News crew members from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, or NHK, studied and gained information for their newest documentary at the Air Force Historical Research Agency here, Monday and Tuesday.

The NHK documentary series has 10 -12 million viewers and their newest episode will shed light on the actions of the Monuments Men in Japan.

The Monuments Men consisted of approximately 345 men and women with backgrounds in art history, architecture and education. Their mission was to protect and salvage valuable cultural art and landmarks of Europe and Asia among the ruins of World War II and find the art pieces stolen by Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. They served this purpose during the war and well after it ended.

NHK Special Content Development Center Producer Kojiro Yamada, who is a story teller by profession, said he especially likes telling the stories of WWII because it’s the last war in which his country fought. He said amongst all the negativity and tragic accounts of the war, he was pleased to find a rare positive note in this place in history.

“We’re surrounded by these horrible facts in general, but this one … it gives off a little hope that people still tried to understand each other back then .… The people tried to have some mutual understanding or sharing a common value even though the horrible war is happening,” he said.

The film crew journeyed to various locations of the United States to find as much information they could on the Monuments Men in Japan. However, their last stop found them here at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, where they discovered one of the last pieces of information.

Somewhere during their journey they came across the name Langdon Warner, an archaeologist and art historian from Harvard University who, during the war, created the Official List of Monuments for Japan, China, Korea, Siam and Thailand. Yamada and his news crew went on to find if this list of Asia's monuments and landmarks was at all related to the Japanese landmarks untouched amidst incendiary bombing or if it had any impact on the decisions made by military leaders during the bombings.

They didn’t come across any further information that would support this thought, until they came to Maxwell.

While doing research at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, Yamada came across a map that he had once seen before while working on a different documentary.  This time, however, he noticed something different. The map of Tokyo  dated in 1943 has the areas planned to be bombed highlighted in red, within the sea of red were “islands” that had been decided to be spared, these were the locations of historic landmarks, such as the Imperial Palace.

Dr. Daniel L. Haulman, Air Force Historical Research Agency Chief of Organization Histories Branch, told the news crew during an interview he believes it would have been difficult to avoid certain areas during the bombings, because of the materials used in Japanese infrastructure at the time. The incendiary bombing attacks of March 9-10, 1945 destroyed almost 16 square miles of Tokyo and another 16 square miles in May of that year.

Haulman said he had not done a lot of research in regards to the bombings in Japan, but believes it is possible the Americans deliberately avoided destroying cultural landmarks. However, he added that may have been because they were concentrating on military and industrial targets and the landmarks were just naturally avoided, or their architecture and surrounding parks deterred the fire storms resulting from the bombs.

The information the crew found at the Air Force Historical Research Agency gave them an inside look on strategic bombing and how and why the decisions were made.

Yamada said he cannot imagine Japan without the culturally important landmarks and that a certain identity comes from those places. He said the preservation of the landmarks was due to a tremendous effort by the Americans during WWII that had an equally tremendous result.

Yamada and his film crew have yet to give the documentary a name that they find fitting, but it is scheduled to air January 2017.