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00:20with a strong foothold in mainland China Japan sought to advance its dominance of
00:26the Pacific, establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. To those ends, in December 1941, the Empire launched a
00:41globally synchronized attack, striking Hong Kong, Malaya, and Pearl Harbor.
00:48But, as World War II dragged on, it would become clear that Japan had woken the American sleeping giant, and
00:57the Empire's extensive reach into the Pacific had weakened its grasp.
01:02The Empire's still alive.
01:04The Empire's still alive.
01:23The Empire's still alive.
01:33A new year was beginning, and a Japanese soldier wrote in his diary,
01:39I greet 1942, a year of great significance, with a body and mind as clear and clean as an azure
01:47sky.
01:48In this year, more than any other, we must fulfill the path of the warrior.
01:56Japan's military objectives in the opening days of this war, she begins, is to seize the great British fortress of
02:04Singapore.
02:06The last British forces, battered by their fighting, retreated down the Malay Peninsula and crossed the causeway linking to Singapore
02:15on January 31st.
02:19By the time the Japanese pursuit reached Singapore Island, they were outnumbered by more than two-to-one, had been
02:26marching for over 50 days, and were short of ammunition.
02:31Every soldier carried a manual that told him,
02:35When you encounter the enemy after landing, think of yourself as an avenger. Here is the man whose death will
02:42lighten your heart.
02:45The Japanese plan, of course, is we will dominate the airs and the seas around Singapore,
02:52and we will drive south with an army under General Yamashita to seize Singapore.
03:00We don't need infrastructure.
03:03Our soldiers will use mountain bikes to outflank the enemy, and we'll have support from airplanes and from ships at
03:11sea.
03:18On the 1st of February, 1942, the equivalent of four British divisions stood in Singapore.
03:26They had blown the causeway to the mainland, but the Japanese had boats.
03:32Seven days later, the Japanese landed on the island of Palau-Ubin, but the attack was a feint.
03:39The main invasion came when three Japanese divisions crossed the Johor Strait.
03:45Their beachheads, well established by the 9th, they advanced towards Singapore City.
03:52Winston Churchill cabled General Wavell, the commander in the Far East.
03:58No question of surrender must be entertained until after protracted fighting in the ruins of Singapore City.
04:06The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs.
04:10The whole reputation of our country and our race is at stake.
04:15As the Japanese faced greater numbers,
04:20General Yamashita ordered his artillery to fire as though their supply of ammunition was inexhaustible.
04:28Japanese bombers pummeled the city as their engineers patched the causeway.
04:37Yamashita brought his tanks across by the 14th, the day that the Japanese advanced, reached the Alexandra Hospital.
04:47A British officer advancing under a white flag was bayoneted.
04:53Patients and staff, numbering about 250, were captured, and most of them were killed over the next 24 hours.
05:11The military was defeated at first in Australia.
05:17It happened to be fought for the Northanger University in the South of America.
05:18Singapore has never had to do one more perpendicular to the border in Asia.
05:25Singapore was a bridge to the German war.
05:26Singapore was a target for the Germans.
05:27Singapore was a target for theils of the French and the French.
05:29Singapore was a target for the Germans.
05:29Singapore was a target for the Germans to much.
05:29I think that the war was not in Japan.
05:32I think that there were some of the English people in Singapore,
05:36and then I was surprised that there were some people in Singapore.
05:43But I think that there were some of the figures that were not in the country.
05:47I think that there were some of the people in Singapore.
06:01On the 15th of February, General Arthur Percival, commanding Singapore, wrote in his diary,
06:08There is no hope or help on the horizon.
06:13He surrendered his command of about 80,000 troops, the greatest defeat in the history of British arms.
06:28Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported the fall of Singapore, claiming Japan is the sun that shines for world peace.
06:40But in every occupied territory, the killing of civilians seemed to contradict that boast.
06:47In Singapore, Operation Suk-Ching purged through cleansing, targeted Chinese males aged 18 to 50.
06:55Japan places the death toll at 5,000.
06:59The Singaporean estimate is between 20 and 50,000.
07:12It looked as though Japan was going to end victory after victory.
