Price for Peace

In honor of Memorial Day, NBC has put together this special chronicling the events that led up to the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With executive producer Steven Spielberg and the National D-Day Museum working together, this documentary retells the end of World War II with a combination of wartime footage and commentary from surviving veterans. Video of flamethrowers flushing Japanese soldiers out of bunkers, dead bodies floating up on shore, and rotting corpses being eaten by maggots gives you the feeling of actually being there, as difficult to stomach as that often is. Also, with Paul Tibbets—the pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima—and other Japanese and American soldiers still reacting with every range of emotion, the permanent effects of the war come across loud and clear.