 National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present the Pacific story. In the mounting fury of world conflicts, events in the Pacific are taking on ever greater importance. Here is the story of the Pacific and the millions of people who live around this greatest feat. The drama of the people whose destiny has taken the Pacific war. Here as another public service is the tale of the war in the Pacific and its meaning to us and to the generations to come. Manchuria, the Japanese Roar. It was the night in November, 1931. I was walking along the riverfront in Tianxin thinking. Two months before that, the Japanese had invaded Manchuria. I had been in Mukden the night of the so-called incident, and then on a hunch, I'd come down to Tianxin. Out of the dark, I saw a small group of men hurrying toward a powerful launch. A Chinese came running, far behind them, shouting. Stop them! Stop them! They are kidnappers! Hey you! Hey! Hey, what are you doing? Stop them! Stop them! I shot it almost automatically. Help me! Help me! Stop them! They are kidnappers! Hey you! Stop them! Stop! We have to stop them! Now they're pulling away in that powerful big launch. They have kidnapped Puyi. The Manchu boy-amper? Yes, Henry Puyi. They came to the mansion. Well, who are they? Doihara, Colonel Doihara. Oh, Japanese. They knocked me down. I am a retainer in the household. Colonel Kenzo Doihara. Do you have any idea where they took Puyi? No. They came right into the mansion, and they went directly to Puyi's quarters. And when I tried to stop them... I had come to Tianxin on a hunch, and I'd seen General Hanjo take over the government offices in Mukden. The Chinese railways, the telegraphs, the radio and the telephone. And just about everything else. Even the salt administration. I'd seen him crack down on the Chinese who would not collaborate with him and use those who would. It was evident that the Japanese had come to stay. That they would set up some kind of a government with some kind of a figurehead. And I figured their best bet would be Henry Puyi, the last of the Manchu emperors. Who as a boy had abdicated about twenty years before at the time of the Chinese Revolution. So I went down to Tianxin to get the jump on the story. And now that Puyi had been captured by Colonel Doihara, who was later to be called the Lawrence of China, I tried to figure out the next move. I finally went back up north to Mukden. What's the matter, Walton? Did Doihara slip on over on you down in Tianxin? Yes, I guess he did. Have you seen anything of Doihara or Puyi here in Mukden? The rumor is they've been seen down in Dairon. Dairon, huh? Yes. You're not going down there now, are you, Walton? I don't know. I see they're beginning to fly the flags of the old Manchu dynasty here. Yes, and some of the old Manchu nobility have been in conference with the Japanese. Yes, that's so. Yeah. Maybe you ought to stick around, Walton. Things were happening in Mukden. The Japanese were busy with a few inhabitants who for personal aggrandizement had decided to collaborate. Rumors leaked out that a new and independent nation would be established in Manchuria, and that it would be called Manjoko, which means Manchu country. Then one day we learned that Colonel Doihara had brought Henry Puyi to Manchuria. And then on March 9th, 1932, it seemed King, the renamed city of Changchun, which had been chosen as the capital, Henry Puyi presented himself for an important ceremony. It certainly looks fancy in that morning coat and those white gloves standing up there on that dyes. He doesn't look happy, though, standing there between General Hamzho and Count Chita. They're there to prompt him in case he forgets what to say. Puyi will know what to say. He can see all those Japanese bayonets around him. Order of the self-government dining board. Oh, one of the officials is speaking. The official declaration of independence. Manchuria and Mongolia have been in the past a separate state, not proper. The necessity of the present situation, we are in a position for national independence. With the will of the 30 million people, I hereby declare... ... that they're independent. Yes, Dean, at least a gesture. Is that all they're going to do? Isn't Puyi even going to take a note? I guess not. General Hamzho and Count Chita are shaking hands with him. Well, that's short and sweet. He's now chief executive. Yeah. Hey, look, they're escorting him away. Probably taking him back to the seclusion of his garden. Yeah, probably. I've got an idea, Walton, that that's as close as Puyi is ever going to come to running, my joker. Puyi being led away to his garden, a puppet to the Japanese. I thought of how far the great Manchu house of Nurhatsu had fallen. Once his ancestors, powerful and regal and terrible, had issued