Original subtitles

(narrator) Every day now, for more than 30 years,

this couple have carried out this quaint ceremony

meant, before their god, to expiate the guilt of seven souls.

(chanting)

This is Japan

and the seven souls belong to the seven Japanese war criminals

hanged by the Allies affer 1945.

Japan suffered more than most countries

from the Great Depression affer the First World War.

The population was increasing fast

and every year produced another million mouths to feed.

Japan had no mineral resources of her own, unemployment was high,

and crop failures brought disastrous famines in rural areas.

(man) Public life was very hard in those days

and most of the young military officers

came from low-class agricultural families.

And our culture was in a very, very hard position.

(man speaking Japanese)

(translator) 1930 was the time when Japan

entered what might be called her convulsive period of history.

The influence of the ultra-nationalists grew

and such incidents as the young officers' revolt of May 15

placed Japan step by step under the power of the military.

The politicians took second place to the army.

(man) The Japanese army had been in disrepute

till about the beginning of the 1930s,

and then they came back through the so-called patriotic societies -

many of them no more than gangsters

who could commit any misdeed in the name of patriotism.

(yelling)

Those were the years certain authors have described

as the period of government by assassination.

And there were several assassinations

of prime ministers and leaders in those days

just because they had giberag views

or because they favoured

better relations with the United States, Britain,

or more other democratic-minded nations.

(narrator) The army also controlled the education system.

A respect for the martial arts

was inculcated into every Japanese child from an early age.

To the Japanese, their emperor was a god.

But Hirohito chose to reign, not to rule.

He allowed himself to be manipulated by the military,

and since every Japanese was pledged to serVe the emperor unto death,

his connivance was a considerable asset to the army.

To solve Japan's economic problems,

the army favoured expansion on the Asian mainland.

Korea had long been Japan's, and since her victory over Tsarist Russia in 1905,

Japan had also been allowed to station troops in Manchuria.

Manchuria was mostly empty wilderness,

but it contained raw materials that Japan lacked,

such as coal and iron ore.

lmpatient that the politicians back in Tokyo did not see the obvious need

to seize Manchuria once and for all,

a group of extremists in 1931 infiltrated the Japanese garrisons there

and persuaded them to take on Manchuria's feeble army.

(yelling)

Against little real opposition,

the Japanese army soon controlled the whole country,

driving the luckless Manchurians before them.

The world was shocked, but did nothing...

(all yell)

apart from a rebuke at the League of Nations.

Japan, however,

finds it impossible to accept

the report adopted by the assembly.

(reporter) And so Japan leaves the League.

The Far Eastern war cloud casts its shadow over the whole world.

(narrator) As they had occupied Manchuria with such ease

and without interference from the rest of the world,

the Japanese generals there soon turned their attention

to Manchuria's next-door neighbour, China.

The China of 500 million souls.

The China that for centuries had thought itself secure behind its Great Wall.

ln July, 1937, an incident was manufactured

whereby the Chinese appeared to fire on the Japanese.

Without waiting to investigate, Japan invaded China.

Disunited and ill-equipped, the Chinese were no match for the ruthless Japanese.

Within a matter of weeks, the Japanese had overrun most of northern China

and were bombing Peking.

(air-raid siren)

Peking soon fell, and it was then Shanghai's turn.

Once Shanghai had fallen, the Japanese forces advanced up the Yangtze valley

to threaten the then-capital of China, Nanking.

(all yell)

lt was here at Nanking in December, 1937,

that the Japanese perpetrated what was, until then,

one of the worst atrocities of this century,

when their troops massacred more than 200,000 Chinese in cold blood.

Even the Nazis were shocked, and offered to mediate to prevent further bloodshed.

But the Japanese generals were unyielding

as their military successes mounted.

By the summer of 1938, the Japanese had captured a considerable part of China,

including most of the major cities,

but they were only conquering territory, not people,

as the Chinese retreated into their vast hinterland.

Worse for the Japanese, their conquests incurred the suspicion

of their old enemy to the north, Russia.

ln the summer of 1938, Russian and Japanese troops battled for possession

of a barren hill on the Soviet-Manchurian border.

The Japanese received such a drubbing

that they opted for a settlement affer only two weeks.

Ten months later, another squabble broke out

and once again the Japanese were beaten,

this time by none other than General Zhukov.

lt made them wary of further conflicts with the Soviet Union.

(all yelling)

But it also pushed them closer to Germany and ltaly.

- Banzai! - (all yell)

Living in Japan became difficult for other Westerners.

