and joy explosion.
We can allow us.
a brief period of celebration.
But in let us not forget it to them arduous work e of the sacrifices that still are for coming.
Still it had Japan.
The World in War Japan Tokyo, little before the noon of day 7 of December of 1942.
The Japanese commemorate the first anniversary of the destruction of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
It are has one year that they had known that Japan with 8 million citizens it had defied the joint force of more than 200 million of English and Americans.
Many had received the notice of the attack the Pearl Harbor sober, until apreensivamente.
But later it was victory behind victory, Hong-Kong, Malaysia, Singapura.
The first fears had been wasted in the exultação.
The first-minister, General Hideki Tojo, representative of the militaristas that they had become Japan one Totalitarian and aggressive state, it had lead its compatriots for the war.
Now it promised to them a last victory.
The nation goes to finish the last one battle of this conflict.
To defeat America and England, we will fight until the o end.
Later we go to finish the destruction of our enemies in Asia Now, at the beginning of as the year, as much I eat the nation, I think in the men of the aircraft marshalling area.
One more time express determination for the final victory.
We must continue with the work of war and with the fight.
At this time, Japan it was not an industrial giant, but in this first year they had seen the spirit force and it disciplines of the Japanese soldier to take advantage on the English and the Americans, stronger the material level, but morally inferior.
The same devotion in the national front it would become the just-conquered one Inexpugnável Japanese empire.
For some clarified Japanese more, the attack the Pearl Harbor it had been a tremendous risk.
I was to work as always, for return of the 9 of the morning.
They were all there and they touched music martial.
I almost fell for side when vi in manchetes that the Emperor had declared war to America and Great-Britain.
I find that the people in general this astonishment partilhava.
But now the propaganda showed the jubilant Japanese aviators jamming the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
The unsafe ones were vain.
The periodicals underlined humilhação of the caucasiano.
The Japanese knew that its soldiers fought until a death.
When seeing the caucasianos prisoners to be led for the Japanese for a dishonoured capture, it convinced them its proper invencibilidade.
Japan was earning.
Every day we heard in the radio to tell the victories, the nation was very enthusiastic.
When I heard the notice on the war I thought about what would go to happen, but the reports of the victories, musics of war and the marches that they all passed in the radio the day, they had made them to be very enthusiastic.
It seemed a party.
The Japanese people had coexisted with the war during 10 years.
Since 1931 the army fought one interminable war with China.
The victory in the Pacific had been fast and total.
Finally, they had something to festejar.
During years, before Pearl Harbor, the cities were citizens the aerial simulation of raides.
It was not for the almost inexistent one Chinese Air Force, but so that the sensation of the war if it always kept hot.
All participated.
The associations of quarter, tonari-gumi, the subjects made sure themselves of that all they participated in the distant war.
The associations of quarter they controlled all our life.
We received the instructions from government through tonari-gumi.
Therefore we had that to obey e we depended on them.
In all the quarters, the schools, in the recreios and the streets the citizens submitted themselves patriotically to the conscription of thought and action.
The patriotic virtues started to be infused since infancy.
Since very early, the children they prepared the body and the mind to serve a bigger cause of what proper they: the family, the nation, the Emperor.
If the nation was in war, the children also had that to be prepared for this.
When the lessons finished, they had the duty and privilege to serve to the country e the terrestrial imperial forces, aerial maritime and.
The pupils of secondary education they passed one day with the Air Force.
If they had luck, from there little they could be signed up as adult.
The Japanese were created under three or four dogmas, of the birth to the death: the deity of the emperor, the invencibilidade of the country e that we were the elect race.
They were these things that were hammers blow in the minds of the Japanese since the infancy garden.
The boys learned to imitate the martial code of the samurais, archaic and fierce, unprovided of mercy for the enemy or itself proper.
For one samurai, to die in battle it was to fall at the moment of the perfection, as the flower of the cerejeira.
During centuries the cult of Buddha it had coexisted in Japan with the old Shinto worship to the espíritos of ancestor of the goddess of the Sun Amaterasu.
But in years 20 and 30, the nationalists and militaristas they had insisted on becoming Shinto in the official religion.
Shinto was pure, was strict Japanese.
The Japanese believed piously that the Pontiff of the nation it descended directly of the Shinto Goddess of the Sun, that is, the Emperor.
The Emperor was a god and a warlike head.
The belief of that through it race was destined to the conquest she was systematically propagandeada.
The military acted on behalf of the Emperor, but they underlined of that although the appearances, it enjoyed of little power in the land.
The Emperor desired the peace deeply, therefore it opposed itself to the beginning of the hostilities with America.
However, it met in such position that if the Cabinet he recommended unanimously a certain politics, it could not disapprove it, although not to agree to it.
In a government led for a General, this meant to make that the army wanted.
The leached ashes of the dead soldiers they were brought for house, inside of boxes.
