The Second World War in Japan

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s 75 years this week since the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led to Japan’s surrender to Allied forces and the end of the Second World War. We hear first-hand accounts of military turning points in the Pacific including the attack on Pearl Harbour and the Battle of Midway, and historian Ian Buruma explains the context for Japan’s attack on the US. We also hear about the impact of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki on civilians, about Japanese-American citizens imprisoned in internment camps in the US, and about the writing of Japan’s post-war constitution.

Picture: Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki after bombing by atomic bomb on 9th August 1945 ( US Air Force photo/PA)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:04.8	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:07.6	This week we mark 75 years since the end of the Second World War in the Pacific.
0:12.3	We'll look at some of the key events which shaped the
0:14.5	conflict between Japan and the US from the attack on Pearl Harbor.
0:18.4	Two sailors came along in a model A4 and they said, get in Mac we're at war and they started heading for the Pearl Harbor Navy base and I'm sitting in the back and the bullets came down on the road down all the way down the road.
0:32.0	To the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
0:35.0	Strong flash about thousand times as powerful as the lightning pierced through the windows and hit us.
0:48.0	Plus Japanese American internment, the Battle of Midway and the rebuilding of Japan.
0:53.9	But there is no other place to start than with the single event which finally drew the USA into the
0:58.5	war, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
1:01.3	In December 1941, in a surprise move, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, attacked
1:06.9	the Hawaiian U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Simon Watts has spoken to Adolf Kuhn, a survivor which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately
1:36.7	attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
1:51.0	Everywhere I looked there was ships there was explosions going on and there was ships were sinking. I could see that some of them leave to the
1:53.4	starboard side and some leave to the port side. It was a nightmare.
1:57.6	Nightmare all the way through. Adolf Kuhn was working as a mechanic for the US Navy when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
2:10.0	The son of wheat farmers from the Midwest, he'd volunteered enthusiastically a year earlier. I joined the Navy at 18 years old. Pretty soon the word came up on the bulletin board.
2:30.5	We need people for Sitka, Alaska, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Pearl Harbor, and
2:38.0	my hand went up for the Pearl Harbor one. on.
2:50.0	Face was just everywhere you looked with sailors. I enjoyed all my duties, you know what I mean?
2:53.0	Took the bus and went into Honolulu or Waikake Beach.
	...

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