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00:55And now, Wattle Canal.
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01:15Poured from some hundred factories,
01:17reaped from some thousand farms,
01:19spewed out in fantastic abundance
01:21by American labor and machines,
01:23the supplies for war are heaped upon
01:25an island base in the South Pacific.
01:28All the world knows its name,
01:31Wattle Canal.
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01:45Springboard for attack, storehouse for victory.
01:49Yet in 1942, Wattle Canal was wild jungle.
01:53Ninety uncharted miles of festering malaria
01:55and rain forest, bypassed for centuries
01:58by history, forgotten by man.
02:02But by June of 1942, the unpredictable forces
02:05of war begin to link San Francisco
02:07and the United States with Wattle Canal
02:09and the Solomon Islands.
02:11The 1st Marine Division embarks for the South Pacific.
02:14Destination, New Zealand.
02:17Mission, undetermined.
02:20Somewhere, on some unspecified battleground,
02:24sometime in the uncertain future,
02:27the untested Marines will clash
02:29with the tested soldiers of Japan.
02:32But first, the tedious ordeal of the convoy.
02:36Uneventful, interminable weeks at sea.
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04:45The ocean lifeline to the South Pacific
04:47is the war's longest and the war's most tenuous.
04:51Stretching 6,540 miles from California to New Zealand,
04:55it ties Australia to the United States.
04:58Break this line, stop the ships,
05:02and Australasia and Asia will be forever Japanese.
05:06Across the world, from the islands of Japan,
05:09other convoys, other soldiers leave for the unknown
05:13and sail away to war.
05:15They too set a southerly course for islands
05:17with names unknown to the men who must fight and die on them.
05:21For them also, the routine of shipboard life,
05:25the placid premium of carnage.
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06:00After the conquest of Rabaul in the Bismarck Archipelago,
06:03the Japanese push down the Solomon Islands.
06:06The two opposing forces slowly converge.
06:09♪♪♪
06:17Early in July 1942, a lone American plane
06:20sets in motion a chain of events which will bring
06:22those forces together at a place which neither side
06:25has foreseen nor planned.
06:27An obscure Guadalcanal, air reconnaissance reveals
06:30the Japanese are building an airfield
06:32which threatens the Allied supply line to Australia.
06:36What the plane has seen changes the course
06:38of the Pacific War.
06:40♪♪♪
06:46The Pentagon, Washington, seat of American war planning.
06:51The joint chiefs of staff recast their global strategy
06:54to meet the new Japanese menace to the Allied positions
06:57in the South Pacific.
06:59Resources are slim, trained troops are lacking,
07:02but the Japanese can be permitted to go no further.
07:05Guadalcanal must be taken.
07:08Admiral King casts the die.
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07:17New Zealand lies in the shadow of the Japanese advance.
07:20For the United States forces stationed there,
07:23little time remains to enjoy the cordial hospitality
07:26of a sincere ally.
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07:43The Marines have their mission now,
07:45to launch the first offensive land action
07:47in the Pacific War.
07:49Under Generals Vandergrift and Rupertus,
07:51the first division is ordered to Guadalcanal,
07:53ordered to seize the island and its airstrip.
07:57This means another convoy, but it is very different.
08:01This convoy, loaded and geared,
08:04sails for combat, sails for battle.
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09:12August 7, 1942.
09:15Exactly eight months after Pearl Harbor,
09:18the United States of America takes the offensive
09:20against the Empire of Japan.
09:23For the first time, the American overture to assault
09:26preludes invasion of the islands across the Pacific.
09:29The theme of the future is played
09:31on the beaches of Guadalcanal.
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10:10The order to commit the troops has been given.
10:13Land the landing force.
10:15The day of hit and run in the Pacific is over.
10:18The hour of hit and stay has come.
10:21The first American amphibious operation in World War II
10:24is enacted like a dress rehearsal.
10:26Bombardment has driven the enemy off the beaches.
10:29The Marines walk ashore into the island.
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10:39Eighteen miles across the sound,
10:41others land on Tulagi Island.
10:43Violently opposed by Japanese Marines,
10:46American Marines fight their way ashore.
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11:03And in the air, the Japanese strike back swiftly,
11:06strike back hard.
11:08Bombers from Rabaul hit American transports
11:10before they can unload supplies
11:12vitally needed to sustain the landings.
11:16Damage to the transports at sea
11:18means near disaster to the Marines ashore.
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11:35The shattered transports withdraw.
