The Zero Hour was the brainchild of Major Shigetsugu Tsuneishi, who joined the Japanese Imperial Army's 8th Section G-2 (Psychological Warfare) unit as the Army representative to the Information Liaison Confidential Committee, which oversaw the coordination of the nationalized news agencies, in November 1941.
The American Division radio announcers section was headed by Yuichi Hirakawa, a native Japanese with a degree in Dramatics from the University of Washington.
Tsuneishi acquired a veteran radio announcer with the capture of Australian Army Major Charles Cousens, who had been a popular and highly regarded news commenter in Sydney before the War.
During an interrogation at the General Staff HQ in Tokyo on August 1, 1942, Tsuneishi made it clear to Cousens that he had to broadcast for the Japanese or face execution before putting him to work at 6 p.m. that same evening.
Cousens was subsequently tasked with writing and broadcasting "radio essays" on the need to have high ideals as a human being, collections of platitudes with no propaganda value.