Never Surrender

決して降伏しない (kesshite kōfuku shinai): never surrender, a resolution rather than a shout. 決して kesshite with a negative is never; 降伏 kōfuku is surrender, to admit defeat and submit, the word of 無条件降伏, unconditional surrender, cited in the chronicles from 740; しない shinai is the plain negative, do not. The English is Churchill's, closing the speech of 4 June 1940 after Dunkirk: we shall never surrender. The Japanese sentence was already in print before he spoke, in a 1921 translation of Victor Hugo, of exiles resolved never to surrender; ordinary Japanese, which is why it carries the English without strain.