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An insight into Imperial Japan's military motives, culture, startling initial success as an aggressor, and eventual dramatic downfall, beginning as the Empire of Japan rises on the international stage.
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00:04December 7th 1941 at 0750 hours the first wave of Japanese aircraft
00:23The attack plunged the United States into war and transformed the conflict that had begun
00:31in Europe into a global war. However, Japan's role in World War II did not begin at Pearl
00:42Harbor. But years earlier, in 1937, when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China.
01:13In 1926, a new Japanese emperor ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne and a new era was announced.
01:21It took the name Showa, meaning enlightened peace. The emperor was Hirohito.
01:30They were always in the United States.
01:34They were always in the United States and Europe.
01:39They became a king.
01:40They were always in the country.
01:42They were always in the country.
02:01Hirohito ruled according to a constitution drawn up after Japan's doors, which had been closed for centuries, were forced to
02:09open.
02:12Less than a hundred years before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan existed in selective seclusion.
02:21Then, in 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry and his Black Fleet sailed into Tokyo Bay with instructions from the American president
02:31to prize the country open.
02:40This is the era of high imperialism. All the powers, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, everybody is in the
02:47game of expanding their territory.
02:50And it's at that moment that Japan is involuntarily incorporated into the global trading system and the world interstate system
02:59by the United States, who comes in and imposes, under gunpoint, an unequal treaty on Japan.
03:04Fifteen years later, in 1868, Japan entered a transformative period, the Meiji Restoration.
03:13So this triggers a revolution in the country, the overthrow of the old regime, and the new government that comes
03:20in immediately embarks on aggressive and rapid program of defensive modernization.
03:28The program's objective was to see Japan recognized as a civilized and modern state by the Western powers.
03:37The Meiji Constitution was created because the Meiji oligarchs thought that it was necessary for a modernized, civilized nation-state
03:46to have a constitution.
03:48The Constitution created a parliament known as the Diet, enshrined the supreme role of the emperor, and placed the military
03:57beyond the reach of the parliament.
04:00Whether or not the oligarchs envisaged the rise of militarism at the time of creation is debatable, it certainly made
04:09it easier for the military to intrude into politics from late 1920s onwards.
04:16The military could act without political sanction.
04:20Their supreme head was the emperor, who, it was assumed, would never wield the extent of his power.
04:54The emperor was not just the head of the army, he was the father of the emperor.
05:05The emperor was advised by his close circle of his advisors, and on that advice, he would direct things like
05:12appointing the cabinet and opening the Diet, taking that ceremonial role within government, but always theoretically did have the power
05:22to intervene and exercise his political voice.
05:33After 1926, the emperor would perhaps use his position to transform Japan into a modern trading nation.
05:43But there was a problem.
05:45The country comprised a large population, concentrated on a few islands.
05:50The land available for cultivation was limited, and the natural resources to fuel modern industry almost non-existent.
05:59The answer seemed to lie in imperial expansion.
06:04She had developed an industrial base, built a modern army that needed artillery.
06:09Japan built railroads, modern warships.
06:13So she needed coal and steel to do that.
06:17And those things were not in great abundance in Japan at the level she needed.
06:22So she was going to need resources from Asia.
06:27Within a year of Hirohito ascending the throne, a financial crisis brought down the liberal government.
06:33It was replaced by the conservative Sayukai Party, whose leader announced his intention of pursuing a stronger China policy.
06:47The rivalry between the two nations developed in 1884, when Japan supported a coup in China-dominated Korea, gaining a
06:57foothold in the region.
06:59Meanwhile, with its construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the port of Vladivostok, Russia hoped to expand its influence
07:07in East Asia.
07:10In a series of preemptive strikes, Japan dominated the Russian Navy.
07:19It really cemented Japan as one of the great powers.
07:24Really the first non-European nation to really sort of achieve that status.
07:32It also established the Japanese army and the Japanese navy as among the competitor, premier military institutions in the globe.
