(door clangs loudly)
- I've never opened a submarine door.
Welcome to What's Inside?
This is a unique series that we are doing
where we are touring the national parks
and the national monuments
in the United States.
- Right behind us right now,
this is the World War II Memorial.
The World War II Memorial
was dedicated in 2004.
For us it's special
because my grandfather,
Lincoln's great-grandfather,
served in World War II.
Two years ago, three
months before he died,
he came here and did an honor trip
and was able to see
this monument in person
and remember his times and
remember his fallen comrades.
(triumphant music)
What you see on the surface is beautiful.
It represents all of the
states and the territories
and also represents the
battles that were fought
in the Pacific and the Atlantic.
But we're gonna show you
something that you've never seen.
- Ever.
Not many people have ever seen this.
- Yes, we are gonna go
underneath the memorial
and see what's inside of it.
This is gonna be kind of crazy and cool.
Let's go.
All right, we're going down.
- Oh, it's steep.
- Some steep stairs.
- Whoa!
- This is an entrance
that none of you would be able to go down.
But we get special access today.
(quick footsteps on stairs)
- Okay, after we go down the stairs,
it takes us to this room right here
with a giant watertight door.
It's so that water doesn't come in here
and then flood out all the
different machines and ruin them.
One thing I think is cool.
(door clangs loudly)
Do you hear that noise?
- Oh, it's so loud!
- That slams shut the
doors to the ventilation,
so give us a few minutes.
We probably won't have
too much oxygen in here.
But it makes this room sealed
so that the water doesn't
go in and damage the pumps.
So now, we need to reset that.
Pull reset.
Pull this down.
(metal scrapes)
The doors should be open now.
We're ready to go.
Look at all these handles.
We're gonna try to open all
of them 'til we get this open.
(dreamy synth pop music)
- We're goin' in.
- Whoa!
- This is the main control station.
(loud machinery hisses)
- This controls
how high the water goes,
how low it is.
- For certain ceremonies,
they'll have different ones on
than for other ceremonies.
Right over here is the
wind velocity controls.
So if the wind gets over 25 miles per hour
this will automatically see that
and it will cut the
fountains down to half-mast.
There's a lot more to the story.
This is where every drop of water comes in
for each one of the fountains.
- It's amazing.
- Giant filtration tanks,
these will filter out the dirt.
The last thing you want
is to damage the pipes
and have a bunch of dirt inside of there,
and ruin all the nozzles.
These filtration systems
are super important.
I wanna bring you right to
the center of the fountain.
Let's get through this loud room.
(upbeat synth pop music)
See this giant one back here?
Oh, yes, I touched, I touched.
This right here is just for the fountains
that are near the center that shoot up.
Get down from there, Lincoln.
You're not supposed to be up there.
- Okay, okay.
- Just kidding.
(upbeat synth pop music)
First impressions in this room?
Much quieter.
Much quieter, there
aren't a bunch of pumps.
So now we can show you all the pipes
and where they go for the fountain.
- We're at the center of
the fountain right now.
This little marker that I'm standing on
just marks where the
center of the fountain is.
- And if you wanna know exactly
what we're talking about
we're gonna put a shot right now
up the center of the
fountain from up above.
- It's up there.
- Okay, let me put that in there.
It's really a special
thing to be down here
underneath the war memorial.
The way that the memorial is set up
is that you have two arches.
On the arches that
commemorate all of the battles
that took place in those areas.
Right now we can see all the way
down the Pacific and Atlantic.
Right behind me is the Pacific Arch
which commemorates all of the battles
that happened in the
Pacific during the war,
and no, this is not leaking.
This is all condensation
because right now we are
underneath the water table.
And underneath the
ground a little ways down
we're basically in swampland.
- I see the Atlantic Arch.
All the pipes above me go straight there.
- Okay, perfect, let's go.
We're in a unique spot right now.
This is water.
This is actual water under the ground.
And you see a pump under there.
There it goes, there goes the streams.
And then look down here.
You can kind of hear a sucking air.
That's cause the pump is getting so low
and there's little whirlpools
that are gathering.
This is just one of the
pumps that we've turned on.
There are four pumps down here.
So all of that water
that we just pumped out,
that was a lot of water.
It went to the Potomac
within an area called the tidal basin.
That's where a lot of
the cherry blossoms are.
And down here right near the center
we actually have a wall that
commemorates all the people
that worked on this project.
Up above you have all the heroes
and then underneath, kind of hidden
where the public doesn't see,
are all the people that worked on it.
I think that's a good way to do it.
They still get their respect,
but they don't try to
overshadow the people
that really sacrificed for
our country that are up above.
(yells above machinery)
And right now
we're walking back out
through the loud,
machine-operated system area.
- It's too loud!
- We saw pretty much the entire
underground below the pond.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this
and if you did, share this
with somebody that loves DC.
You have to show them how much work goes
into this war memorial.
- I would never guess this much work.
Whoa! Now it's all quiet.
Echo, echo!
(quick footsteps on stairs)
- And we're back to the mainland.
I'll move.
- [Camera Operator] Okay, that's better.