For the familiar ones of the victims, widowers and mothers, the chance of the pride or the tears, it had passed in the day of the farewell.
To send a son or a husband to die for the Emperor, it was its higher duty.
"We will find In them in the temple of Yasukuni", where the leached ashes of deceased were blessed, it was the place of the farewell to soldiers who left for the war wrapped up in haramaki, a protective band with a thousand points that used in the belly.
The women were in a esquina, for example, in Tokyo, it was in Ginza, e asked for to each woman who passed to sew a point.
It had that to collect a thousand points.
This band was offered one soldier, I also received one, e it rolled it in return of the belly.
Its purpose was to keep the hot belly for the soldier if not to gripar e to deviate the bullets.
We know that this is impossible, but it was an amulet.
I costumava to think.
I do not know if I must say this, but it found that very unjust age.
Over all when I was sent for overseas.
The Japanese women offer to me a thousand points and I go to die.
Not yet it stows with a woman, because they do not offer me its bodies instead of this e thus allows that alive I my life in its fullness.
They would not die for having slept with me.
Until they could like, I know there.
But soon, I give to die, e alone I receive a thousand points.
The farewells in war time they would have to be spirituals, cerimoniosas and colds.
The recouped men already left of the hospital singing the Umi Yukaba.
They sang, "I go for my tomb tapeworm, there far in the sea" e left of new for the war.
However, less than 5 months after Pearl Harbor, the war already was not thus so distant.
Sixteen B-25 Mitchell, commanded for Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle, they had unglued from the aircraft carrier "Hornet" for the first aerial attack to Japan.
They wanted to make a miniature one, but anticipated demonstration of the vulnerability of Japan in relation to one it has attacked aerial e had been entirely successful.
When the attack of Doolitle was.
effected on skies of Tokyo, it had a species of consternation, because the military.
they guaranteed some times to the public, that the Japanese sky was impenetrable.
The bombers had penetrated effectively the Japanese skies, to play 16 tons of bombs on its cities.
The estragos in itself had not been great, but the shock was.
The press received instructions for the transmission of the notice.
They wanted that we gave to understand that it had been a cruel act, an indiscriminate bombing on civilians, women and children.
Eight of the pilots of Doolittle had been captured.
For the Japanese, only others were bombed.
They were enraged for the fact of this barbarity to have if abated on them.
The prisoners had been judged for a military court.
Three had been executed.
The main function of the women Japanese age to procreate.
Experts only of the ceremony of the tea, they remained in the embroidery frames.
Now that the battle fronts they were taking the men, they were directed stop harder activities.
The women of the field already worked to the side of the men, but for the women of the city, war brought a total change.
To replenish the store-room empobrecida of the country, they also were obliged to work during long hours.
They extracted coal to use to advantage the few resources of Japan e to keep the war machine functioning.
The women of the city, educated wives and mothers to become, the "honored occult ones", they had to leave the isolation e to learn new crafts.
They said that had to substitute the men, as its enemies they had fact, to assure the victory.
We worked in the plant.
We worked week yes, week not, of 15h to 23h.
To 23h, when we finished our work, they took in them for the supper room where in they gave a soup earthen bowl to them.
In the truth nor it was soup, was salty water, with two or three sprouts of soy.
We had as much hunger.
Perhaps it had a wire of mass back in the deep one.
Everything what we had was rationed.
If we did not have a password of food we did not have nothing.
We had to arrange our proper food, therefore we planted potatoes in the garden.
We worked very stops terms our vegetables.
The daily life.
it was very difficult.
The proper Empress assumed a new role, stirring up the nation to make more efforts and more sacrifices.
The sacrifice was necessary for the victory e believed that the last one victory still was unquestionable.
Nobody wise person who from June of 1942, already they fought only for the survival.
June of 1942.
The airplanes of war of United States take off to intercept the Japanese armed that it attacked the island of Midway.
For the battle, Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, it had pledged the four greaters aircraft carrier of the Japanese fleet.
When the battle finished, in 5 of June of 1942, the aircraft carriers of Yamamoto if they had set on fire or sunk.
Midway was a defeat of which Japanese navy never recovered.
However, the people was informed of that it had been a victory.
The truth was occulted even of the members of the government.
They had said them that one of aircraft carrier had sunk, e that another one seriously was damaged.
As that battle had counted with four aircraft carrier, the version that had counted in them it was that three had returned e one was in péssimo been, but the Anglo-American section said that they had destroyed the four.
The doubt was installed in our minds.
We pressure the Navy stops in they supplied more details to them, but they had remained fidiciary offices to its initial report.
Tei-ichi Makishima I age chamber operator e I filmed the battle of Midway.
When we come back to our base, in the Sea of Japan nor they had left in them to write letters.
The wounded had been kept in isolated infirmaries.
We receive orders private of that we could not partilhar information on the battle, not even with the remaining portion of the Navy.
