- 5 days ago
What were once among the most-advanced engineering projects ever undertaken now lay in abandoned ruins around the world. Experts explore why some of Earth's biggest and most-mysterious constructions were built and what brought about their downfall.
• 那些拥有惊人过往的传奇片场，以及激发好莱坞灵感的真实取景地——在这些日渐衰败的建筑之中，回荡着历史的回响。
• 废弃的电影布景： 节目中重点探访了多处极具代表性的好莱坞工业遗迹，包括 《星球大战前传1：幽灵的威胁》 在突尼斯沙漠中遗留下的经典飞船与城镇布景（如经典的莫斯埃斯帕 Mos Espa 遗址）。
• 废弃的灵感源泉： 除了人造布景外，节目还深入探索了一些启发了好莱坞编剧与导演的真实废弃历史建筑。
• 那些拥有惊人过往的传奇片场，以及激发好莱坞灵感的真实取景地——在这些日渐衰败的建筑之中，回荡着历史的回响。
• 废弃的电影布景： 节目中重点探访了多处极具代表性的好莱坞工业遗迹，包括 《星球大战前传1：幽灵的威胁》 在突尼斯沙漠中遗留下的经典飞船与城镇布景（如经典的莫斯埃斯帕 Mos Espa 遗址）。
• 废弃的灵感源泉： 除了人造布景外，节目还深入探索了一些启发了好莱坞编剧与导演的真实废弃历史建筑。
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01Derelict yet famous.
00:04Empty but iconic.
00:08Five abandoned sites ingrained in Hollywood history.
00:13From the hauntingly familiar.
00:15When you see this landscape, you get a sense of deja vu.
00:19Like, you've seen this before.
00:22To ghost towns that make perfect backdrops for fantastical tales.
00:28Hollywood was scouting for a location for a new movie they were making.
00:32They found this amazing village forgotten by time.
00:38Long forgotten ruins, given new life by the silver screen.
00:43It was scheduled for demolition.
00:45But just before that, a film crew came to shoot a movie that of course has become world famous.
00:53And the real places that inspired summer blockbusters.
00:58This ridge is related to one of the most iconic stories in US history.
01:03It was made for the silver screen.
01:05These are five of cinema's most iconic abandoned places.
01:14Decaying relics.
01:19Ruins of lost worlds.
01:24Sites haunted by the past.
01:29Their secrets waiting to be revealed.
01:44In Tunisia, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, a curious structure emerges from shifting sands.
01:57When you first see this landscape, it's very alien, very barren.
02:03But also, there's something familiar about it.
02:05You get a sense of deja vu.
02:07Like, you've seen this before.
02:12It looks like it could have been there 200 years or indeed 2,000 years.
02:17You just can't tell looking at it from a distance.
02:22Closer inspection reveals menacing features.
02:28The people who built this obviously had a lot to be afraid of and a lot to protect.
02:34This high exterior wall is clearly there to protect the settlement, but from whom?
02:42What links this place to another complex marooned 175 miles away, across the largest salt pan in the Sahara?
02:51There's no one here.
02:53The sand has been pushed up against the structures.
02:55It's been abandoned for some time.
02:59They seem really out of place, as if they were dropped out of an airplane into here, the middle of
03:04nowhere.
03:07Fantastical events a long time ago connect both sites.
03:11But this place is far and away different to the first.
03:17Here you see something that at first looks ancient, but you quickly realize it isn't.
03:22This is something built more recently, but it's entered into our collective imagination as if it's a real place.
03:32You start to realize that these are not all permanent structures.
03:37What's really going on here? Where did these things come from?
03:39And what, out of this world force, made both these sites world famous?
03:45And gave Hollywood's favorite intergalactic hero a place to call home?
03:57This multi-celled construction is Qasar Ullad Sultan.
04:03Dr. Ali Thabti is an expert on these strange abandoned structures.
04:10The Qasar was protected from anything that lay outside, because there was only one entrance.
04:15There was no other way of penetrating it other than through this gate, called a skiffer.
04:22Dating from the 16th century, Qasar Ullad Sultan is a fortified village which straddles an ancient Saharan trade route.
