About this episode
Apr 2025
The Cu Chi tunnels of the Vietnam War
9m 43s
Today
Operation Mincemeat
10m 45s
Yesterday
The Irish priest who built an airport
9m 18s
Dec 2022
Contested islands and Miss World protests
50m 21s
May 2014
The Sino-Japanese War
46m 41s
Dec 2009
The Samurai
42m 5s
Jun 2023
The Shimabara Rebellion
48m 3s
Jun 2023
The Shimabara Rebellion
48m 3s
Sep 2020
Stories of resistance and protest from around the world
49m 57s
Nov 2021
Hiromu Nagahara, "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and Its Discontents" (Harvard UP, 2017)
1h 20m
In 1968 and early 1969 university students across Japan fought pitched battles with riot police after they barricaded themselves into their lecture halls and went on strike. They were protesting about the poor quality of their education and the inequalities of Japanese society in a period of rapid economic change. Emily Finch talks to Kazuki Kumamoto who was a young student who joined the protests. This is a Whistledown production for BBC World Service.
(Photo of a policeman looking at Tokyo University Building. Credit: Getty Images)
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ... Show More
In the early hours of 30 April, 1943, the most audacious hoax of World War Two has just got underway. Its code-name - Operation Mincemeat.The body of a British naval officer, Major William Martin, has been washed up on a Spanish beach. The dead man is carrying top-secret papers r ... Show More
In May 1986, a new airport opened in Knock in the west of Ireland. It was the dream of an Irish priest, Monsignor James Horan, who raised millions to have it built. The location for the airport seemed impossible – set in the boggy, foggy hills of rural County Mayo. However, Knock ... Show More
<p>Max Pearson presents a compilation of this week's Witness History programmes from the BBC World Service.</p><p>We hear from a man who was aged six when he was among the Japanese families expelled from his island home, as it was taken over by the Soviet Union after the Second W ... Show More
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. After several years of rising tension, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, full-scale war between Japan and China broke out in the summer of 1937. The Japanese captured many major Chinese ports and cities ... Show More
Melvyn Bragg and guests Gregory Irvine, Nicola Liscutin and Angus Lockyer discuss the history of the Samurai and the role of their myth in Japanese national identity.The Samurai have a fearsome historical reputation as a suicidally brave caste of Japanese warriors. During World W ... Show More
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Christian uprising in Japan and its profound and long-term consequences. In the 1630s, Japan was ruled by the Tokagawa Shoguns, a military dynasty who, 30 years earlier, had unified the country, ending around two centuries of civil war. In 1637 ... Show More
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Christian uprising in Japan and its profound and long-term consequences. In the 1630s, Japan was ruled by the Tokagawa Shoguns, a military dynasty who, 30 years earlier, had unified the country, ending around two centuries of civil war. In 1637 ... Show More
<p>Max Pearson brings you a roundup of this week’s Witness History stories of resistance from the last 70 years. From the early days of opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, through the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, a photographer's memories of the 1989 demonstra ... Show More
Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2017) by Hiromu Nagahara is the first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry. The book connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryūkōka ... Show More