07:47So it was as a world power that Japan took its place in the alliance against the central powers in
07:53the First World War.
07:56In the First World War, Japan has also been in the first World War.
07:59In the First World War, Japan has also been in the first World War.
08:02We have made many modern weapons to build a war in the first World War.
08:08And we have been in the first World War.
08:27In June, 1919, the victorious allies assembled at Versailles to plan the post-war world.
08:48Japan was to be bitterly disappointed.
08:51France, Great Britain, and the United States proved to have the loudest voices.
08:58Japan was a British ally, was therefore on the winning side, but felt in particular the failure of the negotiators
09:08at Versailles to include any kind of racial equality clause in the final treaty was really a rebuff.
09:18As a result, the feeling both in China and Japan that essentially the West would never treat Asian countries equally
09:25or fairly began to grow.
09:37In 1924, the United States Congress enacted legislation excluding Japanese immigration.
09:45One of the things that irritates the military is that Japan is not treated as equal between the great powers,
09:52you know.
09:52And again, they feel insulted by this, but they also feel their own power is being undermined.
09:57Rising nationalism, feeding on discrimination, rejected any ideas that were not authentically Japanese.
10:06The tinder was dry.
10:08Any spark would ignite nationalist sentiment.
10:24The British-led system of international free trade had been a major casualty in the aftermath of the First World
10:31War.
10:31In 1930, the U.S. raised tariffs to protect American businesses and farmers, while Britain favoured trade within her own
10:41empire.
10:56They feel very much threatened by those changes that are taking place in the global economy, and the onset of
11:05the Great Depression makes that much, much worse.
11:09Because Japan's major export is silk.
11:11It all goes to the United States, virtually all of it.
11:15Silk is a luxury good.
11:17After the Wall Street, the Trash people stopped buying silk.
11:40Resource poor Japan was ill-placed
11:43to survive a reordering of global trade.
11:47Territorial expansion offered itself as a potential solution.
12:08China was Japan's obvious target.
12:24The general election of 1928 was the first since Hirohito had been crowned emperor.
12:31The lower house was elected, however, it was very limited because only male over 25 had
12:40the right to vote.
12:42The turbulent economic and political climate placed a strain on the nascent democracy, and
12:49violence increasingly became a political tool.
12:52The attempted assassination of Prime Minister Hamaguchi at the hands of an ultra-nationalist
12:59ushered in what one Japanese politician called a period of brainless patriotism.
13:09You have a series in the early 1930s of assassination attempts which are not necessarily engineered
13:19by the military top brass but very often involve more junior soldiers.
13:27very often, too, with links to right-wing groups.
13:38China was vulnerable to outside exploitation.
13:42In 1912, the Qing dynasty was overthrown and the Republic of China founded.
13:4916 years later, Chiang Kai-shek became its leader.
13:54He had been battling the Chinese Communist Party ever since.
14:00Western governments had seized footholds for Chinese trade, and so had Japan.
14:07Amongst Japanese concessions resulting from their victory over Russia in the region were
14:12the rights to lease sections of the railways in southern Manchuria.
14:17They rename it the South Manchurian Railway, and this becomes the beating heart of Japan's
14:24economic empire in northeast China.
14:27They also are authorized by the terms of the lease to station a militia, and so they establish
14:36what becomes the Guangdong Army.
14:37So the Guangdong Army become really important institutions in terms of independent operators.
14:48Independence among some officers in the Guangdong Army emboldened them to make the first move.
14:57On the 18th of September 1931, Japanese troops in Manchuria, acting without authority from Tokyo,
15:04fabricated an incident to justify taking over the whole of China's northeastern region.
15:11So the officers of the Guangdong Army decided to take matters into their own hands
15:17and staged an incident just outside Mukden.
15:22One lieutenant wrote in his diary,
15:24It is our duty to act decisively in the interests of our nation.
15:29It is our destiny.
15:34Mukden is this city inside Manchuria on the railroad.