You were constantly under the superVision of police.

You were always, as a European, suspected of being a spy.

ln the railway stations, you'd offen see posters

of a man with a Sherlock Holmes cap and a curly pipe,

which said, "Beware of spies".

You had the intensified activities of the thought police and the Kempeitai,

who controlled speech and thought.

Then you had the introduction of a national uniform called Kokomin-fuku.

Affer leaving school, people were supposed to wear these to go to work.

And they were khaki

and they were similar to the uniforms worn by the serVicemen.

And then the cinema and plays,

the complexion of these became more martial and more a glorification of war,

and the radio would play more and more music of a military nature.

Then on the political field you had the Taisai Yukusankai, the one-party system

that made it easy for the military

to consolidate their influence over the country.

(nationalistic song)

(applause)

There was constantly the sight and sounds

of soldiers being sent off ceremoniously

to the front in China.

(Busn) They were always taught that

the greatest thing that could happen to any family

was to be able to give a son or two sons or three sons or seven sons

to the serVice of their country

and to die for the emperor and the imperial family.

(Mutsu) You had the so-called ash boxes, remains of soldiers,

coming back to Japan, so we knew we were at war.

(narrator) Western influences had grown in Japan in the '30s,

which the military disliked and now discouraged.

(Busn) l remember my former wife - it must have been about 1938 -

coming from a hairdressers' where she had her hair waved

and being stopped by a policeman,

who told her that this was a sign of Western decadence -

you shouldn't have your hair waved.

Dancing, even Western music -

except classical music, which was mostly German, Beethoven, sort of thing -

was frowned upon.

Dancehalls were closed down and any kind of pleasure introduced from the West,

the military did their best to prohibit it and rub it out altogether.

(Busn) When l leff Japan, early '40, there was rationing, prices were high,

students of high schools, universities,

were doing military training practically every day,

you had army officers attached to every school to superVise such training.

And so it was a nation preparing for war.

(yells)

(narrator) The China war dragged on into 1940,

though the Japanese generals were looking to end it

without too much loss of face.

But Hitler's swiff victories over Holland and France in May, 1940,

and the seemingly imminent defeat of Britain

made the Japanese generals greedy for more.

Generally speaking, the Japanese public was very elated by the German success.

The catchword in those days was "Don't miss the bus".

Within three months of France's fall,

the puppet Vichy government had been persuaded

to allow Japanese troops to enter French lndochina,

ominously close to the Philippines, then an American dependency.

America reacted sharply

by embargoing supplies to Japan of iron ore and aviation fuel.

The embargo pushed Japan still closer to the Axis.

ln Berlin in September, 1940,

Germany, ltaly and Japan concluded the Tripartite Pact.

The two wars at opposite ends of the globe were now linked,

though not yet joined.

Japan's pro-German foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka

followed up his goodwill trip to Hitler with a visit in April, 1941 , to Moscow,

where he signed a neutrality treaty with Stalin.

(man) The Soviet Union had already posed a threat to Japanese security,

and so the army was itching for a showdown with the Soviet Union.

The navy, on the other hand,

wanted to advance southward

because the resources

our country lacked were largely in the South Seas.

And so Japan was, so to speak, pulled apart

between the army ambition and naval design.

But when the time for interVention against the north passed,

the army naturally joined with the navy.

(narrator) Japan had the strongest navy in the Pacific,

but when she occupied the rest of French lndochina in the summer of 1941 ,

the United States embargoed oil,

which leff the Japanese navy critically short of it.

Japan could either climb down and suffer loss of face,

or else move south to seize these,

the oil wells of the Dutch East lndies.

Serious planning for such a move began straight away.

Special jungle training and amphibious landing exercises were put in hand.

Army leaders argued that

unless an invasion of the Dutch East lndies began before the end of 1941 ,

a shortage of oil would rule it out forever.

Even so, some Japanese politicians still hadn't given up hope

of achieving Japan's aims by diplomatic means.

But time was short.

The generals had given the diplomats until mid-October.

When that deadline passed, Hirohito, on Marquis Kido's advice,

invited his war minister General Tojo to form a government.

There are many interpretations of Marquis Kido's actions

in choosing General Tojo as the prime minister

over the last cabinet preceding the outbreak of the war.

l myself asked this point

and Marquis Kido's reply was:

"Nobody except Tojo was powerful enough to control the army,

which was running amok."

And also: "Tojo was deeply devoted to the person of the emperor,

and if His Majesty made his wish known to General Tojo,

Tojo would faithfully abide by such a wish."