04:34Most people of this region were engaged in trade, either directly or indirectly.
04:40Slaves, precious metals, ivory and other products were all being imported from neighbouring Sudan.
04:49The semi-nomadic culture who built this place were called the Berbers.
04:56The Berber people have occupied this region since Roman times, and it's they that brought this distinct style of building.
05:05And here we've got lots of these little dome structures.
05:09Very defensive, very small, but clearly important.
05:16Each cell was known as a gorfa, and it would hold the food reserves for a particular family.
05:24For centuries, they would use that to protect their grain and their olives.
05:29This is your insurance policy. This is your bank.
05:33They had to get through dry seasons, and they had to keep outsiders from stealing their food.
05:39That would be a death sentence.
05:43While its walls offered protection from raiders, the secret to the gorfa cells' success was their rounded roofs which deflect
05:51the sun.
05:59Because the temperature never goes above 17 or 18 degrees, these rooms preserve food products stored in them.
06:07So for instance, barley can be kept here for five, six or even seven years without anything happening to it.
06:19For centuries, these domes helped protect the Berbers from the cruel conditions of the Sahara.
06:27Then, in 1976, their otherworldly shape inspired the realisation of a very different desert world,
06:36at another neglected site almost 200 miles away.
06:40It's a link that only begins to make sense when a distinctive domed structure comes into view.
06:48In this seemingly never-ending desert, it looks tiny and insignificant, but it is immediately recognisable.
07:00It's quite obvious this is Luke Skywalker's childhood home.
07:07Now you know where you are. The scenes at the Lars homestead really set the tone for Star Wars, for
07:17the original Star Wars.
07:19In 1976, director George Lucas brought Hollywood to this remote corner of Tunisia.
07:27Inspired by the domed architecture of the ancient Berber grain store, Lucas built a set here.
07:33And the sandy landscape became Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine.
07:39It's that iconic. I am surprised that there aren't two suns on the horizon.
07:44It's so burnt into our brains that you expect Luke Skywalker or his aunt or uncle to come round the
07:53corner.
07:54This is where it all started. The original movie set of the first Star Wars film, A New Hope.
08:06I mean, you stand and you look at it, and just for a moment, you're transported to a galaxy far,
08:13far away.
08:17Initially, they went to Tunisia because it was a cost-effective location with the deserts they wanted.
08:23But then Tunisia and its culture and architecture started influencing the movies.
08:29The Tunisian landscape seemed a dream fit for Lucas's vision.
08:34But the brutal desert climate would be unforgiving.
08:40So, key date, March the 22nd, 1976, George Lucas shouts action out here in Tunisia.
08:49And it hasn't rained in seven years to this point.
08:52And then what do you know it? The rain's come down for the next four days.
08:59A storm rolled in and it wreaked havoc on the set.
09:04In fact, the top of the Lars homestead was blown right off.
09:08And the model they were using for the Jawa's ship, the Sandcrawler, was almost destroyed.
09:16Everything is just being washed away.
09:20What a way to start this whole universe.
09:26Production continued and Star Wars became a celluloid sensation.
09:30Although few expected George Lucas to return to Tunisia.
09:35So the sets were just left, just left to the environment and left to rot.
09:41But Tunisia's unique architecture proved too much of a draw and Lucas did come back.
09:47This time, the ancient grain store at Qasar Ulitsultan took center stage.
09:54They actually used the Gorfas as a set, as a location for the Phantom Menace.
10:02And these cells that were once used for food storage became used as prison cells,
10:08where Anakin and his mother are imprisoned in the Phantom Menace.
10:15The ancient walls made a perfect intergalactic prison.
10:19But Lucas wanted more from the barren Tunisian landscape.
10:24And in 1998, he decided to build his own desert site.
10:29Almost 200 miles away in the remote Nafta region.
10:35Mos Espa is an entirely invented place.
10:39It was built as a set in the middle of nowhere when they shot the Phantom Menace.
10:45Hamid Ashebi worked on the film.
10:50During filming, there were lots of people here.
10:54Around 250.
10:56The technical team were 120.
