Scenes from 1930s during lead up to Second Sino-Japanese War, and World War 2. Narration by General of the Imperial Japanese Army Baron Sadao Araki. Opening scene shows a practice drill in which male emergency workers, in white uniforms, arrive by truck and assemble in a field, as hook and ladder fire trucks filled with firemen, arrive and turn into a circle. Glimpse of women nurses in white uniforms standing near a large Red Cross flag with Japanese writing on it. Scene shifts to traffic on a busy city street. Tnen a closeup of Japanese women in white garb, passing out leaflets to people. Boy Scouts at the corner of a building and Girl Scouts at another spot, solicit contributions for the troops. They use megaphones to get the attention of busy pedestrians. The girls hold baskets to collect contributions. Women in traditional Japanese garb stand on a street corner and encourage public support for Japanese soldiers, by knitting scarfs to be sent to them. Soldiers stand on a street corner wearing sashes and displaying a banner. More girl scouts (or uniformed school girls) soliciting support for the military. View from a high vantage point overlooking a bridge filled with pedestrians. Camera pans upward showing way into downtown. Japanese people attend a public display of airplanes at an airport in Osaka, where citizens have contributed to fund them. They crowd around two biwing planes. A woman bows at a temporary shrine set up honoring Japanese fliers. Closeup of airplane fuselage with writing on it. Quartering view from front of radial engine running on the airplane. Covered search lights sitting side by side. Anti-aircraft battery consisting of sound detection listening devices and guns. A Japanese army truck on display and then driving away. Closeup of an anti-aircraft searchlight. More views of sound detection devices. Air raid sirens. Two bi-wing airplanes. The one in foreground is equipped with a center ski. A Nakajima aircraft in flight overhead. A searchlight being demonstrated at night. Glimpse of firemen extinguishing a fire in a street, during exercise. Nurses and stretcher bearers in an emergency exercise. Soldiers remove signs from an army truck. Emergency workers in full protective gear, including gas masks, demonstrate and exercise emergency procedures using gas on a city street. A rifle being fired at a target. Girls lined up with rifles in prone position on a firing range. They stand up with their rifles. Riveters working on steel girders of a building under construction. Closeup of a hot rivet being installed. People traveling on motorcycles, cars, and bicycles. Feet of pedestrians walking on sidewalk. View from above of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians moving near an electric tram on a city street. Passenger railroad coaches passing the camera viewing from beside railroad tracks. A clamshell bucket unloading coal from a barge. Cargo in a net being unloaded from a ship to a dock. New automobiles driving on a Japanese highway. Trains moving through a rail yard with many rail lines. Japanese business commuters walking on a railroad station platform. Japanese Women working rapidly using headsets and manual phone plugs at a switchboard in a telephone exchange. A Japanese businessman using the telephone. A woman typing on an english typewriter keyboard. Construction workers using wrenches to bolt a steel part on a structure. Various kinds of machinery running rapidly. Hot steel being handled in a steel mill. Fires in furnaces and smoke billowing from factory smoke stacks next to numerous electric power lines.
Japanese Army conducts military exercise. Artillery shells explode in the distance. Some raise white smoke, while others create craters and throw large amounts of earth into the air. Japanese soldiers run carrying rolled up canvases. From them they remove and inflate rubber rafts that they carry up over a hill and down to a shoreline. They jump into the rafts and paddle furiously toward an opposite shore. The national red ball flag (sun-mark flag) is displayed on one raft. Closeup of occupants in one raft. Machine gun fire is heard in the background. The rafts reach the opposite shore where the troops jump out and charge up a hill in smoke. View from camera located at defensive obstacle as the troops arrive there. They place sections of pontoon bridges over the obstacles and cross over them. Then they carry bridge sections down a steep embankment to another shoreline where they place them end-to-end in the water to form a serpentine floating bridge. Soldiers on each section maneuver them with long poles into position spanning the water to the next shore. Next, armed troops are seen running across the new pontoon bridge. Two of them carry a version of a Hotchkiss machine gun (licensed by Japan as their Type 3 Heavy Machine Gun). One of the last few soldiers crossing the bridge, carries the sun-mark flag.
