l hope the United States will keep out of this war.
l believe that it will.
And l give you assurance and reassurance
that every effort of your government will be directed toward that end.
As long as it remains within my power to prevent,
there will be no blackout of peace in the United States.
Affer World War l there was a surge of isolationism,
a feeling we had no reason to become involved in World War l
and we'd made a mistake
and there were a lot of debts owed by European countries,
and the country went isolationist.
l haven't the slightest idea of European affairs.
- Let Europe fight their own battles. - War? Not for me.
This time America should keep out - and l know l will.
lf war breaks out in Europe,
this country should heed the advice of its first president
and avoid all foreign entanglement.
(narrator) ln early 1940, Britain's ambassador in Washington reported
that nine out of ten Americans
were determined to keep America out of the war.
A few, like the American Nazi Party,
even wanted America to aid Britain's enemies.
(speaking German)
(man shouts)
(man) The country was enormously divided.
There was the America First movement, which was advocating isolationism;
on the other hand there was
the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
We had these curious voices
such as Charles Lindbergh's, the voices of isolationism.
ln the past, we have dealt with a Europe dominated by England and France.
ln the future, we may have to deal with a Europe dominated by Germany.
(Ball) Charles Lindbergh, thanks to his extraordinary exploit,
was a very popular figure - he was almost a folk hero.
So he would have influence.
l suppose that celebrities of all characters have influence,
otherwise they wouldn't be endorsing products all the time.
(Lindhergn) ..but it should not involve the internal affairs of Europe.
They never were, and never will be, carried on according to our desires.
(applause)
There was a strong anti-British antipathy
in certain parts of the country.
lt was felt that Britain
was trying very hard to drag us into its war.
(marching band music)
(narrator) 1940 was presidential election year in the United States
and Roosevelt's main concern that summer was to get himself re-elected.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the 22nd convention of the Republican Party will now come to order.
Even as we meet, lights are going out in Europe.
Blackouts of dictators
take the place of lighthouses of free men.
Ours is the grave responsibility to preserVe the lighthouses of liberty.
ln the name...
of the people...
of the whole United States...
l place in nomination...
that valiant American...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
(narrator) Affer France's fall,
most Americans were disposed to aid Britain in some way,
but still more were strongly opposed to entering the war on Britain's side.
(Willkie) ..third-term candidate
has not kept faith with the American people.
(narrator) Roosevelt's opponent in the election that autumn
was an out-and-out anti-war candidate, Wendell Willkie.
(Willkie) lf his promise to keep our boys out of foreign wars
is no better than his promise to balance the budget,
they're already almost on the transports.
(narrator) But with the Nazis triumphant everywhere,
Roosevelt couldn't afford to wait to be re-elected
before putting America on some sort of war footing.
(Roosevelt) The Congress has debated without partisanship
and has now enacted a law
establishing a selective method of augmenting our armed forces.
We must, and we will, marshal our great potential strength
to fend off war from our shores.
(man) More than 16 million young Americans
are reviving the 300-year-old American custom of the muster,
by which, from the earliest colonial times,
every able-bodied citizen
was subject to the call for service in the national defence.
The first number drawn by the secretary of war
is serial number 158.
(cheering)
l am honoured to be one of those first called
and l'll try very hard to make a real good soldier.
And l'm proud of you.
(Willkie) If you eIect me president of the United States,
l shall never send an American boy to fight in any European war.
l consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts.
l will not pretend that l find this an unpleasant duty.
(laughter)
l am an old campaigner and l love a good fight.
(cheering)
(narrator) Roosevelt got his good fight,
though to stay in the race he had promised, like his opponent,
not to send American boys to fight in foreign wars.
- Name, please? - Franklin D Roosevelt.
(narrator) November 5, 1940, was election day,
and by midnight America's choice
of president for another four years was clear.
(man) The results are now conclusive - Roosevelt wins.
(cheering)
(narrator) Now Roosevelt felt he had a mandate
to give Britain all aid short of war.
But he could only move slowly, for America was still deeply divided.
(Corwin) Many of the war measures, such as steps to give aid to Britain
at the time when England was standing alone and was beleaguered,
just squeaked by in Congress.
Even a programme of armament, of military preparedness,
got through Congress on very, very close votes,
one-vote margins in a total of 400 votes.
