The Pacific Story. This is the story of the Pacific and its people, of the peaceful sea and the lands and lives it touches, and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. The National Broadcasting Company presents the first in a new series of programs dedicated to a fuller understanding of the vast Pacific Basin. This new broadcast series, another feature of the Inter-American University of the Air, will deal with a different aspect of the Pacific each week, with drama of the past and present, and commentary by Owen Latimore, authority on the Pacific and recently political advisor to General Ishimō-chan Kaiseki. This is the Pacific Story. Japan's Dream of World Dominion. Across the vast Pacific, the East at last meets the West. The destinies of the millions of people who live in the lands it touches are faithfully intertwined. The vast Pacific no longer separates the Occident from the Orient, but rather joins them. Here around the Pacific Basin, a new world is emerging, a new era of cultural and commercial and industrial development. What happens in the Pacific today will affect not only the millions of Chinese and Malaysians and Polynesians, but the millions of Americans as well. Land forms an arc rather than a complete circle around the Pacific. At the south, the Pacific opens into the Antarctic Sea. South America is on the Pacific from Cape Horn to Panama, and Mexico is on the Pacific and the United States and Canada. At the top of the map, Alaska lunges out to the West and almost touches Siberia. From here, the rim curves away to the south. Below Siberia lies Japan, and behind Japan on Asia's mainland is China. South of China lie the Philippines, and west and south are Indochina, Thailand, the Netherlands, Indies, and Malaya. Further to the west are Burma and India, at the bottom of the map, between the feet of the great arch, are Australia and New Zealand, and dotting the sea itself for thousands of islands. With the peoples of these lands, our future in the Pacific must be resolved. Today, this vast Pacific storehouse of wealth and culture and wisdom is ablaze. 70 million regimented Japanese are engaged in the terrible attempt to enslave a billion and more people. At the very beginning, the Japanese militarists made their biggest and most thorough conquest when they conquered the Japanese people and yoked them to a system of unending, recurring aggression. This double conquest, at home and abroad, gathered new impetus only 16 years ago, in 1927, by an event in Mukton, Manchuria. Who is it? Fong. Who? Fong. Open the door. Are you alone? Yes, but I must hurry. Come in. They are going to start at 10 o'clock tonight. And they are all here? Yes, from Tokyo and from all over Manchuria. They have been arriving here in Mukton for two days. Do you have their names? Not all of them, but they are all Japanese experts, military officers, railroad men, shipping men. Do any of them suspect you are Chinese? No, but they are to start in less than an hour, and I cannot get back here again until it is over. How long will it last? A week or more, and I must have someone to take the information I get to you. Chen will do that. I am expecting him here now. I will be in the conference room or need it. You know what it means if you are discovered? I have been a house boy there a long time. They will be watching you. I speak to no one. Who is it? Chen, I came down a black alley, but I thought someone was following me. Was anyone following you, Feng? No, I tried to see for sure, but it was too dark. We must move. They will be here before dawn. We move to one thing, Louise, tonight. Then I must leave at once. Will you be at the house, Chen? Yes, Fukusawa is taking me. I will be in the kitchen. Fukusawa is taking you? Good. To look after his personal needs. I will come in tomorrow. Feng will have access to the conference room, but will not be able to reach me. You, Chen, will see him and report to me. I can only get to the market and back. I shall meet you there. Is there anything else? No, not now. I shall expect you when the conference is over. Go up the dark way, Feng. Yes, sir. Chen, you must determine if you will follow tonight. If we are to succeed, let us be realistic about the problem. Being realistic implies the policy of blood and iron. That could be suicide. That is a proper answer. Freeze, gentlemen. In any plan so great in scope as that which we envision for Japan, we will do well to remember the principle laid down by my ancestor, Lord Hata, in 1858. In his memorial to the emperor, Lord Hata said, the object should always be kept in view of reigning the foundation for securing Heijanuma over all nations. We should declare our protection over harmless but powerful nations. Thus, the nations of the world will come to look up to our emperor as the great ruler of all nations. You mean, sir, that we should go to war with United States? If we are to control China, we must first crush the United States. China is wanting. United States is another. We must start preparations at once. Let us not deceive ourselves. We must fight the United States sometime. Here is your sake, sir. Oh, here it is, sir. Put it down here. If we are to conquer China, we must first take Manchuria and Mongolia. No, I do not agree with that. Shall I pour your sake for you, sir? Oh, yes, yes. Just a little. It need not a necessary fall that going into Manchuria and Mongolia will result in war with the United States. America has too much at stake in Asia to permit us to take either Manchuria or China without war. America is a wrong way