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How Japan secured victory in Malaya and the fall of Singapore, and an exploration into the effect of the lack of cooperation between the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Navy.
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00:04In 1937, the Japanese Empire embarked on a campaign to destroy the Nationalist Government of China.
00:13However, as the years dragged on, hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops would be bogged down in a stalemate.
00:22Hoping to obtain a new empire, Japan was faced with two options.
00:27Expand north from the homelands, or strike south, seizing the resource-rich possessions of the Western colonies.
00:37A four-year campaign of propaganda, education, and legislation had prepared the Japanese people for a high-stakes showdown.
00:47It would come as a series of stunning offensives, from Malaya to Pearl Harbor.
01:09The New York Times
01:10The New York Times
01:10The New York Times
01:39December 13, 1937 is recognized as the date when Japanese troops began to ravage the city of Nanjing.
01:49Twenty-four hours earlier, the USS Panay, an American gunboat stationed on the Yangtze, was attacked and sunk by Japanese
01:57aircraft during the battle for Shanghai.
02:00Despite showing three American flags.
02:08Diplomacy, apologies, and cash compensation settled the matter.
02:12The Japanese government and people wish to express sincerest and profoundest regrets.
02:24But nothing could reverse the tide of global public opinion, as Japan's empire became increasingly mistrusted and increasingly isolated.
02:44In August 1937, the cabinet of Prime Minister Kanoe Fumimaro issued the guidelines for the execution of the National Spiritual
02:54Mobilization.
02:56The first steps towards galvanizing the nation for war.
03:01Everyone was encouraged to support the state and to see men off to war, to provide labor for various work
03:12projects.
03:16Those goods that are being sold are tied into products that have a linkage with imperial expansion.
03:24So we'll see comfort bags.
03:26These are bags that would have various items, perhaps chocolate, maybe caramel, letters from children, small gift items that imperial
03:36subjects, individuals can purchase and then have sent to the front.
03:42People also were encouraged not to be extravagant, not to waste, and to remember that the country was at war.
03:50And so one of the banners that was flown in many cities read, extravagance is the enemy.
03:59By 1936, the Imperial Military Reserve Association, comprising members who had completed their required national service,
04:08numbered three million, the majority recruited from the countryside.
04:14Within a year, half a million of them were back in uniform and sent to China.
04:20Nagatani Massao, a typical recruit, was seen off by his father.
04:25He wrote,
04:26I promised that I would become a splendid man.
04:30So what becomes the experience of imperial development for a young boy is that as the education system shifts from
04:39the 1920s to the 1930s,
04:40as the Japanese military becomes really much more kind of militaristic, jingoistic, nationalistic in its push,
04:47young individuals in Japan see their future as a military soldier.
04:59Hideki Kurabayashi's story is not unusual.
05:03Born in Ozuzugawa village, his education was militaristic and his opinions black and white.
05:10It was our mission to go and fight China, he recalled.
05:14Japan had to control China.
05:16That's what my father said, so that's where I went.
05:20In my village, I was called a patriotic child.
05:25Every extended family was affected in some way and sent at least one or more boys or men from the
05:33family off to fight.
05:35And, of course, all Japanese were, at the outset, were patriotic and this seemed like the right thing to do.
05:44Textbooks and propaganda pamphlets issued by the Ministry of Education
05:48pictured children as shoku kumen, productive little nationals.
05:54Hatano Kanji, a child psychologist, recruited to serve on a national education planning committee, said,
06:00I would like to see a culture that makes children positively participate and work,
06:06not one that treats children as precious.
06:13Propaganda focused on service to the nation,
06:17including kamishibai, a form of picture storytelling.
06:22Kamishibai are paper plays and they are the most popular form of children's entertainment.
06:29What you have is a box on the back usually of a bicycle and it's oftentimes a slightly elderly guy.
06:37And he pulls the images out of the box and then he narrates the story, pulls the next slide,
06:43and the children can be involved in that.
06:47Initial kamishibai children's production, which was mostly about crazy characters, they start to have more militaristic themes.
