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EnhanceTV :: Educational TV :: History :: Road To Tokyo

Road To Tokyo

After D-Day in Europe, and with Australia safe at last from Japanese invasion, the worst of World War II appears to be over by late 1944. But the conflict in the Pacific is about to hot up and it will be a long, costly road to Tokyo for the Allies.

Three years of war against a brutal, fanatical and suicidal Asian enemy have run down Australia's food supply, munitions and manpower.

The nation is also running low on hope for 22,000 soldiers caged in POW hell-holes. When the time comes to end the war we want to be in the frontline, but our new American Allies have other ideas.

Tension mounts as General Douglas MacArthur, Pacific supremo and Australia's saviour, sidelines our forces in his grand plan to knock out Japan. He returns in glory to liberate the Philippines while our troops get to mop up resistance in Borneo - an operation many can't see the point of.

Road To Tokyo, narrated by the actor Jack Thompson, blends archival footage and eyewitness interviews with war veterans, POWs and civilians, plus insight from historians, to tell the story of the final life-and-death struggle against Japan.

It reveals the often overlooked contribution Australia made in 1944-45 as MacArthur island-hopped his way to Okinawa before the atom bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ended the war.

Tokyo was the prize. For Australia, the road there was signposted with some of the bloodiest campaigns of World War II - and the memory of 8031 POWs who never came home.

PRODUCTION DETAILS:
A Film Australia Production produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Executive producers: Mark Hamlyn and Alison Leigh Producer: Sally Regan. Writer/director: Graham Shirley.