Episode 2 - “The Pacific Boils Over”

Summary

In some Americans’ mindsets, Japan's Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941 was WWII's opening volley. But Henry Salomon's original Victory outline had three full episodes to precede it: a “Prologue: to Spring 1940” and then two segments on anti-submarine warfare against Germany in the Atlantic. Perhaps Salomon decided he’d more quickly engage his audience by presenting Pearl Harbor earlier in the series, prompting its move to EP2.

EP2 marks Japan's initial appearance in Victory. Viewers thus get first hearings of numerous “J-tunes,” including nearly all of Bennett's most-reprised ones (see chapter 5), plus a few appearing only in EP2. In short, EP2 consists of Japan's planning and training for its attack on Hawaii, fol-lowed by the lengthy battle sequence, much of it unfolding without narration. Afterward, Japan's home front celebrates the good news while US military authorities assess casualties and destruction at Pearl Harbor. The program ends with a note of US optimism: America's surprising success in repairing many of the damaged vessels for their return to action.

Rodgers's HAWAII opens this episode, and the territory's populace gives little thought to possible hostilities. This first exposition of HAWAII receives the same arranger's treatment given SONG-SEAS for Victory's title sequence. Bennett had filled out SONG-SEAS fore-and-aft to accompany the full minute of opening credits and does likewise for HAWAII to span EP2's initial, sixty-eight-second segment.

At 2:08 there's an immediate shift to the Japanese viewpoint. A gong [A], along with Bennett's open-fifth chord, establishes an Asian locale for the first time in the series. J-1 then accompanies a quick scene-setting in Japan, “the most thoroughly industrialized nation in the east” where “social, economic and religious ideas from an isolated past survive with superimposed industrial methods and western ways.”

The narration outlines Japan's territorial ambitions for an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and we hear the series’ first presentation of J-2 (2:58), followed immediately by a throwaway J-tune [B] at 3:31, never again heard in Victory. J-1 reappears at 3:48, more single-use material at 4:00, and then at 4:23 is J-3's debut, accompanying the first mention of Japan's designs on Pearl Harbor. J-3 recurs at 4:54, 5:04, and 5:14. Next is a detailed Japanese map of Oahu and Pearl Harbor accompanied by Bennett's first transformation of Rodgers's HAWAII (5:19). For Japan's pilots-in-training at 5:43 Bennett crafts [C] a declamatory muted trombone “recitative.”