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00:00Papua New Guinea, one of the most unexplored places on Earth.
00:14Beneath this dense jungle, there are scars of a bloody battle that may have changed the course of history.
00:20World War II was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.
00:34Where we're going, we don't need roads.
00:37But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.
00:44That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.
00:48That's it.
00:48Congratulations.
00:51Now, technology expert Pete Kelsey.
00:55I've got to skip this.
00:56And military historian Marty Morgan.
00:59Oh, my God, look at this view.
01:01Are using 21st century technology to strip away the present and reveal the buried secrets of World War II.
01:11This time, why was Japan's most fearsome fighter plane downed minutes from takeoff?
01:19That's amazing.
01:23What part does a hidden underground fortress play in this long and bloody campaign?
01:31Crank it up right now.
01:32And can Marty and Pete find the most remote battlefield on the planet, lost for nearly eight decades?
01:39Marty, this terrain is insane.
01:41Marty, this terrain is insane.
01:43Crank it up right now.
01:54modern là -
01:56ồng surah
01:57The 1937.
01:59And Japan has its sights set on building an empire.
02:05It's the beginning of a five-year rampage across the Pacific Ocean.
02:12They're fast, terrifying, and unstoppable,
02:17painting the ocean the red of the rising sun.
02:23By 1942, they have full control of the Western Pacific.
02:29Only one major territory was left unconquered, Australia.
02:36And before they could attack, one thing stood in their way,
02:41the remote jungle of Papua New Guinea.
02:53But Japanese troops never made it to Australia.
02:59Their ambitions crushed in a bitter and now largely forgotten campaign here on Papua New Guinea.
03:07Nearly 80 years on, scanning expert Pete Kelsey and military historian Marty Morgan
03:14want to understand how events here turned the tide of war.
03:18The answers lie hidden in the dangerous jungles and murky swamps.
03:28Historical accounts show that in January 1942,
03:32the Japanese launched an attack on the island of New Britain.
03:36Their target?
03:37The Port of Rabaul.
03:39It was a vital strategic location defended by a small force of just 1,400 Australians.
03:53From up here, I can really picture it.
03:55Pre-dawn, January 23rd, 1942,
03:58a Japanese force of over 5,000 men
04:01land at four points around Rabaul.
04:04The Japanese quickly overpower the smaller Australian force that was here
04:09and they seize Rabaul.
04:12And more importantly, they seize this,
04:16the ideal fleet anchorage, Simpson Harbor.
04:22Rabaul was the perfect location for a Japanese attack
04:26on the Papua New Guinea mainland.
04:34But the Allies soon retaliated.
04:38They dropped 3,000 tons of explosives on the Rabaul base in one month alone.
04:46It was bombed more than Berlin.
04:49And yet, somehow, the Japanese held Rabaul for the next three years,
04:59only giving up when Hiroshima was bombed
05:01and Japan finally surrendered.
05:06But how did they defend this place so far from home
05:09from the combined might of the Allied forces?
05:11Local historian and wreck diver Rod Pierce
05:22has been studying the waters around Rabaul for decades.
05:28He thinks clues about the Japanese defenses
05:31lie in the waters of the harbor.
05:36Marty and Pete join him in the search.
05:41Tell me you have sonar gear.
05:45Yep, I've got it.
05:47What are we waiting for?
05:53Using sonar, Rod's boat scans the harbor.
05:56It's not long before Marty spots something.
06:15Hey, Rod, we've got something.
06:18Right?
06:19Is that what I think it is?
06:22Yep.
06:23Definitely worth a dive.
06:26Pete is taking cutting-edge photogrammetry kit on the dive.
06:35I'm going to go down and have a look, see what it is.
06:39It's hot and it's hot.
06:40It's hot.
06:40It's hot.
06:56It's hot.
06:57It's hot.
06:57It's hot.
06:58I'm going to go down and have a look.
06:59I'm going to go down.
07:00It's hot.
