Devastated area in north eastern Hiroshima following August 6, 1945 atomic bomb attack in World War 2. Simple shacks and buildings are being built using rubble material after the devastation of Hiroshima. Damage at Higashi station. Newspaper headlines about the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, and the warning to Japan by the President of the United States. A map of Japan shows the location of Nagasaki. Scenes of Japanese workers in arms factories building torpedoes and munitions, some wearing kokumin-fuku worker uniform. Workers in an assembly line munitions factory of Mitsubishi. A map shows a torpedo plant in the north and a steel and an arms plant in the south, then plots the center point between them as the U.S. target for the "Fat Man" atomic bomb attack. View of the atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, as seen from the B-29 bomber "Bockscar" (sometime called Bock's Car or Bocks Car). Mushroom cloud rises up to the sky. Wing of the B-29 bomber in the foreground. An aerial view of rubble and destroyed buildings in Nagasaki following the atomic bomb attack. Destroyed Mitsubishi steel plants beside the sea.
German rocket pioneer, Gerhard Zucker, attempting to develop postal rockets in the 1930s. Location is Wadden Sea off Cuxhaven, on April 9, 1933, where Zucker follows Nazi Sturmabteilung (also called SA or Stormtroopers) carrying the mail rocket across wet sands. The rocket is set up on a launch stand. Zucker and an assistant ignite the 8 side rockets and the mail rocket takes off. It noses up and loops over backwards, falling to the sand. German Stormtroopers lift up the damaged device. Next, is seen a later, more modern, rocket trial ending in failure. Two German engineers display a model similar to the pulse-jet-powered "buzz bomb" (V-1) employed by the Nazis in World War 2. A brief glimpse of similar American machine on sand flat, as narrator states German acknowledgement of knowledge gleaned from Dr. Robert Goddard's work. A German V-1 flying bomb (aka Doodle Bug) being launched in 1944, during World War 2. View of British houses of Parliament, London, England; an air raid shelter sign in City of Westminster. Londoners waiting out a raid in the shelter. Scenes of fire and destruction during German bombing of London, as narrator speaks about the more advanced German V-2 ballistic missiles employed later in the war. Londoners trudging through debris amongst bombed out buildings. Change of scene to U.S. infantry and armor advancing deep into Germany. Narrator refers to them overrunning rocket bases and other vital war-making facilities, near the end of the war. Glimpse of large number of German prisoners of war. Documents of military surrender being signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, in Berlin, May 8, 1945. Closeup of Keitel. Scenes of American forces operating in Pacific theater. Aerial view of atomic bomb explosion. Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. U.S. soldiers and other service personnel return home and greeting loved ones at end of war. Aerial view of Pentagon building and surrounding area in Arlington Virginia near Washington DC. U.S. troops boarding a ship in San Francisco, bound for war again, this time in Korea (1950).
Film showing city of Hiroshima, Japan, before and after the August 6, 1945 dropping of the atomic bomb over the city in World War 2. Sequence opens on what the narrator says is August 5, 1945, the day before the event (but the footage is likely from before that date). Camera pans over the city of Hiroshima before the atomic bomb destroyed the city. Japanese air raid lookouts are seen on watch for allied bombers. View of atomic bomb detonation as seen from aircraft high overhead (this is actually a view of the Nagasaki blast, not the Hiroshima blast despite narrator's comments). Next, the complete destruction of the city of Hiroshima is seen from camera at low altitude showing the four and one half square miles of the city flattened and burned. A Japanese hospital still functioning, with red cross flag on it. Hospital workers retrieving wounded victims of the bombing. Ambulatory victims clustered in doorways and halls. Shadow image of a large industrial valve wheel burned onto wall behind it. Similar image of a ladder burned onto a wall. The decorative pattern on a woman's dress burned onto skin of her back. Japanese physicians treating victims of thermal and radiation burns. Views of various victims, including some children, and their respective injuries. Scene shifts forward one year, to August 6, 1946. Children are lined up outside a school building, and then seen inside their classroom. Disfiguration and wounds on children resulting from injuries are still evident on the children at their desks. Sequence shifts again, this time to an early United Nations meeting with delegates grappling with the issue of controlling nuclear power and atomic weapons. Closeup view of American delegates, including James F. Byrnes (Secretary of State)and James B. Conant, President of Harvard University in the assembly. Closeups of representatives from South Asian nations. Closeup of USSR delegation, headed by Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. Signs identifying delegates from Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, Bolivia, China. Final sequence shows several U.S. atomic scientists in their respective laboratories, including Enrico Fermi and Vannevar Bush. United States representative to the UN, Warren Austin, speaking about the so-called Baruch Plan, for international control of atomic weapons. (Principal author, Bernard Baruch, is standing behind speaker's left shoulder.) USSR delegation, headed by permanent representative, Andrei Gromyko, who is seen presenting the Soviet plan. View of explosion and mushroom cloud during U.S. Operation Crossroads atomic bomb test in the Pacific.