10:59And on top of that, there were all the actors and so on.
11:04Sometimes there were 300 people on set.
11:06It was a big job.
11:10Familiar landmarks of the fictional town have withstood weather and time,
11:15including the spaceport gate, pod racing area and Watto shop.
11:23Moisture evaporators and other props also remain,
11:27posing a stark contrast to the sandy desert landscape.
11:38They spent nearly a whole year building this set.
11:42It was a big undertaking.
11:45First of all, they scouted in May, June and July.
11:50After that, it was punishing building this set in the desert.
11:54We would start work at 4 or even 3 in the morning and finish at 10 or 11 at night.
12:00There were long days.
12:02The shoots went on for three more months.
12:04Then it was all over.
12:06It was like a dream.
12:10The movie making may have finished many years ago,
12:13but Star Wars has become intrinsically linked to Tunisia.
12:21They left these great sets,
12:24which have now become tourist attractions in the desert.
12:30Star Wars really changed this part of Tunisia.
12:34It really put it on the map.
12:38It's become a place of pilgrimage for Star Wars fans.
12:44I'm so happy to have been part of making the film.
12:47It gave an economic boost to the region
12:49and created jobs so that many people could earn money.
12:53It was extraordinary.
12:54Extraordinary.
12:59Today, as the shifting desert sands
13:03threaten to engulf the Star Wars sets in NAFTA,
13:06Qasar Oulid Sultan still stands resolute.
13:10Perched here for over 500 years,
13:12it is testament to its builder's skill and ingenuity.
13:18In some ways, the Star Wars stories are stories of a struggle against the odds.
13:25And that mirrors the story of the Berbers,
13:28who only survived in this harsh landscape by banding together
13:33and cooperating against a desert that was really encroaching upon them on every side.
13:46In Ohio, near the city of Mansfield, stands a haunting facility saved from destruction by a remarkable Hollywood connection.
13:58The same day that the wrecking balls came to tear this place down was the same day that the filming
14:05company showed up.
14:08But no matter what Hollywood dreamt up, it could never compete with the real story.
14:18This building's origins stretch back to the late 19th century.
14:22This site at Mansfield was chosen in 1885 for a very special reason and a very particular project.
14:29To take young offenders and rehabilitate and re-educate them in the most positive way possible.
14:37It was a reformatory.
14:39So, the notion was you weren't just punishing people, you were helping them learn
14:43and then you would release them out of the world and they would commit crimes no more.
14:49This is the Ohio State Reformatory, completed in 1911.
14:56Inside, expert Ron Puff finds evidence that shows how the idealistic reformatory soon became a crowded adult facility.
15:10We're currently in the West Cell Block.
15:12This is five tiers, originally 350 cells, meant for one inmate to a cell.
15:18Ended up from the very beginning with two inmates, so we housed 700 inmates here.
15:22You could be stabbed, you could be mugged, you could be thrown off a high walkway.
15:27I mean, the place was such that you were in fear of your life each and every day.
15:33Inmates were told, when you came here, make yourself a weapon and hide it in the backyard,
15:37so if everything goes crazy, you at least know where your shank or your rock or whatever it is you
15:43placed is, so you can be safe.
15:46By the 1930s, the Ohio State Reformatory had become a brutal adult prison.
15:53For the worst offenders, there was solitary confinement here at the reformatory.
15:57They might keep the lights on 24 hours a day, they might keep the lights off 24 hours a day.
16:03The hole, as it was known, was crammed full of prisoners.
16:08In one case, they had a riot, and they wound up putting 120 prisoners down in the hole at the
16:14same time for 30 days.
16:17In this instance, they actually found a body that had been murdered and stuffed into a mattress for several days
16:23before anyone realized he was dead.
16:27By the time this facility was abandoned in 1990, of the 150,000 inmates who arrived here, 200 never left.
16:41In this case, they had been murdered.
16:47Today, this grand facility has become a major tourist attraction, thanks to an extraordinary twist of fate.
16:57It was scheduled for demolition, but just before that, a film crew came to shoot a movie that, of course,
17:04has become world famous, The Shawshank Redemption.