from Manchuria. Would you care for some more sake, sir? No, no, that is all. America is not our only danger in Pacific. The Chinese may someday wake up. But these factors must not deter us from the plan. We have come here to Mukten to work out. No strategy is sound unless it is realistic. If we merely hope to develop trade in Eastern Asia, we shall eventually be defeated by England and America. No. Our course is to take Manchuria, Mongolia, China, and whatever else is necessary to ensure our self-protection. Here is your tobacco, sir. Oh, yes, yes. That is all. That is all. Yes, sir. We must take firm attitude toward the United States. To give warning to China and to rest of the world. We are not ready to take such an attitude. Then we must prepare. No nation aside from Japan is noble and injustice enough to command. Hello, Chen. You have come here to market? Yes. Here is the report from Fang. A stranger is watching you. The vegetables are wilted. Let us move along to the bean cakes. They are over here. It is the same man I have seen each time I have come here to market. Has Fang been in the conferences? Yes. But they have been watching me. I am sure. Do not come here again. There will be another session tomorrow. I will try to reach you at once. I see. Then it is no longer a matter of where we shall start, but how and when. The United States in the Lansing-Ishi North of 1917 have admitted our special interests in Manchuria. But how shall we start? It is simple. The only way to gain actual rights in Manchuria and Mongolia is to use this region as a base. Out the right as a base? Under the pretext of trade and commerce, yes. And from there, penetrate the rest of China. Here are your capsules, sir. Oh, yes, yes. Did you bring water? Yes, I have it over here. Oh, but that will take money. More than we have. We can get foreign capital through the slogan, equal opportunity for all in Manchuria. Yes. That will not only help us get foreign loans, but will dispel suspicions of our design in Manchuria. Here is your water, sir. Oh, yes, yes. As a military man, I leave the getting of the money to you. I pledge it. I will take the glass, sir. Will there be anything else? That is all now. That is all. Ten yen must be appropriated to send 400 retired military officers to mix with the people. These officers are trained for this mission? Trained and ready, yes. They will go disguised as teachers and Chinese citizens. Our first move must be into Manchuria, then into China. In our world with Russia and the United States, we must make Manchuria and Mongolia proper human beings. I had not expected to see you, Fang. They took Chen today. Chen knew it was coming. Here is my report and his, too. Before they took him, he arranged for a Korean clerk to furnish us a complete text. Then the conference is over. It ended last night. Eleven days of wanton plotting. They all left as secretly as they came. They have put their thoughts into a plan. Soon China will be bleeding, and then the rest of the world. In July 1927, this plan cunningly conceived by the cream of Japanese military and civilian experts, generals, admirals, railroad men, shipping men, economists, bankers, industrialists. This crystallization of the dreams of Lord Hata, the Black Dragon Society, Premier Okuma, and Viscount Tani, this plan to dominate the world was presented by Baron Tanaka to the Emperor of Japan. Manchuria first, that was the plan. Japan buckled down to a task with zeal, and four years later, in 1931. They are coming. They will be here any minute. It will do no good to lock the door, Yang. We cannot let them get control of this telephone building. They have already taken over the telegraph offices and put the radio stations out of commission. We will delay them until our army sends help. There is no help. They are taking over everything. I saw them marching into the powerhouse. They set off a bomb at ten o'clock last night at a place where their own troops were concentrated on the South Manchurian Railway. Then they said that one of us Chinese did it. They had it all planned. Before the night was over, they attacked and captured the Chinese barracks and the great arsenal here at Mukden. Yang, Yang, you guard this door here. Yes, sir. We must keep these telephone lines open as long as we can. I shall never let them pass. Yang says they have taken the powerhouse. Yes, they have taken, they have captured Antung, Changkong, and Nuchang. Those cities are hundreds of miles away. Is this an invasion? It has been directed from Tokyo. They are coming. Open the door! Open the door! Shall I open the door? Open the door! Open the door! Open the door! Open the door! Open the door! Open the door! Yes, sir. Open. You are fooled. You are under arrest! What have we done? What you will soon learn. And you, get away from that door! No, no, you will not pass here. No, get away from the door. No, never, never! The plan worked out by those experts at Smukton was beginning to unfold. The Tanaka Memorial was beginning to be translated into bombs and bullets and blood. Manchuria and Mongolia first, and then in 1937, China. And by coincidence, the Japanese attack on China as a result of the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge in Paiping came ten years to the day after the Japanese drew up the Tanaka Memorial. Powerful Japanese talents are... Extra, extra, Japanese-born Chinese civilians, extra, extra, Japanese-born Chinese civilians! The Chinese are reeling under the lightning Japanese blow. Jap columns with full equipment are smashing into China, driving