06:56From 1934, roughly 750,000 children per day watched kamishibai in Tokyo alone.
07:05The heroes of the stories were soldiers, who almost always died valiantly.
07:12But the audience for kamishibai was declining for a reason that caused official concern.
07:26In the interwar years, the birth rate in almost every developed nation fell amidst economic hardship and increasing international tension.
07:36Japan was no exception.
07:40The live birth rate dropped from 13 per thousand before 1937 to less than 10 per thousand.
07:49Encouraging large families, the government lent couples wedding clothes if they were too poor to afford a ceremony.
07:57Families with 10 children or more were promised free higher education.
08:02Tojo Katsuko, wife of a government minister and mother of seven children, announced cheerfully that having babies is fun.
08:14At school, children received the Ministry of Education's 1937 Cardinal Principles of the National Polity.
08:24Japanese people were told at school from a young age that their role as Japanese citizens was to respect the
08:32emperor and devote themselves to the nation.
08:35Well, the emperor was the supreme benefactor of the entire country.
08:41And so in theory, all Japanese felt grateful to the emperor for everything he did for them, felt obligated to
08:50repay him in some way.
08:53They rehearse this idea on a daily basis by reciting the imperial rescript on education and bowing to the portrait
09:02of the emperor.
09:11As trams passed the imperial palace or Yasukuni shrine, the conductor would say, please bow and passengers would reverently comply.
09:22Beginning in November 1937, the Japanese government created what might be called moments of reverential silence and what this orchestrated
09:37choreographed moment required was that all Japanese and Japanese subjects face the imperial palace in Tokyo and observe a minute
09:48of silence.
10:03On January 16th, 1938, a radio broadcast announced that Japan no longer recognized Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government in China.
10:16Prime Minister Kanoe would later call the announcement an utter blunder.
10:22The error was not recognizing that Chiang was still the most powerful and ruthless figure in China.
10:30The alliance between the Chinese Red Army and Kuomintang was in name only, the former providing little support to battle
10:38the Japanese.
10:40While the Communist Party built its strength in the countryside, Chiang Kai-shek concentrated his efforts on defending the cities
10:48and strategic infrastructure.
10:57To disrupt the Japanese advance, in June 1938, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the dike holding the Yellow River at Huayuangku
11:06to be breached.
11:11No warning was given. It would have alerted the Japanese to the plan.
11:223,000 square kilometers of Chiang's own country flooded, at the cost of perhaps 800,000 Chinese lives.
11:33Crops were destroyed, and the silt deposited across farms rendered the land untenable for years to come.
11:42The Japanese were beyond the range of the flood, and the waters only briefly impeded their advance.
11:50By December 1938, Japan held all of China that was necessary to control trade and communication.
11:58All of the major coastal cities and railways.
12:04Chiang Kai-shek had moved his nationalist government to Chiang Ching.
12:11On December 22nd, Prime Minister Kanoe said,
12:15The Japanese government is resolved to carry on the military operations for the complete extermination of the anti-Japanese Kuomintang
12:23government.
12:23And at the same time, to proceed with the work of establishing a new order in East Asia.
12:49By the time of Pearl Harbor, more than a million Japanese military personnel were serving overseas.
13:081930s Japan was perhaps the world's most homogenous major nation.
13:13Less than 1% of its population were not descended from those who had crossed from mainland Asia millennia earlier.
13:21Despite this, it was not a society without dissent.
13:28If you were overheard saying things that sounded defeatist, the secret police would visit you and call you in for
13:38an interrogation.
13:39And children and teenagers and military recruits were all required to keep diaries.
13:47And the diaries were submitted to their superiors every seven to ten days for what were called diary checks.
13:56Rumors, gossip and spying all fed police intelligence about dissident activity, published annually in a volume called The State of
14:06Social Movements.
14:07A school teacher was heard to say,
14:10We are fighting in China because the military are out of control.
14:15In another, a farmer was quoted,
14:18If the emperor would just say the word, the war would stop.
14:21With the rise of militarism, the heavy-handed suppression of domestic dissent sometimes included torture and imprisonment without trial.
