How One Tiny Submarine Started A War With America | Pearl Harbor: Who Fired First | Timeline

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ward signals the action to naval headquarters at pearl harbor on this quiet sunday morning the decoded message is passed from office to office no action is taken just an hour and a half later japanese bombers are attacking pearl harbor they destroy the greatest ships of the u.s pacific fleet if the ward's signal had been heeded the lives of 2000 american servicemen might have been saved there is a question of why wasn't why wasn't the command here at pearl harbor more on guard and ready for anything that might happen and that's part of the bit large debate [Music] [Applause] hawaii's deep sea research institute terry kirby's submarines film underwater volcanoes and shipwrecks but on his training trips kirby also looks for the lost japanese submarine from the attack on pearl harbor [Music] i didn't realize it had never been discovered until 1991 and a lot of people have been looking for it and it still hadn't been discovered and it still hadn't been verified that the ward actually sank it so um after 1991 when we did our tests and trial dives we would do them in the area kirby bought his two submersibles in europe and rebuilt them here there's just enough room inside for two pilots and a video operator [Music] the subs can dive to two thousand meters so this is shallow work [Music] but it's more exciting than you might think when you're going across the ocean floor i mean a lot of times it might be hardly anything to see it's very sandy not much around but whatever you come across you feel like you're the first person to see it and it's very it's very exciting because of its significance in american history and in world history if they do find the japanese submarine on the ocean floor it will prove that the u.s navy ignored a clear warning of the attack [Music] november 26 1941 the imperial japanese fleet leaves the kureal islands for hawaii the 40-strong fleet aircraft carriers battleships cruisers and destroyers must cross 6500 kilometers of the pacific [Music] admiral isoroku yamamoto has ordered complete radio silence for the entire voyage the future of the japanese empire is at stake yamamoto was a very very bright individual but he also saw the future of the navy quicker than others he could see that the battleship era was passing he was very interested in what was happening with aviation developments and they watched carefully dropping bombs on warships yamamoto studied at harvard and was japan's naval attache in washington he knows his adversary well he knows the empire stands no chance in a long war against the economic might of the usa but the attack must and will go ahead he will sail his squadron to within 300 kilometers of the hawaiian coast from there his bombers will take off for the attack on pearl harbor the initial plan was for six carriers and support vessels to strike the pacific fleet by air and as discussions of this plan was uh undertaken and called the hawaii operation it became evident that the japanese navy's submarine arm wanted to be involved as well and so they came up with this plan of bringing five [ __ ] subs roughly 80 feet long with a crew of two and two torpedoes into the hawaii area there is a powerful precedent for yamamoto's plan in november 1939 germany's u-47 sneaked into scarpa flow the british royal navy's base in scotland its defenses were supposed to be impenetrable u-47 sank the battleship royal oak more than 800 british seamen died [Music] there was a hero's welcome in berlin for u-47's commander grinter prien we squeezed past the patrols and suddenly we were inside the harbour of scarpa flow the [Music] now it's the turn of the japanese ten men in five [ __ ] submarines after torpedo american warships while their compatriots strike from above very few people knew about it and the people that were trained were the best of the best they were the elite uh submariners in the japanese navy and they essentially went into secret training and there were only a couple of dozen of them at the beginning waiting on their bunks aboard the battleship chiyoda young elite officers like sub lieutenant yoshio katayama from a poor farming family near osaka or lieutenant at 22 the youngest of the group he writes to his parents the worth of a person becomes clear when he is on the right road aiming at the right goal if he doesn't reach his goal he hasn't tried hard enough [Music] this is the sheltered bay [Music] that's what honolulu means in hawaiian [Music] the south coast of oahu a paradise of volcanoes and lush vegetation a posting here is a dream come true i heard of a little island out in the middle of the pacific about two thousand miles called territory of hawaiian little farm boy that's about as far overseas as i want to get and i also heard they have beautiful girls there with long black hair and they have grass skirts and they even said some of them live in grass shacks and i said oh hell give me pearl harbor this is an island of rest and recreation heat and hula hard to resist the fertility dance of the local maidens [Music] seventy thousand u.s soldiers on oahu know all about the tensions with japan but war is the last thing on their minds [Music] signalman everett highland doesn't think he's in any danger it was the feeling that if we ever did go to war with japan or if japan did attack americans soil it would be the philippines it was closest to japan as far as getting a fleet from japan to hawaii i mean that was simply out of the question [Music] most of the u.s pacific fleet is at pearl harbor there's no room to build the crews on land so they have to live on their ships no one mines so long as they're looked after you want to remember this is just at the end of the depression the military was one of the better places to go at least you had you had food you had a place to sleep so many uh many fellas join the military the troops are well fed but they're short of