Rape, murder, mayhem, and Urban Myth

My view on the legacies Frank Capra and Iris Chang have left behind for us to deal with
(Warning: some links may lead to graphic depictions not suitable for human consumption)

People are all too ready to believe dark rumors, and so they spread. But what kind of mind dreams them up? Is it a particularly evil mind that conceives of those awful atrocities, or is it a natural tendency of humans as they explore every what-if possibility and permutation?

I started to look into this topic because as a Japanese, I feel our collective name and face have been dragged through the mud too many times in the world stage, often as a pretext for starting and escalating war. In the process, I have discovered the concept of "urban myth" that can be so powerful and heinous there is a trail of victims stretching all through the history: Witch trials, convicted innocent daycare providers (modern day equivalent of witch trial, I guess), even the flood survivors of New Orleans were victimized by various urban myths, and tens of thousands were imprisoned in the flooded city without much food, drinks and shelters for 5 days, while the world watched wondering why the help was so slow to arrive. The accusations included unspeakable atrocities against babies, little girls, and pregnant women, just like the fall of Nanking. It served as the pretext to delay the rescue and send in the military with combat gears.

How fake were the propaganda movies and Photos?

•  【Propagandists ①/4】 Frank Capra, Secret of the Battle of China
•  【Propagandists ②/4】 Yellow Journalism in "Sino-Japanese" & "Spanish-American" war
•  【Propagandists ③/4】 Iris Chang (A): Big Publicity Campaign of the Rape of Nanking
• 【Propagandists ④/4】 Iris Chang (B): the Rape of Nanking - verification - (cc sub)
• 【超限戦】報道スペシャル－中国プロパガンダ写真の真実[桜H24/2/4] Japanese only

The similarities between New Orleans after the flood and Nanking (Nanjing) after fall of the city: 

Who	In New Orleans August 2005	In Nanking December 1937
Who were there	Poor blacks (Those who did not have car, enough money, or place to go)	Poor Chinese and Japanese military (The well to do left Nanking a few weeks before the Japanese military arrived. Iris Chang's grandparents were among them)
Who spread the information	City officials, major media reporters, tourist who were allowed to leave the city early	No report of atrocities at the time, except in America, later spread based on hearsay of Westerners stayed in the city and forged photos and propaganda movies made in or sent to America by Chinese propaganda machine to incite Americans and to sensationalize, more recently, by a book published in America (Iris Chang 1997)
Who believed it	Americans	Americans
Who were the target of prejudice	Poor blacks	Orientals (Chinese as victims and Japanese as perpetrators)

If you read the accounts accusing Japanese of atrocities in Nanking when it fell at the end of 1937, the accusations extend even to mutilating and raping babies. The first time I have ever heard of such a thing was in a context of Satan worship and witchcraft soon after I came to the U.S.  It sounded so foreign and implausible. Does it really happen?  Is it one of the infinite permutations of what if scenarios that human brain generates?  Or is it some kind of urban myth, a reflection of dark past that is kept alive and invoked in fearful moments or in hate-filled minds in some culture, strong enough to convict innocent daycare providers and destroy their lives? I read similar horror stories that have come out of New Orleans during those terrible 5 days after the flood, which no one could substantiate. (OK. I did some googling, and some people were doing unspeakable things to babies in South Africa not long ago, because it was recommended as the only cure for venereal diseases and AIDS! I have also found unspeakable savagery committed against Japanese babies in Tongzhou1937 by Chinese militants and some photographs taken then is displayed in the Nanking museum as a thing Japanese soldiers did to the Chinese in Naking!! It just proves the essence of urban myth: The Chinese expected the Japanese to do exactly what they did to the Japanese as a retaliation. It did not matter what the truth was.)

As I said, I am picking up such a dreadful topic now because as a Japanese, I feel our collective name and face have been dragged through the mud by certain propaganda machines as a pretext for starting and escalating a war. It happened in 1937 and China seems to think it will work again now, 70 some years later. Worse yet, most of the world seems to believe it. I pray America will not make the same mistake again (There was no Weapon of Mass Destruction back then to use as a pretext to start a war, instead, this propaganda was used as a pretext  to use the WMD on Japan). Isn't it interesting that a country that massacred the natives to near extinction is the country that used the so-called Nanking massacre as a pretext to drop the atomic bomb and that the same country which invented a WMD and actually used it in a real war not only once, but twice is the country that used suspected WMD as a pretext to start a war. Does it tell us something about human nature? Or is it just a coincidence?

As to the facts of the fall of Nanking, I'd leave it to historians. When a good Japanese historian says that 40,000 men (not 300,000 civilians) in uniform and plain clothe were buried (killed by Chinese military as well as the Japanese), I believe it. When he says that there are enough indications that the evidences presented to show atrocities committed on civilians by Japanese solders are fake or miss-attributed (e.g. Chinese killing Japanese or Chinese killing Chinese), I believe it.