17:09The prison drama starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins made the most of this inhospitable setting.
17:18One of the things we're famous for is the movie The Shawshank Redemption.
17:22Now, that was filmed back here in 1993, and we're so thankful it happened here because now we have this
17:29building to show people because of it.
17:32The Shawshank Redemption was the redemption of this prison.
17:43In rural North Carolina, an industrial ghost town doubled for a cinematic dystopia.
17:55You see house after house that looks as though it hasn't been lived in ever.
18:04The houses are laid out according to some sort of plan.
18:11The houses look mostly identical.
18:15And then you've got a smattering of commercial buildings and a shop.
18:21It's a community, but it's suddenly frozen in time.
18:28There's little to suggest why this village is here.
18:32This is a land of rocky peaks, dark hollows, steep river valleys.
18:38It's not a place known for rich agriculture.
18:41What would have brought people to a place like this?
18:45Could traces of manufacturing next to the nearby river offer up a clue?
18:51Whatever happened to make everyone here move away had to have been worse than living in one of the poorest
19:00corners of America.
19:02This place might have been totally forgotten, just a backwater that no one remembers,
19:08if it hadn't played a major role in one of the largest Hollywood blockbuster series ever.
19:23Calvin Reyes spent three years preserving this dilapidated place.
19:29It's really great to be able to connect people with something that's, you know, more pop culture
19:33and show them a little bit of piece of history that they can then fall in love with.
19:39The structures here tell a sorry tale of abject poverty.
19:45This is a typical floor plan.
19:48So you have four rooms in the bottom, separated by a main wall.
19:53And so, originally, you have two families living in this house.
19:57The last, like, residents were early 2000s, which is still hard for people to really believe,
20:05because there was no running water at that point.
20:07There's no sewer.
20:08It was a tough life.
20:11Former residents Susie Childers and Rick Hames used to call these simple structures home.
20:20This is my house.
20:21This is the house that we lived in.
20:22This is where we grew up.
20:23Yeah.
20:26I used to throw a baseball against these steps for hours and quite a few of those balls found the
20:31windows.
20:33So, in that regard, it looked kind of normal.
20:37It looked good then.
20:39It looks sad now.
20:41Very sad.
20:43This faded and battered village is called Henry River.
20:48In 2011, its rundown appearance attracted Hollywood.
20:55When the producers of The Hunger Games were looking for a place that looked rural and impoverished, but still livable,
21:07Henry River turned out to be the perfect place.
21:11This village wasn't built for the movie.
21:13This village was built 106 years before the movie was actually filmed.
21:21They were looking for a dystopian environment, which clearly we have, in an abandoned village.
21:28This site was used to depict the grim, futuristic hometown of The Hunger Games' main character, Katniss Everdeen.
21:37It's absolutely perfect.
21:40It's perfect for District 12.
21:42It's perfect for Katniss and her family to live in, because it's the real deal.
21:47Generations of people have lived and worked here and brought up their own families.
21:53Thanks to the movie, millions now know this village as District 12.
21:58But the real story of this isolated village is altogether different.
22:05There has to be something that makes it economically feasible and logical for all these people to congregate in this
22:13pretty remote location.
22:17Geography is the reason that this town is here.
22:22We've got a very steep valley with a lovely river flowing through it.
22:27A 100-year-old dam at the edge of the settlement demonstrates the importance of the river.
22:34I'd say about eight to ten months of the year, they'd be able to run off of water power.
22:39The river was high enough and producing enough flow.
22:43All this power was being used to manufacture an important commodity, cotton.
22:49In U.S. history, famously, cotton was the backbone of the economy in the South.
22:56That cotton was being shipped overseas to be made into cloth in Britain and France.
23:03But after the Civil War, after slavery ended, cotton was still being grown in the South.
23:11But the new idea was to build cotton mills.
23:18In 1903, the Henry River Manufacturing Company bought 1,500 acres at this site and transformed it into a thriving
23:27cotton production centre.
23:29The company erected 35 worker houses, a two-storey boarding house, a bridge, a brick company store, the power-producing
23:42dam, and the original three-storey brick mill building where the cotton yarn was produced.
