And then Japan

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 9th Year

Issue

Issue No.

4

Date Released

22 Nov 1943

Length of issue (in feet)

1656

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1And then Japan

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

The March of Time synopsis: In this release the March of Time gives an informed view of the task before the Allies after they have settled accounts in Europe. Early in the film Mr. Churchill is presented, saying; "In our conference in January, 1942, between the President and myself, and between our high expert advisers, it was evident that while the defeat of Japan would not mean the defeat of Germany, the defeat of Germany would infallibly mean the ruin of Japan". But though it is accepted that Germany must be defeated first, it is insisted that the ruin of Japan, though it follow infallibly, will not be compassed by less than maximum combined effort. According to Mr. Joseph Clark Grew who, as former U.S. Ambassador in Tokyo, has studied the Japanese at close range, Americans have little cause for complacency about the outcome of their war in the Pacific. The Voice of Time reminds us: The Western World knows far too little about the Japan of today which remains unexplicably savage and unfathomably alien. Instances like the murder of captured American airmen and the reports of the bitter combats and unimaginable hardships endured by American troops on Bataan, have produced among Americans at home the feeling that their Japanese enemy was monstrous, unreal, inhuman.

But apart from the mystery of mankind’s apparently infinite capacity for being deceived, there is nothing so very mysterious about the savage fanaticism of Nippon’s warriors. For every Japanese has been taught that his nation is the seat of all divinity on earth, that his ancestors are gods, and that his children are destined to rule over all peoples. Throughout his entire life the Japanese dedicates himself to blind subservience to his gods, his nation and the sacred person of his Emperor, all indissolubly linked in symbolic ceremonials which spare the subject any need for independent thought. In Tokyo, firmly entrenched in power and sheltered by the godhead of the Emperor, is the political clique of army and navy chieftains, and Premier Tojo, the real master of Japan’s destinies, wielding absolute authority through a devoted and servile cabinet. The prime instrument of power in Japan’s Asiatic realm is the Army of Nippon, recruited mainly from among the classes of peasants and workers, to whom a military career is a great step up in the social scale. Hardy, frugal and of great physical endurance, they are one of the world’s best-disciplined military organisations. To fight what it thinks may be a hundred years’ war Japan is drilling its youngest generations and instilling in them all the precepts of obedience and devotiong which the national code of worship and emulation of military heroes requires of young and old.

Japan’s bid for world domination has already brought to its commercial classes new prosperity and optimism. Public enthusiasm is worked to high pitch by propaganda films which remind the Japanese that aggression is a policy that pays, and that what they have won by arms could never have been obtained by peaceful means. And each passing month brings new confidence that Japan can hold what she has won. For Japan, from being a "have-not" nation of seventy-three millions, crowded into one hundred and fifty thousand square miles of island territory has become master of an empire of nearly four million square miles. Hers today is the timber of the Philippines, the rubber and tin of Malaya, the oil of the Dutch East Indies and the minerals of Manchuria - hers by right of conquest because the army of Japan has been able to fulfil the nation’s sacred and manifest destiny. In blatant celebrations Japan is telling the Western World that she has won her objectives and can hold them eternally, for she has on her side power and daring and the incalculable blessing of the eight million deities of Shinto. For any who find the news from Russia and Italy intoxicating "...And Then Japan" is a sobering film. "Against the madness of Japan’s people", concludes Joseph Grew, "nothing less than all our effort will suffice. The future is ours or theirs".

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.9 No.13 of the US edition. The title on the lobby card reads "... And Then Japan".

Keywords

Social conditions; Industry and manufacture; War and conflict

Written sources

The March of Time Promotional Material   Lobby Card, Used for synopsis

Credits:

Production Co.

Time Inc.