I practically was made prisoner during one month and way after coming back to Japan.
As she was journalist, I was under a monitoring particularly pressed, because we had the reputation to be very talkative.
They had forbidden to me to come back the Tokyo, while the remaining portion of the war lasted.
The true situation it was never transmitted in the radio.
during the War It is clearly that each reporter.
he was minutely censured at that time.
Thus, the public one was informed of that the Army and the Navy it continued to accumulate victories.
It did not have reporters, only propaganda.
But a result was described in the told conflict in the propaganda films: the caucasianos oppressors of the eastern people defeated for the courageous Japanese soldier.
E, in turn, the welded espartano dominated for the revolt for the luxurious life of the enemy.
Tokyo, 5 of June of 1943.
A funeral of State for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
The great commander whom he led the victory in Pearl Harbor.
The people was informed of that the Admiral died as a hero, in the aircraft marshalling area, having faced the death with elegance in a war airplane.
Its loss was bigger of what of many warships.
But this first public admission of defeat, although to be represented as but symbolic of heroísmo, it hid obscurer truths of which the proper Yamamoto was well cliente.
It wise person who the superiority material of the enemy, when it was mobilized in its fullness, would be smashing.
In Pearl Harbor, it had bet in a brief war.
In Midway, the appositive one was lost.
Yamamoto is abated in skies that now they were full of enemy airplanes e overseas was now dominated for the Navy of the enemy.
In 1944, the scale hung entirely against Japan.
The metal was now a good precious for the war, too much precious it stops ornaments or ceremonies.
The war had been fought to assure raw material for a land where it became scarce, but above all, for the oil.
But now that the resources that General Tojo boasts that they would go to gush out of its conquests, they were more close to the deep one of the sea of what of Japan, what it went for Japan not it arrived for the war machine.
The food also became scarce.
The official ration of 1500 calories daily, level of subsistence, many times were not reached.
The rice harvest had been the worse one of last the 50 years.
The hunger pairava for close.
The 1941 victories they had placed Japan behind of a vast protective ring, defended until the o end.
The half one of 1944, the armies amphibians of General MacArthur they had reduced it an interior ring dependant of the island of Saipan.
Saipan, at a distance of a flight of Japan, she was seen for the Japanese military as a inexpugnável shield.
It was vital that thus it was.
We perceive that if we lost Saipan, we would be in a very difficult position.
The importance of Saipan inhabited in the fact of that if this it fell the war would be same in front of Japan.
Japan would be to the reach of bombings of the Americans.
It was a defense area absolutely vital for Japan.
In 15 of June of 1944, after an incessant bombing for the sea and air, the American troops had attacked the coast.
As always the military garrisons Japaneses had fought until the o end.
For the first time, the civilians Japanese, women and children, they turn over pegos in the war.
Some, stuned and docile, had been submitted.
Saipan had deep ports e two aerodromes.
All the rocks had been defended.
In three weeks, to conquer an island with 220 km2, the Americans had lost 15 a thousand men, between died and wounded.
All the 25 a thousand defenders Japanese faleceram in the combat.
Some civilians, as well as many soldiers, they had preferred the suicide the surrender.
They had died in go, Saipan was conquered.
Exactly before the last Japanese dying, the Americans already were ready to attack the metropolis.
The truth was too much close even so that High-Command Japanese could hide it.
They had informed the people of whom the situation was serious, but not irremediable.
However, the proper sacred nation directly it was threatened.
The school boys had learned that Japan was to the reach of the enemy.
It had fond the moment for all, new and old, to face danger the same that its soldiers.
It remained only one handful of trained pilots in that long ago it are the worthy Japanese Air Force, constructed to attack and it does not stop defending.
When the war started, its huntings Zero dominated skies.
Now loosers were exceeded and.
They now disdained its machines in relation to the giant ortalezas that now they attacked the native land.
They were young e courageous, but they were very few.
It felt the same in relation to one hunting Zero that one samurai feels for the sword.
It had to manipulate the airplane, such as if it was my body.
Also it believed that cockpit it was a private place that it would be my tomb.
When we went to attack, never we took parachute.
We never believed that we could leaving to imprison in them, if we were abated on enemy territory.
Since always, the Japanese warrior believed that it was a sin to leave itself to imprison.
In the same way, we, while modern Japanese soldiers, we did not have leaving to imprison in them because it would be a dishonor.
With the Imperial Navy insult, the shield of defeated Saipan e the conquered Phillipino, but the islands of Iwo Jima e finally Okinawa remained to hinder the advance them Allies on Japan.
In April of 1945, Iwo Jima is captured.
Now an American Army, protected for warships Okinawa threat, the last island before Japan.
In a desperate blow it stops to hinder the last attack, Japan congregated one more time its young ones to fight and to die as its ancestor.