07:17And so there was a lot of excitement.
07:19After the fall of Singapore, there was a huge celebration in Tokyo.
07:24Thousands and thousands of people showed up.
07:38With success in Singapore, the Japanese controlled nearly all of Southeast Asia.
07:47The Philippines, an American colony since 1898, remained the only Allied stronghold in the region.
07:57America's Filipino air fleet was ravaged in Japan's initial strikes.
08:03Allied supply depots were located close to invasion points and quickly lost to the attackers.
08:11Still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack, Washington was unable to deliver adequate supplies or reinforcements.
08:20For three months, the U.S. and Filipino forces held Bataan against the Japanese.
08:29When General Wainwright surrendered on May 6, 1942, Japan's war of conquest was effectively over.
08:41One-sixth of the Earth's surface had been occupied in less than six months.
08:47Japan had seized more than two and a half million square kilometers of land in Southeast Asia,
08:52and practically the entire western half of the Pacific Ocean.
08:58More than 150 million people had been added to Emperor Hirohito's subjects.
09:06More than half a million European and American civilians,
09:10and close to 150,000 military prisoners, were in Japanese hands.
09:36Japan had not lost a single battleship, aircraft carrier, heavy or light cruiser,
09:42while it had gained food and resources of great importance.
09:47Conquest had netted Japan's 70% of the world's tin supply,
09:52most of its natural rubber, and the oil production of the Dutch East Indies.
09:58However, had the assault on oil-rich targets failed, Japan's war would have been over.
10:05Instead, captured wells were supplying Japan with almost as much fuel, denied her by the American embargo.
10:15When Emperor Hirohito heard the news of the Dutch formally surrendering their possessions,
10:20he said,
10:22The fruits of war are tumbling into our mouth almost too quickly.
10:26He was right.
10:30The scale and speed of the Japanese offensive posed problems which Japan would never solve.
10:40Japan has in hand this enormously expanded colonial territory.
10:45How are you going to manage it?
10:46How are you going to administer it?
10:47And the plans are very kind of ad hoc.
10:50No colonial civil service had been created,
10:54and those installed proved incapable of understanding variations in language and culture.
11:01A violent chapter of occupation was about to be written.
11:21Overseeing their new empire,
11:23the Japanese resorted to stern tactics,
11:26which quickly alienated the local populations.
11:31Like military and western internees,
11:35natives had to bow to the Japanese,
11:37and were slapped in the face if they failed to do so.
11:40Boards were erected in towns and villages,
11:43listing the laws.
11:45Colonial rule was replaced by colonial rule,
11:48and popular support for the Japanese occupation failed to emerge.
11:54Japan's wartime ideology was ripe with contradiction.
11:57The empire saw itself as the liberators from western oppression.
12:03However, a deeply ingrained belief in racial superiority
12:08empowered the conduct for which the Japanese occupying forces became known.
12:14Those beliefs were expressed in media produced for the territories,
12:19in song, in cinema, and in cartoon strips.
12:24There's no ministry of propaganda.
12:26There's no Joseph Goebbels who leads both psychologically in terms of
12:32what is good propaganda, or in terms of policy.
12:36It's kind of a mess, and kind of complex.
12:40But at the same time, that allows it to take a very amorphous approach.
12:45During the war, Japanese comic art was supported by the state,
12:49and used for propaganda purposes in leaflets dropped into war zones.
12:55It appeared in the magazines that children read,
12:57and the newspapers their parents consumed.
13:16This is something different.
13:18This is something new.
13:20This is going to be racial harmony.
13:23This is going to be Asian self-determination.
13:25This is going to be Japanese leadership of Asian independent movements.
13:32And in keeping with that, the Japanese proceeded to use the Manchukuo model,
13:37the model of the client state, the putative independent state,
13:40and set up all of these different puppet, or client, or satellite governments
13:45throughout all the occupied areas of Southeast Asia.
13:54The biggest problem with this concept was Japan's words and actions did not match.
14:01So, it became more brutal and entitled, as the situation became more desperate.
14:13One of the great goals of the Code Prosperity Sphere, according to a Japanese report,
14:19was to ensure that Japanese immigrants were in control of agriculture wherever they migrated.