(speaking Japanese)

(narrator) But even General Tojo shrank from the brink of war.

He extended the deadline for diplomacy another month, until November 25,

sending special envoys to Washington to negotiate the ending of the oil embargo.

(man) Say a few words for us, sir. lf you come quite close...

Gentlemen, you all know how difficult my mission is.

But l will do all l can

to make it a successful one for the sake of two countries,

Japan and the United States.

(narrator) And so that autumn, with scant sincerity on either side,

the diplomatic charade was played out.

(Kase) The government undertook

the difficult negotiations with the United States,

but the temper of the nation grew more militaristic,

which made it practically impossible to continue the negotiations.

(narrator) While the diplomats talked in Washington,

in Tokyo the militarists put the finishing touches

to their plans of conquest.

To capture the oil wells intact called for a surprise assault,

not just on the Dutch East lndies, but also on Malaya and the Philippines.

Having got the oil, there was the problem of getting it back to Japan

unhindered by either the Royal Navy based at Singapore,

or the massive United States Pacific fleet based in Hawaii at Pearl Harbour.

(man speaking Japanese)

(translator) lt was felt that if war came

and Japan were to fight in a conventional way,

she had little hope of winning.

And so the idea was to strike a blow

against the American fleet at Pearl Harbour

simultaneously as the war started.

There were three main problems

in attacking Pearl Harbour.

The first was to keep it a secret,

because if the Americans knew

a Japanese fleet was approaching, then they would immediately attack it.

The second concerned which route to take,

and the third concerned the attack itself,

whether it would be possible to use torpedoes

in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbour.

(man) The most difficult problem was torpedo launching in shallow water.

The British navy

attacked the ltalian fleet at Taranto

and l owe it very much for this lesson

in shallow-water launching.

(man) We made a model of Pearl Harbour

and the situation of the battleships and other warships.

We sent our agent to Pearl Harbour.

(man) Sometimes l went Japanese teahouse in Aliwa Height.

From there, l saw the fleet in Pearl Harbour.

Sometimes l go round Pearl Harbour

by taxi or bus.

Sometimes l walk along the front, drinking beer, to get information.

l did, you know, fishing.

l measured the depth of the sea,

but it was very... danger.

And one time l was ordered to see the torpedo gate.

So l went to the prohibited area of Pearl Harbour,

but l could not discover the submarine gate.

l sent my information

by commercial telegram, in code.

(narrator) The Japanese carrier fleet had leff Japan on November 26.

lt took them 1 1 days to sail, undetected,

the 4,000 or so miles to this point,

a mere 200 miles short of Hawaii.

The Americans had broken the Japanese codes and knew war was imminent,

but they had not found out where the Japanese might strike them.

"Climb Mount Niitaka" came the message from Tokyo.

lt was the signal for war to commence.

6am on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 .

The first of 400 Japanese bombers and torpedo planes take to the air.

Their destination: Pearl Harbour.

ln the early morning of December 7,

Joseph L Lockard and myself

were detailed to operate a problem from our radar unit.

The problem was to last from 4am to 7am.

And it was a training programme.

l was the plotter and Joseph Lockard was the radar operator.

We picked up a very large blip, which we had never seen before,

and proceeded to plot that flight in.

lt was then that l suggested that we send the information

in to our information centre.

l called in and the switchboard operator told me that there was no one there.

Did we wish to have someone call back to our radar station?

And that's when this Lieutenant Tyler called back

and told us, in essence, to forget it.

We continued the flight until about 20 minutes of eight,

when the flight seemed to disperse to the right and to the leff of the island.

(man) l was on board the USS Californla, tied to quay 3.

l was on the quarterdeck, getting ready for a colour -

as a matter of fact, l was a member of the band.

And looking slightly to the south,

l could see planes coming that direction, and some from that direction.

That was about the time of general quarters.

And l dropped my instrument, which was a clarinet,

went down below into my battle station,

and, about five minutes later, torpedoes hit us and exploded.

(man #2) I was aboard the West Virginia when the first airplanes came over.

They were built similar to our Helldivers, in those days.

And the pilot had the greenhouse back,

and he flew so low that l still remember him.

He had the leather helmet, like World War ll had, and the goggles,

and the reason l remember, he had a real thick moustache.

As he flew over, he kind of smiled and looked at the ship

and flew over towards the hangar there, when he starts laying his first bomb.

l saw the Arizona blow up, and it was like she just rained sailors.

Those were the ones fortunate enough to live, the ones blown off the ship.

l ran to the stern first to see if l could get off that way,

cos everything was burning at this time.