14:35Voices of doubt were not confined to the home front.
14:38A soldier, Motajima Saburo, wrote home,
14:42It has been raining every day, and I have been lonely most of the time.
14:47But the national sentiment was more truthfully represented by a soldier who wrote,
14:53The Hinamaru flag was raised high.
14:56We were 100 meters from the enemy when we shouted,
14:59Banzai! I was moved beyond control.
15:14Tokyo's hopes for a resolution of what it persisted in calling, the China Incident,
15:20rested on the economic disintegration of Chiang Kai-shek's government.
15:25The flight of 12 million refugees from Japanese atrocities,
15:29notably in Nanjing, was the largest movement of people in history and compounded Chiang's problems.
15:38Shanghai contributed 85% of the country's revenue before it fell to the Japanese.
15:45China was dependent on foreign loans, which Japan wanted to cut off.
15:53An entrance, Turkey and United War.
15:56The war and the war and the U.S. were not left again.
15:57Why was that the war?
15:58It is where it is that,
16:00being supported by China and by the U.S. and abroad,
16:03from the U.S. to the U.S. and to the U.S. to the U.S. to the U
16:05.S. serve,
16:06such a entity.
16:07So, Japan, when it was hard to fight for Japan,
16:10the U.S. war, is not done to fully fight after the war.
16:12So, in Japan,
16:13the U.S. and the U.S. were not in retaliation of the U.S.
16:16and the U.S. were not attacked by the U.S.
16:17such a important concept.
16:21Alarmed by increasing hostilities from Japan, the United States announced that it would
16:26not renew the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan.
16:33This proved to be the catalyst that pivoted the empire's plan of expansion.
16:39From an initial strategy of striking north, occupying and suppressing territory in China
16:45and Mongolia, it turned to a plan of striking south.
17:12The Japanese army needed to demonstrate that victory would come on land.
17:18The Japanese army needed to demonstrate that victory would come on land.
17:19The Navy wanted to win at sea.
17:22But advancing north placed the Japanese army face to face with a dangerous opponent.
17:35The Soviet Far East and the Japanese empire in northeast China kind of overlaid each other.
17:41Stalin began to build up military forces along the Manchurian-Siberian border.
17:54In May 1939, a dispute flared up near the village of Nomanhan between Soviet troops stationed
18:02in their client state of Mongolia and Japanese troops who had moved across the border from Manchurko.
18:10Within days, both sides built up their forces, with nearly 60,000 Soviets facing almost 40,000 troops of the
18:19Guangdong Army.
18:21Throughout June, the clash escalated into a modern mechanized offensive.
18:29This time, the Soviet Union is in a big turmoil.
18:33Stalin is essentially purging his officer corps in the army and the navy.
18:38And so, Japan is thinking the Soviets are sort of easy pickings.
18:47as both sides added to their strength on the ground, battles raged in the skies,
18:53with the latest aircraft meeting in continuous dogfights.
19:06By July 6, Japan had secured its only successors.
19:13In the next stage, they were thrown back over the Kalka River.
19:17The Soviet Union's counterattack opened on August 20th with a massed artillery barrage.
19:25They used tanks, armored cars, heavy, heavy artillery concentrations, and air power,
19:31and give the Japanese a preview of what it might be like to fight the Soviet Union.
19:39The Japanese had anticipated a battle of attrition.
19:42The Soviets, with more than 500 armored vehicles at their disposal, launched a campaign of movement.
19:52Eleven days later, the Japanese Manchuko Army were almost completely wiped out.
19:59And this becomes the first time that they look at the Soviet army with some kind of respect.
20:06Now, the local commanders, they're all ready to start again.
20:10But this is one of those moments where the high command in Tokyo said,
20:14that's not enough.
20:15We're already bogged down in China.
20:18We cannot afford to expand into a major front with a war against the Soviet Union.
20:29On September 1st, Germany's invasion of Poland opened the European war, transforming diplomacy.
20:40Japan began negotiations in Moscow, reaching a truce on the 16th.