orders that all men obeyed with trembling fear. Nurhatsu, the Mongol-Napoleon, had declared the independence of Manchuria an inner and outer Mongolia from China. And, though he died before he finished his work, he laid the foundation for the invasion of all China. His people, a hundred thousand frightful warriors, took the Ming capital at Peking and proclaimed Manchu rule over all the Chinese empire. The Manchus ruled China for 268 years until 1912, until the time of the boy emperor Puyi. And when he abdicated, the Manchu dynasty collapsed. And now, he sits on a make-believe throne of the puppet state of Manchukuo. But the real rulers are the heads of the Japanese army and the railways of Manchuria. For many years before they invaded Manchuria in 1931, they had been penetrating it. Manchuria has everything we need. Japanese experts made surveys and reported back to the superior. Manchuria is larger than France and Italy come together. They were interested in space. Manchuria is a granary. They were interested in food. Manchuria is rich in minerals. They were interested in resources. Most of Manchuria is prairie land. It is fertile. Wheat and soya beans and qualiang grow there in great abundance. There is some mountains, but most of the land is wide valleys and rolling plains. In summer, the weather is as hot as in Egypt. In winter, it is 50 below. The winter winds sweep over the prairies and freeze everything before it. There are forests of pine and oak and elm and walnut. And in the earth are millions of tons of coal and iron. The Japanese had their eyes on Manchuria for years. After the Russo-Japanese War, they took over the Lao Deng Peninsula of Manchuria along with the southern Manchuria railway that ran from Port Arthur and Dyeran to Changchun. And also the coal mines worked by the railroad. At last, Japan had a foothold in Manchuria and she made the most of it. But this will give Japan control over our railways. Is it not a fact that China agreed in a secret protocol to the Treaty of 1905 not to build railways in Manchuria in competition with the Japanese railways? Yes, but that protocol was forced from us. And is it not a fact that in 1907 and again in 1909 China agreed to borrow from Japan to build the railways which we permitted you to build in Manchuria? We have agreed to all that. You remember that we permitted you to build the railroads on the conditions that you borrow the money from us and that we have supervision. Limited supervision, of course, over the line. That is what China is protesting. Japan is working the mines at Fushan and Yantai. And we are paying China attacks on the coal we mine, are we not? But all this means that Japan controls the railways, the mines of Manchuria and that we have... Japan expects China to abide by its agreements. Good day. The Chinese still nominally held Manchuria, but the Japanese were penetrating to its heart. Japan had staked out Manchuria as its sphere of influence and was alert to incursions of every kind. Other than that, she advanced her own interests in Manchuria. As of this date, Japan will supply foreign advisers on the Japanese subjects. We will hereafter have the right to prospect for minerals and the open mines in nine districts of Manchuria. One of these districts was the famous Anshan deposit, estimated to have 400 million tons of iron ore. They put in the first two blast furnaces just after World War I. I went up to have a look at it in the early 20s. The capacity of these blast furnaces is 300 tons of big iron a day. That isn't enough, Walton. How much is that in a year? About 200,000 tons a year. The original idea was to turn out 800,000 tons of steel a year. I understood that with the fushion mine only 75 miles away to supply the coal, that this was an almost ideal setup. Normally it should have been, but the depression hit it pretty hard. Instead of putting in eight blast furnaces, they've got just these two. And then they put up a cowl over there for 10,000 people, and that costs a lot more money. Well, as an expert in this sort of thing, would you say that this Anshan development is a success? Not by American standards. We can turn out big iron for around $25 a ton in the United States. It costs them here $35 a ton. Yes, but it looks as though they're going to continue with it. Oh, they'll do that. They regard it as a necessity. A heavy industry both for defense and to develop manufacturing. You can be sure that they'll go on expanding it too. From Anshan I went over to Fushion, the mine that supplies the coal for the Anshan iron works and the South Manchurian railway and the other industries of Manchuria. This is the biggest open coal mine in the world, Mr. Walton. Yes, it looks like an enormous saucer. Oh, yes. You see, the trains wind down around the sides, down into the