23:50Early on, when they first started operating in 1905, they were working with 4,000 spindles.
23:55Within a few years, though, they tripled that production.
23:58At any given time, they had, you know, over 100 employees working in the mill.
24:03This was your classic company town. Everything was owned by the company.
24:07They provided everything, which in a way is the image of the beneficent company that wants to make life good
24:13for its workers,
24:13but also tended to trap workers and disdain in the town.
24:22For some, mill work was their only choice.
24:28My mom had a job in the mill. She thought this was the perfect spot to live.
24:35I can remember listening to my mom talk.
24:39As with a lot of other families in that day and time, when they got to be a certain age
24:45and they were able to work, they had to work.
24:47So she went to work in the mill before she ever graduated from high school.
24:53Their entire lives were spent here.
24:57Industrial accidents were common in busy cotton mills.
25:00And the Henry River mill was no exception.
25:03You have people, especially early on in production, that were coming straight off the farm.
25:07They're not used to working in a manufacturing environment.
25:09And here's these giant machines that they're working on that didn't have the same safety regulations that we have today.
25:16Injuries were normal.
25:17People would lose appendages, they'd lose fingers, they'd lose hands, they'd get crushed, they'd break bones.
25:21It's just part of life in a textile mill.
25:26My mother was injured pretty significantly in the mill.
25:30She got her hand caught in one of the winding machines and had several surgeries.
25:37The tough working life and poverty created a tight-knit community at Henry River.
25:43The epicentre of this neighbourhood was the brick building that would double as District 12's bakery, the Company Store.
25:52So this was the place where everything happened.
25:55This is where they centred around, not necessarily the mill.
25:58The mill was a means of making money and surviving.
26:02This is where the community was built, around the central store.
26:06But as the 20th century progressed, life here would take a turn for the worse.
26:13It closed in 1970, but the vast mill building was still fully intact.
26:21In 1977 it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground by the next morning.
26:26You could see it for miles, the fireball, because it just completely went up and there was no saving it.
26:34With the mill burnt to its very foundations, there was no chance of work for the people of the village,
26:40and they eventually dispersed.
26:47Today, the industrial heritage of Henry River Mill Village has been revived.
26:53It's really neat to go back in time and see what some of these things look like, and you find
27:02everything. It's really incredible.
27:04And the village has also been given a new kind of history.
27:08I don't know if they actually filmed some at the house we lived in at the top of the hill.
27:13My daughter tells me now I lived in District 12.
27:27Off the southwest coast of Japan is an obliterated and deserted island site.
27:36Once the thrilling backdrop for James Bond's bitter showdown in the movie Skyfall.
27:46A high wall surrounds the island.
27:50It's not clear what it was built to keep in or out.
27:55So what happened at this torn-out site?
27:58And what became of the 5,000 people who once lived here?
28:07This is Hashima Island.
28:12Former resident Tomoji Kabata remembers the first time he saw this place, known locally as Battleship Island.
28:23When I saw the island from a ship for the first time, I noticed that it really looked like a
28:29battleship.
28:32Another thing I was surprised by was the sheer number of reinforced concrete buildings.
28:39Derelict industrial structures reveal the true purpose of this site.
28:46Coal was first discovered here in the 19th century.
28:50And four deep shafts were sunk to extract it.
28:55You're talking about digging a 200-meter-deep mine in the sea next to this tiny little island.
29:01It's an incredible logistical challenge.
29:06The deeper you go into the mine, the more material you're bringing up.
29:11And to use that to backfill and make your island slightly bigger to maybe then house more miners so you
29:17can go even deeper.
29:20It kind of keeps going round and round. Where does it stop?
29:24By the 1970s, Hashima Island had tripled its natural size.
29:32Reclaiming land is actually a massive engineering challenge because you're working with water which moves.
29:39The levels come up and down. It can be quite acidic, quite salty.
29:44It corrodes man-made materials quite easily.
29:48Even so, it still became one of the most crowded places on Earth.
29:54So the population density on Hashima got to the point where it was double what civic engineers at that time
30:01would have recommended as being the maximum.