weapons the army isn't ready to fight flower bombs replace explosives on exercises of 1918 are too fresh president franklin d roosevelt was re-elected promising never to take his country to war but in britain winston churchill is asking for support in his country's struggle against hitler and president roosevelt knows the american people will only fight if the other side fires first [Music] hitler's conquests in europe seem unstoppable in summer 1940 he celebrates victory over france soon the luftwaffe is bombing london more than 20 000 civilians die [Music] by mid-1941 roosevelt is sending weapons to britain but churchill wants more at a meeting on the prince of wales churchill warns roosevelt of a potential common enemy germany's equal in aggression and brutality japan [Music] and japan is moving ever closer to nazi germany crown prince chichibu was hitler's personal guest at a nazi party rally in nuremberg the prince takes the salute with hitler on the podium these images have only just been released from the japanese archives japan was presented as a unique country forged by the gods the emperor himself was divine destined to rule over all the world above all he was destined to liberate asia in 1937 japan invaded china they called this liberation it was a good excuse to seize land and raw materials the campaign is led by the prime minister general tojo many naval officers view this invasion with concern they know it will heighten tensions with the united states admiral yamamoto has his doubts too but he keeps them to himself he believed they could make things extremely difficult with the americans for a year maybe 18 months if there was no peace agreement with the us by then it could only go downhill the sailors in the japanese fleet know nothing about these concerns they have no information at all many even believe war has already broken out yamamoto and his officers do nothing to dampen these rumors the admiral needs men who are ready to fight and to sacrifice themselves and that includes the submarine crews bomber pilot abe zenji got to know the submariners they made a deep impression on him on our way to pearl harbor somewhere in the north pacific we were told about the five [ __ ] submarines i can only describe their crews as men who turned into god-like heroes when they volunteered for this mission that was something i never could have done [Music] the japanese developed their [ __ ] submarines in less than a year it's a remarkable technical achievement [Music] the project is so secret that they're built in isolated private shipyards there's virtually no time to test the new weapons at the naval academy the volunteer cadets are trained and indoctrinated for just one mission from which they are not expected to return it's a new way of making war the war plans for both japan and the us called for a great battle to occur out in the middle of the ocean where the ships would just hammer each other uh that didn't happen and they realized they'd be attacking each other in harbors so the submariners were told to memorize attack plans for five different places it was san francisco sydney harbour diego suarez hong kong and pearl harbor [Music] all of them inaccessible [ __ ] submarines can make them realistic targets if the ward sank one of these submarines it must be lying somewhere off pearl harbor in the summer of 2002 new technology made the search easier the university of hawaii had developed a new highly efficient sonar unit day after day the scientists scanned the ocean floor in the bay of pearl harbor there was no shortage of sightings as a result we were able to identify some targets and these are possible objects that we see in the images that could be the [ __ ] sub and so we went ahead and identified all of these targets and ranked them so we determined which was the number one target all the way down to which was the number 39. still too many to investigate the number must be reduced all 39 possibilities are approximately the right size 24 meters long and 1.8 meters high with further analysis they eliminate those that are part of a rock formation or simply garbage off the coast this is what's so interesting we had one really promising looking target and we weren't going to start our dive season until august so it was it was torture we had quite a while away to actually get the submarines down there to see what it was and then once again they were it wasn't a funded dedicated project so we only had three test dives before we started a four-month dive season to see if we could identify some of these targets and see if we could find it the most likely target is 400 meters down is it the submarine the crew of the ward believe they sank on the morning of pearl harbor in 1941 the americans are more worried about sabotage than a japanese attack military aircraft are lined up on the runways where they're most visible suspicion falls on japanese immigrants many americans see them as traitors conspiring against their own country yet most have been patriotic americans for years many will later fight for the us the danger is from elsewhere from japan itself but most american soldiers like ship's cook george brown still believe in a peaceful solution i think everyone knew that something was going to happen we didn't know it was going to be a war but everyone was talking that the japanese were a real threat at the time [Music] the u.s demands a complete japanese withdrawal from china and southeast asia they see their own power in asia dwindling the us is already supplying weapons to china in its struggle against japan [Music] tokyo rejects the american demands the japanese merely offer a partial withdrawal from china now president roosevelt decides on a measure that will force japan to its knees in months [Music] the united states freezes japanese assets and cuts off its oil supplies [Music] japan must now live off its oil reserves [Music] the embargo paralyzes japanese industry and leads to severe poverty some elements in the japanese government see only