Series: War and Radio [Part VI] As an “Advocate” for National Policies

Following the first installment that reviewed the birth of “detached tone” in radio announcement and its status during the Sino–Japanese War, the second half of this paper discusses how “detached tone” was transformed into “screaming tone.” “At dawn today, December 8, the Imperial Japanese Army and the Navy entered a state of war against American and British forces in the Western Pacific.” The flash news reporting the outbreak of the Pacific War, read out by a radio announcer Tateno Morio, has been alleged to be the moment of birth of what is called “screaming tone” since back then and is regarded as the long–accepted theory even today. However, if you carefully study the statements of announcers before the war, you can easily see this is not the truth and is nothing but a myth. In the summer of 1941, when the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States was looming, announcers already objected to “detached tone” and started exploring “screaming tone” as a new announcement theory. The question is why a myth different from the truth was needed to explain the birth of “screaming tone.” This paper demonstrates the following: (a) there was a strong military demand behind the birth of “screaming tone”, (b) the tone requested by the military was hard to accept for announcers, and (c) they created a different type of “screaming tone” instead of the “screaming tone” expected by the military in which an announcer had to literally scream. A myth was needed to internalize the military demand. The “screaming tone” thus generated was not a blowing–the–bugle–type announcement. Tateno defined “screaming tone” as an “announcement that perceives the public with passion, unites and organizes their emotions, and mobilizes them towards one direction.” What kind outcome did it have? Among Miyagi Prefecture's municipalities, Marumori Town suffered the heaviest personal damage mainly due to the collapse of levees along three small/medium rivers that flow across the town. While 75% of the respondents were aware of the evacuation advisory, only 17% evacuated from home. May people remained at home because they did not think the area would be flooded. This clearly tells that it is crucial to inform residents of flood risks of small and medium rivers. Meanwhile, Ishinomaki City did not have any levee collapse, but approximately 10,000 houses were flooded by inland flooding. The survey finds about 50% of the residents anticipated the flooding of their houses. It appears that many people decided not to take risks to evacuate during heavy rainstorms but to wait for the water to subside, by sheltering themselves by “vertical evacuation” to higher areas such as second floor of the house. Such evacuation behavior was likely to be driven by the fact that the area had been often flooded due to the ground subsidence cause by the Great East Japan Earthquake.