11:38Stripped of supplies, the Marines dare not waste a moment
11:41encountering their implacable, impersonal,
11:44hateful foe, the jungle.
11:48Now it begins, the toil and the terror
11:51that makes Guadalcanal not a name,
11:54but an emotion.
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12:16The airstrip is taken the day after landing
12:19and the Marines christen at Henderson Field
12:21to honor a fallen buddy.
12:23Their own gear destroyed,
12:25the engineers use Japanese equipment
12:27to prepare the field for the first American planes.
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12:49If the Japanese reacted sluggishly on the beach,
12:52they unleash full fury from the sky.
12:55Their own field now menaces their own flank.
12:58They go all out to destroy it first,
13:00planning to retake it later.
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13:32Under the dark cover of night,
13:34the Japanese filter reinforcements ashore.
13:37Special landing troops, Imperial Marines, crack units.
13:42Their general has warned,
13:44this is the decisive battle between Japan
13:47and the United States.
13:49A battle on which the rise or fall
13:51of the Japanese empire will depend.
13:54No troops are better fitted than these
13:56to master the jungle.
13:58Fearless, these men have been schooled
14:00in stealth and infiltration.
14:02They are experts in ambush and concealment.
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15:29And the Americans?
15:31They meet savagery with savagery.
15:34They fight, and they fight,
15:37and they fight.
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16:34In all the history of human slaughter,
16:36few troops have ever endured such scourging
16:39as the Marines on Guadalcanal.
16:41The casualties mount from the fighting,
16:45from malaria, from dengue,
16:48from the rot and corruption of the jungle,
16:51which knows not mercy.
16:54♪♪♪
17:19Salute the rising sun throughout their empire,
17:23throughout newly conquered Southeast Asia,
17:26throughout the South Pacific.
17:28The Japanese pause out of respect
17:30for their symbol of national superiority.
17:32Theirs not to reason why.
17:35Theirs but to do and die.
17:37And die they will, and die they do
17:40in a series of the most terrible sea battles in history.
17:44Down from their island fortress to the north,
17:46Rabaul, comes the Imperial Japanese Navy
17:49with timetable regularity.
17:51The Tokyo Express.
17:53But sailors of the United States and Australian Navy
17:56sacrifice their blood for their brother Marines
17:59who cannot hope to control Guadalcanal
18:01against an enemy who controls the surrounding seas.
18:05The Japanese come down the slot of water
18:08between the Solomon Islands
18:09and head for the sound called Iron Bottom
18:12because it is strewn with the hulks of dead ships,
18:15the bones of dead sailors.
18:19The Battle of Samoa Island.
18:21The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.
18:24The Battle of Cape Esperance.
18:26The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
18:29The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
18:32The Battle of Tassiferanga.
18:34The Battle of Renal Island.
18:37Nights of inhuman ordeal and defeat.
18:41Nights of more than human valor.
18:44And victory.
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19:17Guadalcanal is a running wound through which both sides bleed.
19:21A hemorrhage of naval strength, of men, of materiel.
19:26Far from the dying and destruction.
19:28Far from the sailors and Marines
19:30who fight and pray for victory and salvation.
19:33The United States of America organizes her land,
19:36her resources, her industry,
19:38her men to answer the distant prayers.
19:41In the greatest mobilization of strength
19:43ever known to the world,
19:45America prepares to rescue the world.
19:48And to the rescue, America marches.
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24:45And on Guadalcanal, another march.
24:48A march of grim men.
24:50Oh, young men.
24:52A march of men leaving purgatory.
24:55The 1st Marine Division is being relieved.
24:58What's left of it.
25:00And on a lonely grave at Lunga Point,
25:02there is a prediction about the Marine who lost his youth.
25:05That when he goes to heaven, to St. Peter, he will tell.
25:09Another Marine reporting, sir,
25:12I've served my time in hell.
25:21Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas,
25:25flies down from Pearl Harbor to pay what small tribute is within man's province.
25:31If there was horror and ferocity,
25:34there was also courage and self-sacrifice.
25:37If there was death, filth and disease,
25:41the Marines turned the tide of war and stopped their enemy.
25:46The Japanese will advance no further.
25:49And as the surviving Marines wave goodbye,
25:52one of the greatest tales of heroism slips out of focus into history.
25:59To these men go the honors accorded the Greeks at Thermopylae,
26:03the Colonials at Valley Forge,
26:06the British at Waterloo,
26:09and now, the Americans at Guadalcanal.