(Harriman) Then the extraordinary legislation, Lend-Lease,
was proposed in December of 1940 and became law in March of '41 ,
and under that the president
did everything he possibly could to give aid to Britain.
My instructions when l went over to represent him
were very simple, very brief.
They were to contact the British government
to find out what we could do to help Britain - short of war.
And we began at once doing all sorts of things
which were not really neutral under the literal interpretation -
for instance, we were preparing British naval vessels in American ports
and we escorted convoys across the Atlantic as far as lceland,
and we transferred two million tons of ships.
The immediate problem was to get people to understand what it was.
ln this, l think Mr Roosevelt's very simple analogy
of lending your neighbour a fire hose when there's a fire
was a most persuasive simple illustration.
(Roosevelt) The people of Europe who are defending themselves
do not ask us to do their fighting.
They ask us for the implements of war -
the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters -
which will enable them to fight for their liberty and our security.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
For us, this is an emergency as serious as war itself.
ln those days, the business community regarded Roosevelt
as, at a minimum, a major deputy of the devil,
and Roosevelt was deeply suspicious of the businessmen,
so that the people who were associated with the mobilising of the war
had a divided interest.
Some of them felt that their main purpose in being in Washington
was to put a curb on the socialist excesses of the New Deal.
Some of them were uneasy about being there -
they had the feeling of people who were playing in an orchestra in a brothel.
And there was also a great unwillingness...
We hear now about the military-industrial complex -
in those days there was a great unwillingness
to convert from civilian industry.
There was a feeling that war production would be a very unprofitable business,
it would lose markets for automobiles, for tyres, for chemicals, and so forth.
(Galbraith) There was a problem with some of the unions
up until June of 1941 .
Until Russia was in the war,
and in the days of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact,
there was foot-dragging on the part of some of the union leaders.
And there were strikes.
(narrator) Four times as many workers
were on strike in 1941 as in the year before.
That spring, nearly half a million coal miners struck for almost a month,
while on the west coast a walk-out that summer at North American AViation
delayed deliveries of planes to Britain for several weeks.
lt took troops to get production moving again.
But although Roosevelt was still reluctant to lead America into war,
the war was now catching up with America.
June 11th, 1941 : an American freighter, the Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat.
Roosevelt used this as a pretext for occupying lceland
and relieving the British garrisons there.
September 4th: a US destroyer, Greer, was attacked by a U-boat near lceland.
Roosevelt now told his navy to shoot on sight.
October 16th: the US destroyer Kearney was struck by a German torpedo
while escorting a convoy in mid-Atlantic and 1 1 of her crew were killed.
Roosevelt used this incident
to push through Congress the repeal of the Neutrality Act.
We have wished to avoid shooting.
But the shooting has started.
And history has recorded who fired the first shot.
ln the long run, however,
all that will matter is who fired the last shot.
(applause)
The repeal of our Neutrality Act will be the last step on the road to war.
lf we load our ships with contraband of war
and send them into combat zones,
they will most certainly be sunk.
And that means war - a war which in the opinion of many of us,
although designed to save democracy abroad,
will surely destroy it at home right here in America.
(narrator) On October 30 the US destroyer Reuben James was sunk
with the loss of 1 15 lives.
Officers and all hands forward perished.
Myself and 45 men are all that are alive.
(narrator) Despite pressure from Churchill,
who dearly wanted America in the war, Roosevelt now did nothing.
lt was clear it would take much more than the drowning of 100 or so US seamen
to bring America into the war.
There was even a sentiment - l remember this being expressed -
to the effect that England would fight to the last American.
There were steps that were developing - gradual steps, to be sure -
somewhat comparable to the steps that took place in World War l.
One incident affer another - the torpedoing of the Sussex got us excited,
then there was the Lusitanla episode...
ln the same way, l think that with the moves that Mr Roosevelt was making,
the cash-and-carry programme that he had,
the protection of the convoys, the destroyer deal...
One thing and another was occurring that would be apt to produce, l think,
an incident that would set the war off.
(narrator) That incident was massive
and it came in an unexpected place: Pearl Harbour.
(redid) All army and navy bases
on the island of Oahu in Hawaii are now under air attack.
For the latest news, keep tuned to this station.
(Galbraith) My superior, who was in charge
of all civilian operations of the war, was away,
so l was then sent on to the great meeting of the wartime leaders
that convened in Washington on the night of Pearl Harbour.
l remember my sense of mission in going to that meeting.