07:01It's hot.
07:02I'm going to go down and have a look at it.
07:02I'm going to go down and have a look at it.
07:03Photogrammetry captures thousands of images and uses state-of-the-art software to create
07:06a 3D model.
07:10It's not long before they reach the aircraft Marty located with the sonar.
07:36On the wing is the symbol of the rising sun.
07:41This plane is Japanese.
07:52Then the team locate another wreck nearby.
08:02This time the structure is much less clear, but Pete scans it just in case.
08:09What did you think of that?
08:15Rod, that's a Japanese airplane.
08:18Absolutely amazing.
08:20That's incredible.
08:22Incredible.
08:23That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.
08:38So what are these planes and what can they reveal?
08:45Can Pete scans uncover the extraordinary evidence of the aircraft's fate?
08:53Marty, I look clearly an airplane.
09:00Oh, definitely.
09:01Clearly upside down.
09:02Clearly a fighter.
09:03That looks like a zero to me.
09:05Really?
09:06Yeah.
09:07A fighter?
09:08The Japanese Zero was a legendary fighter plane with a kill ratio of 12 to 1 in the early days of World War II.
09:26The Zero wreck was largely intact.
09:29But what can the scans show of the more damaged wreck?
09:34Have a look at this one.
09:36This one is a bit of a mess.
09:39All I can tell you is pretty much what you see.
09:42It's big.
09:43It looks heavy.
09:45It's shattered.
09:46It's in a bunch of pieces.
09:47And that automatically makes me suspect that this is an allied aircraft that was brought down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire during one of the air raids.
09:54Allied?
09:55This looks like it might be an Avenger.
10:02The TBF Avenger was the newest addition to the American's fleet of torpedo bombers in 1942.
10:12It had airborne radar that could locate targets in the dark.
10:18So allied aircraft could relentlessly attack Japanese positions both day and night.
10:24Returning to the scan of the Japanese fighter plane, Pete has noticed something unusual.
10:37Have a look at this, because this just grabbed me when we were in the water.
10:42That is a rock inside the wing.
10:46Embedded in the wing?
10:47It's about that big.
10:49Grapefruit.
10:50Is the prop blade bent?
10:52It is.
10:53Yep.
10:54Okay.
10:55The landing gear is up.
10:56Is up.
10:57So it sounds like something happened on takeoff.
11:02What put a rock in his way, you know, in his flight path?
11:07Maybe the field was under attack while he was trying to get in the air and there was an explosion nearby.
11:11So this guy was rolling out, got it airborne, brought his gear up, threw a rock into the wing.
11:18That would do it.
11:19That would do it, wouldn't it?
11:20Do it.
11:21That would explain why it's in such perfect condition except for this rock.
11:29It's in such a long way.
11:30It's in such a long way.
11:31It's in such a long way.
11:32It's in such a long way.
11:33It's in such a long way.
11:34But what they can't explain is just how they held off the might of the allies for so long.
11:46Pete Kelsey and Marty Morgan are on a mission to discover how the Japanese managed to hold the key strategic town of Rabal in the face of a massive allied retaliation.
12:07The US alone dropped 20,000 tons of explosives.
12:18This level of bombing should have led to surrender in months.
12:32Local historian Rob Rawlinson thinks a clue to the Japanese success lies on the outskirts of town.
12:38Are you getting here okay?
12:43Wish me luck.
12:47Okay, well we've managed to get in.
12:49The entrance has been covered up by a landslip.
12:51Some are exposed and some are opened up all the time because of the weather.
12:56Follow me.
12:57Contemporary accounts tell of a buried Japanese military fortress at Rabal.
13:07Rob believes that these caves were an underground headquarters for the Japanese forces.
13:14The Japanese concreted the tunnels to stop them collapsing.
13:18You can see the tubes in the side of the tunnels.
13:21These would have been coconut palms and they would have cut them off and then held the roof in place.
13:31Is that metal from like a hinge or something?
