決して降伏しない kesshite kōfuku shinai Never Surrender

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 cry is older than Churchill: a Boston song of liberty in 1768 has the sons of the brave who will never surrender, and Travis wrote I shall never surrender or retreat from the Alamo in 1836; the Japanese sentence is in print by 1904, in a lecture's vow to fight on until the body lies on the battlefield, and was rendering Churchill's line of June 1940 by 1944.

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