one option remaining the japanese themselves at that point in their history didn't believe that diplomacy was going to solve their problems remember that country was taken over by militarists militarists only understand one way to solve their problems through war yamamoto finally informs his officers of the master plan the fleet has reached its position close to the hawaiian islands it'll soon be time for the bombers to take off for pearl harbor [Music] the submarine crews prepare for their mission checking the sketches of american ships for the last time one of them has drawn a map of pearl harbor it's found after the war everyone has his own way of spending the final hours on board in washington the situation is becoming critical on december 6th roosevelt cables the japanese emperor expressing his concern at this deep and far-reaching emergency there is no reply no one knows if hirohito personally approved the attack on pearl harbor but the decision has been taken the empire is going to war you died for the family you died for your country and you died for the emperor who was destined to rule the world [Music] december 7th at dawn the japanese submariners say their last prayers at a shrine on the deck of their ship [Music] akirahiro leaves a letter for his parents i take up my pen to thank you with all my heart for everything you have done for me i will always pray for you from my grave for your happiness and your well-being farewell the last photograph taken just moments before they climbed into their submarines [Music] the submarine surfaced and they climbed onto the deck of the mother submarine and then climbed into their submarine and the hatches were secured and at that point the only thing connecting them was at one telephone line that went between them and when the submarine was launched the line broke and that was the last contact people had with these guys this is a dangerous moment the [ __ ] submarines are attached to the mother sub by leather straps there's been no time for a more permanent arrangement in a strong current the straps could snap the submarines could collide and one or both of them could sink [Music] the submarine's batteries will last 12 hours enough to make it to pearl harbor but not to come back this propaganda film shows the [ __ ] sub as a comfortable environment in fact you couldn't stand up straight it was cold and noisy and exhaust fumes muddled the brain was no uh place to go the bathroom there was no place to keep your food uh the submarines were designed to only have a crew in it for an hour or so so there was no point with that but these guys some of these guys were in it for more than 24 hours [Music] 30 kilometers from the hawaiian coast the [ __ ] subs separate from their motherships now they must enter the harbour itself this is the critical moment the harbour mouth is only 11 meters deep a shallow lagoon with a number of radiating channels the [ __ ] submarines must come very close to the surface to get their bearings without being spotted by american patrols [Music] early in the morning about 3 a.m a small little vessel called the condor had saw something and picked up something appeared to be a submarine and reported it to the duty destroyer the uss ward ward investigated found nothing [Music] the crew of the ward assumed it's a false alarm three and a half hours later there's another sighting [Music] later in the morning a supply ship called the antares was pulling uh or towing a barge behind it and the signalman and some other men looked behind in the pre-dawn light and could see something following it and they weren't sure what it was and they could look down and see it what that what's that there's nothing like that they've seen before but this destiny has a periscope so they notify the ward that they have sighted a submarine the ward again searches along the coast the security zone in front of pearl harbor american submarines have to sail on the surface in this zone so when the crew of the ward spy an unknown submarine a few kilometers offshore they fire on it this is the first shot in the pacific war but they can't tell if it's hit its target the ward launches depth charges to finish the job soon afterwards the submarine disappears will lana was an ammunition handler on the ward i watched it go right underneath the ship right there below me when it was going down and i had never seen anything like that before i'd never seen a submarine that small i didn't know what it was whose it was if it was a new kind of sub that we had that we had fired on and sunk the crew of the ward are quite sure they've sunk the submarine but plenty of people don't believe them the whole incident is over in less than ten minutes the ward reports to uh to the headquarters of the pearl harbor that we have fired a depth of charge a submarine operating in the defensive sea area and now that message starts to go through the channels on a quiet sunday morning in hawaii at 7am the troops gather for early mass [Music] an hour later they go back to their ships [Music] there has been no warning [Music] at just after 6am the japanese aircraft carriers turned to the wind the pilots parade on deck ten minutes later the first planes take off these are the precursors of kamikaze the divine wind their instructions are clear if they're hit they must crash into an american target 183 bombers of the first wave set course for pearl harbor [Music] and we had a clear view of our targets only then did i believe that we might actually succeed just before 8 a.m the pilots see the mountains of oahu island ahead of them [Music] minutes later they thunder through the flat valley at the center of the island just a few meters above the pineapple fields right over the heads of the japanese immigrants working there it came straight up toward me going up north and it was so close that when i looked up i saw the pilot with a canvas type helmet and a great big goggles so as i looked up he was looking down at me and he passed me by and i said you know i thought