20:46With quiet on the northern Soviet front, Japan had more flexibility to move in the south.
20:59120,000 Japanese troops began to move deeper into China,
21:04descending on the National Army at Changsha on September 14th.
21:09The Japanese were rebuffed at first, but on the 19th of September, renewed their attack.
21:16This time with airstrikes and poison gas.
21:22By October 6th, well-managed Kuomintang counterattacks had so bloodied the Japanese army that they were forced to withdraw.
21:42In February 1940, the last public criticism of the army was heard in the Diet.
21:49If we miss a chance for peace, the politicians of today will be unable to erase their crime, even by
21:57their deaths.
21:59The Speaker was forced to resign, and within six months, all political parties were banned.
22:07There was a clear leadership in the person of the emperor.
22:10There was a coherent narrative in which Japan had been in danger for decades and had to fight for its
22:16survival.
22:16And there was a grand plan, the eight corners of the world under the one roof, and eventual victory.
22:27On August 1st, Foreign Minister Yusuke Matsuoka formally announced the plan to create a greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere.
22:37The idea had been part of Japan's political conversation for some time. An idea that evolved from an ideal.
22:48Liberating Asia from white colonial overlords, and transforming East Asian territories into satellites of Japan's empire.
22:57More than 8,000 years ago, China was not a step-up in the government.
23:10Many people were playing for its market.
23:12Beyond the same time, the offices were going to be able to dominate the world of��.
23:19But now we're going to be there for decades.
23:24Now, we're not always going to be talking to China and Russia, while we're thinking about this,
23:24but the state of each other is going to thrive fromиров Cultures.
23:25We're not always going to be that high-levelов to build the world's economy.
23:26We have to be in two ways such as our country leaders.
23:31The catch-cry for the ideal was, Asia for the Asiatics.
23:37The reality was made explicit in March 1941, when the Imperial Rule Assistance Association explicitly stated,
23:46Although we use the expression Asian cooperation, this by no means ignores the fact that Japan was created by the
23:54gods,
23:55or posits an automatic racial equality.
24:00In the 1940s, when the Germany and France were born,
24:07the land and France were born in Asia.
24:12Japan thought that Japan would not have been able to get to Germany,
24:16and they agreed to join the alliance between the Germany and Asia.
24:23Britain, standing alone against Germany, seemed on the brink of defeat.
24:29For Japan, there was wisdom in an alliance with the Reich and its Italian ally.
24:35It was not important, for a time, Japan was the place that Germany had revolutionized.
24:44And that's why Germany did not fall to Germany.
24:45That was very impressive, and it was very high.
24:51That's why the claim of Germany had become a weapon.
25:04The tripartite pact bound Germany, Italy and Japan to assist each other by all political,
25:12economic and military means.
25:14Whether Japan would receive the assistance she would need was another matter.
25:25Heavily dependent on imported supplies, Japan was hit hard as the war restricted access
25:31to the country.
25:32And in 1940, the government began to control food distribution.
25:37It's determined that each person should get so much rice, so much fish, so many vegetables
25:44and the portions are not generous. And so the daily per capita fish ration in 1941 is 1.8
25:54ounces of fish. Pretty small piece of fish.
26:01Rationing had been a fixture of life in Japan since 1938, when the government launched two
26:07austerity campaigns. Imposed austerity controlled petroleum, coal, telephones and leather goods.
26:18Voluntary austerity was a hearts and minds campaign, compulsion as a matter of conscience.
26:26Flashy fashions were condemned, and men were urged to wear the national civilian uniform.
26:33Women were discouraged from wearing cosmetics, and hairdressers were permitted to give each
26:38customer only three curls.
26:41In August 1940, the government fixed the prices of 40 vegetables and fruits, which had risen
26:48by 400 percent in the previous year.
26:51Aoto Minso, the wife of a farmer, declared,
26:55They demand more work, more work. And we have to do it. There are higher taxes. Farmers can't
27:03take it anymore.
27:11Most daily basics were strictly controlled, but a black market flourished.