bottom of the mine. We take out between a couple million and eight million tons of coal a year. Yeah, great development you have here. It amounted to very little before we took it over. The Russians operated the mine before the Russo-Japanese war and their output was only about 130,000 tons a year. And you're taking out between seven and eight million tons, huh? Oh, yes. We do it with a modern method. Yeah, that's a lot of coal. There is a great deal here. How much would you estimate? Oh, possibly something under one billion tons. Enough so it would take us a thousand years to take it all. By 1931, at the end of the Mukden Incident, there were 600 factories and mills in northern Manchuria. Many of them built and operated by the Japanese. This was before the Japanese invaded Manchuria. Of the 600 factories and mills, 150 were engaged in processing soybeans. The soybeans of Manchuria are more valuable than all its minerals and forests, Mr. Walton. I'm beginning to realize that. They tell me that soybeans are more than half of the Manchurian export trade. That is right. This year we have a crop of 225 million bushels. That's a tremendous yield. Our soil is the richest in the world. The Japanese are taking our soybeans to help feed Japan. It's an important food for you Chinese, too, isn't it? Yes, it is. And not only food, it is used for many other things, too. You're reducing it to bean oil here, aren't you? Yes, but it is also used to make buttons and radio panels and salad oil and sugar, Provena, vitamins, many things. That's probably one of the reasons Japan is so interested in Manchuria. It is a matter of food and commerce, of dollars and cents. Japan knows, for example, that last year's soybean crop was double the crop of 14 years ago. That would indicate that Manchuria is becoming more and more agricultural. But it is not. Since the Japanese came here, Manchuria has slowly changed from an agricultural state to an industrial state, we are becoming more. You could see Japan's development and exploitation on every hand. The Chinese had put in modern spinning mills. Then the Japanese came in and built bigger ones. The Japanese got their cotton from the United States and their wool from Australia. Yet they foresaw that someday they might be cut off from these sources. We have now introduced American cotton into Manchuria. Too cold in Manchuria? No. We have developed a cotton that grows well in our altitude. We have crossed sheep with excellent wool with our Mongolian sheep, which are hardy, but have poor hair. By this program of breeding, we are now growing Mongolian sheep with excellent wool. We are breeding these sheep by the millions. To observers everywhere, it was clear that someday the Japanese would extend their economic control of Manchuria to political control. Two years after Pugyi was set up as chief executive, he was enthroned as Emperor Kang Tae of Manchukwon. He then selected a Chinese cabinet with a Japanese advisor behind each cabinet member. When the Japanese had done in Korea and Promota, they did in Manchuria. It is no use, Wang. You did not get the job. They say there are no jobs on the railroad. They told me the same thing about the government. Yet there are 600 Japanese in the Manchukwon government. And they say it is a government of the people of Manchuria. They regard all of us Chinese as coolies. Wouldn't they even give you a job as a clerk? No. There is not one Chinese official on the railroad, not one Chinese engineer. And there are only a handful of Chinese who are clerks. Yes, it is unfair. Even in the repair shops, the Japanese workers get more than four times as much pay as the Chinese workers. For the same work? They are making slaves of us. We must leave or we must die here. The Japanese brought in Chinese immigrants for laborers. Paid some of them as little as one-twentieth the amount they paid the Japanese for the same work. These workers were never able to leave because they were always in debt to the Japanese. Under these conditions, gradually the Chinese rose. Armed outlaws, bandits began to appear. We have received intelligence of Mongol volunteers being active in this vicinity. Mongol volunteers? Yes. They have possibly learned of our investigation party. They are seeking to intimidate us. Our information is that there are several hundred in the Bandit Party. We are armed. But they outnumber us, sir. Lieutenant, we are the attachment of the Japanese army. The Mongol bandits may strike lone Japanese civilians, but they dare not attack us of the army. If I may be permitted an observation, sir, perhaps the major will remember that last June, 300 bandits under Tsionkai attacked one of our army punitive units and killed 17 of our men. I remember. That happened in broad daylight. Inform all members of our investigation