And so then l ran to the fo'c's'le.

And then there was a lot of oil, but it hadn't caught fire at this time.

So l said, "The best thing to do is to dive off there."

So l hit the water and swam around this way

and then came up over this rock there, and this is where l landed.

The thing l remember most about that morning was terror and confusion.

First place, it was early in the morning - everybody wasn't quite awake,

and to have somebody trying to kill you at that hour

kinda confuses you at best.

We were taking power and steam from the dock,

since we were alongside for repairs,

and somebody in the confusion cut our power and steam line, so we were leff...

Everything had to be operated in manual.

We only had one battery en masse that we could use,

which was the port five-inch battery,

so we started using it on the aircraff as they came in.

The low-flying torpedo planes all came directly over the hill

and down this way toward battleship row,

so we were able to get some pretty good shots at 'em,

even though we were in manual.

However, the guns had to be serVed by manual means -

we had to pass ammunition by hand.

We had a young chaplain aboard, JG, at the time -

he'd been aboard less than two months. His name was Hallow M Forgy,

and he was...

As for his battle station, he didn't have one -

he was concerned with crew morale - so he marched along the gun deck,

saying, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

You live with these ships all the time -

you never dream they could be damaged like this.

There were ships afire, ships burning, explosions going on all over the place.

(man) My first knowledge of the attack was when l was awakened

by the sound of bombs dropping and the roaring of aircraff all around us.

l ran out on the lanai and saw immediately they were Japanese planes

and there was a fella standing next to me who said,

"lt certainly looks real, doesn't it?"

And l said, "Yes, l'm afraid it is."

l ran over to my offices

and l was standing alongside

the commander-in-chief himself, Admiral Kimmel,

and we were glumly watching the havoc, the carnage, that was going on.

And suddenly he reached up, a motion of this kind,

and tore off his four-star shoulder boards,

which indicated his rank and title as Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Fleet.

He stepped into his adjacent office and when he came out,

he realised that he was going to lose command

and he had donned two-star rear-admiral shoulder boards.

(narrator) All nine battleships of the United States Pacific fleet

had been sunk or ruined,

together with several destroyers and cruisers,

but no aircraff carriers.

Luckily for the Americans,

the carriers had been at sea that particular Sunday morning.

However, the Japanese were well satisfied.

(Fuchida) The United States Pacific fleet was not prepared

and we succeeded.

(cheering)

(narrator) The Japanese did not just succeed

against the Americans at Pearl Harbour.

On December 10, the pride of the Royal Navy in the Pacific,

the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, were sunk.

(cheering)

That same day, Guam fell.

(cheering)

On December 23, Wake lsland.

(cheering)

On Christmas Day, Hong Kong.

(cheering)

On New Year's Day, 1942, Manila, capital of the Philippines.

(cheering)

On January 19, Borneo.

(cheering)

But the biggest prize of all awaited the Japanese in Malaya.

(man) The plan for the defence of Malaya

was based entirely on the air force.

And there were to be some 335 first-class aircraff,

with the army protecting their bases and their aerodromes,

and the idea was that they should attack

the Japanese whilst they were at sea

and destroy them or damage them

before the campaign started.

Percival's idea was to oppose the Japanese as they landed.

And that didn't come off - they were able to land in Thailand

and we would not break the neutrality,

and so we were at a disadvantage from the start.

(narrator) The Japanese were outnumbered two to one.

They had only the poorest of maps, usually pages torn from school atlases,

but they kept the British on the run, not stopping to consolidate or regroup.

(Smyth) One reason we were thrown onto the defensive,

the Japanese employed 300 tanks.

We hadn't any tanks at all.

(narrator) British strategists had decreed

that armour was not suited to jungle warfare.

Back in Whitehall, the British thought the jungle impenetrable,

whereas in some places it was cleared, in others not so dense,

and, anyway, the really dense patches could always be bypassed by sea -

which was precisely what the Japanese did.

(Gkada) The jungle is not such a terrible place.

We can live on rice, salt and sesame seeds, and salted fish, you see.

This can keep a soldier going a long time.

The jungle did not have the fear for us

that it seems to have had for some of the Allied soldiers.

(narrator) The Japanese had bombed Singapore

the same morning as Pearl Harbour.

The lights of the great port had guided them in and remained on during the raid

because no one knew how to switch them off.

Such confusion was to typify Singapore's reaction to the Japanese onslaught.

(Busn) l remember a British national newspaper ran a story

in which the opinion was expressed

that the Japanese would never be good flyers

because they had no sense of balance

through being carried on the backs of their mothers as children.

