What happens
The Pacific Story traces the history of Hainan, a large island off the southeast coast of China, and the competing interests of France, Britain, Japan and China over it. The narrative follows the island from French colonial claims in the late nineteenth century through diplomatic disputes, Japan's expansion in the 1930s, and its military occupation of Hainan in 1939. It describes the Japanese building up the island as a base and the first Chinese underground resistance against the occupiers. The program is a dramatized public-service account of the Pacific War, aired on October 29, 1944, on the National Broadcasting Company network and narrated by Gain Whitman.
Hainan Island, off the southeast coast of China, and the wider Pacific region, from the late 1800s through 1942
Characters: Narrator, Japanese Foreign Minister Ugaki, Japanese Foreign Minister Arita, Colonel Almanova, Chinese underground commander
Listen for: The account of how the Japanese occupation of Hainan in 1939 unfolded, and the Chinese underground attack on the Japanese at Sankiang Railway Station.
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.