Squadrons had been formed special, the Kamikaze, the Men of the Wind The holy ghost, baptisms in honor of the tufão that it verwhelmed the invasion of Kublai Khan, centuries before.
They had drunk the last goblet of wine of rice and they had left for the death.
Its airplanes had been converted into flying bombs.
Its mission was to beat against the enemy ships to the plaza of Okinawa.
As commander, they asked many times to me if it was difficult to congregate these squadrons, but in the truth the inverse one was transferred.
We had many pilots that they were voluntariaram, but only some could to leave for each attack.
Therefore, the difficulty inhabited in choosing a reduced group.
All the others asked for it chose that them e was complicated to ask for to that they had not been chosen to wait for the next chance.
On the other hand, those that they were chosen for the attack they were very enthusiastic, therefore it was not difficult to send them.
But, in contrast to one it has attacked normal, when these kamikaze left, never more they returned.
It had a sadness, because we knew that those that left never more they came back.
Kamikaze was abated in air.
They had inflicted serious damages, but they had failed.
The Americans had invaded Okinawa.
Okinawa was only the 560 km of Japan.
The more if they approached to the island, more fanatic if it became the fight.
In Okinawa, only 7 a thousand Japanese soldiers had survived.
Of more than the 100 a thousand soldiers who they had died, many had been committed suicide, as well as 75 a thousand civilians.
Mrs.
Yonaha, a student, also she was ready for the suicide.
To our return, the soldiers and inhabitants ran away in disbandment, obviously confused.
I followed the soldiers and I enter in a small shelter.
We only wanted sheltering in them from rain.
In this shelter, we find some officers.
We heard the American Army calling in them for it are.
Who wants that it was, spoke in a wonderful Japanese.
But it has much time that we had learned that we did not have to relieve us nor to be war prisoners.
Thus we leave that they continued to insist all during the day, without yielding.
They cried out of the sea and they said:"They leave, leave" They said: "We will not make the aged women, children badly and.
They leave, please!" Already it had taken the decision to die e found that it had to commit the suicide.
One of the soldiers had a garnet e said:"We go committing suicide in them" e we agree.
When we take this decision, I felt a great relief and one great tranquilidade.
He is clearly that first to kill did not want me, it wanted to run away from some form e to continue to live.
But the speakers had started to be each time higher.
We feel that the Americans they were each time next, therefore I asked for to the soldier to also kill me.
When it was to the wait that the soldier pulled the trigger, one of the other soldiers unseamed the sword e started to agitate it knot air and to say: "Vocês, the women and children, they leave! They do not have to die here!" We are very scared with that one would cry out, therefore we arise ourselves and we withdraw.
The place where we were hidden he was very small, therefore it was enough to give a step behind to be outside of the shelter.
We saw two soldiers American in them to point pistols.
They had not said nothing, but they were always making signal with the pistols to sairmos.
The soldiers who we had left there inside they had asked for them not to say to the Americans who were there, because all went to commit suicide.
In 2 of July of 1945, Okinawa fell.
In the metropolis, the people prepared itself for the storm that arrived.
First the super ortalezas to sobrevoarem Tokyo, they were only premessenger of hundreds that were for coming.
They went to expel fire and explosives, in one it has attacked aerial open pasture, that one would abate systematically on the Japanese cities.
In formations that arrived at the 2 a thousand members, all the hours, almost without opposition, the rubbles had reduced the Japanese cities.
In the ground, the anxiety to find shelters against raides aerial, it was changedded into one feared daily routine.
First, I ran for the shelters, but he was not tranquila there inside, because they were small e fragile.
The people who were in the shelter they were always so tired, so pale and quiet.
Nor the children cried, because too much tired and they were scared.
Therefore, we were all silenced.
The Japanese cities wooden they were set on fire easily, with its citizens there inside.
This artificial hell in Tokyo it was worse of what that one that if it followed to the 1923 earthquake, the worse natural disaster of Tokyo.
Not very far from my house, it had many men who had died.
Mine better friend.
it lost the father, the brother and the sister, in that night, e the mother of it was committed suicide after this.
In the following morning.
it wanted to go to see as was my house, therefore I crossed the bridge e I directed me for house, but it completely was destroyed.
She was too much tired and it was.
thinking about.
but the war detestava.
Detestava the war.
I was there suffering in silence.
Tokyo, was a deportation carbonized.
But the steel and the cement had survived.
The stench of the death was gotten loose of the ruins.
In one it has attacked, in one alone night, more than 70 a thousand had perished.
In the aerial attacks on Japan, about 250 a thousand civilians they had died.
Eight million had been without ceiling.
Men and women, youngsters and young women, the survivors prepared themselves to defend its native land.
To come back to send the invaders toward the sea, with rifles wooden, arcs and arrows, spears of bamboo.
In the end, when lode fell of the sky.
Irresistible, unimaginable.
in mushroom form.