14:25The document declared,
14:27We must plant the blood of the Yamato race in this soil,
14:31and stressed that Japanese immigrants were to act as mentors and role models in their host country,
14:38while forbidding them from intermingling with other races.
14:43Hoping to legitimize the sphere,
14:46Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo held the Great East Asia Conference in late 1943.
14:53The participants were obliged to conduct the proceedings
14:57in their only common language,
14:59English.
15:02Like,
15:291941年8月にイギリス・アメリカ側が大西洋憲章というのを出すんですねつまり戦争目的、連合国側の戦争目的というのを発表しますこれに対抗して少しでもアジアの人々を日本に引きつけるそのために英米の支配、植民地支配を批判して
15:36決して日本はそれとは違うんだということを強調するのがこの大東亜会議の目的だったんです
15:45Hideki Tojo's attempt to shore up the co-prosperity
15:49sphere with his conference was too latePresident Roosevelt had announced that unconditional surrender was the only way the war would
15:58end
16:27日本の支配が最も高い戦争を利用せることができる日本の支配が最も高い戦争について日本の支配がありません日本の支配がちわれているときに日本の支配が高い戦争になるのは日本の支配が大きな戦争について
16:29them with its own japan was not a large economy the economies of the occupied areas in southeast
16:36asia had been enmeshed into the global economies of europe and north america japan especially
16:43wartime japan was simply not in a position either to buy materials from southeast asia
16:48or to provide manufactured goods and that led to an increasingly difficult economic situation
16:56which made all the other hardships all the brutality of the japanese occupation seem
17:01all the worse in batavia now dakota the rice warehouses were full but the food was reserved
17:09for the japanese when desperate residents stormed the warehouses the japanese beheaded some of the
17:17protesters and stuck their heads on poles in china and from singapore to the philippines
17:25the civilian death toll mounted in the face of violence hunger and the breakdown of medical
17:31services the number of deaths caused by the military across the entire war is impossible
17:38to fathom with figures ranging from three to ten million an executive order declared that western
17:46languages have ceased to exist schools were closed pending the completion of a new curriculum that
17:53included the compulsory study of japanese the roman calendar was even replaced 1942 became 2602
18:04denoting the number of years since the first japanese emperor had ascended the throne
18:12in the absence of civilian administrators the fate of the conquered lay in the hands of the military
18:20military their excesses were not reported in the newspapers and are still contested the headlines
18:27of the day preferred to exult in the apparently endless victories the war ministry censored all articles
18:34that had to do with military affairs so there was a high degree of misreporting and after a while people
18:42caught on that the figures were being tinkered with and the results of battles were being misreported
19:04across japan's occupied territories neighborhood associations known as tonurugumi managed households in an air raid or similar wartime event
19:17there are more than a million of them each comprising between 10 and 12 households
19:24instructions handed down by the government to the tonurugumi included rise early give thanks
19:32for what you have cooperate with the authorities render public service be punctual encourage thrift and
19:40enhance physical and spiritual discipline censorship reinforced these instructions western music and
19:49film were beyond suppression treated as though they never existed a call went out for the voluntary surrender
19:59of western records despite the involvement of the police it was not very successful
20:06one hollywood film passed by the censors 1939's mr smith goes to washington showed james stewart's heroic
20:15campaign against the corruption of american democracy
20:23tonurugumi slipped easily into a climate of fear and oppression an ideal seedbed for informers
20:30the network became a force for widespread repression 22 special police stations were established throughout japan
20:40when conducting surveillance the home ministry ordered the police to investigate the career environment
20:47mental and physical conduct and changes in thought of the person in question
20:56one of the tools for bringing people together was the repertoire of tonurugumi songs one of which asked
21:03why should we be afraid of air raids the big sky is protected with iron defenses for young and
21:10old it is time to stand up we bear the honor of defending the homeland come on enemy planes come
21:18on many times
21:19times takahashi aiko wrote in her diary each time there is an air defense drill we are made to line
21:27up in single file call out our names and roll call is taken
21:34when the enemy planes did eventually come and bomb wood and paper houses
21:41the tonurugumi's endless hours of practicing passing buckets of water along a human chain
