Japanese international activities during 1931-1945. Opening scene shows Japanese troops embarking on ships bound for an invasion of Manchuria, in 1931. Officers walking on the dock, amongst the departing troops. Scenes of explosions and destruction. Views of Shanghai during Japanese attacks in 1937. Destroyed buildings. Civilian dead lying in the streets. Japanese soldiers racing along a street in a three wheeled motorcycle vehicle. Change of scene shows Japanese diplomat Yosuke Matsuoka addressing a League of Nations meeting in 1933, after that body adopted a report blaming Japan for events in Manchuria. He objects to that action and then leads his delegation in walking out of the meeting. View of Japanese delegates in top hats and bowler hats exiting the building. Scene shifts to Japanese forces firing artillery and machine guns in Manchuria.They wave large Japanese flag victoriously after a battle. The next scene shows Italian forces occupying Ethiopia and raising the flag of the Kingdom of Italy, as Italian troops salute, presenting arms of rifles with fixed bayonets. Axis leaders celebrate the 1940 Tripartite Pact between German, Italy and Japan. The festivities take place in a hall displaying the three nation's flags on the walls. A large number of persons attend including Japan's Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, seen with two celebrants. Scene reverts to China with Chinese civilian people trying to escape from invading Japanese forces. The refugees carry their belongings as they flee. Occasional shell burst is seen among advancing Japanese troops as Chinese soldiers put up resistance. Chinese soldiers firing artillery. In the U.S., Japanese envoys KichisaburÅ Nomura and SaburÅ Kurusu are seen walking together into a building and entering a room inside. Next, are views of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with huge plumes of smoke obscuring the bombed U.S. battleships in the harbor. U.S. battleships in line formation in the Pacific during World War 2. Aerial view of U.S. warships moving in parallel. British ships augmenting the U.S. warships. Naval guns firing. U.S. amphibious assaults on Japanese held islands in the Pacific. Prisoners of the Japanese who suffered in the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur mingling with former prisoners and internees upon his return to Manila in 1944. Aerial views of Iwo Jima. Naval bombardment and amphibious assault of Iwo Jima. Numerous fallen Japanese soldiers. The iconic American flag raising by U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima. View of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. during the campaign on Okinawa, where he was killed in action. A Soldier being carried on a stretcher. Another throwing a hand grenade. U.S. soldier firing at a Japanese defender who falls out of his bunker. Large numbers of Japanese prisoners of war assembled in a field. Japanese Kamikaze attacking U.S. warships off Okinawa. The sky filled with antiaircraft flak clouds. View of 40mm Bofors antiaircraft cannon firing and a Japanese plane falling and exploding on impact in the ocean.
Major Robert Morgan (well-known as the pilot of the B-17, "Memphis Belle," first to complete 25 missions over Germany, in the European Theater and now a B-29 Aircraft Commander with the 73rd Bomb Wing) briefs his crew. They sit on the tarmac near their aircraft, the B-29, "Dauntless Dotty," which was lead aircraft on the first B-29 bombing mission over Japan, on November 24, 1944. The Crew enters the aircraft after the briefing. (World War II period).
U.S. Third Fleet underway at sea, heads for Leyte in October 1944 during World War II. Warships fire heavy guns at Leyte. Ships advance under naval bombardment. Explosions on ship. U.S. troops aboard landing crafts. Japanese troops and defense during the barrage. They take positions and begin to attack. U.S. landing crafts attacked. Dramatic close up views of faces and expressions of many U.S. soldiers as they prepare for the invasion. U.S. troops leave landing craft and wade through water on to beaches. Japanese troops firing at incoming American forces with rifles and machine gun fire. American soldier raises American flag on island. Artillery fired and U.S. Army tanks advance. Wounded U.S. soldiers carried on litters. U.S. Army soldiers staying low and crawling on beach to avoid enemy fire. U.S. Army soldiers advancing, using rifle fire, hand grenades, and flamethrowers to attack entrenched Japanese enemy positions. Dead Japanese soldiers. Smoke arising from explosions in jungle.