After years of combat, a relief and joy explosion.
We can allow us.
a brief period of celebration.
But in let us not forget it to them arduous work e of the sacrifices that still are for coming.
Still it had Japan.
The World in War Japan Tokyo, little before the noon of day 7 of December of 1942.
The Japanese commemorate the first anniversary of the destruction of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
It are has one year that they had known that Japan with 8 million citizens it had defied the joint force of more than 200 million of English and Americans.
Many had received the notice of the attack the Pearl Harbor sober, until apreensivamente.
But later it was victory behind victory, Hong-Kong, Malaysia, Singapura.
The first fears had been wasted in the exultação.
The first-minister, General Hideki Tojo, representative of the militaristas that they had become Japan one Totalitarian and aggressive state, it had lead its compatriots for the war.
Now it promised to them a last victory.
The nation goes to finish the last one battle of this conflict.
To defeat America and England, we will fight until the o end.
Later we go to finish the destruction of our enemies in Asia Now, at the beginning of as the year, as much I eat the nation, I think in the men of the aircraft marshalling area.
One more time express determination for the final victory.
We must continue with the work of war and with the fight.
At this time, Japan it was not an industrial giant, but in this first year they had seen the spirit force and it disciplines of the Japanese soldier to take advantage on the English and the Americans, stronger the material level, but morally inferior.
The same devotion in the national front it would become the just-conquered one Inexpugnável Japanese empire.
For some clarified Japanese more, the attack the Pearl Harbor it had been a tremendous risk.
I was to work as always, for return of the 9 of the morning.
They were all there and they touched music martial.
I almost fell for side when vi in manchetes that the Emperor had declared war to America and Great-Britain.
I find that the people in general this astonishment partilhava.
But now the propaganda showed the jubilant Japanese aviators jamming the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
The unsafe ones were vain.
The periodicals underlined humilhação of the caucasiano.
The Japanese knew that its soldiers fought until a death.
When seeing the caucasianos prisoners to be led for the Japanese for a dishonoured capture, it convinced them its proper invencibilidade.
Japan was earning.
Every day we heard in the radio to tell the victories, the nation was very enthusiastic.
When I heard the notice on the war I thought about what would go to happen, but the reports of the victories, musics of war and the marches that they all passed in the radio the day, they had made them to be very enthusiastic.
It seemed a party.
The Japanese people had coexisted with the war during 10 years.
Since 1931 the army fought one interminable war with China.
The victory in the Pacific had been fast and total.
Finally, they had something to festejar.
During years, before Pearl Harbor, the cities were citizens the aerial simulation of raides.
It was not for the almost inexistent one Chinese Air Force, but so that the sensation of the war if it always kept hot.
All participated.
The associations of quarter, tonari-gumi, the subjects made sure themselves of that all they participated in the distant war.
The associations of quarter they controlled all our life.
We received the instructions from government through tonari-gumi.
Therefore we had that to obey e we depended on them.
In all the quarters, the schools, in the recreios and the streets the citizens submitted themselves patriotically to the conscription of thought and action.
The patriotic virtues started to be infused since infancy.
Since very early, the children they prepared the body and the mind to serve a bigger cause of what proper they: the family, the nation, the Emperor.
If the nation was in war, the children also had that to be prepared for this.
When the lessons finished, they had the duty and privilege to serve to the country e the terrestrial imperial forces, aerial maritime and.
The pupils of secondary education they passed one day with the Air Force.
If they had luck, from there little they could be signed up as adult.
The Japanese were created under three or four dogmas, of the birth to the death: the deity of the emperor, the invencibilidade of the country e that we were the elect race.
They were these things that were hammers blow in the minds of the Japanese since the infancy garden.
The boys learned to imitate the martial code of the samurais, archaic and fierce, unprovided of mercy for the enemy or itself proper.
For one samurai, to die in battle it was to fall at the moment of the perfection, as the flower of the cerejeira.
During centuries the cult of Buddha it had coexisted in Japan with the old Shinto worship to the espíritos of ancestor of the goddess of the Sun Amaterasu.
But in years 20 and 30, the nationalists and militaristas they had insisted on becoming Shinto in the official religion.
Shinto was pure, was strict Japanese.
The Japanese believed piously that the Pontiff of the nation it descended directly of the Shinto Goddess of the Sun, that is, the Emperor.
The Emperor was a god and a warlike head.
The belief of that through it race was destined to the conquest she was systematically propagandeada.
The military acted on behalf of the Emperor, but they underlined of that although the appearances, it enjoyed of little power in the land.
The Emperor desired the peace deeply, therefore it opposed itself to the beginning of the hostilities with America.
However, it met in such position that if the Cabinet he recommended unanimously a certain politics, it could not disapprove it, although not to agree to it.
In a government led for a General, this meant to make that the army wanted.
The leached ashes of the dead soldiers they were brought for house, inside of boxes.
