 The United States Army presents the Big Picture. An official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. In part one of our two-part documentary on World War II in the Pacific, we saw how American forces rallied after early setbacks and forced the enemy on the defensive. Successive Allied victories in the Central and South Pacific during 1943 made possible the great sweeping drives the following year, which cost the enemy all his early gains. Now we will witness the final stages of that epic struggle. With the capture of the Marshall Islands by the combined American forces under Admiral Nimitz and the success of General MacArthur's operations in the Southwest Pacific, the next step in the Allied plan was the invasion of the Marianas. Six months ahead of schedule, Saipan and the Marianas became the target of two Marine divisions on June 15, 1944. Five days later, the Army's 27th Infantry Division went in to reinforce the beachhead. Enemy soldiers, refusing to surrender, holed up on hills and in caves. Many had to be blasted out. The surrender of enemy troops did not come easily. At times, Japanese prisoners were used to urge their comrades to surrender rather than be buried alive, which the enemy had overrun early in the war, was pounded from the air and sea. The invasion of Guam took place on July 21, 1944. The enemy resisted the bold attacks of American soldiers and Marines for 19 days before the island again became a United States possession. During the fighting in the Marianas, Army engineers and Navy seabees had begun work on an extensive system of B-29 airfields. In November of 1944, the first B-29s from Saipan flew against Japan. Between Guam and the Philippines were the Palau Islands. In September of 1944, the first Marine division pushed ashore on Peleliu. The Army's 81st Division landed on nearby Angar Island. Army, Navy and Marine casualties amounted to nearly 12,000 men, while the Japanese garrisons were all at White Dove. On the same day that Nimitz forces invaded the Palau's, MacArthur's troops in a strategically converging attack jumped from the western tip of New Guinea to Moratai Island. With the landings on the Palau's and Moratai, the twin drives across the Pacific were completed and American forces stood upon the threshold of the Philippines. To the men who had carried the fight from Hawaii and Australia to the Palau's and Moratai, the Philippines had long stood as a symbol on which their determination and hopes had focused. We had lost those islands in the grim early days of the war and with them we had lost military advantage and a measure of our self-confidence. Now, three years later, a large and powerful armada converged upon those islands two months ahead of the Allied schedule. Destination, Leyte, Purpose, Liberation. General MacArthur had promised to return and return he did. On October 20, 1944, four American Army divisions stormed the Leyte beaches to begin one of the last great campaigns of the Pacific War. To intercept our invasion force and destroy the American third and seventh fleets, the enemy divided the bulk of their ships into three sections and sent them toward Leyte. On October 25 and 26, the greatest naval battle in history took place, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The enemy lost three battleships, four carriers, ten cruisers, and nine destroyers breaking the back of their naval power. The fighting on Leyte reached a climax with an end run to the west coast at Ormak. Leyte was ours by Christmas 1944. Even before Leyte was secured, troops of the Sixth Army had moved on to Mindoro in preparation for the invasion of Luzon. Then on January 9, 1945, the Sixth Army landed on the main island of Luzon. A people who had existed three years under enemy rule welcomed their liberators with unrestrained joy. Filipino guerrillas had waged continuous war against the enemy during the occupation. Now armed and equipped as units of the new Philippine Army, they fought side by side with advancing Americans to drive the invader from their soil. While the American drive from the initial beachhead at Lingayan Gulf, Game Momentum, more troops landed on the west coast of Luzon, both north of Batan Peninsula and south of Manila. Enemy forces were concentrating their defenses in the rugged mountain terrain and the task of routing them was exhausting and hazardous. The mission of attacking this ridge directly to our rear, which is about 2380 on the map, the company is moving through F Company's present position, located on this high ground back there. They're going to pass through F Company and attack up towards the same hill, 2380. Now can you give me a concentration on that hill? On 2380? Right. Yes, we have the 4.2 mortars, the 155, 105, and 75, all zero down on the hill. A daring raid on Cabanatuan prison brought freedom to hundreds of survivors of the death march in Corrigador. The push toward Manila went well as town after town fell to American soldiers. First cavalry, the 37th infantry, and the 11th airborne divisions converged upon the city. They defended Manila one building at a time, so the Pacific War was fought in the Ruzal Baseball Stadium in Manila. Their American tanks in the infield wired their guns point blank at enemy defenders who were hidden in the grandstands. The Max came with an assault on Intramuros, the old Spanish-built walled city. For our Navy could use Manila Bay, the enemy garrison on Corrigador had to be subdued. The 503rd parachute infantry dropped on the island February 