30:04Nine-storey blocks accommodated the rapidly expanding population.
30:12There were no elevators at all in these high-rise buildings, so people moved about horizontally.
30:19There were lots of passageways going across, so we didn't need to go downstairs at all to get from one
30:25building to another.
30:27We could just walk across using the passageways.
30:34Productivity was high, despite punishing temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius and 95% humidity.
30:42The working conditions here were brutal.
30:47It was a really dangerous place.
30:51Stones often fell from the ceiling.
30:55It was like doing hard labour in a steam bath.
31:01With coal deposits depleted, mining operations ceased in 1974 and the population left.
31:15Nearly 40 years later, Hashima Island became a site of industrial heritage.
31:22And the perfect setting for James Bond to meet his match.
31:31The final site lies 1,000 miles from Tokyo on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
31:43A steep hillside conceals a strange blend of ruins.
31:49We're looking across the water toward this rising ground, a dominating ridge with some structures visible that look as though
31:59it's been reinforced, fortified perhaps.
32:03Somebody has taken serious care to turn these hills into fortifications.
32:14Descending into dense vegetation beyond the warning signs are entrances to another world.
32:23Built into a mountain, you'd never even know this complex was here.
32:27It's pretty much impossible to access unless you were led inside.
32:33I also see evidence of battle.
32:35I see shell fragments or bullet holes around.
32:39It's interesting that in one of the chambers, you can still see text in Japanese that, when it's translated into
32:47English, reads, destroy America.
32:52How did these underground facilities contribute to some of the bloodiest and most famous battles in history?
33:00On this ridge are the remains of an important medieval castle, a site of spiritual significance.
33:08But to Americans, this ridge means something else entirely.
33:12This is related to one of the most iconic stories in U.S. history.
33:26Akemi Azato has spent the last decade investigating what happened on this island.
33:34So the writings in this wall says destroy America.
33:40So this is the commander, real Admiral Oto's room.
33:45And he sent a telegram sent out to mainland Japan praising Okinawans.
33:53After that, on June 13, 1945, he committed suicide in this room with his close officers.
34:08What led to this moment is an extraordinary tale of bravery and self-sacrifice.
34:14It is a remarkable and heroic story.
34:18You can see why it was picked up by Hollywood.
34:21It was made for the silver screen.
34:25The 26th of April 1945, the Maida Escarpment, also known as Hacksaw Ridge.
34:33Men of the U.S. Army's 77th Infantry Division were waiting anxiously beneath the almost vertical 120-metre cliff.
34:43Part of Operation Iceberg, the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theatre of the Second World War.
34:51The Navy's 5th Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on
34:59this island for one final push.
35:03Planners assumed that they would be resisted every step of the way.
35:08This was going to be Omaha Beach all over again.
35:14At first, they encountered an eerie quiet.
35:18But the silence was soon shattered.
35:23They used naval gunfire support to absolutely muller the place.
35:29They'd bash Hacksaw Ridge so hard that nothing is going to be left alive on the surface.
35:39U.S. infantrymen clawed their way up ladders to the smoke-filled ridge above.
35:45But the enemy was nowhere to be seen.
35:48But then once they get onto the cliff, the Japanese, who are invisible, could pop up and start blazing away.
35:55Caught off guard, the troops were driven back by hail of gunfire.
35:59Among them was Desmond Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to hold or fire a rifle.
36:07Instead of joining the retreat back down to the beach, Doss continues to collect wounded up on this, you know,
36:14fire-ravaged ridgetop.
36:16Not only does Doss rescue his own captain, but he also rescues 75 of his comrades.
36:26Doss isn't going to fight, but what Doss is going to do is save American lives as long as he
36:34possibly can.
36:38Carrying them one by one to the edge of the escarpment, he lowered them by rope down the cliff face.
36:44Yet Doss's individual bravery couldn't mask his battalion's colossal losses.
36:52When the U.S. landed, they met almost no resistance.
36:55But that was the plan, to draw them in close and then emerge from this network of underground tunnels.
37:03This way, they could engage them in hand-to-hand combat.