For the familiar ones of the victims, widowers and mothers, the chance of the pride or the tears, it had passed in the day of the farewell.
To send a son or a husband to die for the Emperor, it was its higher duty.
"We will find In them in the temple of Yasukuni", where the leached ashes of deceased were blessed, it was the place of the farewell to soldiers who left for the war wrapped up in haramaki, a protective band with a thousand points that used in the belly.
The women were in a esquina, for example, in Tokyo, it was in Ginza, e asked for to each woman who passed to sew a point.
It had that to collect a thousand points.
This band was offered one soldier, I also received one, e it rolled it in return of the belly.
Its purpose was to keep the hot belly for the soldier if not to gripar e to deviate the bullets.
We know that this is impossible, but it was an amulet.
I costumava to think.
I do not know if I must say this, but it found that very unjust age.
Over all when I was sent for overseas.
The Japanese women offer to me a thousand points and I go to die.
Not yet it stows with a woman, because they do not offer me its bodies instead of this e thus allows that alive I my life in its fullness.
They would not die for having slept with me.
Until they could like, I know there.
But soon, I give to die, e alone I receive a thousand points.
The farewells in war time they would have to be spirituals, cerimoniosas and colds.
The recouped men already left of the hospital singing the Umi Yukaba.
They sang, "I go for my tomb tapeworm, there far in the sea" e left of new for the war.
However, less than 5 months after Pearl Harbor, the war already was not thus so distant.
Sixteen B-25 Mitchell, commanded for Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle, they had unglued from the aircraft carrier "Hornet" for the first aerial attack to Japan.
They wanted to make a miniature one, but anticipated demonstration of the vulnerability of Japan in relation to one it has attacked aerial e had been entirely successful.
When the attack of Doolitle was.
effected on skies of Tokyo, it had a species of consternation, because the military.
they guaranteed some times to the public, that the Japanese sky was impenetrable.
The bombers had penetrated effectively the Japanese skies, to play 16 tons of bombs on its cities.
The estragos in itself had not been great, but the shock was.
The press received instructions for the transmission of the notice.
They wanted that we gave to understand that it had been a cruel act, an indiscriminate bombing on civilians, women and children.
Eight of the pilots of Doolittle had been captured.
For the Japanese, only others were bombed.
They were enraged for the fact of this barbarity to have if abated on them.
The prisoners had been judged for a military court.
Three had been executed.
The main function of the women Japanese age to procreate.
Experts only of the ceremony of the tea, they remained in the embroidery frames.
Now that the battle fronts they were taking the men, they were directed stop harder activities.
The women of the field already worked to the side of the men, but for the women of the city, war brought a total change.
To replenish the store-room empobrecida of the country, they also were obliged to work during long hours.
They extracted coal to use to advantage the few resources of Japan e to keep the war machine functioning.
The women of the city, educated wives and mothers to become, the "honored occult ones", they had to leave the isolation e to learn new crafts.
They said that had to substitute the men, as its enemies they had fact, to assure the victory.
We worked in the plant.
We worked week yes, week not, of 15h to 23h.
To 23h, when we finished our work, they took in them for the supper room where in they gave a soup earthen bowl to them.
In the truth nor it was soup, was salty water, with two or three sprouts of soy.
We had as much hunger.
Perhaps it had a wire of mass back in the deep one.
Everything what we had was rationed.
If we did not have a password of food we did not have nothing.
We had to arrange our proper food, therefore we planted potatoes in the garden.
We worked very stops terms our vegetables.
The daily life.
it was very difficult.
The proper Empress assumed a new role, stirring up the nation to make more efforts and more sacrifices.
The sacrifice was necessary for the victory e believed that the last one victory still was unquestionable.
Nobody wise person who from June of 1942, already they fought only for the survival.
June of 1942.
The airplanes of war of United States take off to intercept the Japanese armed that it attacked the island of Midway.
For the battle, Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, it had pledged the four greaters aircraft carrier of the Japanese fleet.
When the battle finished, in 5 of June of 1942, the aircraft carriers of Yamamoto if they had set on fire or sunk.
Midway was a defeat of which Japanese navy never recovered.
However, the people was informed of that it had been a victory.
The truth was occulted even of the members of the government.
They had said them that one of aircraft carrier had sunk, e that another one seriously was damaged.
As that battle had counted with four aircraft carrier, the version that had counted in them it was that three had returned e one was in péssimo been, but the Anglo-American section said that they had destroyed the four.
The doubt was installed in our minds.
We pressure the Navy stops in they supplied more details to them, but they had remained fidiciary offices to its initial report.
Tei-ichi Makishima I age chamber operator e I filmed the battle of Midway.
When we come back to our base, in the Sea of Japan nor they had left in them to write letters.
The wounded had been kept in isolated infirmaries.
We receive orders private of that we could not partilhar information on the battle, not even with the remaining portion of the Navy.