'Problems of Peace in Europe' produced in 1948, depicts reconstruction problems in aftermath of World War II and includes footage from during the war and soon after the war. Scene of desperate and hungry civilian people (possibly in Germany but could be elsewhere in Europe) scrambling over each other and trying to find food on the ground among garbage or wreckage, circa 1945 or 1946. European peoples massing to reestablish political order and seek relief in post-war Europe. Montage of images of people from all walks of life. Reminders of war showing aircrews in bombers and bombs falling. Batteries of rockets being fired. A formation of U.S. B-17s and a B-26 aircraft with D-day stripes, in flight. Allied bombing of cities with devastating effect (likely 1944-1945). Aerial view of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Aerial view of a major U.S. industrial complex, with many smoke stacks and industrial pollution. Mass of workers leaving at end of shift at a U.S. manufacturing plant or factory. Views of two different streamlined locomotives pulling passenger trains at high speed, approaching camera position. Freight trains speeding on railroads. Farmers harvesting and baling hay by machine and cultivating fields with tractor. Multiple wide views of the K-25 building of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in Oak Ridge Tennessee, the world's largest building in 1944 when it was built, and an instrumental part of the Manhattan Project effort to develop the atomic bomb in World War 2. Huge sprawling industrial sites in America. Map of Europe. Street scene in Germany with destroyed buildings and rubble cleaned from street, but still piled up in places. Desperate, hungry, and poverty stricken German citizens rummaging through garbage piles for anything to eat or anything of value. Two very young German boys standing together on a street, with one boy smoking a cigarette. Children scrambling over trash and rubbish heaps.
The U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial original statue during its unveiling ceremony at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia on November 10, 1951 (This is after the statue had been moved from its original Constitution Avenue location in Washington DC in 1947, and subsequently renovated under sculptor de Weldon's supervision while it was in Quantico.). A sign on the memorial reads "Uncommon valor was a common virtue, 1945." Next scenes show sculptor Felix de Weldon as he works to build the larger Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, which was dedicated in November 1954. Felix de Weldon measuring a model of the flag raising on Iwo Jima made by him. de Weldon and others on his team work to carve the large war memorial in plaster before it is cast in bronze. Views of the sculpted faces of the six Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima: Faces of John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block and Michael Strank. Brief glimpse of the original flag raising scene on Mount Suribachi in February 1945. Next scene, circa 1954 or 1955, shows the completed Marine Corps War Memorial in bronze, in Arlington Virginia, with Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial landmarks of Washington DC in the background. Close-up views of faces of a young boy, an elderly woman, and a middle aged man who removes his hat. American flag fluttering in the breeze atop the war memorial.
View from conning tower of the submarine, USS Bowfin, in Apra Harbor, Guam, during World War 2. Officers and crew of the USS Bowfin stand in formation on the foredeck. With his back to the camera, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, stands at a microphone, reading a citation. He then steps forward to decorate Commander Alexander Kelly Tyree with the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Bowfin (SS-287), on the Seventh War Patrol of that submarine during the period 25 January 1945 to 25 March 1945. Admiral Nimitz then proceeds to decorate other officers and sailors of the Bowfin, as Navy photographers take photographs. The Admiral with two officers and a sailor hold hand salutes a while as the ceremony is finishing. Admiral Nimitz then steps from the Bowfin, across another submarine docked next to it, and down to his launch. He salutes, as the launch pulls away. (Another view of Nimitz stepping into his launch is inserted here, as well.) Glimpse of the officers back on the Bowfin. (Note: Commander Tyree subsequently received a Gold Star in lieu of a Second Navy Cross, following the War Patrol of the Bowfin from 29 May 1945 to 4 July 1945.)