Japanese officials meeting in strategy session. Japanese infantry on mission to cut Chinese supply lines during 2nd Sino-Japanese war. Black smoke rises as they move along a river bank. Chinese prisoner-workers are forced to rebuild railroads destroyed by the Chinese people during their great Westward trek. Japanese soldier closely guards workers. A Japanese army armored train underway on the rebuilt railroad, as Japanese soldiers cheer. Animated map shows China's supply lines by sea, to Tsingtao, Hangchow, and Amoy, cut off by Japanese naval blockade. Japanese Navy launch with officers and crew moving near commercial ships as they take over Chinese river ports. War materiel and other supplies destined for China, including trucks, sit idle, unable to be transported to their destinations. Large oil tanks and drums of gasoline are shown, as well as gun barrels and a flightline filled with parked Curtiss P-36 Hawk aircraft. The Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Asakaze (DD-3) and another, next to it, in a Chinese river port. A Japanese freighter with anchored weighed, secured by long lines to a wharf. Small boats flying Japanese Naval ensigns are next to it. View of map showing china, Burma, Indo-China, and Chungking, with Japanese blockading fleet stationed in the South China Sea. It traces path of narrow gauge rail line from Indo-china to Kumming,China, where it connected to an overland road to Chungking. Next it traced the old Camel Caravan route, across China, from Russia. Narrator notes these were to small to be useful and too close to Japanese-occupied territory. Next, the map traces a railroad that from the port of Rangoon to Lashio, Burma. It is separated from the road to Chungking, by mountains and gorges. Views of the actual mountainous terrain. Animal pack trains moving through the area. Construction engineers in a large drafting room designing a road to transit the area. View of modern road-building caterpillar tractor equipment of the type needed to accomplish this. View of Chinese laborers using manpower instead. They push large rollers and employ pickaxes and other hand-held tools to carve away and dig road beds. Masses of Chinese laborers at work, carving a road along the edge of a mountain. Two-men teams using manual tampers to pound down the roadbed. Children are employed along with adults. A woman with a baby on her back, pounding large rocks into gravel, surrounded by other children doing the same. View from above of the "Burma Road," the product of their labors, winding its way through the mountains and gorges. Many scenes of trucks moving along portions of the Burma Road. P-40 airplanes flying past white cumulus clouds, overhead. Animated map shows continued expansion of Japanese occupied areas to encompass two thirds of the rail lines in China with goal of controlling the remainder, starting at Chengchow, in Summer, 1938. View of Chengchow region, on banks of the Yellow River. Map illustrates flow pattern of the Yellow River. View from past of the Yellow River's Spring floods toward the Sea, with Chinese people throwing rocks onto dikes that keep the river flowing in a more Northerly direction than its former course. Illustration shows how with Japanese encrouching on Chengchow, the Chinese decided to destroy those dikes and allow the river to flood over its former more Southerly course. Japanese soldiers being inundated by the flooding river. Japanese infantry and tanks regrouping on their occupied side of the new (old) path of the Yellow River. Local Chinese residents of Chengchow, wade with belongings as they leave their flooded homes.
Closeup of two Nationalist Chinese soldiers with their flag flying on tall flagpole in background. Next, countless numbers of Chinese soldiers are seen marching along the Great Wall during the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II). Newspaper article reads: "52,000 Japanese fall at Changsha." Animated map depicts China and environs, with major cities. Areas of Japanese occupation are shown in black. The city of Changsha is highlighted by a circle. Japanese force is shown massing at Yueyang (Yochow), near Dongting Lake (Ting Tung Hu Lake), and advancing on 24 December 1941, toward Changsha. The map shows Chinses forces putting up token resistance and retreating to the East (rather than toward Changsha) and Japanese forces beginning assault on Changsha, New Year’s Day, 1942. Map shows the Chinese forces from the East attacking and cutting the Japanese supply lines. Japanese forces besieging Changsha are forced to retreat under counterattack by the Chinese. A field artillery piece being fired by Chinese forces and explosion and smoke from its shell striking. More field artillery being fired. Japanese forces carrying their Rising Sun flag as they retreat under fire. Chinese infantry firing from a berm A Japanese soldier falls to gunfire. Japanese soldiers retreating across a narrow-improvised bridge across a swamp. Chinese soldier next to a building, firing a Czech ZB vz. 26 light machine gun. Japanese running with horses through a village. Chinese gunner firing Japanese Type 92 machine gun down on Japanese troops retreating across a bridge below. Another Chinese soldier firing a Czech 26 light machine gun, from hill overlooking retreating Japanese troops, below. Victorious Nationalist Chinese troops parading in celebration along a road high above buildings of a town below in background. Men in Khaki pants and white shirts parading. Girls in white dresses, carrying Chinese flags. Soldiers marching (without weapons) celebrating.
A Japanese maid buys soft tofu (soybean curd) from a street vendor. Street vendor cuts a block of tofu. A Japanese woman practices Ikebana flower arrangement. Japanese woman places the finished flower arrangement on the Butsudan, a small household Buddhist shrine for family ancestors. An old Japanese woman sews on a new kimono while a little boy plays with his toys. Japanese woman bows in front of the Butsudan. At the railway station the Tokyo Express steam train arrives on time and official in-charge writes the train report. Engineer inspects steam train. Children learn to write Japanese characters inside a classroom. Schoolchildren use bamboo calligraphy brushes to write basic Chinese characters or Kanji. Japanese boy writes Chinese characters that read “Great Japan”. Children play baseball during school recess. Older children practice kendo, a modern Japanese martial art.
Men, with horse drawn leveling tools, prepare ground for road construction. Workers with wheelbarrows put concrete into chute of road building machine. Road building machine constructs concrete road along side a railroad track. Road machine moves on chained wheels. Workers with the help of machines build road. Views of automobiles moving along new concrete roads, wide enough to allow cars to pass.
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