13:33Yeah, there'd be probably a hinge here.
13:35There'd probably a door here.
13:37And there's probably two doors.
13:38There might be some hinges over the other side, are there?
13:43Looks like it.
13:44Yeah.
13:45In these dark, difficult conditions, it's almost impossible to get a proper picture of what really lies buried here.
14:04Now we go up here.
14:06Whoa!
14:09This area is dripping with water even today.
14:11Here we go.
14:29Pete is going to use 3D laser scanning technology to build the first ever digital model of the tunnels.
14:36Bringing them to life out of the darkness.
14:39His hand-held scanner fires out tens of thousands of laser beams a second.
14:53It then measures the response time to create a detailed point-scan model of the tunnel.
15:01Can it prove that this really was the military fortress?
15:04Pete returns to base to process the results.
15:17His findings are remarkable.
15:21I actually really kind of like this one just because it's so random and complex.
15:26Great evidence of just how easy it was to actually tunnel in this lava rock.
15:30This subterranean world is vast.
15:33A massive system that is in places five stories high.
15:41And there is clear evidence that it was occupied.
15:47Pete's scans reveal offices, barracks, a complete underground city.
15:52Safe from allied bombing raids deep underground.
15:53And in one part of the tunnels, the scan points to an area with a darker purpose.
16:06Let's bring up this other tunnel we went in with Rob.
16:15What I'm thinking is that's clearly concrete door frame.
16:20And you go a little further in and see these nooks.
16:31You thinking what I'm thinking?
16:34Yeah, that looks like that's a place where they're keeping prisoners.
16:38And why would you build door framing in a tunnel if you didn't want people getting out of it?
16:41So what? Downed airmen because of all these air raids?
16:46Absolutely.
16:48And Australians that were captured here during the invasion in 1942.
16:51Oh, wow.
16:55The Japanese were notorious for the terrible treatment of prisoners of war.
16:59And Pete's scans suggest Rabal was no exception.
17:06Eyewitness accounts confirm that those that managed to stay alive were packed into the tunnels.
17:14They also revealed that forced labor was the key to Japanese survival.
17:20They worked the prisoners to death to create the fortress so quickly.
17:23Rabal was a safe location from which they could make their next move, an assault on Port Moresby and the mainland.
17:40Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, just 300 miles from the northern coast of Australia.
17:46If it fell to the Japanese, they would have control of Australia's main shipping route, leaving it isolated and vulnerable to invasion.
18:01But the first Japanese attack ended in disaster.
18:04May 4th, 1942, the Japanese send a fleet of nearly 50 ships on a mission to take Port Moresby.
18:19This time, after losing Rabal, the Allies were ready.
18:23The U.S. Navy intercept the enemy in the Coral Sea and crippled Japan's best naval vessels.
18:36The Japanese wouldn't attack from the sea again.
18:44What the Japanese did next was bold, brave and totally unexpected.
18:50They decided to use their highly trained jungle forces to launch an overland attack through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet.
19:05But something equally unexpected stopped them in their tracks.
19:09Somehow, in 1942, Australian forces in Papua New Guinea, newly trained and barely tested, managed to hold off the brutal might of the Japanese army.
19:29And Marty Morgan and Pete Kelsey are on a mission to find out how.
19:48So we're gonna go?
19:49We're going.
19:50We're going.
19:51We're going.
19:52It's electric, isn't it?
19:53Wow.
19:56Marty has discovered accounts of a ferocious and decisive battle deep in the treacherous jungle.
20:05But the battlefield has been lost for decades.
20:09We're cranking up right now.
20:10Right now.
20:14Pete and Marty want to use 21st century technology to find and explore it.
20:33Where we're going, we don't need roads.
20:35Unbelievable.
20:36July 1942, over 4,000 jungle trained Japanese soldiers land on the northern beaches at Buna.
20:51Their mission was to use a jungle path called the Kokoda Trail to attack Port Moresby.