party except the civilian officials. The presence of bandits will only scare them. Yes, sir. The Japanese soldiers and three Japanese civilian officials attacked to the garrison forces were killed when their investigation party was attacked by 300 Mongol volunteers yesterday, southwest of Tongwan. The people of Manchuria were never won the loyalty by the Japanese. The Japanese expanded their control, built better roads, better factories, better railways, put in better agricultural methods, but the great mass of Chinese still stood apart. After all, Manchuria is overwhelmingly Chinese. Our people, our language, our culture, all are Chinese. We have not been a real part of China for a long time, but we are different in every way from the Japanese. We know that all we do is for Japan. Day by day, our lot becomes worse. We become poorer and poorer. In Manchuria, the Japanese prepared for their blow against China proper. It came, you remember, in July 1937 with the attack at the Marcapolo Bridge outside of Beiping. After that, the Japanese knuckled down to make Manchuria the foundation for her dream of world conquest. Two weeks after the Marcapolo Bridge incident, the Japanese Manchurian Economic Joint Council was formed to mobilize all of Manchuria's resources for Japan. The following is our production goal for our first five-year plan. By the end of 1941, we will have produced 12 million tons of iron ore, 4,850,000 tons of iron, 2 million tons of raw steel, 2,500,000 tons of piece steel. But what Japan had to have in Manchuria was manpower. This was the key. And although Manchuria has a population of 30 million, manpower is scarce. It is scarce first because the Chinese avoid working for the Japanese as much as they can. And second, because of the low per-man production of the workers. I went out to Anshan again. Well, production here has been stepped up, yes. But still, it's not what the Japanese plan now. What is your goal for pig iron here at Tenzu-Hoo? The goal is 2 million tons a year, but we're never going to make it. Shorted your help? Principally, yes. 60% of our workers stay less than six months. Do you have that trouble only here? No, they're having labor troubles in the coal mines, too. They're opening new coal and iron deposits, but they can't get the workers. Is that true in the other industries being developed here in Manchuria? Factories, power stations, and in the arms and machine plants? It's true everywhere. But I've got an idea that's going to change, and soon. That National Mobilization Act they're talking about? Yes. Japan is putting the heat on the public government to control all menpower and resources. And you think they'll put it true? Yes. And putting all menchuria on a wartime basis. They're not only going to requisition communications and transportation and industries, they're also going to conscript the Manchurians as workers. When they do that, the workers will have to stay on the job. Now what'll that mean to an American engineer like you? I'm not going to wait to find out. Going back to the... That was 1939. The people of Manchuria were well under the heel of the Japanese. All males over 19 were under compulsory service. The economy of Manchuria was linked with the economy of Japan. You will close the shut-offs on the windows while we are passing through this area. Okay. You will keep the shut-offs closed until I return to open them. Okay. You know why that job conductor did that? We're going through a military territory, I suppose. Yes. It's what they call the Manjoko National Defense Zone. I've traveled this way many times. And they seem to be guarding it very well. Actually, they've converted Manchuria into an arsenal for Japan. And they are arming it to guard the northern frontier of what they call Greater East Asia. And guarding it against Russia? Against anyone, including the United States. They're developing Manchuria into a supply base, a military base, if you like. And arming it until it's impregnable. How do you think they're going to make out on their first five-year plan out here? Well, they probably won't quite make it, but they'll have come close to it. That will mean a tremendous increase in heavy industry. When they finish the first five-year plan, they'll probably start a second one. And that will be the time to look out. The first five-year plan closed at the end of 1941. Just at the time the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. They immediately launched a second five-year plan in Manchuria and geared it to the war against the United Nations. First, they'd learned the how of big-scale production. And in the second, they put their experience to work. They made rapid progress to meet the war emergency. More and bigger blast furnaces are being built to turn out steel for the war