15:38And if a bomb goes off, then they can claim the Chinese set it off and initiate hostilities to conquer
15:44Manchuria.
15:47The front page of Japan's leading daily, the Osaka Asahi, told its readers,
15:53In an act of outrageous violence, Chinese soldiers blew up a section of track
15:58and attacked our railway guards.
16:01Our guards immediately returned fire and mobilized artillery.
16:06Half an hour after the so-called outrageous violence,
16:09a train traveled safely over the track.
16:20However, the incident was all the pretext Japan needed for a larger invasion.
16:29Within a week, the Guangdong Army had occupied an area that doubled the size of the Japanese Empire.
16:37Acquiring mineral resources, space, and half the world's supply of soya beans.
16:45The Guangdong Army is a very interesting institution.
16:48It's under the administration and the chain of command of the Imperial Japanese Army.
16:53But because it's physically separated, because it was over in Manchuria,
16:57it achieved this kind of autonomy.
17:01But Japan's foothold in Manchuria was far from stable.
17:06The Guangdong Army continued to clash with Chinese in localized engagements.
17:16He was very worried about the
17:17of the Japanese military over the last while.
17:24He was very worried about the Chinese military on the Ski-Horos.
17:43The Philadelphia record, by no means a lone voice, said that the American people don't
17:50give a hoot in a rain barrel who controls North China.
17:55President Hoover defended America's neutrality, declaring, these acts do not imperil the freedom
18:02of the American people.
18:13The Japanese renamed Manchuria as Manchuco, and established the last emperor of China as
18:19its nominal ruler.
18:21They create a whole structure of an independent state that is staffed by local Chinese officials
18:29who are running everything.
18:31And this state is really just a joke.
18:35It is in some ways a colony of Japan.
18:41In 1932, major Japanese newspapers started shuffling teams of correspondents to Manchuria.
18:50Before the Manchurian incident, recalled Toyama Shigeki, we had not taken a paper.
18:56But after articles about the local unit began to appear and articles about the war dead in
19:02our village came out, almost everybody began to take the newspaper.
19:07There was great excitement about the war.
19:11And news stories about Manchuria and what was happening in Manchuria were continually in
19:16the news.
19:16All the magazines were filled with articles sort of celebrating the heroic Japanese troops
19:23and how they were driving the corrupt and stupid Chinese soldiers out of Manchuria.
19:31The Japanese Home Ministry, responsible for censorship, published a list of topics to be avoided by the
19:38press.
19:39These included reporting the army's actions on the 18th of September as a ploy to plunder
19:45natural resources or motivated by anything other than self-defense.
19:54Radio, which first broadcasted in 1925, increased regular news programming from four to six times
20:02a day.
20:04The Manchurian incident is Japan's first radio war, really stirring up and pumping
20:10up a kind of jingoistic reaction to the Manchurian incident.
20:15At the end of 1930, 6.1% of the population were contracted to receive radio broadcasts.
20:22By 1935, 49.8% of Tokyo households owned a radio.
20:30Newsreels that tracked the occupation of Manchuria filled public halls and packed city parks.
20:37As fast as film cans could be flown in from Manchuria, newsreels screened in department stores
20:42and elementary schools.
20:55In response to the invasion of Manchuria, anti-Japanese activity flared in the International District
21:01of Shanghai.
21:03Japan sent troops to suppress the protest.
21:06And on January 28, 1932, carrier-based Japanese aircraft bombed the Shippei district of the city.
21:16It's not a bloodless conquest.
21:18The Japanese bombed civilians in cities.
21:21It's one of the first cases of strategic bombing of unarmed civilians.
21:26Osaka Minichi Film Unit explained that the purpose of its productions was to help citizens see
21:33how hard the Japanese troops in China are struggling against the marauding Chinese soldiers.
21:41In the first general election after the Manchurian incident, the Sayukai party won a landslide victory.
21:49They were determined that Japan needed land, needed resources, needed to adopt a policy of settling
21:57one million families on rich Manchurian soil.