27:16city dwellers defied regulations, travelling to the countryside in their thousands to buy
27:23direct from farmers.
27:26In the face of growing doubts, a newspaper told its readers,
27:31Peace and contentment can only be gained by eradicating the evil encroachment of the Anglo-Saxons.
27:55On April 13th, the Soviet Union signed a neutrality agreement with Japan that recognized the puppet
28:02state of Manchuco.
28:11In a broadcast on June 29th, the foreign minister advocated the inclusion of certain South Sea
28:18areas in the new order in East Asia. It was the first public expression of the policy of expanding
28:26to the South and building a defensive perimeter.
28:53On the 17th of July, 1940, just as France fell,
28:57the British government yielded to Japanese pressure
29:01and closed the Burma Road,
29:04a vital artery supplying the Chinese.
29:08With her focus elsewhere,
29:10Britain was unable to counter militarily.
29:15The problem for Japan is the flow of war material into China.
29:21It's flowing in through Hong Kong and southern Chinese ports,
29:25such as Guangdong, and it's also flowing through the Burma Road,
29:29which goes through Burma.
29:31This war material is absolutely keeping Chiang Kai-shek's military afloat.
29:38In appeasing the Japanese,
29:40Churchill failed to prevent dangerous developments.
29:44On July 22, 1940, the military party in Japan triumphed.
29:51General Hideki Tojo, the future prime minister,
29:54became minister for war.
30:03東城という人はですね、当時の陸軍を非常にうまくコントロールしていました。
30:11ですから戦争になったとすれば、東城を中心に陸軍は団結するでしょうし、
30:16もし戦争ではないと、戦争はダメだということになったとしても、
30:19東城だったら陸軍を抑えて、
30:22その陸軍がですね、
30:26防発することを避けることができるんじゃないか。
30:27A request that the Vichy government of France
30:30permit the stationing of Japanese troops in northern Indochina
30:33was the first practical expression of the Strike South policy.
30:39The tripartite Treaty of Alliance
30:42allowed the Japanese government
30:43to negotiate directly with the Vichy regime.
30:47Japan goes to France and says,
30:50you know, we want to cut off the material
30:51coming through northern Indochina,
30:54North Vietnam.
30:56And so they get the French to agree
30:59in 1941 to allow the Japanese
31:03to occupy northern Indochina.
31:07Later, the Vichy government was informed
31:10that the Japanese army would push further
31:12into Indochina on July 24th, 1941.
31:16Irrespective of the Vichy government's position,
31:22they acquiesced to the peaceful entry
31:25of Japanese troops.
31:48America begins to tighten the noose
31:50and gradually escalates
31:52different kinds of economic sanctions.
31:54It was a spectacular failure of deterrence diplomacy
31:56because instead of deterring aggression,
31:59it did the exact opposite.
32:01It accelerated it.
32:24On September 22nd, 1941,
32:28columns from the Imperial Japanese Army
32:31moved over the border in three places
32:33and advanced on the railhead near Langeau.
32:43On the morning of the 24th,
32:45Japanese aircraft,
32:47in breach of the agreement with Vichy,
32:49attacked French positions on the coast.
32:58By the evening of the 26th,
33:01fighting had died down.
33:03Japan was allowed,
33:04amongst other concessions,
33:06three airfields,
33:08placing her aircraft
33:09within range of future targets
33:11and control of port and railway facilities
33:14that choked off a supply route into China.
33:18When the Japanese offensive
33:20to create the Co-Prosperity Sphere
33:22was launched at the end of 1941,
33:25the air bases were critical
33:27to providing air support
33:28for the invasion of Malaya, Singapore
33:30and the Dutch East Indies.
33:34Japan's strike south conquered each area,
33:37providing the empire with tin,
33:39rubber and, above all, oil.
33:44One giant question mark hung over the plan.
33:48In this way,
33:54Japan had the idea of
33:56taken the problem
33:56from the US to the US to knockout
33:57and that there was no strategy
34:00to be able to remove the power
34:00in the long-term.
34:02is all managed to fix the land
34:04and live in the long-term.