We had all seen the war coming.
Here was the day and here was the hour,
and here was l, attending the meeting with the other great men.
We got to the meeting and the other "great men" - myself included -
were one hell of a disappointment,
because nobody could think of anything to say or do.
lt seemed a good idea to see
what materials were threatened by the Japanese advance.
Everybody was coming in during the course of this,
some in sport jackets, some in tennis shoes,
and it became terribly evident that nobody had any real information
as to where these strategic commodities came from.
And eventually the whole discussion bogged down, l remember,
on the question of kapok.
Kapok, everybody thought... lt was clearly listed as a strategic material,
it evidently came from that part of the world,
and nobody could think, for God's sake, what the stuff was used for.
(sirens)
l ask that the Congress declare
that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan
on Sunday December 7, 1941 ,
a state of war has existed
between the United States and the Japanese empire.
(applause)
(narrator) Even now Roosevelt didn't ask that the US declare war on Germany -
although Britain had already allied herself with the US against Japan.
But Hitler decided for him.
For some unexplained reason, Hitler declared war on the United States,
which relieved Roosevelt of all of his difficulties.
l was practising law in Chicago - that is, at the time of Pearl Harbour -
and l can tell you that if Hitler had not made this decision,
if he had simply done nothing,
that there would have been enormous sentiment
in many parts of the United States that the Pacific war now was our war,
that the European war was for the Europeans
and we should concentrate all our efforts against the Japanese.
♪ Oh, give me land, lots of land
♪ Under starry skies above
♪ Don't fence me in
♪ Let me ride through the wide open country that l love
♪ Don't fence me in
(Corwin) People sold their homes at a fraction of their value,
they were certain the west coast would be under attack, that we'd be bombed.
There were even blackouts along the west coast,
as there were along the east coast.
And there were even some false alerts here.
(air-raid siren)
(narrator) Not everybody took these precautions seriously.
To European eyes, America's going to war
had moments both ludicrous and familiar.
(♪ "When Johnny Comes Marching Home")
♪ The men will cheer and the boys will shout
♪ The ladies they will all turn out
♪ And we'll all feel gay
♪ When Johnny comes marching home
Living among us are those we call aliens.
We must remember that our parents or our grandparents
or our great-grandparents
all were aliens in their day.
lf you believe you have knowledge of any improper activity of any alien
you should report the fact to the nearest FBl office.
Don't try to be the law yourself.
There was a tremendous change -
the change being that we were the same individuals
as prior to December 7;
on December 8, when we went to school, many of our classmates and friends
called us "dirty Japs", teased us, harassed us,
and our so-called friends were no longer friends.
ln the First World War, as you know, the Germans were hated thoroughly
and there was a great deal of discrimination
and harassment of the Germans.
ln the Second World War, we were at war with three different nationalities,
the ltalians, the Germans and the Japanese.
And l remember that Thomas Mann
and Bruno Walter spoke up for the Germans
and said they couldn't be removed because that would be the last despair,
having fled Nazi Germany, to be again put into a concentration camp.
And Joe DiMaggio's mother spoke up,
and that was very moving, in San Francisco.
But the Japanese had really nobody.
l think picking on the Japanese
was partly a logistically rational thing that the army could handle -
they said, we can't handle the Germans, but we can handle the Japanese.
Affer all, they couldn't have moved all the Germans and ltalians -
they would have had to move
half the people out of New York. lt would've been ridiculous.
(Ball) These people had always been unpopular
because they competed with the American farmers in truck gardening and so on,
and worked very much harder
and cultivated their land very much more efficiently.
So a lot of people took advantage of their situation
to create antipathy toward them.
And the government acted hastily and rather brutally
- it's not a very attractive chapter.
(narrator) More than 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned en masse,
mostly those on the west coast,
whereas the 600,000 German and ltalian Americans were treated individually.
(Uno) Although we had heard rumours of an evacuation,
we didn't realise that it was going to indeed take place.
We were told that we could only take what we could carry.
Evacuees had three choices: they either had to sell their property,
abandon it or store it.
And in many cases, because of the uncertainty of the situation,
many people just disposed of their property as best they could.
We were then put on buses and taken to assembly centres.
From the assembly centres
we lived in horse stalls or in quickly made tarpaper barracks.
The mental anguish that my mother went through,
having four of her sons in the serVice of the United States government
and having her husband labelled a dangerous enemy alien...
