World War Two had ended in Europe, but still raged across the wide Pacific. And in a string of armed encampments within the US indigenous Japanese Americans remained incarcerated in prison camps, imprisoned for the duration, solely on the basis of their ethnic origin. Racial hatred was rife against all ethnic Japanese, an American phenomenon misdirected against their own in the wake of Pearl Harbour.
All of this was still at a fever pitch when, in June of 1945, two months before VJ Day, James Cagney, through the production company he owned with his brother, William, produced and starred in Blood on the Sun, one of the most powerful films to try to explain exactly how the Japanese 'Co-Prosperity Sphere' came into mortal conflict with the United States.
Based on historical fact, this rivetting, brutal, action-packed motion picture traces the unintended unveiling of the dreaded Tanaka Plan for Japanese world domination of which the 'Co-Prosperity Sphere' was the outpictured façade. Cagney portrays an American reporter toiling in pre-war Japan who, completely innocently is given for safekeeping a purloined copy of the secret plan by his newspaper buddy, Wally Ford. The Japanese know Ford has uncovered their secret, and are willing to perform any act - including murder - to prevent their true intentions from being revealed before they were ready to strike. A beautiful Japanese secret agent, played by Sylvia Sidney is sent to romance and ensnare Cagney, and every thuggish stop is pulled out to retrieve the plan and prevent him from surviving long enough to get it to the American Embassy and into the world press.