37:08They're retreating into these fortifications, forcing the Americans to dig them out, such as they had to do at Iwo
37:14Jima, and take tremendous casualties.
37:16So this, in turn, makes the American approach much more brutal.
37:21The Americans are forced to kind of pry them out of the rocks.
37:25They're using the inherent strength of defensive warfare to their advantage.
37:32According to classic military theory, if you're going in against a well-prepared enemy in entrenched positions,
37:42you had better have a six-to-one advantage, otherwise it's not going to happen.
37:48The Japanese were so outnumbered that every able-bodied Okinawan was drafted in.
37:55School boys were used as frontline soldiers, and school girls as nurses in makeshift underground hospitals.
38:04Scorched timber from American flamethrowers is testament to the horrors these children were exposed to.
38:13Once the Japanese positions beneath Hacksaw Ridge were destroyed,
38:17US forces moved south towards the strategically vital airfield at Naha.
38:23Here, they were confronted with another underground fortress, built into the hill overlooking the airport.
38:31This place was meant to house a naval staff and a really serious communications capability.
38:40So this is the signal room.
38:43There are several signal operators sending a message to mainland Japan, as well as military, Navy, receiving and sending.
38:54But decoding is done by a different room and different operators.
39:02This is the former underground naval headquarters.
39:05Nearly 500 metres of cavernous tunnels.
39:10You had to have room for the admiral, the flag staff, broader staff, signalers, and thousands of Japanese soldiers to
39:21defend the place.
39:22It was built to be hard to crack, and it was built to last against a heavy American assault.
39:32And it was about to be put to the test.
39:36The 6th Marine Division, having captured Naha Airport, encircled this bunker network.
39:43The Navy couldn't fight back too much, and the only way they could do is, with the spears, they went
39:52outside and ended up getting hit.
39:57They couldn't fight back anymore.
39:59They had to stay inside.
40:02Yet the evidence suggests these tunnels may have seen combat.
40:07In these dark underground caverns, you can't help but notice that some of the walls are covered in pockmarks and
40:15what looked like bullet holes.
40:18So did American forces manage to penetrate this formidable facility?
40:22Admiral Ota saying that if this is the end of our operation, and we are committing suicide, but you are
40:30free to go.
40:32It's hard to believe, you know, a commander would not force the lower-length soldiers to commit suicide.
40:40So it's very, very rare.
40:45Once he had sent his final message, Admiral Ota took out his personal weapon.
40:52And he shot himself in front of his staff.
40:56And from the holes in the wall, we can see that all of his staff, to a man, shot themselves
41:05afterwards.
41:07Japanese culture said it is better to die a suicide than to surrender.
41:14And Ota and his staff died heroes in the Japanese culture.
41:21Short of guns, some officers had to improvise with grenades.
41:27Others were found with their throats cut.
41:31Many of the regular soldiers chose to stay and prepare to fight to the bitter end.
41:38Instead of fighting for control of these tunnels, Americans just detonate all the tunnel entrances, close them up with rubble.
41:48And they waited a good long time to make sure that there would be no resistance when they went down
41:54there.
41:55When American forces did go into those tunnels, they found thousands of bodies of Japanese naval personnel.
42:03The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest of the Second World War.
42:08200,000 Japanese were killed, many of them civilians and children.
42:1312,500 on the American side.
42:17In 1970, the former naval headquarters were converted into a museum.
42:22And in 2006, Desmond Doss' story was immortalized by the Hollywood film Hacksaw Ridge.
42:29And that film brought it to the forefront of popular culture.
42:34Hacksaw Ridge is a film which is as anti-war as any war film gets.
42:43And it implants itself into the American consciousness at the same time that Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly wrong.
42:59Having been shot and taking 17 pieces of shrapnel at Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss was rewarded with the Medal of
43:08Honour for his selfless act there.
43:21Hacksaw Ridge is actually a good story, isn't it?
43:24The soldier helped others.
43:26And we believe that both Americans and Japanese Okinawans share the history together.
43:33And then what we do is pray for hope for the eternal peace.
43:41We know that meat is a good story or anything like this.
44:06Thanks, James.
44:09Take it away.