34:06It will be a long-term,
34:08so,
34:09if the military continues
34:09to take the long-term.
34:10the United States will destroy
34:13the United States.
34:24an imperial conference held on september 6th prepared a report which said although america's
34:31total defeat is judged utterly impossible it is not inconceivable that a shift in america's
34:37public opinion due to our victories in southeast asia or to england's surrender might bring war to
34:44an end so co-dean america cah al iiris ga asiari mocti ta philipin ya maria hanto no
34:56well well no one woですね tone asia asia nico sida s stay a no nho ni si you know
35:03a gunji bush or contact or you could take a loophole easily saying that you more
35:08Another goal was to fight the war against the war against China.
35:15This was the goal for the war.
35:20When the war was created, the U.S. will come to the war.
35:24The U.S. will come to the war in front of the U.S. military.
35:29The U.S. will come to the U.S.
35:41Prime Minister Kanoe thought it manifestly unwise
35:44for Japan to plunge into an unpredictable war
35:48and resigned on October 16, 1941.
35:54He was replaced by the war minister Hideki Tojo, who said,
35:59if we just acquiesce to the American demand,
36:02everything we have achieved in China will be lost.
36:34He
36:36I know that he was a citizen of the power of the president.
36:43He was a leader of the president of the president of the U.S.
36:46He was a leader of the president.
36:46I knew he was a leader in the country, but his strength was not.
36:54He was a leader in the U.S.
37:09As long as there remains the great spirit of loyalty and patriotism, we have nothing
37:15to fear in fighting America and Britain.
37:18So said Hideki Tojo.
37:28On November 1, 1941, the Vice Chief of Staff said,
37:34There is a strong probability that our advance to the south will enable Germany and Italy
37:40to defeat England.
37:42It will also greatly increase the probability that we can force China to surrender, and
37:47then even the Soviet Union.
37:51Japan is already at war with the largest nation in the world in terms of population, China.
37:58She's planning for a war with the second largest nation in the world, territorially, the Soviet
38:05Union.
38:06And here she goes actively at war against the largest empire in the world, the British Empire,
38:14and the largest economy in the world, the United States, to say nothing of the other major maritime
38:22power like the Netherlands.
38:24On December 4, the Imperial Combined Fleet was sailing for Hawaii under the command of
38:30national hero, Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto, who had studied at Harvard University.
38:35Admiral Yamamoto, he lived in the United States.
38:39He saw the oil fields of Texas.
38:41He saw the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Cleveland and the wheat fields of Kansas and Iowa.
38:48He knows the latent potential of the United States if it fully mobilizes for war against anybody.
38:54of the United States.
39:07I was in Japan and I was in Japan and I was in Japan and I was in Japan.
39:14It was the basic strategy for the US Army.
39:20I wanted to do this.
39:22I thought that the US Army was perfect.
39:27The best way to win is to make a missile attack.
39:32When the American army was in Hawaii,
39:38when they were in the Pearl Harbor,
39:40they would kill a missile attack and kill them.
39:47At least for a year or a year,
39:50the American army was in Japan and in the Gulf of Asia.
40:00The German army was not able to come to Japan and the Gulf of Asia.
40:04The German army was able to make a missile attack.
40:33An imperial re-script was issued under the emperor's name.
40:39Proclaimed on December 8th and read aloud in every town and village, it said,
41:07With a united will, shall mobilize their total strength, so that nothing will miscarry in the attainment of our war
41:14aims.
41:26Proclaimed on December 8th
41:47However, by the time the re-script declaring war had been made public, the first battle
41:54was over.
42:10Earlier, on December 7th, Japan's striking force of six
42:15aircraft carriers were positioned northwest of Hawaii.
42:21Admiral Yamamoto's cable ordering the strike famously instructed,
42:26Nitaka, Yamanabore, climb Mount Nitaka, attack as planned.
42:32Mount Nitaka was then the highest peak in the empire.
42:39A pilot said, I saw a heroic battle for the first time.
42:43To have been able to take part in this battle was, for a warrior, the greatest joy.
