Introducing Dramas: Purple Heart Warriors
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2024
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Time-travelling drama about the Japanese-American legends of US military history - inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd regiment, fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two, is written by Oscar nominated Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe. It contains dramatised battle scenes. Available now, just search for Dramas - the home of original, immersive storytelling from the BBC World Service - wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Also, listen to our previous season Fukushima. This seven-part nuclear drama tells the story of the tsunami which hit in 2011. It follows the heroes who fight to contain the disaster and those whose mistakes led Japan to catastrophe.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Drama's immersive storytelling from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.1 | Available now, Purple Heart Warriors by Iris Yamashita, an original six-part drama series, |
| 0:15.3 | inspired by real events. Here's Will Sharp. You might know him as Ethan from the second season of the White Lotus, |
| 0:23.4 | or as Shun from the TV series he created called Flowers. He's also leading the cast of |
| 0:29.5 | Purple Heart Warriors right here. Italy, 1944. Allied troops have landed at Naples and are fighting their way north, |
| 0:40.3 | attacking entrenched German machine gun positions in the fields of Tuscany. |
| 0:45.3 | These troops would become the US's most decorated military unit, |
| 0:50.3 | the 100 Battalion 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated fighting unit |
| 0:56.5 | comprised of Japanese Americans, the Purple Heart Warriors. |
| 1:01.0 | I'm Ken Morioka from Los Angeles, and I had just turned Grandpa Allen's Japanese Mochi Bakery |
| 1:06.3 | into Go Nuts Donuts. |
| 1:08.9 | Not sure how it happened or why, |
| 1:13.9 | but I suddenly found myself in the 1940s, |
| 1:16.2 | trapped in my grandpa's 18-year-old body fighting in the war. |
| 1:18.9 | Ken finds himself in combat training |
| 1:20.7 | with second-generation Japanese Americans |
| 1:22.8 | known as Nise, |
| 1:24.3 | who have volunteered from the incarceration camps on the mainland. |
| 1:27.7 | They are joined by pigeon-accented Japanese Americans from the Hawaiian Islands |
| 1:31.5 | who had been placed under martial law. |
| 1:34.7 | Aloha, bunkmates. |
| 1:36.2 | I'm from Maui. |
... |
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