21:48were of little use
22:05on april 18th 1942 16 specially adapted b-25 bombers prepared to launch from their carrier hornet
22:18in the history books the operation carried the name of its commander the doolittle raid
22:26the bombers departed for tokyo and four other cities
22:32they weren't expecting this and one of my diarists writes about hearing the sound of explosions in the
22:41sky looking up and seeing anti-aircraft shells exploding and she learns that american bombers have
22:47bombed tokyo the aircraft didn't have the range to return to the carrier
22:53so they flew on to land in china where most crashed crews that fell into japanese hands became prisoners of
23:01war or were shot we all feel pretty strongly about these boys that we were with and if there's any
23:08way to get
23:11even
23:12we'll certainly try it was a kind of publicity stunt a way of showing the japanese that they were not
23:19invulnerable that they could be attacked
23:26naval strategists and tacticians in japan recognized that the defense perimeter that had been constructed had been broken
23:37bombs had fallen on tokyo close to the imperial palace threatening the life of the emperor one citizen
23:45described the raid's effect we started to doubt that we were invincible
23:51the shock and shame cried out for a response from a military cast whose first duty was to defend the
23:59emperor
24:00it was evident to japanese planners that flights from the nearby chinese mainland were possible
24:08on april 21st 1942 days after the doolittle raid japan's chinese expeditionary army was ordered to knock
24:18out air bases in chekyang and kiangsi
24:24by early july japan's forces had met all of their objectives but china did not stop fighting
24:33detaining 820 000 japanese troops from operations elsewhere
24:44shang kai-shek felt that the contribution of chinese forces were not being appreciated
24:50and promises were not being kept
24:56the feeling of inadequate appreciation of china's role in the war would not diminish
25:0230 percent of those who died in the second world war were chinese
25:06and 39 percent of japan's casualties were taken in the fight with china
25:22japan began planning a counter blow to the doolittle the front
25:27one which would neutralize america's capacity to launch raids on the home islands
25:33but the planning exposed divisions in japan's military command
25:39contention between japan's army and navy could be traced back to clan rivalry in feudal times
25:48military efficiency was compromised at every step
25:52by competition for resources money and manufacturing capacity
25:58the rivalry was dramatically illustrated in the aircraft industry
26:05both services were battling to build the most effective air arm
26:09a 1943 survey found that an industry with the capacity to produce 53 000 aircraft annually
26:17was producing less than 10 000
26:21each service commissioned too many prototypes striving to outdo the other
26:29it was also calculated that only 55 percent of the aluminium allocated to manufacturing
26:35ended up in aircraft the rest fell into the black market
26:42the inter-service rivalry reached levels of damage impossible to reconcile
26:47with the image of a unified and obedient nation
26:52the navy has promised the army that this will be a short war against the united states britain
26:58the dutch and so the army sort of accepts the navy's assurances at face value
27:04but of course by the end of 1942 that all does not pan out and so the army begins to
27:10feel betrayed by the navy
27:14the army which had little need for oil controlled the spoils won from the former dutch colonies
27:21in several crucial actions they denied the navy access
27:28of the two services emperor hirohito said if there is friction between them this war cannot be concluded successfully
27:38hirohito was right
27:42the divisions within the military were exacerbated by a factional argument within the ranks of the imperial japanese navy
27:54so
27:55There are two types of ideas.
27:57One is the one is the one is the one is the one.
28:03The Japanese ships will destroy the United States and destroy the entire Earth.
28:11That is the one that will be able to use the entire Earth.
28:18This is the one is the one in the United States.
28:39To disrupt US plans to utilize Australia as a staging ground
28:44for offensive action, the Japanese naval staff favored occupation
28:49of southern New Guinea.
28:51The combined fleet staff, led by Yamamoto, argued for a full-scale engagement
28:57with the American Pacific Fleet.
29:04In a fatal compromise, the Japanese agreed to do both.
29:13So they sent an invasion fleet covered by part of Yamamoto's combined fleet
29:19a carrier division of two big carriers, Zuekaku and Shokaku,
29:22to cover the invasion fleet that's going to seize Port Moresby.