i saw the blood red insignia of the rising sun on the wings but it cannot be because that's a japanese plane and japan is too far away admiral husband kimmel is the navy commander in pearl harbor he receives the warning from the ward during a sunday morning game of golf on ford island the island in the mouth of pearl harbor it's too late when he gets the news he drives straight to headquarters but there's no time to alert the troops or evacuate them from the ships shortly before 8 o'clock kimmel watches from his office as japanese bombers dive down from the sky [Music] on board the ships the sailors still think it's a u.s air force exercise until the bombs start to fall [Music] at 7 52 the first dive bombers attacked the island's airfields in just a few minutes hawaii's air defenses are knocked out [Music] twenty-year-old herb weatherwax is with his family in honolulu he has a weekend's furlough i heard the explosion i love the explosion and i turned the radio on to see what that noise was about and they announced over the radio that all military personnel report to station immediately the japanese have attacked pearl harbor and i was i was in a state of shock [Music] a few minutes later the bombers attacked the harbour itself dozens of pacific fleet ships including 29 destroyers line the keysights at last the navy sends a signal to all units air raid pearl harbor this is no drill on the ships and on ford island where many of the officers live with their families there's chaos sudden i heard a big back of me and i looked back but the sun was directly in my eyes so i couldn't see what was coming and suddenly there were seven or eight aerial torpedo bombers came right over my shoulder and they dropped off their aerial torpedoes about ten foot off of the water because they had been built to go in shallow water i looked boy five or six of them were heading right out towards the uss oklahoma yamamoto's attack is going exactly according to plan the aerial torpedoes have been specially developed for this action they pierce the armor-plated hull of the battleship oklahoma within 20 minutes the ship has turned on its side and sunk with hundreds of sailors on board the water came in with such force they picked me up and threw me into the next compartment we dug down the hatch to keep the water from coming in there must have been about 12 guys that were already in there the attack turns pearl harbor into an inferno of fire and smoke oil and blood an american sailor shot this colour footage of the attack sailors jump in panic from their ships into the scalding oil more are trapped inside the wrecks [Music] i never even heard anything go off i picked myself up and well the first thing i remember is being flat on my face with my arms out extended in front of me and they were all the skin had been peeled off and bleeding and so i picked myself up and uh wondered where the gun crew went they had been all injured at 806 the arizona the pride of the u.s navy is hit [Music] a hand points out a bomb as it descends moments later it crashes into the magazine the great ship sinks within nine minutes the arizona becomes a grave for more than a thousand men [Music] on the oklahoma george brown is fighting for his life i climbed the ladder got to the hatch and squeezed through there and had about four or five other guys about my size that did the same thing we no sooner got through the hatch and then the lights went out and the ship had listed so much you could hardly stand up he has to leave the others behind more than 2400 die in the attack on pearl harbor a thousand more are injured [Music] for the first time the united states has been attacked on its own soil it is a trauma for the nation and for the survivors after i got married my wife would wake me up two or three times say you're hollering you never forget that so even today i can see the faces of both people after one and a half hours the attack is over at 9 44 the bombers turn for hope squadron leader fujita circles for a few minutes over the inferno [Music] he takes this picture as a souvenir then he signals the success of the mission back to the fleet in japan the relatives of the fallen lay to rest the remains of their divine heroes [Music] more than 60 japanese failed to return from pearl harbor including nine of the ten submariners [Music] when they were selected for this mission most of them had to give their superiors a few fingernail clippings or locks of hair which would be used for their barrier they were not expected to return they'd more or less come to terms with their death and were ready to sacrifice themselves for their country their emperor and their family and that's why it was so dishonorable for a japanese to be captured [Music] the day after the attack one of the japanese [ __ ] subs is found washed up on a hawaiian beach soldiers drag it onto dry land one of the two crewmen is kazuo sakamaki the 10th submariner the first prisoner of the pacific war these soldiers proudly show off his jacket his co-pilot committed suicide at the last moment sakamaki didn't manage it in time he was written off in japan shunned it was like he never existed and he kept trying to commit suicide in prison but he would ask the guards for permission and the american guards would say no and he'd go okay then i can't do it and they it was a real culture shock for both americans and him for the japanese sakamaki has lost all honor after the war he lives in brazil dying in 1999 in japan at the age of 81. [Music] for the crew of the ward the wreck of the submarine on the beach proves the [ __ ] subs existed [Music] they did reach the coast of hawaii just as willit lehner always claimed everyone we would talk to i said yeah i was on the ward and we sunk a japanese submarine an hour and 20 minutes before the attack and what do you mean you sunk it have you got any proof well no we don't have any proof but i know i saw it going down and i know i sunk [Music] the deep sea researchers are the only chance to find proof for the