20:59It crosses the Owen Stanley's, a formidable mountain range with an elevation of 13,000 feet.
21:07The Owen Stanleys are notorious for being some of the most treacherous and rugged terrain on planet Earth.
21:13And I believe that what I'm seeing is living up to that reputation.
21:19The Australians got wind of the invasion within days.
21:23They immediately sent two battalions into the steaming jungle.
21:27They had no idea what was waiting for them.
21:28I've spent my entire life reading about this battle, and I have never appreciated it fully until just this moment.
21:44Coming in up.
21:45It's the only opening in the canopy I've seen in 30 minutes.
21:56Marty and Pete are greeted by local villagers to guide them through the jungle to a place they call Etoa.
22:11The locals' ancestors passed down stories of the war that swept through their land nearly 80 years ago.
22:30This place was a wasteland. All the trees and plants were dead. The rivers were polluted with blood.
22:44We couldn't drink the water for seven or ten years afterwards.
22:49This stream that goes down to Iora Creek, many soldiers died there. It's full of bones.
22:57It's full of bones.
23:01Located midway between Port Moresby and Buna on the Kokoda Trail, Etoa was clearly the scene of heavy fighting.
23:12But can technology find proof of the bloody stories they tell?
23:17And is this the place where the Australians defeated the Japanese?
23:21The team set up camp on the only flat piece of land for miles.
23:32At first light, Pete gets to work.
23:37He's going to use a drone fitted with a powerful laser scanning system, LIDAR.
23:43The data it records will allow him to strip away the trees and map the area around the camp in amazing detail.
23:52Now I know what was inside that big box.
23:58You must be Jeremy. I am.
24:00And Gavin then. Yeah, nice to meet you.
24:02Hey, I'm Pete. Yeah. Wow, am I glad you guys are here.
24:05Jeremy and Gavin are experts in gathering LIDAR data from challenging environments.
24:11So what have you brought?
24:13Well, we've brought this larger drone and a LIDAR mapping system called Hover Map.
24:17It hopefully will allow us to penetrate through the canopy so that we can image the ground and hopefully find some interesting features.
24:28That's perfect because what we are looking for are any signs of battle, of warfare.
24:33So you can guess them. Trenches, foxholes, whatever. And this can do that, right?
24:41It can.
24:43But flying a drone in this dense jungle is incredibly difficult.
24:47The thin air drains the drone battery quickly and keeping eyes on it during the short flight window is a challenge.
25:00So Pete's smaller drone will be their eyes in the sky.
25:04We're at 6,000 feet. And last time I flew this type of mission at 6,000 feet, the best I could get was six to seven minutes flight time in between windows of weather.
25:15So we're really up against a lot here.
25:18Because hitting a tree here would be a bad day.
25:22Yeah, it's pretty much a pack up our stuff and let's go back.
25:26How should we do this? Should we put the little one up first, get eyes in the air? What's the plan?
25:31Sounds like a plan.
25:32Yeah? Okay.
25:33Pete and the team start with a scan of the area around the camp, hoping they might find something.
25:51Roger.
25:54If not, they'll widen the search.
25:59This is great already. He's covering so much ground.
26:02This would take us weeks to walk what he's doing.
26:13First flight successful. The birds come back. It's all good.
26:16Of course, now we want to push farther out and get more data.
26:22Pushing further out will take the drone further from the controllers over tougher terrain and is fraught with danger.
26:32Now we're just climbing to four zero meters.
26:39Okay.
26:40Coming across. Coming over.
26:42Okay. Just stop it there. Hold, hold, hold.
26:45Yep, holding.
26:46That's good position.
26:48That's three minutes.
26:50Roger. We're having...
26:51Wow, he is way low.
26:53You need to come home.
26:54He is low.
26:56We're having a problem.
26:58I can't climb.
26:59Okay, can you, uh...
27:00It wants to come right down.
27:02It's descending?