42:52The first wave of fighters and bombers struck at 07.50 hours in the morning.
43:1319 American ships were lost and damaged in the carnage, along with 300 aeroplanes.
43:19The deaths of military and civilian personnel exceeded 2,400.
43:27But Pearl Harbor was just one of Japan's Pacific targets.
43:3311,000 kilometers away and 40 minutes earlier, the first Japanese landings went ashore in Malaya.
43:41Three hours after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked Hong Kong.
43:46To mount the coordinated offensive, Japan had 680,000 troops in China and 170,000 to be used elsewhere.
43:58Probably the largest globally synchronized series of one-day attacks in the history of mankind.
44:05They are attacking targets that stretch from the Indian Ocean to Pearl Harbor.
44:22Hideyuki Kurabayashi remembered reading about the attacks in a newspaper.
44:28He thought Japan had done a bold thing.
44:30He remembered, everyone thought we would probably win.
44:35People were excited, they were really ecstatic.
44:38And the various government agencies, the home ministry, prefectural governments,
44:45and even local town and village governments carried out pro-war rallies beginning on December 10th.
44:55Kenji Kitagawa was a schoolboy. He remembered hearing the news on the radio.
45:02My mother and father said how a terrible thing had happened.
45:06Because, besides the people in high spirits saying we won the battle at Pearl Harbor,
45:12there were many Japanese who were concerned about going to war against such big countries.
45:17They were anxious about what would happen.
45:20People who had some sense of American power are very upset,
45:25because they don't think Japan can defeat a country as great as America.
45:3241-year-old Sakamoto Tane, who lived in a port city on the island of Shikoku,
45:38expressed the general feeling in her diary when she wrote,
45:41at long last, the war has started.
45:52もう日本は1935年ぐらいからずっと戦争をやってましてですね、
45:59もうその戦争慣れをしていて、どういう準備をしたら戦争を始められるか。
46:00それから国民に対しても、
46:02We are now in a war.
46:06The people are all worried about us and we need to be able to do this for a country.
46:11We have been able to do this for a country.
46:12We have been able to move to the war.
46:33described the scenes in Hiroshima City on December 9th.
46:38Yesterday's excitement turned today to a determination
46:40to serve in ways that could lead to certain victory.
46:44And in the cold rain that had been falling from early morning,
46:48crowds of ordinary people went to pray for certain victory
46:52at the Gokoku Shrine.
47:02The governor of Shizuoka Prefecture said,
47:06recognizing that the conflict will be long,
47:09each of us should pledge to overcome the 10,000 difficulties,
47:13overthrow the enemy countries,
47:15and move towards their annihilation.
47:20And the rallies had grand names like
47:23rally to support the Greater East Asia War
47:26or rally to support the annihilation
47:30of the Americans and the British.
47:31Some of these rallies attracted as many as 70,000 people.
47:44West of Hawaii lie a ring of fortified islands
47:47that would render Japan's co-prosperity sphere defensible.
47:52Wake and Guam were American outposts
47:55that upset the integrity of Japan's perimeter.
48:00each were targets in Japan's mass assault on the Pacific.
48:06Guam fell at once.
48:08However, a marine garrison held out on wake for two weeks,
48:12until December 23rd.
48:15Japan had galvanized its foothold in the Pacific.
48:19But the ramifications of war were soon to be felt.
48:23On January 7th, the USS Pollock sunk a Japanese freighter off Tokyo.
48:29It was the first of 1,113 merchant ships and 201 warships
48:35American submariners were to sink in the Pacific War.
48:41Belts started to tighten on the home front.
48:46But early success fuelled the military and Admiral Motomi Ugaki declared on New Year's Day 1942
48:54the main thing is to win and we surely will.
49:00The Japanese described themselves as being victory drunk.
49:05Their troops were closing in on the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore.
49:11And their navy was making plans to draw the Americans into a decisive encounter
49:17near an island of which nobody had heard.
49:22Midway.
49:23Midway.
49:25Midway.
49:29Midway.
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