22:02On May 15th, Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, who had refused to formally recognize the puppet
22:08state of Manchuria to appease the League of Nations, was gunned down by a group of military officers.
22:18The war minister labeled the killers irrepressible patriots.
22:58After Inukai's murder, civilian politicians were confined to minor roles.
23:05An admiral, Saito Makoto, was made prime minister,
23:09and civilian politicians in the cabinet were outnumbered two to one
23:14by bureaucrats and military personnel.
23:18The military had an effective power of veto in the cabinet,
23:21which could bring down a government.
23:24The role of the elected assembly simply evaporated
23:28as military expenditure began to climb,
23:31increasing 1,200% from 1931 to 1938.
23:45Meanwhile, food shortages were widespread in northern Japan,
23:49combined with unemployment and debt.
23:52In one village, Inawate Prefecture, the infant mortality rate in 1930 rose to 50%.
24:00A village head in Yamagata Prefecture reported in 1931
24:07that 110 of the villagers' 467 girls, aged between 15 and 24, had been sold as prostitutes.
24:18Japan was looking for answers.
24:29The successful invasion of Manchuria had strengthened the belief in the familiar slogan
24:35to the continent, because we're too crowded.
24:40The League of Nations vetoed 42 to 1 to condemn the invasion of Manchuria.
24:46Only Japan dissented.
24:48The war minister characterized the vote as
24:51as the siege of Japan by the whole world.
24:54The day will come when we will make the world look up to our national virtues.
25:18We shall spend a short time to carry out the investigation which has been entrusted to us by the League
25:24of Nations.
25:25The League's inquiry into Japan's invasion of Manchuria took almost a year to table its report.
25:33It has a lot of criticism for China, but it does not accept the Japanese case.
25:37It does not accept the case that Manchukuo was the result of an independence movement.
25:42It does not accept the case that Japan had to occupy all of Manchuria in self-defense.
25:48Foreign Minister Uchida concluded his evidence before the commission by saying that
25:53China has been playing with Japan for too long.
25:56The endurance of the Japanese people has come to an end.
26:18Japan withdrew from the League in March 1933.
26:23Japan finds it impossible to accept the report adopted by the Assembly.
26:31The American ambassador in Tokyo told his president,
26:35this step indicates complete supremacy of the military.
26:55Anticipating an all-out war, the Japanese army and navy launched a propaganda campaign
27:00to turn the people against the party-led government.
27:32Anticipation of Japan
27:41In early 1934, an army pamphlet declared,
27:46Now Japan stands at the center of a world which has entered the Pacific age.
27:51The Manchurian incident changed world history.
27:54The age of white race omnipotence is passing.
27:58At the end of the year, Japan gave notice of her intention to disavow her obligations
28:04under the Washington and London Naval Limitation Treaties.
28:09The Japanese sense of honor and of concern for national dignity and prestige
28:16would make it impossible for my country to consent to a continuation of the present racial system.
28:24Japan is going to give notice of her intention to terminate the Washington Treaty of 1922
28:31to have a new deal in the naval matter.
28:35The Japanese government then officially declared the depression over,
28:40with production rising at more than 10%.
28:43The military doesn't want its spending stopped,
28:46so there's another source of concern about the government in power wants to stop that,
28:52because they said it's going to become seriously inflationary if we carry on.
28:57If democratic process, elections and debate did not feature in Japan from the mid-1930s,
29:04a struggle between competing factions certainly did.
29:10One faction, led by Seidao Araki, called itself Kodoha, the imperial way.
29:20We had already started to stop fighting control,
29:29which is what was the first time we had to do in Japan.
29:36And now we had a lot of four countries.
29:39We had a lot of five countries that were raised from Japan in order to create an NFL
29:41and South Africa.
29:43We were asked to do so many who were asked about to make that change,
30:00They believed that morale and spirit and the Japanese superiority in spirit and fighting spirit and Bushido spirit would win.