We had guards, watch towers, machine guns...
lt was a picture of incarceration.
We felt that we were prisoners - prisoners in our own country.
lt was certain there'd be no more rubber for a while
and we'd have to make do with the stock of rubber tyres that we had.
And it wasn't in the authority of our agency to stop the sale of rubber tyres,
so we drew up an order anyway
and we had an anonymous young man circulate it
in the Office of Production Management that had to clear all pieces of paper.
Walked in, with "Here's the tyre order, sir." Everybody signed it.
And we froze the whole nation's stock of rubber tyres.
Everybody got work.
This was very much appreciated affer the long, deep depression of the 1930s.
You might've thought inflation would be the major problem,
because in most countries, in most wars, it's been a major problem.
But very early we mobilised,
we put in a rationing, and, although there was a small amount of grumbling,
it's amazing how well the rationing system worked.
(Galbraith) There was a tendency to accept shortages with one exception.
People were very resistant to gasoline rationing.
Clothing shortages, food shortages, coffee, sugar, people would accept.
But there was no form of rascality, chicanery, thievery, larceny
that people wouldn't engage in to get extra gasoline.
l think the thing they most resented
was the extreme youth of many of us who were doing it.
The Office of Price Administration,
as l look back on it, must've been very hard to take.
l was then 31 .
David Ginsberg, my immediate associate, general counsel, was 29,
and most everybody else was younger than we were -
including Richard Nixon,
who was one of the more obscure employees of the agency.
There's a famous wartime picture of Sewell AVery,
a great tycoon of the last age,
who was head of Montgomery Ward and brought it out of the Depression,
being carried out of his office by two American soldiers in uniform
because he wouldn't comply with the War Labor Board.
Our war programme for the coming fiscal year
will cost 56 billion dollars.
That means taxes and bonds...
and bonds and taxes.
- Ohh... - We have a squeal with each orchid.
Want to get your orchid? Come this way, please.
2250. This is really a handsome thing to have.
You're getting this as a premium for a war bond for $2250,
so it's really a good purchase for anybody.
Let's have a look at that.
Hope is looking at the shoe. He may increase his bid to $2255.
(laughter)
You're going to come up a little, aren't you, flabby?
(laughter)
l shouldn't, but l'll go 25.
Our enemies aren't pushovers. They're savage, skilful and relentless.
They've trained for years for just this chance to ensgave the worgd,
and that's just what they intend to do. And they'll use every trick and tool.
But on the other hand, they aren't supermen.
They didn't come down from Mars.
They can be licked and they will be licked.
By men.
(cheering)
♪ We fought in 1917
♪ Rum-di-di dum dum dum
♪ And drove the tyrants from the sea
♪ Rum did-di dum dum dum
♪ We're in a bigger, better war
♪ For your patriotic pastime
♪ We don't know what we're fighting for But we didn't know the last time
♪ So load the cannon, draw the blade
♪ Rum-di-di dum dum dum
♪ Come on and join the big parade...
♪ Rum-di-di dum dum, rum-di-di dum dum, rum-di-di dum dum dum
♪ Let the drums roll out
♪ Let the trumpets call
♪ While the people shout
♪ Strike up the band
lt was the airplanes of the treacherous foe
that brought my husband to his death,
and if l can qualify as an airplane worker at Vega
and with my hands help to keep 'em flying,
l will feel that l am carrying on for him.
♪ Hear the cymbals ring
♪ Calling one and all
♪ To the martial swing
♪ Strike up the band
♪ There is work to be done, to be done
♪ There's a war to be won, to be won
♪ Come, you son of a, son of a gun
♪ Take your stand
♪ Fall in line, yea a bow
♪ Come along, let's go
♪ Hey, leader, strike up the band
We are doing our share,
but we're going to do infinitely more than we have done.
We have in our town today two mothers,
each of whom has given two sons already.
And, as l said before, we'll give our sons, we'll give our lives,
but, by the help and grace of God,
we will not give up our free America or our democratic way of life.
♪ Strike up the band
♪ Yankee-doo doodle-doo doodle-doo
♪ We'll come through, doodle-doo doodle-doo
♪ For the red, white and blue, doodle-doo
♪ Lend a hand
♪ With the flag unfurled
♪ We can lick the world
♪ Hey, leader, strike up the band
(narrator) On the night of Pearl Harbour,
one man had been happy - Winston Churchill.