I practically was made prisoner during one month and way after coming back to Japan.
As she was journalist, I was under a monitoring particularly pressed, because we had the reputation to be very talkative.
They had forbidden to me to come back the Tokyo, while the remaining portion of the war lasted.
The true situation it was never transmitted in the radio.
during the War It is clearly that each reporter.
he was minutely censured at that time.
Thus, the public one was informed of that the Army and the Navy it continued to accumulate victories.
It did not have reporters, only propaganda.
But a result was described in the told conflict in the propaganda films: the caucasianos oppressors of the eastern people defeated for the courageous Japanese soldier.
E, in turn, the welded espartano dominated for the revolt for the luxurious life of the enemy.
Tokyo, 5 of June of 1943.
A funeral of State for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
The great commander whom he led the victory in Pearl Harbor.
The people was informed of that the Admiral died as a hero, in the aircraft marshalling area, having faced the death with elegance in a war airplane.
Its loss was bigger of what of many warships.
But this first public admission of defeat, although to be represented as but symbolic of heroísmo, it hid obscurer truths of which the proper Yamamoto was well cliente.
It wise person who the superiority material of the enemy, when it was mobilized in its fullness, would be smashing.
In Pearl Harbor, it had bet in a brief war.
In Midway, the appositive one was lost.
Yamamoto is abated in skies that now they were full of enemy airplanes e overseas was now dominated for the Navy of the enemy.
In 1944, the scale hung entirely against Japan.
The metal was now a good precious for the war, too much precious it stops ornaments or ceremonies.
The war had been fought to assure raw material for a land where it became scarce, but above all, for the oil.
But now that the resources that General Tojo boasts that they would go to gush out of its conquests, they were more close to the deep one of the sea of what of Japan, what it went for Japan not it arrived for the war machine.
The food also became scarce.
The official ration of 1500 calories daily, level of subsistence, many times were not reached.
The rice harvest had been the worse one of last the 50 years.
The hunger pairava for close.
The 1941 victories they had placed Japan behind of a vast protective ring, defended until the o end.
The half one of 1944, the armies amphibians of General MacArthur they had reduced it an interior ring dependant of the island of Saipan.
Saipan, at a distance of a flight of Japan, she was seen for the Japanese military as a inexpugnável shield.
It was vital that thus it was.
We perceive that if we lost Saipan, we would be in a very difficult position.
The importance of Saipan inhabited in the fact of that if this it fell the war would be same in front of Japan.
Japan would be to the reach of bombings of the Americans.
It was a defense area absolutely vital for Japan.
In 15 of June of 1944, after an incessant bombing for the sea and air, the American troops had attacked the coast.
As always the military garrisons Japaneses had fought until the o end.
For the first time, the civilians Japanese, women and children, they turn over pegos in the war.
Some, stuned and docile, had been submitted.
Saipan had deep ports e two aerodromes.
All the rocks had been defended.
In three weeks, to conquer an island with 220 km2, the Americans had lost 15 a thousand men, between died and wounded.
All the 25 a thousand defenders Japanese faleceram in the combat.
Some civilians, as well as many soldiers, they had preferred the suicide the surrender.
They had died in go, Saipan was conquered.
Exactly before the last Japanese dying, the Americans already were ready to attack the metropolis.
The truth was too much close even so that High-Command Japanese could hide it.
They had informed the people of whom the situation was serious, but not irremediable.
However, the proper sacred nation directly it was threatened.
The school boys had learned that Japan was to the reach of the enemy.
It had fond the moment for all, new and old, to face danger the same that its soldiers.
It remained only one handful of trained pilots in that long ago it are the worthy Japanese Air Force, constructed to attack and it does not stop defending.
When the war started, its huntings Zero dominated skies.
Now loosers were exceeded and.
They now disdained its machines in relation to the giant ortalezas that now they attacked the native land.
They were young e courageous, but they were very few.
It felt the same in relation to one hunting Zero that one samurai feels for the sword.
It had to manipulate the airplane, such as if it was my body.
Also it believed that cockpit it was a private place that it would be my tomb.
When we went to attack, never we took parachute.
We never believed that we could leaving to imprison in them, if we were abated on enemy territory.
Since always, the Japanese warrior believed that it was a sin to leave itself to imprison.
In the same way, we, while modern Japanese soldiers, we did not have leaving to imprison in them because it would be a dishonor.
With the Imperial Navy insult, the shield of defeated Saipan e the conquered Phillipino, but the islands of Iwo Jima e finally Okinawa remained to hinder the advance them Allies on Japan.
In April of 1945, Iwo Jima is captured.
Now an American Army, protected for warships Okinawa threat, the last island before Japan.
In a desperate blow it stops to hinder the last attack, Japan congregated one more time its young ones to fight and to die as its ancestor.
