3-023-469 - British Pathe Ltd/Heritage Images

A Group of Male Japanese Soldiers Pushing a Gun Over Rubble in a Street in Shanghai, 1937. 'As Japan emerged from her long seclusion into the modern world, her leaders, inspired by the old traditions that besought all to die for their country's honour, looked for expansion and conquest. The western world had given them the battleship, the gun, the bomb. Now they searched for the chance to put them to good use. Japan had an army, large and excellently trained. A navy too, powerful and ambitious. It was only a question of when, and where. A morning in 1937, the coast of China close to Shanghai. An armada of warships and transports loaded with troops. And when the first naval shells struck at the land, the invasion of the Asiatic mainland had begun. Over Shanghai, Japanese planes began a systematic softening up. The first bombs of World War II. For it was there, on the beaches of China, as far back as 1937, that in truth the second great struggle for the world began. A struggle that was to end in the collapse of Germany, and the first atomic bombs on Japan... The battle for the great city of Shanghai was intense and hard-fought'. From "Time To Remember - Sense Of Values", 1937 (Reel 2); documentary film about the events of 1937, war in the Far East, build up to war in Europe.