on the key military centers, and sweeping all resistance... Read all about it, Japanese, before the shells bang high, extra, extra, read all about it, Japanese... Alone, China stood up before this furious onslaught, fought with skill and courage, lost her entire coastline and retreated from her coastal plains to the hills of the interior, and there with less material than any major power on earth, she successfully fought off attack after attack as the years rolled by. The Japanese plan was unfolding, unfolding faster than we knew. After the fall of France, Japan moved into Indochina. As the war with China drew into its fifth year, the Pacific was boiling. Now the Pacific War was creeping toward America. It struck with paralyzing power at Pearl Harbor. The distant war in the Pacific became our wars. It became the war of all the peoples of the Pacific Basin. Our destiny in the Pacific was at stake, as well as the destiny of the Chinese, the Malaysians, and the Polynesians. Now we understood China's plight, and now at last, we responded. Hey, Sergeant, there's land down there. Where are we? You'll figure it out for yourself. We're flying east, aren't we? Yeah, but we're not over Africa yet. Well, relax. If the skipper wanted you to know where we're going, we'd have told you long before this. Well, a whole heavy bombardment squadron like ours has taken off and headed east. Why hold these small stations? We're going to land. Flight to form Moted Bomber. B-24 Liberators swept down to a landing on Puerto Rico last February. There it was met by General H.H. Arnold, commander of the United States Army Air Force, who with Field Marshal Sir John Dill were just returning from a meeting with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking, following the Casablanca Conference. Up to this point, Puerto Rico, the heavy bombers did not know their destination, but now they did. General Arnold gave them the order. Chungking. Pilot to navigator. Pilot to navigator. When are we going to sight land? Navigator to pilot. We should sight Africa in five minutes. It's getting colder, Sarge. Look at the snow down there. We're crossing the highest mountains in the world. It's fire! Navigator to pilot. Navigator to pilot. Go ahead, navigator. That's it. That's it ahead of us there at two o'clock. That's Chungking. American heavy bombers in Chungking, America speaking in terms of cold steel, but bombers are not enough. Bombers need ground crews and supplies, gasoline, spare parts, bullets, bombs. By ships, these were taken across the seas, then flown across India, across the Himalayas into China. Now those are your orders. Any questions? No, let's get going. Come on. Very well, men. That's all. Report to your planes. We'll take off at once. Eastward, east and south across the Chinese plains to the shore of the Pacific, to the Japanese hell coast of China. Halfway around the world, these young Americans had come, halfway and more, from Colorado and Utah, where they had trained, across the nation to Puerto Rico, across the Atlantic to Africa, across Africa, across India, over the Himalayas, and now on the long, long mission from Chungking to the sea. Navigator to pilot. Spotted our target. Ten thirty o'clock. Ten thirty o'clock. Good. That's it, all right. Pilot to bombardier. Pilot to bombardier. Target. Ten thirty o'clock. Your ship. Bombardier to pilot. Good. Take her in. Two point two. Steady. Steady. Bombs away. American bombers in the far east. American bombs on Japanese health strongholds. Canton in South China. The great island of Hainan and Haiphong in French Indochina. But the road back is hard. The Japanese occupy Manchuria, the coast of China, the Philippines, Indochina, Thailand, the fabulously wealthy Netherland Indies, Malaya, Burma, and a great portion of the Pacific basin itself. Japan stands astride Asia and looms over the horizon of the entire world. Before there can be peace in the Pacific, this power must be broken. We have only begun to understand this vast, unpeaceful sea and all of its waters, many lands and islands, and more than a billion people mean to us. The significance of the events of the Pacific is a matter for one who knows the Pacific. Here is Owen Latimore, director of the School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Latimore. You have been hearing a story of how our enemies in the Pacific forced this war on us. In later programs, continuing the story of region after region, people after people, the Pacific story will have much to tell us of our friends as well as our enemies. Fortunately for us and for the future, our friends are even more important than our enemies, for this is not only a story of how free peoples take up arms when they are attacked. We are fighting for something as well as against something, and so are our allies, the United Nations. When the Pacific War began six years ago, long before the war in Europe, the Chinese resisted Japanese invasion because they too had something to fight for, something more than their lands and their homes and their property. More than anything else, they fought because they had been making progress in creating a freer and better China, and because they refused to let the Japanese turn the clock back. That is one of the angles to the story of the Tanaka Memorial, which you heard being retold a few minutes ago. The Tanaka plot was hatched in a memorable year, 1927. That was the year when China's nationalist armies under Chiang Kai-shek were uniting the divided country of China. The Japanese militarists did not want a united and