Ambassador Grew asserts to camera that Japanese "have got to be beaten until they know they are beaten". Japanese have been "fanatical, resourceful, treacherous and murderous" in their aggression against China. Creation of Manchukuo under puppet Emperor Pu Yi (reviewing troops), gave Japan control of industrial development and agriculture using Chinese labour, while opium usage was simultaneously expanded. Bombing of Shanghai in 1937 by Japanese Army Air Force (Zero fighters and twin-engine bombers take off, street devastation) caused USN casualties on board USS Augusta (funeral on deck). Chinese refugees flee city as US missionaries, targeted by Japanese, tend wounded civilians.

Developing new tactics of improvisation and building up their military experience Japanese moved up Yangtse River in series of amphibious operations: armed air boats move up river, floatplanes reconnoitre, supplies are moved along bank of river, soldiers cross water over human pontoon. Chenju railway station. After occupation Chinese work under Japanese guard. Strategic and economic importance of South-East Asia: timber, hemp (grown by Japanese colonists on Davao) and coalmines of Philippines; rubber plantations, tin mines of poorly defended British Malaya, with port and dry dock of Singapore; oil fields and quinine (anti-malaria) bark and naval bases of Netherlands East Indies; space, coal, iron ore and sheep of Australia. Official visit in March 1941 of Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka to Berlin, met by Ribbentrop, Goering and Hitler, obtains German consent for Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. Replacement in October 1941 of Konoye as Premier by General Hideki Tojo leads to attack on Pearl Harbor.

Didactic film narrated over archive film by Joseph C Grew, US Ambassador to Japan (1932-1941), and addressed to men of the United States Navy records Japan's political aims and military aggression between 1931 and her attack on Pearl Harbor, and predicts that America's enemy will never surrender.