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NHK TV to feature Tinian’s WWII history
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Posted on Jul 20 2011
Japan’s largest broadcast company, NHK, recently traveled to the small island of Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands for a story about the deployment of two atomic bombs from the island during World War II.
The NHK special will be aired in early August and will feature a behind-the-scenes look at the information war that went on between the U.S. Army Airforces’ 509th Composite Group stationed on Tinian at the time, and the Japanese Army and Navy. While on Tinian, the three-member shooting crew filmed aerial and land footage of North Field, where the bombs were loaded aboard waiting B-29s, the 509th Composite Group Camp and bomb assembly areas. The crew also interviewed 509th veteran Russel Gaachenbach.
The Marianas Visitors Authority assisted the team with securing film permits and helping clear access to the jungle-covered shooting sites.
Both atomic bombs, ultimately dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the war, were constructed and loaded on Tinian. North Field, the atomic bomb storage pits, invasion beaches, and numerous other World War II sites and artifacts on Tinian are still readily accessible to visitors today. [I](MVA)[/I]
