The Pacific (2010) - Prologue. WW2 Miniseries.

To bring you a special news bulletin, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air. President Roosevelt has just announced. The details are not available. The White House is now giving out a statement. Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. December 7th, 1941. It was America's greatest military disaster and marked an entrance into World War II that would be followed by six months of consecutive defeats. Wake fell to the enemy. Guam was quickly engulfed by the Japanese. Japanese troops captured most of Luzon Island and were pressing the assault on the rest of the Philippines. Within half a year of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese controlled one of the largest territorial empires in human history. By the summer of 1942, they were at Australia's doorstep. Their reach extending all the way down to a small remote island in the South Pacific, Guadalcanal. Here, the Japanese were rapidly building an airfield. If they completed that airfield, they could effectively choke off U.S. supply lines to Australia, denying the United States a base from which to wage the rest of the war in the Pacific. In August of 1942, almost nine months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 1st Marine Division shipped out from New Zealand, headed for the first American offensive of World War II. We were never told that we were going into combat. They told us that we were going to an island that the Japanese held called Guadalcanal. They even called it Guadalcanal. They didn't even know how to spell the name. That was a nasty war, man. I'll tell you what, it scares me today, and that's been 67 years ago. We had no concept that it was an important event. We had no idea that we were in the forefront of all this. The main thing was to stay alive.