30:09And for that kind of army, you needed a large army.
30:12But you didn't need a lot of this high technology because the Japanese soldier could defeat high technology.
30:20Blood over bullets. That was sort of their approach.
30:37They were Germanic. In their approach, we need a general staff that's scientific, rational, under control of the general staff,
30:47really kind of tight control.
30:48Because this is what works in warfare now, are these high-tech mass armies with tanks, artillery, airplanes, very modern
30:57small arms, repeating rifles and machine guns.
31:04Tojo had been chief of staff of the Guangdong Army.
31:08He would later become army minister, wartime prime minister, and finally be hanged as a war criminal.
31:26The turbulent times reached a climax on February 26, 1936, when almost 1,500 officers and men associated with the
31:37Kodahar faction attempted to overthrow a government that was in favor of diplomacy and lower military spending.
31:54The finance minister, lord keeper of the privy seal, and inspector general of military education were slaughtered.
32:02The mutineers' manifesto said,
32:05Unless we rise now, the emperor's prestige will fall to the ground.
32:11Instead of the show trials for which they hoped, 123 of the coup's leaders received secret court-martials.
32:1919 were executed.
32:21The emperor simply issued an order for the men to return to their barracks.
32:27The mutineers supported the imperial way, but they had acted without the knowledge or permission of the emperor, and they
32:34had killed men who were close to him.
32:52The coup's failure meant the suppression of the Kodahar faction, and, by default, a surge in influence for the rival
33:00Toshihar, or control faction.
33:02They still were very, very aggressive and imperialistic in their foreign policy positions.
33:10But in order to keep these guys under control, the emperor and the political class kind of turn over foreign
33:18policy to the Japanese army.
33:21And so the army is really in the driver's seat, and the key guys on the Supreme Council for the
33:27direction of the war are the army minister, Hideki Tojo, and the chief of the imperial naval general staff.
33:46From 1931 to 1937, Japan extended its occupied territory into Jehol, Hope, and Kihar.
33:59In some ways, the new cities of Japanese colonial areas, particularly in Manchuria, are highlighted both in Japanese magazines, but
34:08also in international magazines.
34:09And then people can experience both the cleanliness, the speed, the sleekness, the, quote, modernity that is then all associated
34:18with Japan.
34:19And that ties into this idea of Japan leading East Asia. It's the new light of East Asia.
34:25However, Japan's presence in China was under the pretext of holding and defending Manchuria.
34:31But the possibility of a military alliance was demolished by the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939.
34:32In the United States, Japan was under the pretext of the Soviet Union.
34:33In the United States, Japan needed the security of international alliances.
34:40With the Soviet Union threatening the Mongolian-Manchurian border, Japan joined Germany in the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact.
34:52But the possibility of a military alliance was demolished by the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939.
35:03On July 5th, 1937, a formal agreement to cooperate against the Japanese was signed by the two parties fighting for
35:11mastery in China.
35:13The Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong.
35:20It was less of a problem when China was very weak and divided.
35:24But what you've got by 1937 is you've got some willingness on the part of both of the Chinese Communists
35:31and the Kuomintang Nationalists to work together to try and help save China.
35:41World War II broke out on the 7th of July, 1937.
35:45This is not a date that European historians generally attribute to this event.
35:48But I think there is a very strong case that actually the Second World War began in Asia.
35:52And particularly with shooting between locally garrisoned Chinese and Japanese troops at a bridge called Lugotiao, known in the west
36:00as the Marco Polo Bridge.
36:02One small unplanned incident actually set off a powder keg that launched Continental War.
36:09From mid-July, deliberately overreacting to a minor skirmish, Japanese troops were surging into China.
36:18No longer a territorial dispute, Japan had launched a full-scale invasion, striking beyond Manchukuo, expecting an easy and early
36:28victory.
36:30It's important to remember that at the start of this war, this was portrayed in Japan as an incident that
36:36would be over within a matter of weeks.
