A Japanese Pipe Dream

The film opens with scenes from a United Nations conference discussing the spread of drugs. The narrator states that before the beginning of World War II, Japan was the only one of thirty-five nations to refuse to sign an anti-narcotics treaty and alleges that this was because the country's leaders planned to use drugs as a weapon of war. Next, scenes of daily life are shown to demonstrate the importance of progress to the Japanese. When the Japanese desire more land and cheap labor, China, Japan's oldest enemy, becomes a target for conquest. The film then discusses the growth of the opium industry in China under the Japanese: Japan conquers Manchuria, a favorable spot for cultivating the opium poppy, and demands that the residents grow the poppy and pay at least half of their taxes in opium. Using confiscated Japanese footage, the film then depicts the processing of raw opium into heroin: Raw opium is collected from cuts made in the poppy head when it is in full bloom. The sap that collects is sticky, brown and bitter. Later it is scraped off the pods, gathered into a ball and sent to the factory. At the factory, the gum opium is cooked. Next, the semi-dried opium is washed in large vats to clean and remove any impurities. It is then heated again and beaten. After a third boiling, the opium is cooled. Thin layers of the substance are then placed on a brass opium bowl, and the drug receives its final factory cooking, which must be done very carefully as overheating would spoil it. It is then ready for smoking or for refining into morphine or heroin. Again using Japanese footage, the film then shows and describes the effect of opium on the addict: Addicts will do anything to obtain enough drugs to relieve their agony. Although opium and morphine addicts are mild and harmless while they are taking the drugs, they may become dangerous when the drug is withheld. In 1938, Madame Chiang Kai-shek denounces the "systematic doping of the populations of Manchuria and Japanese-controlled China." The same year, 650 kilograms of Japanese heroin are seized on the Pacific coast by the United States government. At this time, the United States is not at war with Japan, and reports of the seizure, which are considered war propaganda, are ignored, according to the film's narration. American isolationism after World War I is then described. American attitudes toward Japan change after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the narrator warns that "the Japanazi peril shall perish from this earth."