80 Samurai vs 8,000 Mongols: What Really Happened at Tsushima

In 1274, eighty samurai allegedly charged thousands of Mongol invaders on Tsushima. But seven months later, a Buddhist monk wrote a letter that tells it very differently: the commander, Sō Sukekuni, fled. We put the battle of Tsushima on trial: who wrote each part of this story down, and when? CHAPTERS 0:00 80 samurai vs the Mongol fleet 0:53 The Letter 2:27 The Beach 4:57 What the Monk Heard 7:01 Hakata Bay 9:23 The Wind 11:28 The Verdict HOW TO READ THIS VIDEO The chip in the top-right corner rates the source behind each claim: 🟢 First-hand record · 🟡 Within a generation · 🟠 Later history · 🔴 Fiction · 🔵 Disputed SOURCES Yuan shi (1370), ch. 208, Japan; Goryeosa (1451), ch. 27, 28, 104 (Chinese text on Wikisource) Nichiren, Letter to the Lay Priest Ichinosawa (1275), The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, no. 63 Kanchūki (diary of Hirohashi Kanenaka, 1274); Hachiman Gudōkun (1308–1318); Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (1293) Hattori Hideo, 「文永十一年・冬の嵐」 (2003), Kyushu University Arakawa Hidetoshi (1958), Nihon Rekishi 120; Thomas Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention (2001) nippon.com articles on the Mongol invasions and the kamikaze myth; Japanese Wikipedia: 文永の役, 宗助国, 八幡愚童訓 All illustrations are AI-generated reconstructions, not historical images.