27:03Yep. There's nothing I can do to stop that.
27:05Here comes strike.
27:07Oh, no.
27:09That's bad.
27:11That is bad.
27:12Well, then that's game over.
27:13In the dense Papua New Guinea jungle, Pete, Jeremy and Gavin are hunting for the missing drone.
27:35I've got a rough idea where it is.
27:39Yeah, where's that?
27:40Okay, see that tall dead skinny tree in front of you?
27:44If the lidar unit is undamaged, there's a chance they can retrieve its data.
27:50Yeah, the tall skinny one with straggly branches.
27:53Can you show me where?
28:01Right on the top.
28:02Oh, yeah.
28:03There it is.
28:04Right on the top.
28:05Okay.
28:06Well, hopefully we can find a way to get it down.
28:13With the fate of the lidar map still unknown, Marty heads onto the ground around the camp with Gregory Bablis,
28:20a curator at the Papua New Guinea National Museum.
28:27He was one of the first historians ever to explore this site,
28:31and he thinks there is evidence of fighting visible to the naked eye.
28:38Marty, keep your eyes open for things we can find on the surface.
28:43There are still things on the surface?
28:44Yeah, scattered all over the place.
28:46The whole island is littered with surplus materials from the wall.
28:55I think I got something here.
28:58Uh-oh.
28:59Uh-oh.
29:01It's a nice find.
29:02Yeah, that's a nice find, all right.
29:03What do you reckon that is?
29:05It's an Australian water bottle, isn't it?
29:08Is it common to find things like this?
29:10Oh, yeah.
29:11Yeah.
29:13Yep.
29:14Let's keep looking.
29:15Yeah.
29:20Jeez.
29:21I think there's some things here under the brush.
29:24Oh, that's something, isn't it?
29:27Is this a helmet?
29:28Yeah.
29:29It's a helmet.
29:30Oh, wow.
29:31Oh, that's Japanese.
29:32Japanese, yeah.
29:33Uh-oh.
29:34I see some.
29:35Wow.
29:36Oh, my God.
29:37Look at this.
29:38This looks like the locals have found things around the area, and they just kind of piled
29:46them up in one place.
29:48Uh-huh.
29:50Lost in the jungle for nearly eight decades, this is the wartime evidence that Marty has been
29:57looking for.
30:00Oh, God.
30:01Look at this.
30:02Japanese Type 99 light machine gun magazine.
30:04It's corroded through to where you can see the spring inside.
30:06Oh, yeah.
30:07That's incredible.
30:08Yeah.
30:09There was a fight up here.
30:14Pete, Gavin, and Jeremy have retrieved their missing drone.
30:19The drone's a total write-off.
30:20To find evidence of a real battle, the drone's LIDAR scan will be critical.
30:36They hope it'll reveal fighting positions, dugouts, signs of battle, but only if they can
30:42get the data off the drone.
30:46You see that?
30:47This one.
30:48I'm answering the data off.
30:49Yeah.
30:50That's why I left it on.
30:51Amazing.
30:52Yeah.
30:53It's pretty good.
30:58As night falls, back at camp, Pete processes the LIDAR data and transforms it into a 3D landscape
31:07of the jungle floor.
31:10Wow, look at that.
31:12With the damaged drone, the team have only covered a small part of the target area.
31:19So have they managed to capture any of the battlefield itself?
31:24Well, we found some potential sites.
31:28Uh, yeah.
31:29What do you make of that?
31:30They're quite deep, aren't they?
31:31Yeah.
31:32Yeah.
31:33The LIDAR reveals two pits in the jungle floor that appear man-made.
31:39They are located very close to the camp.
31:43There's no doubt those are fighting positions.
31:45Yeah, those are prepared fighting positions.
31:47But to find out for sure, they'll have to be checked out on the ground.
31:54So do you think that that gives you guys some targets to look for tomorrow?
31:57This is great.
31:58Have the team found evidence of a battlefield that has been lost to the outside world for nearly eight decades?
