Warclouds in the Pacific

This short film examines the Japan that emerged at the beginning of the 1900s and was firmly established as an industrialized nation by the outbreak of World War II. Facing the greatest threat in their history, the democracies of the Pacific took careful stock of this new Japan and its strength, and erected a vast system of defence across the world's greatest ocean.

What’s probably most noticeable about this otherwise fairly generic wartime documentary is that though it was commissioned by the Canadian Film Board, it doesn’t really feature very much by way of Canadian military prowess. Indeed, aside from a very brief potted history of the industrialisation of Japan - built, it suggests, on Nazi inspiration and expertise - it focuses more on the US and UK operations in Asia before highlighting the US Navy’s maritime equivalent of the Maginot line stretching south from the Aleutians. Lorne Green provides an enthusiastic and effusive commentary that is often just a little bit too over the top, and the plentiful stock footage helps to illustrate a message that is nowhere near as jingoistic as many other features made at the start of North America’s preparations for war, but it is still just as propagandist - only from a more defensive perspective.