(narrator) The Japanese secret weapon in Malaya was... the bicycle.

When their tyres punctured, the Japanese soldiers simply rode on their rims.

To the retreating British, the clatter on the stony road sounded like tanks,

and added to their fear.

l think the fundamental reason why we failed in Malaya

was that we were stretched to the limit at that time

in our war with Germany and ltaly

and there simply were not the trained men, air forces and ships

that we should have supplied to beat the Japanese attack.

The priority of arms and equipment for Malaya at that time was very low.

They were only number four,

affer Great Britain, the Middle East and Russia.

Also, with regard to men, the first priority was the Middle East,

and Malaya only came second.

Some of the Australians that arrived in Malaya had never even fired a rifle.

So we did field very much a second eleven

against the very highly trained and strongly supported Japanese.

(narrator) Like the Americans at Pearl Harbour,

the British in Malaya wrongly believed the Japanese air force was poor,

but now British air cover waned and eventually disappeared.

There was no effective plan to stop the Japanese by land

and too little determination to resist.

Your forces

are not so aggressive as we expected.

The British planners had thought that, at worst,

northern Malaya could hold out for at least three months,

enough time to enable substantial reinforcements to be sent to Singapore.

But it took the Japanese, under General Yamashita, just seven weeks

to advance the 600 miles down the Malayan peninsula.

On February 8, 1942,

they crossed the thousands yards of the Straits of Johor

onto the island of Singapore.

No defences had been built on the northern shore of the island,

so the Japanese were able to land relatively unmolested.

What is more, they were able to capture

most of Singapore's water supplies with ease.

By now, the Japanese bombers raided Singapore at will,

for there was virtually no air defence.

The Japanese, in fact, were almost out of ammunition

and were considering withdrawing to the mainland,

but, unknown to them, British morale had collapsed.

(speaking Japanese)

(translator) General Yamashita had not prepared any plans

in the event of a British surrender.

And so when, on February 15, Major Wild, General Percival's emissary,

arrived at our forward headquarters at 3pm,

no one there believed him.

l was ordered to discuss with him

his suggestion of a meeting between General Percival and General Yamashita.

Major Wild wanted General Yamashita

to go to the governor general's residence,

but did not mention surrender.

l told him it was out of the question for General Yamashita to go anywhere

and that his general must come to us.

Eventually Major Wild agreed to this and said he would bring him at 6pm,

but again made no mention of surrender.

When l reported this to my superiors, they were suspicious and unbelieving.

However, l returned at six to meet General Percival and Major Wild.

l guided them to the Ford factory,

where the meeting with General Yamashita was to take place.

Because of this disbelief on the Japanese side,

they were still setting up tables when we arrived.

Straight away General Yamashita asked General Percival

whether he was surrendering.

But the British general merely talked about wanting to keep 1 ,500 soldiers

to maintain peace and order in Singapore.

General Yamashita again asked about surrender,

but General Percival went on talking about these 1 ,500 troops.

And so these two conversations continued in parallel

and time was passing.

Finally, General Yamashita could wait no longer.

He banged the table and asked General Percival if he was surrendering.

Otherwise, the Japanese would launch an immediate night attack.

Would that be all right?

Percival replied, no, he did not want any more attacks.

So again General Yamashita asked, "Will you surrender?"

And at last General Percival said yes.

(cheering)

(narrator) Singapore had been thought by the British to be impregnable,

but they were thinking of an attack from the sea.

lndeed, all the big fortress guns pointed seaward, not landward.

Said Churchill later, "The possibility of Singapore having no landward defences

no more entered into my mind

than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom."

We were so surprised, because we expected that

your forces were about 50,000 in total.

And we found out that there were about

1 10,000 prisoners in Singapore.

(narrator) Singapore's fall was the worst military disaster

in British history.

More than 130,000 troops laid down their arms

in the largest capitulation the British army has ever known.

The Japanese soldiers are told not to be prisoners,

so it's quite natural,

when they see the tens of thousands of white prisoners at Singapore,

they look down on them.

Thousands of British and Commonwealth troops

had arrived in Singapore only days before,

just in time to surrender.

Singapore's fall meant that the whole of Southeast Asia lay at Japan's feet.

Within weeks, the Japanese army was at the borders of lndia

and the Japanese navy was steaming close to the shores of Australia.

They had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

For the British, a last humiliation.

The garrison was paraded before the triumphant Japanese.

The sun had set on one imperial power.

On another, the sun was still rising.