32:06Marty and Pete are deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea on the Kokoda Trail investigating the forgotten battlefield of Etoa.
32:26Pete has made the first 3D LIDAR model of what he hopes is the battlefield site.
32:37Arranged around their modern-day camp, the scanning has revealed a series of anomalies they think might be dug-in fighting positions.
32:50And Marty sets out with archaeologist Kenneth Miamba to investigate.
32:57When they reach the location, nothing is visible to the naked eye.
33:02Oh, you think you have something?
33:03Yes, it's spongy. It's leaf litter on top of the hole here.
33:06Oh yeah, I feel it.
33:08Do you want to hit it with the metal detector and see if there's something in there?
33:10Yes, I'll keep it dry and see what's coming out from the hole.
33:18Oh, I hear it.
33:19Yes, I'm picking something really heavy here.
33:22So, shall we dig it?
33:23Yep.
33:24All right.
33:25I'm just going to dig in.
33:26Literally.
33:33Jackpot.
33:34There it is.
33:35It's a boot heel.
33:36Look at that.
33:37That's incredible.
33:38Soldiers don't just discard their boots.
33:39No.
33:40So, this belonged to somebody who didn't make it out.
33:41This is an Australian boot heel.
33:42But the Japanese were known to take boots from fallen soldiers.
33:46So, it's not certain proof of an Australian position.
33:47So, they moved to another pit identified by the LIDAR in search of stronger evidence that
33:53these are fighting positions.
33:55So, they moved to another pit identified by the LIDAR in search of stronger evidence that
33:59these are fighting positions.
34:00It's a big one.
34:01It's a big one.
34:02This one is located directly north of the camp.
34:30Well, this is interesting.
34:33You guys just found two very interesting artifacts.
34:37Both of them 1941 dated Mark VII .303 caliber cartridges.
34:44One fired, one unfired.
34:46And that's a sort of exceptional thing to find because that's proof positive that Australian
34:51troops were fighting right here over this prepared fighting position.
34:56And the interesting detail about that is what's exactly behind me.
35:00That's our camp.
35:03The cartridges are solid proof that these pits discovered by the LIDAR are dug-in fighting
35:09positions for Australian soldiers.
35:15Marty believes that the Australians were shooting in the direction of the area where they have
35:19set up camp.
35:24But who and what were the Australians firing on?
35:31Back at camp, the team have been investigating another anomaly identified in the LIDAR scan.
35:37We heard you guys found something.
35:39Yes.
35:40Oh, look at that.
35:41What is it?
35:42What do you think it is?
35:43Ooh.
35:44Pete, what do you think?
35:45Can I touch?
35:46I think you can, but be careful.
35:47Looks like sulfur.
35:48Sulfur.
35:49Sulfur.
35:50Maybe it's a battery?
35:51Yeah.
35:52But that knob wouldn't be on a battery.
35:53Oh, that looks like numerals.
35:54This is a radio because that's how you're changing your frequency.
35:55So this would be a pot then?
35:56Wow.
35:57Contemporary records help the team identify the radio as Japanese.
36:04And this radio type was only issued to battalion commanders.
36:11It's positive proof that they are near a base for a sizable Japanese force.
36:18So that makes me think that where we have camped might have been a Japanese battalion headquarters.
36:39The ground truthing has confirmed what the team suspected.
36:44This was the location where the Australian soldiers attacked a Japanese camp, pushing them back away from Port Moresby.
36:58They finally found the battlefield they were looking for.
37:03And there is more.
37:05The radio has been buried.
37:09Well, why bury a radio?
37:11Ah, radio operators were under a very strict order that in the event that you had to abandon your equipment or surrender, you had to either destroy it or bury it.
37:20So whoever buried this did it in a hurry.
37:24Australian soldiers who fought in the Kokoda campaign recalled that the Japanese were a formidable opponent, often unafraid to fight to the death.
