Pacific: The Lost Evidence

The attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the key moments in modern history, turning the war into a global conflict, and marking America's emergence as a military superpower.

On February 19, 1945, men of the US Marine Corps invaded Iwo Jima. Over the next 36 days, the island became the site of a titanic struggle of sheer bloody will and determination.

On August 7, 1942, more than 19,000 Marines invaded Guadalcanal with orders to seize and hold the tropical island, in the first US offensive of the Pacific War.

On November 20, 1943, one of the most ferocious battles in U.S. history began. Cutting-edge techniques, archive film, reenactments, and interviews with survivors tell the story of this overlooked World War II battle.

In June 1944, 70,000 US Marines storm ashore on the Pacific island of Saipan. For the first time in the war, American fighting men stand on Japanese soil.

In 1944, US troops storm ashore on the island of Leyte. The liberation of the Philippines has begun, but the invasion triggers the Japanese Navy's last-ditch attempt to stop the American advance.

This Japanese stronghold in the Mariana Islands would become a bitter and bloody battlefield as US forces fight to expel nearly 19,000 tenacious Japanese troops from their heavily defended positions.

As the Allied juggernaut closed in on the home islands of Japan, Okinawa's defenders would rely on suicide tactics and banzai charges to stall the invasion force, in "the last great battle.”