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Private Notes
Jack Thompson narrates Road to Tokyo, a landmark documentary on the last year of World War II in the Pacific – the forgotten story of Australia’s bloody role in defeating an enemy of unbelievable brutality.
“Road To Tokyo attempts to tell the mostly overlooked, dramatic story of the last year of the war,” says Mark Hamlyn, executive producer and Film Australia’s Head of Production. “This is a story about being so near to victory yet so far – a story of terrible human sacrifice in the last nine months of the conflict, which claimed thousands of Australian lives.”
This program coincides with the 60th anniversary of the armistice with Japan signed on August 15, 1945. Covering the final stage of the Pacific war, Road To Tokyo chronicles the period from late 1944 and its impact on Australia’s fighting forces, POWs, civilians and government; when Australia and the United States engaged in a fight to the death with Japan to end a war that began on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbour.
With defeat awaiting Germany after D-Day and Japan repulsed from Australia’s doorstep, it seemed to many people that the worst of World War II was over by 1944. But far from winding down, war in the Pacific was about to hot up. The final nine months of conflict would bring new horrors as Japan, though losing its Empire, remained defiantly unbowed.
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