Film opens showing devastated snow-covered remains of Peterhof Palace and its fountains, in Leningrad, after the Russians ended the siege of that city in January, 1944 of World War II. The next scenes show crowds gathered on 25 August, 1946, to celebrate the newly restored fountains, which are seen spraying water again. (Narrator notes that Russians now call the place Petrodvorets, meaning Peter's Palace.) An official speaks, at the ceremony, about the architecture of Petrodvorets and its cultural masterpieces still to be restored. Glimpse of statuary and array of fountains. Closeup of several young women holding flowers. Another shot of the fountains spraying along both sides of a central pond, with spectators crowded along the extreme sides near lines of trees.
Aerial view of Christ Redeemer Statue on Mount Corcovado, Brazil. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), John Edgar Hoover, narrates this 1944 clip and talks about enemy agents in the United States during World War II, before America's entrance into the war. German and Japanese suspects seen in South America. A German fleet carries German agents aboard merchant and cargo ships. German agents in formation on deck of ship, shown debarking the ship after receiving instructions. Japanese and Nazi German colonies being established in South America in large cities and in remote areas of Patagonia. Automobile industries, hotels, shops, and other industries established by Nazi German agents. German signs and Nazi Swastikas and Nazi flags shown on some buildings in South American countries including Brazil. A Nazi flag. A view of German factories in South America. Photographs of Adolf Hitler in a school building where young boys and girls are being instructed by their teacher. German pilot shown operating a passenger airliner; aerial view of from aircraft of Rio de Janeiro Brazil, including port and city areas. A dramatization depicts well planned accidents in the factories and sabotage attempts to slow production of goods bound for the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) receives reports about planning of German attack on the Panama Canal. A woman watching a teletype machine as a report arrives. A man in a radio room of the Federal Bureau of Investigation receives information and turns to type out a report on his typewriter. Men and women convicted as spies are seen together in a room with U.S. federal agents. The spies are taken in a police van. Man serving as projectionist seen running a film projector. A film of Fritz Duquesne case in the FBI office shows FBI Agents' successful secret filming of members of the Duquesne spy ring. The film is shown being loaded onto a projector and then played. FBI agent William Sebold (posing as spy Harry Sawyer) is seen with Fritz Duquesne and other spy ring members: Pedestrians and vehicular traffic on a New York street corner as Sawyer and Duquesne prepare to meet. German spies sit together in a hotel room in New York City, recorded by hidden camera. Heinrich Clausing, a spy ring member and former cook on the cruise ship SS Argentine is seen. Also seen is Hartwig Richard Kleiss putting on his hat and smoking a cigar. He's shown giving money to Sawyer for purchase of a spy camera, according to narration. J Edgar Hoover notes that German agents communicated through a Long Island radio station that was secretly controlled by the FBI. Hartwig Kleiss is seen showing the blueprint plans of the steamship SS America, including plans for its secret gun emplacements. Fritz Duquesne is shown in the film, removing diagrams of various American arms that he had concealed in his sock Japanese agent Takeo Ezima, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, is also seen meeting in the hotel with Harry Sawyer.
View from above, of the surrounding walls and courtyard of a prison in Rheinbach, Germany. Ground view inside the prison yard, where German civilian Matthias Gierens is being escorted to the gallows by U.S. military police, and accompanied by a German Catholic priest, on June 29, 1945. They ascend the gallows and final charges and sentence are read to Gierens. Next scene shows bodies stacked up at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp operated by Nazi Germany. Scene returns to the gallows, and a hood is placed over Gierens' head. View of Allied army officer witnesses, in formation, at parade rest. Noose is placed over Gierens' hood. View of a a bird flying overhead, trapdoor opens, Gierens drops, and noose tightens. Next is an unrelated scene of several German soldiers being executed. They are seen hanging from four gallows in a line in a public square while a large crowd, possibly Soviet citizens, looks on. (Notes: Regarding the execution of Gierens in the opening scene: German civilian Matthias Gierens was a 37 year old railroad worker. He was executed for the August 15, 1944, murder near Priest, Germany, of a downed American airman, who was later identified as U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lieutenant Lester E. Reuss. Gierens and three other German civilians, Peter Kohn, Peter Back, and Matthias Krein, were convicted on June 2, 1945 in Ahrweiler, Germany, of the murder. Their trial was the first Allied trial in Germany of civilians charged with a war crime.)
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