The Pacific: Inside The Battle - Guadalcanal (HBO)

it's 1942 no one had ever heard of Guadalcanal they didn't even know how to pronounce it so the average 18 19 20 year-old Marine is fighting an unfamiliar enemy on unfamiliar territory in an unfamiliar terrain everything is open to question this is a first amphibious landing the United States has attempted since 1898 the issue of whether the Americans of that generation could prevail in adversity was going to be settled at a place called Guadalcanal by the Marines during the first six months of war in the Pacific the Japanese conquered hundreds of thousands of miles of territory in eastern Asia and Oceania - the Japanese Guadalcanal was a most desirable piece of land using that island as a base they might well succeed in severing the lifeline from the u.s. to Australia the combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington were prompted by the enemy threat to the vital US to Australia I plan to schedule a quick counter blow designed to stop the aggressor short on the South Pacific none of these boys were veterans maybe our colonel would have been in World War one but no one had been in combat they hadn't been any combat to be in we had read all this stuff about the super Japanese and how they defeated the Chinese and the Russians when the u.s. struck at Guadalcanal the Japanese were utterly dumbfounded that an offensive had been taken by the u.s. so early in the war none of this stuff has been tried before on the scale that eventually reached in World War two an amphibious landing getting Marines all the way from the United States deep into the South Pacific soon after dawn on d-day morning August 7th naval guns announced the beginning of America's first offensive action in world war ii the assault waves of the 1st marine division headed for the beach i'm sure the enemy was ominously quiet first wave landed and we came in right behind the first wave in about three minutes ready to get at least one before they killed us and they're the first wave was sitting on coconuts and laughing at us the expectation was that we were going to meet resistance that we were gonna have to fight our way in well at the Japanese that were there were labor battalions they just couldn't run they weren't combat troops might say they're surprised there were only a couple hundred Japanese combat soldiers on the whole island on the day the Marines landed that was going to change very dramatically Guadalcanal is so close to rubble that it's easy for them to bring in supplies and manpower so the Japanese build up it is quick and significant on August 9th the first of a series of unprecedented naval battles for control of the waters surrounding Guadalcanal was joined off several island the night of August 8th they are dug in on a ridge overlooking the channel and they begin to witness huge explosions down there it's too dark to really see what's going on but they know that there's a naval battle and then they see explosions really large ones that let them know oh man somebody's getting hurt down there we could see the battle going on because we were just high enough to look down on it can you match if you don't wanna lose look like there were that far apart and lightning bugs would go from one ship to the to the other and then a ship would flow up there wasn't really any way to know whose it was who or which side was winning or anything but her name it took a terrible beating that night where's the Navy gone Turner took everyone and headed for open sea where is for now while we knew that our Navy had left the Japanese had landed forces and that the Japanese had controlled the sea and if they could supply their troops and we could operating from bases in the northern and central suliman's from Bougainville and nearby islands Japanese planes dominated the skies over the area daily they came down the slot to bomb American forces on Guadalcanal the American fighting men could almost set their watches by the regular visits of the enemy plane Ares started immediately mostly farmers from a very high altitude that lasted the whole airfield and the troop area they would come or once or twice a day sometimes even three times a day the main target which all the enemy bombers concentrated on was the airstrip for which the American marines had fought so hard field which had been seized on the second day and never lost once quickly repaired after each plumbing the airport was always the fire they considered it an unsinkable aircraft carrier that's what the Navy said and our job was simply to hold the airport enemy soldiers a depth the jungle fighting were difficult targets for marine riflemen this was the first experience for American fighting men and a new kind of warfare the ground fighting for our battalion really began on August 21st we knew there was an attack coming but we never thought that they would be so careless as they were this Japanese unit came down the beach and they did not know that an armed two pettalia I was waiting for we had guns right where the river the Sandspit met and that's where they tried to cross a company made contact three miles east the Japanese Colonel thought we were a little dinky outpost and he was gonna run over us we decimated him we just chewed him up completely with morning breaks the Marines see Japanese bodies Fred all of the beaches the next morning was a a horrible scene the smell I will take with me to my grave as the day progressed was then that real fear set in they won but what does that mean it means we live for another day and we have to do this all over again alligator Creek the whole tenor of how the Pacific War was going to be fought was set that battle established two things the first of which was that the average Japanese soldier was not going to surrender but what it established that was even more ominous was the fact that the average Japanese soldier who was thought to be attempting to surrender was in fact trying to take one last American with him as the battle progressed it becomes more and more important to both sides and the Japanese then began to pour massive amounts of of men and materiel and to push us off this this inhospitable island during October US forces fought off counter blows by a stubbornly resisting enemy the Japanese battle fanatically but their copper attack failed anyone who reads the account of job as loans exploits on the night of October 24th and 25th 1942 can pretty much say this is extraordinary heroism when the Japanese came on that night they came at least five perhaps six times I'm shortly after midnight almost all the way to dawn they hit that night October is wanted for us about 1:00 a.m. and I kept getting worried about John we're doing a bad job up on his in the Japanese were totally disorganized and came on not by a regiment or by battalions but by companies and platoons and short quick rushes ripe targets for marine machine guns on December 9th elements of the 1st Marine Division began leaving the island the wariness all troops were headed for a rear area for rest and relaxation altogether we've all gotta come out from August the 7th of fortitude to December 22nd at the end of the Guadalcanal campaign the 1st Marine Division was totally emotionally and physically exhausted it was going to take a very long time to rehabilitate the 1st Marine Division Guadalcanal and planted something in their minds but this was going to be a very long war they realized what they were up against and it was gonna be a long road back this road to Tokyo Guadalcanal was termed officially secure on February 9th 1943 but the price paid for that small corner of an island in the South Pacific was high more than 3,000 Americans had died fighting the enemy at Guadalcanal thanks to their supreme sacrifice the US had stopped the enemy's sweep of aggression the Battle of Guadalcanal could have been lost it's entirely feasible and the fact that it's the first battle having lost it would have been a calamitous blow certainly to American morale what really set the path all the American armed forces in world war ii was what happened at Guadalcanal it proved the Axis powers were mortal and could be defeated even under conditions of extraordinary adversity Guadalcanal in microcosm it's sort of like the story of all of the Pacific long slugging it out messy filled with misery filled with horror and it just goes on and on and on and on and on

Channel: HBO

Views: 353,536

Rating: 4.8835878 out of 5

Keywords: HBO, Mini-Series, Films, the, Pacific, Miniseries, Band, of, Brothers, Tom, Hanks, Steven, Spielberg, Gary, Goetzman, Inside, Battle, Guadalcanal, World, War, WWII, History, Veterans, Historians, Interview, America, USA, Japan, Sidney, Phillips, Japanese, Marines, Military, Armed, Forces, 1898, Richard, Greer, Frank, Hugh, Corrigan, Bruce, McKenna

Id: KQKJY43-LmE

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2010