29:27And that will be a jumping-off point for further Japanese plans
29:31to cut the strategic sea lines between the United States and Australia.
29:41On the 4th of May, an invasion force to initiate the naval staff strategy
29:46sailed for Port Moresby, the key to New Guinea.
30:03The American codebreakers in Hawaii, under Joe Rochefort, break the code.
30:09And they figure out that there's something up in the Coral Sea.
30:13Nimitz decides to take a gamble and send two of his carriers,
30:18the Yorktown and the Lexington, off to the South Pacific to the Coral Sea.
30:25The battle was initiated when US carrier Yorktown
30:29launched surprise attacks on Japanese forces in the area.
30:36The next day, the main Japanese strike force,
30:39built around two heavy carriers, entered the Coral Sea.
30:45The American and Japanese fleets engaged without significant results on the 7th.
30:50But around 0800 the following morning,
30:57the two forces located each other.
31:02The Japanese had people who were carrier admirals,
31:07who understood how to use the aircraft,
31:09and they had up to six carriers working together in coordinated groups.
31:14But many in the Japanese Navy still believed in this doctrine,
31:18that the carriers were just the auxiliaries that came first,
31:22and then you followed them up with the heavy ships,
31:26whether they were battleships or heavy cruises.
31:28That never happened, and Coral Sea proved it.
31:32For the first time in history,
31:34those serving aboard opposing ships in a naval action
31:38never sighted each other.
31:41The Lexington was hit and abandoned.
31:46Shukaku disabled and forced to retire.
31:51And Zuikaku, though undamaged,
31:53lost 40% of her air group.
31:58The Americans were obliged to withdraw,
32:01allowing the Japanese to claim victory.
32:05But it was a victory that compelled Japan to abandon plans
32:09for an invasion of New Guinea from the sea.
32:14The Japanese Navy doesn't regard the Coral Sea as a defeat.
32:17They sort of see it as sort of a half-baked victory,
32:19and so they refuse to see it as a defeat.
32:24But Yamamoto makes the argument
32:26that the American Navy needs to be finished off once and for all.
32:34Yamamoto's moment had arrived.
32:36The action of the combined fleet
32:38would finally neutralize American naval strength in the Pacific,
32:42and deal with a small Hawaiian outlier
32:45that had provided cover for the carriers
32:47from which the Doolittle Raiders flew.
32:51A place 4,000 kilometers from the nearest continent
32:55in any direction.
32:57A place called Midway.
33:01The other thing is that the American vessel
33:03was not to war must be fought in the US.
33:06The wings of the military were placed in Midway,
33:07in the midway,
33:10the military was attacked.
33:17After the military's military shells,
33:21the military military were alleged to try.
33:25And when the military military was in the US.
33:28I'd never be able to win.
33:32I'd never be able to win.
33:33I'd never be able to win.
34:00The battle opened on June 4th, when aircraft from Admiral Nagumo's first striking force attacked aircraft and installations on Midway
34:10itself.
34:11When the aircraft returned, the Admiral decided to re-equip them with bombs for a second attack on the island.
34:22At 10.20, he gave the order to launch when ready.
34:28But before Nagumo's bombers took to the sky, Lieutenant Commander Wade McCluskey of the USS Enterprise led his dive bombers
34:37in the charge.
34:39The carrier Kaga was hit first, then Akagi, then Soryu, when USS Yorktown's bombers joined the assault.
34:51Japan lost four carriers, more than 3,000 seamen, and 250 aircraft.
35:27Midway
35:28Japan's strategy was destroyed in Japan.
35:33If the sea lane was destroyed by Japan,
35:37the Japanese ship was attacked by Japan.
35:41That is why the sea lane was destroyed in Japan.
35:48This is why the Japanese ship was destroyed by Japan.
36:01The news of Midway was passed to Prime Minister Tojo in typically obtuse language.
36:07As General Moritake Tanabe announced, the Navy has made a great mistake.
36:14And that was sort of a turning point.
36:17People began to sense that things weren't going well.
36:21Japan's losses equalized the strength of the opposing fleets.
