Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

a Cass's belly project. Sorry I missed a week there, the life got a little busy and I fell behind.

So in this episode, we begin Act 2 of the series, meaning we'll have a couple of background episodes on Japan and then the US, then dive back into the narrative.

In this episode, I'll be using a lot of Chinese and Japanese names, so excuse any mispronunciations,

especially when it comes to the Chinese.

I'm going to try and use the older Wade Giles style of transliteration for Chinese rather than

Pinyin, even though it's less faithful to actual Mandarin.

The reason for this being that many of my sources are older and use the older convention,

and I want to stay consistent.

The only real exception to this rule are cases where the pinion name is more familiar to an English

speaker than the old Wade Giles version.

For example, Beijing is usually called Peking in older sources, but it's confusing to modern listeners.

So I'd rather just use Beijing than Peking, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I think the show is going to get a little more hectic now that the Pacific Theater has been introduced.

We'll be bouncing back to Europe, then back to Asia, but I'll try to keep the narrative as straightforward as possible.

For now, we shift our gaze toward the Far East to look at the rise of modern Japan

and trace the nation's course from isolationist backwater to major imperial power in less than a century.

So let's begin, episode 15, Rising Sun.

Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead. Danger against which we must prepare. We shall defend our island, whatever they can't be here.

Whatever the cast may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

...