Japanese Forces

7 December 1941

Asahi Graph 1941

Hideki Tōjō annoucing that the Empire of Japan was now at war with the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, reading out an Imperial Rescript that ended with the playing of the popular martial song Umi Yukabe (Across the Sea), which set to music a popular war poem the Manyōshū, featuring the lyrics "Across the sea, corpses soaking in the water, Across the mountains corpses heaped up in the grass, We shall die by the side of our lord, We shall never look back", December 1941