37:38But this radio suggests something different happened here.
37:45If they did this, they didn't stand and fight.
37:48They didn't stand and fight to the death like they would.
37:50They took off.
37:51They withdrew.
37:52They withdrew under pressure from the enemy.
37:54Wow, wow, wow.
37:57So what happened to them in this jungle?
38:00Why did they run?
38:11Pete Kelsey and Marty Morgan have discovered that the Battle of Etoa ended with the Japanese held at bay.
38:18And records suggest that when the Australians attacked them here, the Japanese were already in serious trouble.
38:30So what do you suppose actually happened down there?
38:32Oh, the Japanese, the farther they go, the weaker they get.
38:36And they reach a breaking point.
38:38And it's not far from here and they have to pull back.
38:41Military records reveal that the Japanese set out on this campaign with just over two weeks of rations.
38:50But Australian resistance slowed them down for four months.
38:56Tropical disease had taken its toll.
38:593,000 men, over half of the troops on the trail, had severe malaria or were starving.
39:06With Port Moresby almost within sight, the exhausted Japanese were forced to give up and retreat back along the Kokoda Trail.
39:21And the Australians would push the retreating soldiers back to the coast from where they had come.
39:27November 1942, the Kokoda Trail campaign ended where it began.
39:44At the Buna Coast, still in Japanese hands.
39:48And just a mile from the beach at Buna, Marty discovers the wreckage of something that helped the Allies to finally win this fight.
40:04Oh my God, look at this.
40:07The wreckage of a B-24.
40:09The American B-24 bomber could carry 5,000 pounds of bombs for nearly 2,000 miles.
40:23More importantly, the B-24s could avoid the heavily defended Japanese beaches and supply reinforcements.
40:30Aircraft like this that are not just contributing to the strategic air war against the Japanese base at Simpson Harbor-Rabaul,
40:41but they're also contributing to ground combat operations around Buna.
40:45Because airplanes like this, they could function as a transport and they could move supplies.
40:51And it is spectacular to see this one still here after all these years.
40:55Supported by aircraft like these, in September 1942, American troops finally joined in the battle for Papua New Guinea.
41:15It would take a brutal struggle, but the tide of the Pacific War was finally turned.
41:20January 22nd, 1943, exactly a year since their arrival in Rabaul.
41:33The Japanese were finally driven off the Papua New Guinea mainland.
41:39It had been a fight to save Australia, waged in the air, sea, and in the jungle.
41:45But it also shook America to the core, with one iconic image taken at Buna Beach.
41:58Are we getting near the place? You know the place.
42:02The famous photo, yeah.
42:04Are we?
42:05It's just up ahead.
42:06On September 20th, 1943, Life Magazine printed a truly shocking image.
42:15For the first time, the American public saw a photograph of their own dead from World War II.
42:27Is it?
42:28This is it. There's no doubt about it.
42:31It's probably further down the beach this way.
42:32It's there. We're here.
42:38I think we're on it.
42:41That is chilling.
42:49When I turned 14, my parents gave me a book for my birthday of the most famous photographs of the Second World War.
42:56And I still have that book.
42:59And I loved it because it was full of all the things that a 14-year-old boy gets excited about.
43:05Airplanes and tanks and ships and machine guns.
43:09But it also included this photograph.
43:12And at that age, this had a powerful emotional impact on me that changed the course of my life.
43:18I cannot begin to estimate the emotional impact this would have had on people back home.
43:28These three U.S. Army soldiers are just three of the 292,000 Americans who were killed in action during the Second World War.
43:37But millions of people saw them because of this image.
43:44And millions of people personalized the human loss of the Second World War through this image.
43:51And it was right here.
43:53Around 14,000 Allied soldiers, including 7,000 Americans, and 200,000 Japanese lost their lives in the fight for Papua New Guinea.
44:09An unknown number of Papuans also died in a war that wasn't their own.
44:15An unknown number of Papua New Guinea