What happens
The Pacific Story examines Japan's fishing industry, from its wide spread across the Pacific before the war to its collapse in 1945. The episode traces how Japanese fishing fleets expanded from the 1907 treaty after the Russo-Japanese War, through disputes with Soviet Russia over fishing rights and whaling in the Antarctic, into clashes with American fishermen off Alaska. It describes how the fleets were later placed under naval control and then driven back to Japanese waters as the Allies advanced, leaving Japan short of food. The program closes by raising how fisheries of the Pacific might be managed in the future. The episode is a documentary narration, not a dramatised story, and features no named characters beyond unnamed fishermen and officials.
The Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic and Antarctic to the Bay of Bengal, including Alaska, Siberia, the Philippines, the Netherlands Indies and Japan.
Listen for: The 1907 Portsmouth treaty clause that opened Japanese fishing rights in Soviet waters, and the account of the 1931 Antarctic whaling.
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.