For now he knew Britain was saved.
A few days later he journeyed to Washington
to make sure the war was going to be fought
on the British plan of Europe first and the Pacific second,
and to cement the new Anglo-American alliance.
What kind of a people do they think we are?
ls it possible they do not realise
that we shall never cease to persevere against them
until they have been taught a lesson
which they and the world will never forget.
(narrator) Time, Churchill knew, was on the Allies' side.
With America's industrial might behind them, they could not lose.
(shouts order)
1942 began badly for the Americans in the Pacific.
Manila, capital of the Philippines, fell to the Japanese on January 1 .
The Japanese pushed the American forces
back into the narrow peninsular of Bataan.
The American plan was to hold out there
for six months or so, until reinforcements came.
But the reinforcements never did come,
and nor had Bataan been really prepared for a siege.
The American troops besieged at Bataan had no air support,
were short of medical supplies and their morale was poor.
Even their commander-in-chief, General MacArthur,
had leff them for safer shores.
Their bitter ballad: "We are the battling bastards of Bataan
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes or artillery pieces
And nobody gives a goddamn."
Cock-a-hoop with the ease of their victory so far,
the Japanese called on the Americans beleaguered in Bataan to surrender.
The voice of the Philippines calling the attention of everyone everywhere.
Everyone everywhere, Filipinos and Americans all over the country...
(narrator) They tried leaflets too...
aimed mostly at the Filipino soldiers among the American forces.
The Japanese closed in for the kill.
ln early May, 1942,
the American commander in the Philippines, General Wainwright,
bowed to the inevitable and surrendered the remainder of his forces.
(mterpreter) l've decided to accept, in the name of humanity,
the formal surrender of all American and Philippine army troops
in the Philippine lslands.
You will - repeat, will - surrender all troops to the proper Japanese officer.
(narrator) 80,000 Americans surrendered,
the largest mass capitulation in American military history.
The Japanese made the Americans march in the blazing sun
to prison camps 100 or so miles from Bataan.
Deprived of water and medicine, starVed and brutally beaten,
some 10,000 soldiers died along the way -
more than had been killed in the actual fighting for Bataan.
By that spring of 1942, the Japanese conquests were at their peak.
Surely the British and Americans would now want to make peace, argued Tokyo -
a peace that would allow the Japanese to retain their conquests.
But already bold steps were being taken to strike back at the Japanese
here in the heart of their empire, Tokyo.
l was on this cruiser called the Northampton
and we were several days out at sea when we saw the Hornet coming up.
And the Hornet had very unusual planes on deck -
you could see them from a long way.
They were large land-based planes - B-25s.
(man) We had only one real worry - that would have been a dead calm.
Under those conditions,
taking off the carrier deck with the heavy loads that we had
would have been at best precarious.
The worst thing we thought might happen
would be a completely alerted Japan waiting for us.
What did happen was that the morning just before take-off
we encountered two Japanese fishing boats.
They spotted our task force, sent a message to the mainland,
but, unfortunately for the Japanese,
were sunk before they could repeat the message.
So we achieved almost complete surprise.
The actual amount of damage done was minimal.
We were 16 aeroplanes, each with one ton of bombs.
ln the later stages of World War ll, the 20th Air Force under LeMay
was sending out 500 aeroplanes, each with 10 tons of bombs.
So we dropped 16 against a later raid of 5,000,
so the damage was not at all great.
However, it did have some advantages.
One, we had had nothing but bad news at home,
so it was the first good news our folks got
and it was appreciated as good news.
lt caused the Japanese to question their warlords,
who had informed them that Japan would never be attacked.
(narrator) The Doolittle raid stung Japan's leaders and made them careless.
Ever since Pearl Harbour,
Japan's navy had sought a decisive battle with America's navy,
a battle that would decide once and for all mastery of the Pacific.
ln early June, 1942, the Japanese carriers
rendezvous'd close to Midway lsland,
some 1300 miles northwest of Hawaii.
(speaking Japanese)
(translator) We had ceased to be as wary as before.
The Americans knew in advance that we would attack Midway.
They were waiting for us and we walked into their trap.
(narrator) But while the Japanese navy's
attention was focused on Midway lsland,
the American navy were preparing
to strike back at the Japanese carrier fleet.
(man) We had a wonderful advantage - we were breaking their code
and they didn't know it.