machine. Very hydroelectric plant is being constructed to supply power for Manchuria's war industry. The largest arsenal in Greater East Asia has been completed in Manchuria to supply Japan's mighty war machine. Hard-scale production to meet Japan's war needs is now on the way and the speed is rapidly increasing. All Manchuria sprang into life. New factories went up. An airplane factory, an automobile company, another ironworks. And all these meant that Japan was girding for a stubborn and terrible war on the mainland of Asia. In the control of food, the Japanese have reached into every part of Manchuria. They have clamped an iron hand on the farmers. You are aware, Chen, that the test of military provisions is a serious charge. But I stole nothing. The crops of Manchukuo belong to Japan. You held back some of your soil beans for your own use? My wife and children, there was not enough. We have furnished you with seeds to grow Kalyang. But only half as much this year has left. We had to little to eat. We had to eat the husks of the Kalyang. You look well enough. We are hungry. The army has taken our pigs and goats and our chickens and ducks. And when we could not give money for troops' company, they took our clothes and quilts and blankets. Do you deny that you held back a portion of your soil beans? No, my children... Here's guilty. Take him away. The food that is taken from the Chinese is commandeered for the Japanese. Across the great plains of Manchuria, it is taken by train down to the seaports on the Yellow Sea. Britain and the United States can never starve out Japan. This cargo of soil beans is going to Japan. With the food of Manchukuo, we can feed our entire population without import. Korea and Formosa furnish us rice, in addition to the rice we grow in Japan. The waters of the Pacific supply us with fish. Manchukuo supplies us with grain. And Formosa sends us sugar and fruits. These foods are ample for us. It was not so many years ago, 1927, that Premier Tanaka of Japan said, In order to conquer China, we must first conquer Manchuria and Mongolia. In order to conquer the world, we must first conquer China. For 40 years now, the Japanese have been penetrating into Manchuria. And since 1932, they've been converting it into a stronghold of their inner empire. Since the outbreak of World War II, they have learned many lessons. They've learned how to develop their resources. We have now modernized the oil enterprises of Manchukuo. In these fields here at Kushon, there is a deposit of 6 billion, 700 million tons of oil. And that is not all the petroleum in Manchuria. We don't know how much more there is, but we know that they have modernized their methods. Hundreds of thousands of tons are being taken out every year to carry on the war. And we know, like the British, they've learned to decentralize their industries. They have dispersed their production centers throughout Manchuria and the islands of Japan. From these plants flows a stream of war supplies. This plane is carrying guns, tanks, munitions to the front of the channel. This train is carrying naval supplies, food, medicine and ammunition to a Chinese port for shipment to the South Pacific. This plane is carrying oil to put up for use of our warships and aircraft carriers. Well, Mr. Walton, the industries of Manchuria can be bombed out the same as the industries of Germany. Manchuria is fairly well protected from bombing by the deep penetration of the Japanese and North China just now. Yes, but eventually the United Nations will drive into China and will operate from bases there. That's what Japan is expecting. She's been anticipating this for years. Some experts believe that the Japanese may even withdraw from Japan to the Asiatic mainland and make their stand there. What do you think, Mr. Walton? Well, if the Japanese can hold their coal, iron and oil deposits and their food supply in Manchuria, they'll be a hard nut to crack. Or we must remember, Japan considers Manchuria the first essential in her plan to rule the world, and she'll fight for it to the last. You have been listening to the Pacific story presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations as a public service to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the crosscurrents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific story program, send 10 cents in stamps or coins to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. We repeat, for a reprint of this Pacific story program, send 10 cents in stamps or coins to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. This is written and directed by Arnold Marquess. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Paluso. Your narrator, Gain Whitman. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is the National Broadcasting Company.