Victory at Sea S1E06 Guadalcanal

Film Gorillas

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00:00♪♪♪

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00:55And now, Wattle Canal.

01:00♪♪♪

01:15Poured from some hundred factories,

01:17reaped from some thousand farms,

01:19spewed out in fantastic abundance

01:21by American labor and machines,

01:23the supplies for war are heaped upon

01:25an island base in the South Pacific.

01:28All the world knows its name,

01:31Wattle Canal.

01:33♪♪♪

01:45Springboard for attack, storehouse for victory.

01:49Yet in 1942, Wattle Canal was wild jungle.

01:53Ninety uncharted miles of festering malaria

01:55and rain forest, bypassed for centuries

01:58by history, forgotten by man.

02:02But by June of 1942, the unpredictable forces

02:05of war begin to link San Francisco

02:07and the United States with Wattle Canal

02:09and the Solomon Islands.

02:11The 1st Marine Division embarks for the South Pacific.

02:14Destination, New Zealand.

02:17Mission, undetermined.

02:20Somewhere, on some unspecified battleground,

02:24sometime in the uncertain future,

02:27the untested Marines will clash

02:29with the tested soldiers of Japan.

02:32But first, the tedious ordeal of the convoy.

02:36Uneventful, interminable weeks at sea.

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04:45The ocean lifeline to the South Pacific

04:47is the war's longest and the war's most tenuous.

04:51Stretching 6,540 miles from California to New Zealand,

04:55it ties Australia to the United States.

04:58Break this line, stop the ships,

05:02and Australasia and Asia will be forever Japanese.

05:06Across the world, from the islands of Japan,

05:09other convoys, other soldiers leave for the unknown

05:13and sail away to war.

05:15They too set a southerly course for islands

05:17with names unknown to the men who must fight and die on them.

05:21For them also, the routine of shipboard life,

05:25the placid premium of carnage.

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06:00After the conquest of Rabaul in the Bismarck Archipelago,

06:03the Japanese push down the Solomon Islands.

06:06The two opposing forces slowly converge.

06:09♪♪♪

06:17Early in July 1942, a lone American plane

06:20sets in motion a chain of events which will bring

06:22those forces together at a place which neither side

06:25has foreseen nor planned.

06:27An obscure Guadalcanal, air reconnaissance reveals

06:30the Japanese are building an airfield

06:32which threatens the Allied supply line to Australia.

06:36What the plane has seen changes the course

06:38of the Pacific War.

06:40♪♪♪

06:46The Pentagon, Washington, seat of American war planning.

06:51The joint chiefs of staff recast their global strategy

06:54to meet the new Japanese menace to the Allied positions

06:57in the South Pacific.

06:59Resources are slim, trained troops are lacking,

07:02but the Japanese can be permitted to go no further.

07:05Guadalcanal must be taken.

07:08Admiral King casts the die.

07:10♪♪♪

07:17New Zealand lies in the shadow of the Japanese advance.

07:20For the United States forces stationed there,

07:23little time remains to enjoy the cordial hospitality

07:26of a sincere ally.

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07:43The Marines have their mission now,

07:45to launch the first offensive land action

07:47in the Pacific War.

07:49Under Generals Vandergrift and Rupertus,

07:51the first division is ordered to Guadalcanal,

07:53ordered to seize the island and its airstrip.

07:57This means another convoy, but it is very different.

08:01This convoy, loaded and geared,

08:04sails for combat, sails for battle.

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09:12August 7, 1942.

09:15Exactly eight months after Pearl Harbor,

09:18the United States of America takes the offensive

09:20against the Empire of Japan.

09:23For the first time, the American overture to assault

09:26preludes invasion of the islands across the Pacific.

09:29The theme of the future is played

09:31on the beaches of Guadalcanal.

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10:10The order to commit the troops has been given.

10:13Land the landing force.

10:15The day of hit and run in the Pacific is over.

10:18The hour of hit and stay has come.

10:21The first American amphibious operation in World War II

10:24is enacted like a dress rehearsal.

10:26Bombardment has driven the enemy off the beaches.

10:29The Marines walk ashore into the island.

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10:39Eighteen miles across the sound,

10:41others land on Tulagi Island.

10:43Violently opposed by Japanese Marines,

10:46American Marines fight their way ashore.

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11:03And in the air, the Japanese strike back swiftly,

11:06strike back hard.

11:08Bombers from Rabaul hit American transports

11:10before they can unload supplies

11:12vitally needed to sustain the landings.

