Peleliu: WWII’s Most Well-Preserved Battlefield

A one-hour documentary film narrated by Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Bloodline, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo).

The remote island of Peleliu is considered the most well-preserved battlefield in the world. It is illegal to remove any relic from the island, so the battlefield remains almost as it was when the fight here ended in the fall of 1944. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Marine and Army battle, which was supposed to last three days, but instead took 72 days of hard fighting to eliminate the Japanese from 500 caves on the island. Today, Peleliu, six miles long and two miles wide, is a living testament to the one of the Marines most bitter and eye-opening fights in World War II.

Few Americans, unless they are Marines or scuba divers, know Peleliu, a small island six miles long and two miles wide located in the Palau island group of the Caroline Islands in the southwest Pacific, about 550 miles due east of the Philippines. About 600 Palauans live on the island today. During World War II, Japanese forces occupied the Palau Islands, and an estimated 13,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors maintained and defended an airfield on Peleliu.