36:24But between 1942 and 1944, Japan would add six new fleet carriers, the U.S.A. 14.
36:38By 1943, it was clear that the mass production of warships by the Americans was an advantage.
36:46They had a production line of them.
36:50In fact, throughout the war, for every major naval vessel built in Japanese shipyards, the
36:58Americans built 16.
37:05Japan was soon struggling to bring home the war material plundered throughout the Pacific.
37:11With little strategy or resources to safeguard transport ships, they were sunk in unsustainable numbers.
37:44In 1942, 40% of the oil from capture of the U.S.A.
37:49fields reached Japan.
37:52Within two years, the figure had fallen to just 5%.
38:04The Pacific Ocean covers an area greater than all of the land masses combined.
38:09Its scale dwarfs the scattered patches of dry land that rise from its waters.
38:16But the existence of these islands made extending the Japanese Empire into the Pacific feasible.
38:24A ring of fortified islands would make the empire defensible.
38:29But garrisoning and supplying those islands would be, according to the Imperial Vice Chief
38:35of Staff, Lieutenant General Tsukada Osamu, like sowing salt in the sea.
38:43The Japanese are always overreaching.
38:45And each time they take one base, they think, well, we need to push our defensive perimeter
38:49even further out so that we can try and make sure that we're defending that as well.
38:53And that's essentially what's happened.
38:54First, they've taken truck.
38:55They've set up a base there.
38:57They've thought we need to defend trucks, so they've pushed out the defensive perimeter
39:00further and taken Rabao.
39:02Once they've got Rabao, they think, well, now we need to protect Rabao.
39:08The Empire had inadequate ships and aircraft to compete in a war based on mobility.
39:18Japan, where since 1938 the military had consumed 75% of government expenditure, was simply outmatched
39:27by American industry.
39:31Each American frontline soldier was supported in the Pacific by four tons of supplies.
39:38Each Japanese combatant by a single kilogram.
39:44As opposed to the Americans, who had a 16 or 17 to 1 ratio for everybody in their supply line
39:50and the single combatant on the island, the Japanese ratio was roughly 1 to 1.
39:58Sixty percent of Japanese soldiers who are recorded as having died in combat in actual fact
40:05probably died of starvation.
40:24In every modern nation with the military, the state has to commemorate its fallen soldiers.
40:30It becomes a very important part of the propaganda of modern nation states, and it was very important in Japan
40:37as well.
40:40Fallen soldiers were commemorated at the Yasukuni Shrine, which before the war was a public institution.
40:50When a loved one died or was killed on active service, the remains seldom reached home.
40:58Hiroshi Fujino was head of a Tokyo Tonorigumi.
41:03One of his duties was to read a statement to his group.
41:06Families of those soldiers going to active fronts are advised to save locks of hair or pieces of fingernails
41:14to guard against not having anything at all of the person of the honored dead.
41:20Soldiers were told that when they died on the battlefield, their souls would return to Japan,
41:26and that they would be enshrined in this particular temple.
41:33Instead of their loved ones' remains, relatives were visited by a messenger, who would recite,
41:40Please accept this notice, comforted by the knowledge that your son died for his imperial majesty, the emperor.
41:47We express our deepest condolences to the soul of a hero.
41:54For families of fallen soldiers, the sacrifice that they had made was widely recognized.
42:01They were embraced by their neighbors, they were given pensions,
42:04and they were held up as the very kind of Japanese that were supporting and defending the nation.
42:27With virtually all able-bodied young men in the armed services,
42:32women assumed jobs in steel mills, coal mines, and munition factories.
42:36Company president, Chikue Nakajima, complained,
42:41Skilled mechanics were drafted and replaced by school children.
42:45The result was that one of his planes, the KI-84, earned the nickname, the Pilot Killer.
42:53So there is an industrialization of the younger female labor force,
42:57and of course moving them from school into the factories where they're making bombs and whatnot.
43:04Retired army officers showed civilians how to combat invaders.
43:09Several thousand Buddhist monks were conscripted, divested of their robes, and sent to munitions plants.
43:18Every inch of arable land was used to grow food.
43:24All disposable metal was slated to be melted down for weapons.