Squadrons had been formed special, the Kamikaze, the Men of the Wind The holy ghost, baptisms in honor of the tufão that it verwhelmed the invasion of Kublai Khan, centuries before.
They had drunk the last goblet of wine of rice and they had left for the death.
Its airplanes had been converted into flying bombs.
Its mission was to beat against the enemy ships to the plaza of Okinawa.
As commander, they asked many times to me if it was difficult to congregate these squadrons, but in the truth the inverse one was transferred.
We had many pilots that they were voluntariaram, but only some could to leave for each attack.
Therefore, the difficulty inhabited in choosing a reduced group.
All the others asked for it chose that them e was complicated to ask for to that they had not been chosen to wait for the next chance.
On the other hand, those that they were chosen for the attack they were very enthusiastic, therefore it was not difficult to send them.
But, in contrast to one it has attacked normal, when these kamikaze left, never more they returned.
It had a sadness, because we knew that those that left never more they came back.
Kamikaze was abated in air.
They had inflicted serious damages, but they had failed.
The Americans had invaded Okinawa.
Okinawa was only the 560 km of Japan.
The more if they approached to the island, more fanatic if it became the fight.
In Okinawa, only 7 a thousand Japanese soldiers had survived.
Of more than the 100 a thousand soldiers who they had died, many had been committed suicide, as well as 75 a thousand civilians.
Mrs.
Yonaha, a student, also she was ready for the suicide.
To our return, the soldiers and inhabitants ran away in disbandment, obviously confused.
I followed the soldiers and I enter in a small shelter.
We only wanted sheltering in them from rain.
In this shelter, we find some officers.
We heard the American Army calling in them for it are.
Who wants that it was, spoke in a wonderful Japanese.
But it has much time that we had learned that we did not have to relieve us nor to be war prisoners.
Thus we leave that they continued to insist all during the day, without yielding.
They cried out of the sea and they said:"They leave, leave" They said: "We will not make the aged women, children badly and.
They leave, please!" Already it had taken the decision to die e found that it had to commit the suicide.
One of the soldiers had a garnet e said:"We go committing suicide in them" e we agree.
When we take this decision, I felt a great relief and one great tranquilidade.
He is clearly that first to kill did not want me, it wanted to run away from some form e to continue to live.
But the speakers had started to be each time higher.
We feel that the Americans they were each time next, therefore I asked for to the soldier to also kill me.
When it was to the wait that the soldier pulled the trigger, one of the other soldiers unseamed the sword e started to agitate it knot air and to say: "Vocês, the women and children, they leave! They do not have to die here!" We are very scared with that one would cry out, therefore we arise ourselves and we withdraw.
The place where we were hidden he was very small, therefore it was enough to give a step behind to be outside of the shelter.
We saw two soldiers American in them to point pistols.
They had not said nothing, but they were always making signal with the pistols to sairmos.
The soldiers who we had left there inside they had asked for them not to say to the Americans who were there, because all went to commit suicide.
In 2 of July of 1945, Okinawa fell.
In the metropolis, the people prepared itself for the storm that arrived.
First the super ortalezas to sobrevoarem Tokyo, they were only premessenger of hundreds that were for coming.
They went to expel fire and explosives, in one it has attacked aerial open pasture, that one would abate systematically on the Japanese cities.
In formations that arrived at the 2 a thousand members, all the hours, almost without opposition, the rubbles had reduced the Japanese cities.
In the ground, the anxiety to find shelters against raides aerial, it was changedded into one feared daily routine.
First, I ran for the shelters, but he was not tranquila there inside, because they were small e fragile.
The people who were in the shelter they were always so tired, so pale and quiet.
Nor the children cried, because too much tired and they were scared.
Therefore, we were all silenced.
The Japanese cities wooden they were set on fire easily, with its citizens there inside.
This artificial hell in Tokyo it was worse of what that one that if it followed to the 1923 earthquake, the worse natural disaster of Tokyo.
Not very far from my house, it had many men who had died.
Mine better friend.
it lost the father, the brother and the sister, in that night, e the mother of it was committed suicide after this.
In the following morning.
it wanted to go to see as was my house, therefore I crossed the bridge e I directed me for house, but it completely was destroyed.
She was too much tired and it was.
thinking about.
but the war detestava.
Detestava the war.
I was there suffering in silence.
Tokyo, was a deportation carbonized.
But the steel and the cement had survived.
The stench of the death was gotten loose of the ruins.
In one it has attacked, in one alone night, more than 70 a thousand had perished.
In the aerial attacks on Japan, about 250 a thousand civilians they had died.
Eight million had been without ceiling.
Men and women, youngsters and young women, the survivors prepared themselves to defend its native land.
To come back to send the invaders toward the sea, with rifles wooden, arcs and arrows, spears of bamboo.
In the end, when lode fell of the sky.
Irresistible, unimaginable.
in mushroom form.