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

Announcers' War (vol.1)

Abstract

This paper focuses on theories of wartime radio announcement. Preceding studies had a common bird's eye view: a virtuous “detached tone”–an announcer reading news utterly objectively in a cool manner–was replaced by an evil “screaming tone” emphasizing subjectivity that had been developed since the outbreak of the Pacific War. However, this study reached the following findings different from the conventional theory. (1) “Detached tone” had been regarded as the optimum announcement theory for driving the people into the war since the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, and there is no difference from “screaming tone” in this context. (2) “Screaming tone” has been considered to have emerged spontaneously from the breaking news announcing the opening of the Pacific War, but it is a fabricated legend; the theory was already established in the pre-war period. This paper elucidates the above findings by delving into the minds of then announcers. Mobilizing citizens not by content but by the tones of speech–the author explores what challenges the announcers had to take on.