00:00♪♪♪
00:10♪♪♪
00:20♪♪♪
00:30♪♪♪
00:40♪♪♪
00:50♪♪♪
00:55And now, The Turkey Shoot.
01:00♪♪♪
01:04Guam in the Marianas.
01:06Guam in the late 1930s.
01:09Guam in the twilight of peace.
01:12A langorous island where native Chamorros pursue their placid age-old ways.
01:17This is United States territory in the far Pacific.
01:21Heritage of the 1898 war with Spain.
01:24A forgotten stepchild among America's overseas possessions.
01:29♪♪♪
01:49Under the guardianship of the United States Navy, life has remained serene, unruffled.
01:56But the pattern of history is changing,
01:58and naval authorities on Guam plead in vain with Congress
02:01to fortify the strategic island while time remains.
02:05Peace is but a mask behind which lurks the ugly face of war.
02:10Already Japanese bayonets cast lengthening shadows on Guam and on its people.
02:15♪♪♪
02:22The American garrison on Guam.
02:24Only a few hundred Marines.
02:26A fact duly noted 1,600 miles to the north in Tokyo,
02:30where the warlords of Japan convened to plot the means
02:33by which they will hammer out the greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere
02:37to the greater glory of the emperor.
02:39The geographic names which the militarists weigh in their deliberations
02:43are heavy with coming history.
02:45Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.
02:47Borneo and Hong Kong.
02:49Malaya and Singapore.
02:51But there is another lesser-known name to be integrated into the plan,
02:56and that name is Guam.
02:59Guam, the American pillbox without guns in the Marianas.
03:03♪♪♪
03:12Saipan, Tinian, Rota are Japanese.
03:16Southernmost is Guam, and Guam is doomed.
03:19♪♪♪
03:29♪♪♪
03:49On the entire island, there is no defensive weapon
03:52larger than a .30 caliber machine gun.
03:54The hopelessly outnumbered Marines
03:56face 5,000 fully equipped Japanese landing troops.
04:00December 10, 1941.
04:03Guam is overwhelmed.
04:05♪♪♪
04:25♪♪♪
04:46Guam is now Japanese, but the sun has set for the Chamorros,
04:51and during the long night ahead,
04:53Guam is forced to muster with Saipan and Tinian,
04:56and the three islands form a cluster of death traps
04:58across the path leading north to Japan, west to the Philippines.
05:03With every passing month of occupation,
05:05the Japanese impose increasingly harsh restrictions on Guam and its people,
05:10using every device of pressure and propaganda
05:12to integrate forever the island into their empire.
05:16♪♪♪
05:31♪♪♪
05:58For two and a half years, Guam waits,
06:01secured and beyond reach within the Japanese wall of water and steam.
06:06But in June 1944, incredibly, miraculously,
06:11powerful United States naval forces appear off the Marianas
06:14as the Allies, on the other side of the world, storm ashore at Normandy.
06:19The ebb tide has given way to the flow.
06:22Now it is the Americans who bear down on Guam in overwhelming strength.
06:26Now it is the Japanese who are doomed.
06:56♪♪♪
07:21♪♪♪
07:41♪♪♪
08:01♪♪♪
08:21♪♪♪
08:41♪♪♪
09:10Under Admiral Spruance, ships of the United States Fifth Fleet
09:13have brought 100,000 troops and a quarter million sailors to the Marianas.
09:17Saipan is the first target.
09:19Saipan, headquarters of Japan's Central Pacific Fleet,
09:23commanded by Admiral Nagumo,
09:25the same Nagumo who smashed Pearl Harbor.
09:28Saipan, whose loss rings from the Emperor's Supreme Naval Advisor
09:32the anguished cry,
09:34Hell is upon us.
10:04♪♪♪
10:24♪♪♪
10:47On Saipan and on Kenya, on Guam,
10:50the assault troops inch forward against suicidal Japanese resistance.
10:54And while soldiers and Marines struggle for each yard of earth,
10:58far to the west, many leagues seaward, another battle is shaping.
11:03A Japanese carrier force from bases in the Philippines
11:06sets out to crush the American landings.
11:09But the approach of the Japanese fleet has been spotted by American submarines,
11:13its position betrayed, its course plotted.
11:17The Japanese pilots, most of them young and inexperienced,
11:21are marked for death before they start.
11:24The Americans are waiting.
11:26The Americans are armed.
11:28The Americans are prepared.
11:30♪♪♪
11:33American carrier planes are brilliantly deployed to meet the oncoming Japanese.
11:38The ensuing battle is a slaughter, a rout, a turkey shoot.
11:43♪♪♪
12:11The biggest single-days bag of the air war anywhere.
