Rarely seen color home movies and combat footage reveal the horror of Japan’s violent blitz of the Pacific—from its raid on China to its attacks on Pearl Harbor and Australia—and show how America’s military raced to ready itself for battle.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor sends shockwaves to every corner of the Pacific, and U.S. troops enter unfamiliar worlds to encounter steamy island jungles, bitter arctic cold, and a ruthless enemy. But early Allied victories turn the tide of the war.
America advances towards Japan, engaging in a new series of island-hopping invasions through the Central Pacific. But when a fraught fight on the Tarawa atoll becomes one of the costliest battles of World War II, strategists rethink their approach.
America’s fight for the island of Saipan brings mountain sieges, Banzai attacks, white-knuckled dogfights, and escalating tensions between the U.S. Army and Marines. Combat footage and firsthand accounts bring this seminal moment of the war to life.
Discover America’s strategic motivations behind the simultaneous invasions of Tinian and Guam, and witness the ill-fated plan to strike Japan from India and China with the new troubled aircraft, the B-29.
A weakened Japanese Empire refuses to surrender, and the war approaches its brutal climax through American invasions of Peleliu, the Philippines, and Iwo Jima, along with the first organized kamikaze attacks and the deadly raid on Tokyo.
Jeff Wilburn
Narrator
Dan Wolf
Producer
Justine Schmidt
John Cavanagh
David Royle