36:39Japanese troops would march on Nanking, the Chinese government would surrender and the incident would be over.
36:46Japan had got itself into a sort of ideological trap by 1937 when full-scale war broke out between China
36:54and Japan.
36:54They had become convinced in terms of their own domestic politics that China was a weak opponent, almost an unworthy
37:01opponent.
37:02And that if Japan were to go to war against the Chinese, then the whole thing would be over probably
37:07in three or four months.
37:17Obviously, a lot of young men got very excited and wanted to go off and fight.
37:23Predictably, they talk about their blood boiling and being so excited.
37:29Now that the red slip is actually in my hands, wrote Umida Fusal, I'm moved, excited.
37:37First, I showed it to my wife, then my parents.
37:41In the countryside, when a young man was drafted and sent off to war, the entire village would show up.
37:49And so the mayor of the town would make a speech, parties would be held, and the entire village practically
37:56would see him to the train station.
38:00A recruit from the Kyoto prefecture was given a dagger by his mother, who said,
38:06If you are captured by the Chinese troops, use this to cut your stomach open and die.
38:11I have three boys already, so if I lose you, it won't bother me.
38:18This pressure was also felt by women occasionally.
38:21One of the girls who became a Red Cross nurse said that she made her choice because there were no
38:27boys in her family.
38:28And that, therefore, this was one way in which her family could contribute to the war effort.
38:34And that, therefore, this was one way in which her family could contribute to the war effort.
38:47By August 11th, more than 30 Japanese warships, including five troop transports, stood in the mouth of the Wangpu River.
38:58On August 18th, Hirohito asked his service chiefs how they intended to land a knockout blow that would quickly end
39:06the fighting.
39:08The response, delivered two days later, proposed a bombing campaign, a blockade, and destruction of the Central Army.
39:18At the time that the king was a king's father, but it was the highest leader.
39:25So, the king was wearing the army's hand and showing the face of the people in front of the people
39:29in front of the people,
39:30and how the king was the king's presence, and how the king was the king's presence.
39:36The first Japanese troops landed in Shanghai on August 23rd.
39:43Most would move on northern China, a vast territory in which a decisive battle did not guarantee
39:51victory.
39:57Chang has these very, very good divisions that were trained by the Germans.
40:02They've just come from a successful campaign against the Chinese communists in Shang-Chi.
40:09And so these are really good troops, they're really good fighters.
40:12Unfortunately they're weak in artillery compared to the Japanese, they're weak in small arms
40:17and machine guns, they're weak in aircraft, and they have absolutely no naval power.
40:22The Japanese are strong in all these areas.
40:25And of course the Japanese have air power.
40:30Chiang Kai-shek will double down on the fighting, but it's a street to street, block by block
40:37fight between the Japanese and the best troops in the Nationalist Army.
40:46Between August and November, the Chinese Nationalist Army lost 60% of its most effective formations,
40:54and 10% of middle to lower ranked officers.
40:58The Japanese losses were also in the thousands.
41:03And hopes for a quick Chinese collapse were dashed.
41:13The Japanese strategy was Sokusen Soketsu, rapid combat, quick decision.
41:29On September 19th, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his troops to stand at Baoding.
41:35On the 20th, General Teruuchi, commanding the Japanese offensive said, the officers and men
41:42should not return without filling their canteens from the Yellow River.
42:13Chiang Kai-shek
42:17Chiang Kai-shek
42:18Combat in the Tianxing-Beijing area spread west and south.
42:23By late July, major Japanese reinforcements had advanced west along the railway towards
42:29Beijing, which fell at the end of the month.