So we had some idea what was going to happen there.
We were on the scene
with the carrier force in the right spot to meet them.
(narrator) Midway, one of the greatest sea battles of all time,
meant the US regained naval control of the Pacific
and was the end of Japan's hope of any further conquests.
The four Japanese carriers
that had launched the raid on Pearl Harbour six months before
were destroyed by planes from the very American carriers
that had been at sea and escaped destruction that day.
The Battle of Midway doomed Japan.
The Midway battle was, many people say, the turning point of the Pacific war -
that is, the turning point from complete retreat on our part,
or at least an attempt to establish a stalemate, and offensive.
(narrator) Turning point not just at sea, but on land too.
The island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons,
the southernmost limit of the Japanese conquests.
ln August 1942, the Allies returned.
For the Americans, it was their first invasion of the war.
(man) We had such a tiny fraction of America's force and money -
resources and manpower resources.
90% went to Europe.
We had such a tiny little thread of existence down there.
lt was our first offensive in the Pacific
and we went in with only one division.
The Japanese were tough fighters and they never would give up.
We had isolated a Japanese regiment
in what was known as the Gifu strongpoint,
and they fought until we actually had to annihilate them.
We used loudspeakers affer we had surrounded them
and tried to persuade them to surrender, but they wouldn't.
Japanese shouldn't have made such a great effort in Guadalcanal.
They could have saved their strength.
(flies buzzing)
(narrator) At long last the tide had turned for the Allies in the Pacific.
But it was still as yet only a sideshow.
The main energies were being reserVed for Europe.
lt was really a little odd
to the Americans in the general public at that time
that we were spending so little effort in the Pacific.
President Roosevelt made up his mind that the defeat of Hitler
was by far the most important to achieve first -
he was the most dangerous of the enemies.
And he was very skilful
in keeping American public opinion directed towards Europe,
although we did have a very major operation
in Japan and a very successful operation,
affer we recovered from the tremendous blow
of the loss of a substantial part of our navy at Pearl Harbour.
l think that generally public opinion had the feeling, as we say in baseball,
the big league was in Europe
and in the United Kingdom - l include that in Western Europe.
The decision was made early
that Europe came first - and it was a wise decision -
in spite of the fact
we got the devil knocked out of us in the Pacific for a long time.
That was the right decision and l think everybody recognised it.
Now, of course, the navy protested
at being leff way underpowered in the Pacific.
And it did put us up to very heavy casualties and all of that.
But l think the country in general agreed with the decision
that the real threat was in Europe.
We could take care of the Japs in our own good time,
but the real thing that had to be met was on the Continent.
♪ This is the army, Mr Jones
♪ No private rooms or telephones
♪ You had your breakfast in bed before
♪ But you won't have it there any more
Here we teach you how to kill:
get the opponent on the ground as quick as possible
and snuff out his life by kicking with both feet,
one foot, the flat of the hand,
a rabbit punch, gouging the eyes out, ripping the mouth.
The gentle art of killing a man
is to get him on the ground and kick in this manner. See?
Come on, all of you do that. Come on.
♪ Do what the buglers command
♪ They're in the army and not in a band
♪ This is the army, Mr Brown
♪ You and your baby went to town
♪ She had you worried, but this is war
♪ And she won't worry you any more
♪ Mr Jones, Mr Green
♪ Mr Brown...
Mr Churchill did have a real antipathy, l think,
toward getting ashore what he would call prematurely onto the European continent.
He had very vivid memories
of the sacrifice of a British generation in World War l.
Passchendaele and the Somme - they were always nightmares to him.
Affer all this passion
that had been aroused as a result of Pearl Harbour
and our being in the war, marching and counter-marching and training,
we just had to get ashore someplace.
ln view of the British attitude,
which felt we weren't prepared to go into the main theatre,
we sniffed around for another spot to express our strength
and it turned out it was Africa.
♪ Over there
♪ Send the word, send the word
♪ Over there
♪ That the Yanks are coming
♪ The Yanks are coming
♪ The drums rum-tumming everywhere
♪ So prepare
♪ Say a prayer
♪ Send the word, send the word
♪ To beware
♪ We'll be over
♪ We're coming over
♪ And we won't come back till it's over over there
(narrator) November, 1942.
600 ships, loaded with men and material,
set sail for North Africa - Operation Torch.
Said Roosevelt, when he heard the news, "At last we're on our way."