12:14On any front, 400 Japanese planes butchered for a loss of 26 Americans.
12:21Three carriers, two tankers are also sunk.
12:25The back of Japanese naval aviation is permanently broken
12:29in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
12:32♪♪♪
12:41With the Imperial Japanese Navy beaten off,
12:44the troops under Marine General Holland Smith,
12:47commander of the 5th Amphibious Force,
12:49set their sights for the grueling conquest of the Marianas.
12:53Against the Americans, the Japanese have pitted units of their cracked Manchurian army.
12:58The Japanese resist.
13:00The Japanese die.
13:02The Japanese do not surrender.
13:05♪♪♪
13:34♪♪♪
13:4017,000 Japanese fall in the battle for Guam.
13:44Last-ditch defenders are blasted from caves or commit suicide by leaping to death.
13:50♪♪♪
14:01Agana, Guam's battered capital,
14:04liberated by the blood and sacrifice of young Americans.
14:08The battle is over.
14:10The mopping up goes on for months
14:12before the last Japanese soldier is ferreted from his hiding place.
14:16♪♪♪
14:36And the people of Guam, the Chamorros,
14:40down from the hills they come.
14:43Out of Japanese concentration camps they come.
14:47The weary and the frightened, the sick and the feeble.
14:52All are welcomed and helped by the American soldier
14:56who cheerfully abandons the savagery of battle
14:59for what is truly in his heart, in his nature.
15:04Sympathy, kindness, compassion.
15:10♪♪♪
15:25♪♪♪
15:45♪♪♪
16:05♪♪♪
16:25♪♪♪
16:50The ordeal of survival is over.
16:53The shadow of perpetual fear is gone.
16:56The nightmare of battle has ended.
16:59Peace has come again to Guam, to the Marianas,
17:03and arising from the ashes, new life.
17:23♪♪♪
17:43♪♪♪
18:03The meaning of America has gone deep into the life of Guam,
18:06deep into the hearts of the Chamorros.
18:09All through the Japanese occupation, their loyalty never wavered.
18:13They knew the Americans would come back one day.
18:16The Americans have come.
18:18The day has come.
18:21♪♪♪
18:50♪♪♪
19:10And Guam, in its gratitude, does not forget.
19:15Liberty has its price.
19:18Freedom, its cost.
19:21♪♪♪
19:31But the work of war must still be done on Guam.
19:34Deep inside the boundaries of the Japanese Empire,
19:371,000 miles forward from the last conquered base at Inuitoc,
19:41naval construction battalions, the Seabees,
19:44with Marine and Army engineers,
19:46take over from those whose job it was to destroy.
19:49Destruction gives way to construction.
19:52As fruits of American industry and the know-how of her men,
19:55transform tropical Guam into a generator for victory in the Pacific.
20:00♪♪♪
20:25♪♪♪
20:46Afra Harbor.
20:48Once $5 million was too much to spend improving it.
20:52$280 million are dumped without question
20:55to fit it for the staggering traffic of cargo and equipment that comes surging in,
20:59transforming the island into the most potent advanced base anywhere in the world.
21:04Guam becomes the Pacific supermarket where the tools of war are stocked.
21:09♪♪♪
21:38♪♪♪
22:07♪♪♪
22:36♪♪♪
22:49From Guam, Admiral Nimitz directs the naval strategy
22:52for the final phase of war in the Far East.
22:55Pearl Harbor, the traditional headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet,
22:59is now a remote rear area.
23:02But Nimitz's new base is equidistant from two major Allied objectives.
23:06Tokyo, 1,600 miles north.
23:09Manila, 1,500 miles west.
23:12Everything needed to conquer the one and liberate the other
23:15has been furnished in abundance and overabundance and superabundance
23:19by workers and factories 10,000 miles back across the vast reaches of the Pacific
23:24in continental United States.
23:27But here it all is.
23:29Detroit is here and Birmingham is here.
23:31Pittsburgh is here and so is Seattle.
23:34The wealth of American skill and American labor
23:37is stored and stacked and ready here on Guam,
23:40here in the Marianas.
24:01♪♪♪♪
24:21♪♪♪♪
24:41♪♪♪♪
24:53Established bases for operations against Japanese sea communications
24:57and for long-range air attacks against Japan itself.
25:01That is what Nimitz's strategic directive called for in the Marianas.
25:06On Guam, on Saipan, on Tinian,
25:10the bases have been established.
25:12The mission has been accomplished.
25:14Now the B-29s take off.
25:17Take off for Tokyo.
25:19Take off for victory.
25:22♪♪♪♪
25:42♪♪♪♪
26:02♪♪♪♪