progressive China. They wanted a weak, divided China. They wanted China to be ruled by corrupt politicians and militarists, whom the Japanese could bribe and manipulate, so they gathered in haste to plan how to prevent Chinese unification and progress by force. That is why the Chinese to this day are fighting not only to stop the invasion begun in 1937, but for the right to continue their own progress launched in 1927. That creates a bond between America and China. Americans have always believed in the goodness of the future, in an expanding horizon. Today and tomorrow, our expanding horizon opens up for us wide vistas across the Pacific. As we move toward that new horizon, what is our advance to be like? Are we to thrust across the Pacific as better and tougher imperialists than the Japanese, or are we going to make our mark in Asia as liberators and as allies of others who are fighting for liberty? Can we win without allies, and can we stay free unless others become free? There can be only one American answer. What we want is liberty, and we feel kinship with others who want liberty. Luckily for us, we can find that kinship. Our first great advantage is that we have a good name across the Pacific. We have a people in Asia which believes that America wants to conquer and possess their territory. Our second great advantage is that thanks primarily to China, there is not a man, woman, or child in Asia who does not know the idea of liberty or have the hunger for liberty. And don't forget, there are Japanese also on our side, the conquered Japanese, by their own militarists, brave men and women, beaten and jailed and powerless until the Japanese military are beaten and the military legend shattered. Every step of Japan's imperialistic aggression abroad has been prepared for by a step in the suppression of the Japanese people. So today the issues are clear, as clear in our enemy's camp as they are in ours. Because we understand what the war is about, we need all the more to understand the peoples who are fighting the war. We are in this war side by side with people who in these modern days drive tractor sleds as well as dog sleds in the Arctic, in it with people who earn their living standing knee deep in the mud of rice paddies, in it with Malays and Indonesians and Polynesians who made prodigious ocean voyages in canoes before Balboa ever saw the Pacific, in it with Australians and New Zealanders who live where it is summer at Christmas time. Most of these people are different from us in many ways and like us in some ways. What is it that counts, the difference or the likeness? In China, a whole people have one recognition as full equals among the free self-governing peoples because they proved by fighting that they could survive unconquered. In the Philippines, we taught a people the ways of democracy and prepared them for the practice of democracy. President Roosevelt has said that he thinks that the Philippines are a very good model for other countries. Chiang Kai-shek of China has just put forward another suggestion in a very important message to us Americans and to all the other United Nations. He says that it is our moral duty to create freedom. Some people are not yet ready for it, but we should create the conditions under which they can have it when they are ready for it. That opens up a lot of ideas. Here we have one of the great figures of Asiatic history who restates in his own way what Lincoln meant when he said that America could not survive half slave and half free. We must not close the doors of opportunity. Freedom does not stand still. Freedom advances. Unless more and more men are becoming free all the time, freedom becomes less real for those who are still nominally free. When Hitler denied freedom to the Jews, he limited freedom for other Germans too. When we, on the other hand, said to the Filipinos, you shall be free, we created by those words a reality for which the Filipinos would fight and are still fighting. Maybe that is the chapter of the future in the Pacific story. Maybe out of many cultures, languages, religions, races, there is coming into being something new, not a dead level on which all men are the same, but a wide level on which many people, diverse in their history and different in their present lives, may yet have under their feet the firm ground of freedom. Thank you, Mr. Lattimore. You have just heard the first program of the new series, the Pacific Story. Next week at the same time over most of these stations, the second will be broadcast, Alaska, America's New Frontier, with drama of the past and present and commentary by Owen Lattimore, authority on the Pacific, and recently political advisor to Generalissimo Chang Kai-Shek. You may secure an illuminating handbook of the Pacific Story, which gives background information on each program in this series with suggested further reading. This specific story manual will be sent to you for 25 cents in coin to cover cost of printing and mailing. Address, the University of California Press, Berkeley, California. I'll repeat the address. The University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The Pacific Story is written and directed by Arnold Marklis. The musical score is composed and conducted by Charles Dance. Your narrator, Pedro de Córdova. This program has been presented as a public service and another feature of the Inter-American University of the Air by the National Broadcasting Company and the independent radio stations associated with the NBC network. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