11:16Damage to the transports at sea

11:18means near disaster to the Marines ashore.

11:21♪♪♪

11:35The shattered transports withdraw.

11:38Stripped of supplies, the Marines dare not waste a moment

11:41encountering their implacable, impersonal,

11:44hateful foe, the jungle.

11:48Now it begins, the toil and the terror

11:51that makes Guadalcanal not a name,

11:54but an emotion.

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12:16The airstrip is taken the day after landing

12:19and the Marines christen at Henderson Field

12:21to honor a fallen buddy.

12:23Their own gear destroyed,

12:25the engineers use Japanese equipment

12:27to prepare the field for the first American planes.

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12:49If the Japanese reacted sluggishly on the beach,

12:52they unleash full fury from the sky.

12:55Their own field now menaces their own flank.

12:58They go all out to destroy it first,

13:00planning to retake it later.

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13:32Under the dark cover of night,

13:34the Japanese filter reinforcements ashore.

13:37Special landing troops, Imperial Marines, crack units.

13:42Their general has warned,

13:44this is the decisive battle between Japan

13:47and the United States.

13:49A battle on which the rise or fall

13:51of the Japanese empire will depend.

13:54No troops are better fitted than these

13:56to master the jungle.

13:58Fearless, these men have been schooled

14:00in stealth and infiltration.

14:02They are experts in ambush and concealment.

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15:29And the Americans?

15:31They meet savagery with savagery.

15:34They fight, and they fight,

15:37and they fight.

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16:34In all the history of human slaughter,

16:36few troops have ever endured such scourging

16:39as the Marines on Guadalcanal.

16:41The casualties mount from the fighting,

16:45from malaria, from dengue,

16:48from the rot and corruption of the jungle,

16:51which knows not mercy.

16:54♪♪♪

17:19Salute the rising sun throughout their empire,

17:23throughout newly conquered Southeast Asia,

17:26throughout the South Pacific.

17:28The Japanese pause out of respect

17:30for their symbol of national superiority.

17:32Theirs not to reason why.

17:35Theirs but to do and die.

17:37And die they will, and die they do

17:40in a series of the most terrible sea battles in history.

17:44Down from their island fortress to the north,

17:46Rabaul, comes the Imperial Japanese Navy

17:49with timetable regularity.

17:51The Tokyo Express.

17:53But sailors of the United States and Australian Navy

17:56sacrifice their blood for their brother Marines

17:59who cannot hope to control Guadalcanal

18:01against an enemy who controls the surrounding seas.

18:05The Japanese come down the slot of water

18:08between the Solomon Islands

18:09and head for the sound called Iron Bottom

18:12because it is strewn with the hulks of dead ships,

18:15the bones of dead sailors.

18:19The Battle of Samoa Island.

18:21The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

18:24The Battle of Cape Esperance.

18:26The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

18:29The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

18:32The Battle of Tassiferanga.

18:34The Battle of Renal Island.

18:37Nights of inhuman ordeal and defeat.

18:41Nights of more than human valor.

18:44And victory.

19:17Guadalcanal is a running wound through which both sides bleed.

19:21A hemorrhage of naval strength, of men, of materiel.

19:26Far from the dying and destruction.

19:28Far from the sailors and Marines

19:30who fight and pray for victory and salvation.

19:33The United States of America organizes her land,

19:36her resources, her industry,

19:38her men to answer the distant prayers.

19:41In the greatest mobilization of strength

19:43ever known to the world,

19:45America prepares to rescue the world.

19:48And to the rescue, America marches.

24:44And on Guado Canal, another march.

24:48A march of grim men, old young men.

24:52A march of men leaving purgatory.

24:55The First Marine Division is being relieved, what's left of it.

24:59And on a lonely grave at Lunga Point, there is a prediction about the Marine who lost

25:04his youth.

25:05That when he goes to heaven, to St. Peter, he will tell.

25:09Another Marine reporting, sir, I've served my time in hell.

25:21Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, flies down from Pearl Harbor

25:26to pay what small tribute is within man's province.

25:31If there was horror and ferocity, there was also courage and self-sacrifice.

25:37If there was death, filth and disease, the Marines turned the tide of war and stopped

25:44their enemy.

25:45The Japanese will advance no further.

25:49And as the surviving Marines wave goodbye, one of the greatest tales of heroism slips

25:55out of focus into history.

25:59To these men go the honors accorded the Greeks at Thermopylae, the Colonials at Valley Forge,

26:06the British at Waterloo, and now, the Americans at Guadalcanal.

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