43:30Even the gates of sacred shrines were dismantled and shipped to munitions factories.
43:38Sacrifices and shortages were changing perceptions of the war.
43:51However, nothing could be allowed to close the public bathhouses.
43:56As firewood grew scarce, people were encouraged to donate their old clogs to keep the boilers going.
44:04The police had the power to replace any bathhouse manager who failed to keep the water hot.
44:11The most innocent of pleasures were reshaped to meet the needs of war.
44:16Recreational fishermen were required to turn their catch over to army or navy food centers.
44:24Everyone was expected to participate in paramilitary drills, as well as air raid exercises.
44:32People were told when to exercise and how to pray.
44:35The government openly proclaimed its goal, which was the creation of flawless public order.
44:44However, the citizens of Japan did not blindly conform to the commands of the state.
44:55There was no organized resistance or meaningful protest, but there was disobedience.
45:00There was fraud and cheating.
45:03People queuing for rations claimed them for the dead and non-existent.
45:08An army of aunts, uncles and grandparents that swelled to a ghost population estimated at 1 million.
45:17There was a flourishing illegal black market.
45:21The inevitable effect wherever rationing was introduced.
45:25When Kenzo Nakajima returned home on leave, he was shocked.
45:29Prices were higher, he recalled, and the black market was outrageous.
45:37A survey showed that at least half of all families were supplementing their rations from the black market.
45:44By 1942, families of five spent an average of four and a half hours a day standing in line for
45:52food, sometimes receiving nothing.
45:55Oshima Shisu, who lived in Kanazawa, wrote that she heard they were selling sweet potatoes, and we lined up from
46:03very early in the morning, but in the end, couldn't get any.
46:07So people gradually are getting less and less fish protein.
46:12The same thing happens with the vegetable ration, that it shrinks to the point where Japanese are getting virtually nothing.
46:20And food distribution is handled by the neighborhood associations.
46:24And of course, many people, especially in the cities, can't survive on what they're getting in the way of food
46:31rations.
46:33Tokyo journalist Kiyosura Kiyoshi observed, everywhere there is a shortage of rice.
46:39He later noted that, there is only rice for two meals a day, and a third meal is unthinkable.
46:48Another alternative was to buy directly from farmers, and this was a practice called kaidashi.
46:54And they weren't supposed to do that either.
46:57But on any given day in the city of Tokyo in 1944, between eight to 20,000 people left the
47:05city to buy directly from farmers.
47:08And 40% of those who trekked to the countryside to buy from farmers were women, and 60% were
47:17children.
47:17Because it was believed that the authorities, if they caught children, would be more tolerant, and let them go.
47:38The Japanese public knew from every detail of daily life that the war was not running in Japan's favor.
47:45Although the tightly censored and manipulated media shielded the population from news.
47:54That changed in 1943, when defeat in the Aleutian Islands was reported.
48:01And for the first time, the government used a word that it hadn't used before.
48:06The word gyokusai in Japanese, which means the shattering of the jewel.
48:11And gyokusai is a pair of Chinese characters that comes from a 7th century Chinese history called the Book of
48:20Northern Qi.
48:21And the word gyokusai appears in a sentence that reads,
48:25I would rather be a shattered jewel than a perfect gem.
48:31In other words, I'd rather die and shatter than survive the war.
48:37And so the government began to use the term gyokusai to refer to the collective deaths of many Japanese servicemen.
48:49In March 1943, in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, American aircraft had surprised a convoy transporting an entire division
48:59to reinforce Ley and Salamua.
49:05All eight transports were sent to the bottom, along with four of the accompanying destroyers.
49:13In September, the Allies executed amphibious landings at Ley and the Japanese evacuated Salamua.
49:23There was no more news of brilliant victories.
49:26There were greater sacrifices to come.
49:30And soon, the bombs would fall.
49:34Japan was losing the war.
49:45PBS America discovers how monasteries shaped every aspect of medieval Britain
49:50and created a dazzling array of art, architecture and literature.
49:54In Saints and Sinners, a millennium of monasteries.
49:58Next.
50:06The
50:07For more information visit www.fema.org
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