42:36Japanese troops began to push inland up the Yangtze, and floated balloons over the forbidden
42:41city in Beijing. The balloons trailed streamers that read, the Japanese army preserves the peace
42:49of East Asia. Shanghai is an international city, all the other powers are there, and Chiang Kai-shek
42:57decides, I am going to make my stand at Shanghai. And he throws everything at Shanghai, his best
43:03troops, all of his troops, he's going to defend it to the death. The Japanese finally prevail by
43:09sending in air power and basically pounding the Chinese soldiers from the air. And then there
43:16starts to be a retreat. The battles of the Shanghai-Nanjing campaign lasted until the end of the year, fought
43:25in a
43:25blaze of publicity. In the late autumn, the Chinese armies fell back, and the government moved inland
43:34to Wuhan, abandoning Nanjing.
43:46In the race from Shanghai to Nanjing, there's this deadly escalation of violence. The fall of Nanjing
43:56united Japan's two theaters of operations. Ending 1937 with an episode impossible to whitewash, and
44:06difficult to understand.
44:08By the time they get to Nanjing, everything is already broken down, complete breakdown in
44:14discipline. The high command has gotten way back behind most of these soldiers, and they start to
44:22hear reports about what's going on. There was no plans for taking prisoners of war. They couldn't feed
44:29the Japanese soldiers, much less any kind of prisoners of war. So what do you do? They executed them.
44:36In the fighting, until the fall of Nanjing, there had been outrages on both sides. Japanese swords had
44:45swung down on Chinese necks. Prisoners had been bayoneted, shot, and burned. But in Nanjing, it went
44:55on for weeks. Soldiers and officers were guilty of murder, rape, and torture. One officer admitted to
45:04making a sea of blood in order to terrify the locals.
45:11In the minds of the Japanese public, as long as China was in a state of civil war, it continued
45:18to pose a threat for itself and for its neighbor. In the midst of this narrative developed an image
45:26of Chinese people as disloyal, treacherous, weak, and unable to rule themselves. And these kind
45:34of racist ideologies towards the Chinese then influenced the brutality and atrocious behavior
45:41of Japanese troops in China.
45:47The massacre in Nanjing was a big surprise and a great shock. It shocked people who expected
45:54that Japan was now a civilized, modern power. The Japanese media was silent on events in
46:00the city. The well-documented rampage continues to be largely denied to this day. Masatake Okumiya,
46:11a navy pilot, was a witness. He saw Chinese bound with their hands behind their backs facing
46:17the Yangtze River. About 20 soldiers were beheading the Chinese with their swords. Nanjing was not
46:26the exception. It dominates the reported narrative of Japan's invasion, but it was emblematic,
46:33not unique.
46:45On November 15, 1937, the Nine Power Conference, which had assembled at Brussels to debate Japan's
46:52aggression, adjourned. It rejected Japan's euphemistic characterization of the invasion and admitted
47:00to finding it difficult to understand Japan's persistent refusal to discuss a way forward.
47:10But Japan's military had a firm grip on the country. In 1931, military spending had accounted
47:19for 29 percent of total government expenditure. By 1938, it had risen to 75 percent.
47:28Japan was an industrial power whose war potential was significant. But the full-scale invasion
47:35of China had not translated into a great victory.
47:59Falling back, a tactic enabled by China's size drew Japanese forces deeper into the country,
48:06stretching supply lines.
48:08cities and towns fell, but that had not been the objective. The aim had been to destroy
48:15China's central army and dismantle the government.
48:22The strategy failed. Instead of a short, sharp victory, Japan was bogged down in a vast and often
48:30unfriendly landscape. By 1941, Japan lost 185,000 dead and was looking for a plan B. The two factions
48:41within the military reviewed their options. One faction, driven primarily by the army, prized the economic
48:51and territorial value of northern China and Siberia.
48:57The navy favored a strike south, into the resource-rich possessions of the Dutch, French and British empires.
49:05Their eyes were on the tin, rubber and oil of Southeast Asia.
49:12How would the U.S. respond if they launched such an attack?
49:17What could Japan do to neutralize the American threat in the Pacific?
49:22Clearing the way for a rapid war of conquest.
49:46Clearing the way for a rapid war of conquest and Asia.
49:50This publically member build pressure in the northern인� locale using a global financial
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