remaining members of the ward's crew but even bob ballard the man who found the titanic couldn't locate the [ __ ] sub [Music] they only have their three training dives to do it [Music] on the first day they draw a blank we're very excited um that we could go to this target and we thought it's 80 feet long and it'll show up on our sonar and it should be pretty easy to find but we were wrong it was uh it was very elusive right to the very end and we spent a whole dive with two subs going around in circles and didn't see anything on the second day they try a different location a great underwater scrap heap of wrecked ships and aircraft parts in the bay of pearl harbor [Music] no luck for their last attempt they decide to go back to the original location the first thing i saw as soon as we started heading south was this big cylindrical object and it was like that almost looks too good to be true like could it be it you don't want to get your hopes up you know could it be it and um we get closer we get closer and it disappears from my screen and right about that time the pilot mumbled very quietly i think this is the [Music] my submarine on the final day of their search they make a discovery that confirms history the last japanese [ __ ] submarine but can they prove it was sunk by the ward when they examine the conning tower they find a hole that corresponds exactly with the calibre of the gun of the uss ward there were a whole crew of men on the uss ward who swore they shot this submarine and watched it sink that were not believed or were not believed by many for the rest of their lives so this is it was it was always a question mark in the history books you know there was never any confirmation that this actually happened now there can be no doubt the events of the morning of december 7th 1941 can be clearly reconstructed the shell from the ward punctured the conning tower and caused the submarine to sink [Music] it was the first shot in the pacific war fired by the americans [Music] before the attack on pearl harbor took place as i was parked there in the sub looking at that hole in the conning tower i opened up my book and i was looking at those young faces and it was very sobering to think that those two guys are still in that sub and so it was it really it really connected us with that day december the 7th the wreck of the [ __ ] submarine [Music] the grave of lieutenant yoshio katayama [Music] and of his comrade lieutenant akira hiro this is what he wrote at the end of his last letter to his parents when you hear that i am dead be happy and praise me for the love that i bring you through my death after the [ __ ] submarine was sunk would there have been time to raise the alarm and warm the fleet in pearl harbor i think even by 6 30 and to move a fleet of that many ships and get up steam on that fleet would take roughly anywhere from two to three hours um 6 30 the raid actually starts at 7 55. should the sailors have been evacuated from their ships [Music] shouldn't admiral kimmel have made sure his fleet were prepared for an attack admiral kimmel was a surface fleet admiral and as such he had a mindset that the war would happen out there not here and he didn't have a firm grasp of really the of the capabilities of carriers admiral kimmel was prepared really to fight the last war not the war that was coming kimmel is relieved of his command he's exonerated in 1999. the day after the attack president roosevelt addresses congress congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by japan on sunday december 7 1941 a state of war has existed between the united states and the japanese empire the era of isolationism is over america is at war [Music] in hawaii and throughout the united states japanese immigrants are arrested their business is closed 120 000 will be interned in camps hundreds of thousands of men volunteer for war service [Music] the u.s re-arms and with their british allies they march to war against germany and japan admiral yamamoto knows that he has miscalculated i am afraid that we have awoken a sleeping giant he says [Music] in april 1943 he will be killed when his aircraft is shot down over the pacific he was hoping that the united states would be so demoralized by that attack that they would sue for peace and that was a misunderstanding of our character that we would never sue for peace we would be outraged by that attack even if something like that happened today we'd be outraged by that and as a result it would be unconditional to terms and that's the way it ended up the war in the pacific would turn so grisly after pearl harbor that it is going to turn into a race war and a war without mercy yamamoto had prophesied that the turning point in the war would come in six months he was right the battle of midway in june 1942 was that turning point but the japanese lost [Music] there would be three more years of bloodshed before the americans could end the war with the dropping of the atomic bomb in pearl harbor a memorial marks the attack it's built over the wreck of the arizona in which more than a thousand servicemen died the japanese feel embarrassed when it comes to arizona more they feel embarrassed they know there's something wrong so when i come over here my job is to put them at ease so i've learned a few japanese words i have studied hard one whole year to start then as soon as i see them i say oh hi was hamas which in japanese good morning reconciliation [Music] they call the oil that still leaks out of the wreck the tears of the arizona there are ways of solving problems without killing people it's called conversation negotiation communication getting to know people because if you know them you don't have to kill them [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, history channel, submarine warfare, pacific war, ww2 america, war with japan, pearl harbor, ww2 japan, war in the pacific, how america entered the war, us military history

Id: TqzcknRtQJw

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 07 2021