16. With the help of amphibious elements from the 24th Division, the paratroopers took the heavily fortified position within two weeks. Shortly thereafter, General MacArthur arrived to congratulate his men. After securing Manila and Manila Bay, the 6th Army had to clean up the rest of Luzon and route the Japanese out of mountain strongholds into which they had retreated. In the mountains of northern Luzon, organized resistance continued until the end of the war. While the 6th Army was finishing the job on Luzon, the 8th Army moved into the southern Philippines and in a rapid series of amphibious operations cleared Pellawan, the Zamboanga Peninsula, the Sulu Archipelago, Panay Island, Cebu, Negros, and finally eastern Mindanao. With the Luzon campaign well along and following the seizure of Iwo Jima in February 1945, Nimitz prepared for the assault against Okinawa on April 1, 1945. 1300 American naval vessels converged upon Okinawa and began the heaviest pre-landing bombardment of the Pacific War. Four o'clock in the afternoon, 50,000 troops were ashore on an 8-mile beachhead while the enemy played possum. Japanese pilots of the ill-famed Kamikaze Corps flew their suicide planes against our fleet. In 36 hours, 383 attacking planes were shot down. On Okinawa, General Simon Boulevard Buckner's troops found northern resistance comparatively light, while the 10th Army in the south found some of the strongest resistance yet encountered in the Pacific. The road to victory on Okinawa took nearly three months to travel and cost American forces almost 40,000 casualties, including the life of General Buckner. The Okinawa campaign had been a highly successful air, sea and ground operation carried out under conditions favoring the enemy. We had now reached the doorstep of Japan. By the end of May 1945, with the European war over, American military power was supreme from California to the China coast. During the early summer months, the tempo of air attacks on the Japanese main islands was sharply increased. B-29s of the Army's strategic air force, operating from bases in the Marianas, were averaging 1,230s a week over enemy industrial targets. Fighter cover from Iwo Jima protected the big bombers against enemy interception. August 6th, the B-29, the Inola Gay, took off from Tinian Island and headed for the industrial city of Hiroshima. At 8.15 that morning, the Inola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on the city. Three days later, the only other atomic weapon then in existence fell on Nagasaki. A nation that only a few years earlier had embarked upon a war to expand its empire had reaped a bitter reward. Hiroshima and Nagasaki lay in ashes. A major portion of Japanese industry had been destroyed by the fire bomb raids of our B-29s. Her mighty navy and air force had been decimated and the Imperial Army was a skeleton of its former self. Both victors and vanquished cautiously approached the matters of unconditional surrender of occupation. Under the Japanese military code of Bushido, nothing short of a direct order from the emperor could have persuaded commanders to lay down their arms. But the emperor had given the order and the armed forces complied. American troops quickly flew to airstrips that enemy fighter planes had been using only a few days before. In the last amphibious landing of a war, more troops went ashore to assist in the occupation. American military and naval personnel in Japanese prison camps were released. Liberated and liberators shared in the happiness that followed. The Allied High Command estimated that more than a million casualties had been avoided when the Japanese capitulation canceled invasion plans. Japanese officials later expressed their relief and gratitude for the fair and just treatment their nation received at the hands of occupation troops. Lords who had brought on the conflict were subsequently brought to trial. The Japanese people were permitted and even encouraged to make the quickest possible transition to useful, peaceful activity without American interference. Engineer units immediately pitched in to help rebuild what our bombers had destroyed. After years of propaganda and heavily censored news, a free press kept the Japanese people abreast of daily developments. From the first day of the occupation, American forces exerted every effort to gain Japanese cooperation. Abored the battleship Missouri and Tokyo Bay on the morning of September 2, 1945, Allied military leaders assembled for the signing of the formal peace agreement with Japan. We are gathered here representatives of the major warring powers to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese imperial forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender now before you. I now invite the representatives of the emperor of Japan and the Japanese government and the Japanese imperial general headquarters to sign the instrument of surrender at the places indicated. The supreme commander for the Allied powers will now sign on behalf of all the nations at war with Japan. Will General Wainwright and General Percival step forward and accompany me while I sign? General MacArthur used five pens to sign the historic documents and presented the first to General Jonathan Wainwright. The second went to British General Percival, the defender of Singapore, two to the National Archives, and the fifth MacArthur kept for himself. With the signing of the peace which marked the end of World War II, General MacArthur said simply, these proceedings are closed.