What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story examines the role of petroleum in the Pacific region. It opens with a dramatized account of oil's importance to modern war, including the United States' and Russia's status as the two leading producers and Japan's efforts in the early 1930s to secure oil supplies through diplomacy, storage arrangements, tanker construction and imports from the United States. The story follows Japan's push toward the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and the consequences of that campaign. An interview with Ralph K. Davies, deputy petroleum administrator for war, follows, in which he discusses the wartime oil effort and the proposed Anglo-American oil treaty. The transcript gives no air date beyond the one supplied, and the lead actors are not named.
The Pacific region in the years before and during World War II, including Japan, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, China, Australia and the United States, with a closing studio interview in Washington.
Characters: Ames, Ralph K. Davies, Robert McCormick, Admiral Sootz-Soo-goo, Mr. Lim
Listen for: Dramatized scenes of Japan's oil negotiations and tanker construction, then Ralph K. Davies's account of how oil fuelled the war and why the United States and Russia face each other as the leading producers.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.