Even then, the question remains. Why did 40,000 men had to be killed? Arimasa Kubo explains it in detail. Still, 40,000 is a large number from today's perspective, but when you try to maintain order in the area where terrorism is rampant, like some places in today's Africa and the Middle East, what do you do? If you were Algerian military in Amenas or French military in Mali, what would you do with the militants? As far as I can tell, the fall of Nanking took place in a similar context (all the officers including Chiang Kai‐shek fled the city leaving the soldiers in disarray after burning down most of the area). 40,000 sounds reasonable compared to 26,000 Iraqi military personnel killed in the Gulf War in 1990 -1991 when America chased them out of Kuwait, considering the primitive chaos of Nanking in 1937.

From my perspective, civilians or  terrorists, Japanese or non-Japanese, a killing is a killing. Whether it was legitimate military action or war crime is beside the point. An awful lot of people have been killed for no good reasons, and still are. Many people today probably would agree with me on this point. However, digging up movies and photographs  produced for propaganda purposes in the past and gathering unproven hearsay that may be nothing more than urban myth and enshrine them as historical facts for propaganda purposes is a crime in itself. If it is done to a person, you can sue for defamation of character. Furthermore, force-feeding young children's minds with such images is a form of child abuse. The world has a legitimate concern about governments who force-feed their grade school children with such images, even if they are what they say they are. Demanding Japanese government to do the same is totally out of line. I do not have any knowledge of what was troubling Iris Chang's mind, but one thing is clear. Her quest for atrocity hunting did not heal her mind. The suspicious circumstance of her death begs a question: Wasn't she a victim? As a Harvard journalism major, Iris Chang should have and must have known better than writing a history book based on propaganda movies and hearsay.

My father lived in Sakhalin during his teenage years and served as a soldier in Manchuria during his late twenties and early thirties. Unlike Iris Chang's grandparents, he never burdened me with his memories of those years, although nothing could persuade him to have any positive opinion of the peoples he encountered in those places. Actually, growing up in post war Japan, I have wondered why hardly no one including my father talked about the details of that war. I know now that MacArthur and company suppressed war related information that could shed any positive light on Japanese side. But they left by the time I was 5, and there were nothing to stop my father and other adults around me from passing on any war story. Whatever the reason that made them refrain from passing on those "unpleasant" war time memories, I think it was a good thing. Because of that, the current generation of Japanese did not inherit whatever negative perceptions fostered by that war experiences in our parents and grandparents generation. Unfortunately, however, we are finding a whole new set of reasons to be suspicious and prejudiced against them. I wonder who would benefit from it.

The Japanese government and politicians have been offering apologies for "the trouble Japan has caused to the neighboring countries during that war" and more (apologizing for using well paid Korean prostitutes during the war, and letting them call themselves sex slaves, for example.) . I am not aware of any other nation offering any apology to other nations they took over in the past. It looks rather peculiar for a head of modern nation to do so without any attempt to establish the facts or to analyze the legal implications first. Perhaps, they did so relying on the traditional use of apology. That is, in a spirit of there is enough blame to go around and as an invitation to let bygones be bygones. Sadly, that seems to be backfiring. The apology is taken as a sign of weakness and encouraging outrageous claims rather than any apology in return. Now Japanese are intensifying their efforts to dig the truth and to preserve the memories before the war survivors completely disappear into the history, partly due to the recent history of persistent one-sided propaganda against Japan on the world stage.

What did Iris Chang think about those apologies? Her answer to this very question was rather dismissive. Her answer even revealed her lack of interest in the matter, although that was what she was demanding. According to this article, it is obvious that apology without reparations and re-education of Japanese children according to her version of the truth was not acceptable. Would she be happy to learn that the Japanese government has done all she demanded? Apparently the very people whose honor she tried to restore are not.

Her desire to right the wrong is understandable. It must have infuriated her ever since she heard about it from her grandparents in her childhood. However, it is important to note that Chang's grandparents escaped Nanking just weeks before the Japanese army marched on the city. In other words, they were not eyewitnesses. And it is even more important to remember what urban myths were spread by the people who were actually in New Orleans during those 5 days. Iris Chang tried to equate the fall of Nanking to Holocaust. That would be an insult to the Holocaust victims. She was heavily relying on hearsay, and propaganda movies produced by Frank Capra. If they turned out to be a collection of urban myths, and movies filled with staged acts, forged photos, and miss-attributed scenes (e.g. Chinese solders killing Chinese men shown as Japanese solders killing Chinese men), her efforts to right the wrong become false accusation. For someone seeking justice, it would be devastating.    

Those who know the history of that war may wonder why Japan does not respond in kind by pointing out those atrocities committed against Japanese civilians as well as soldiers: in Tongzhou1937, where 223 Japanese civilians including women and children were brutalｌy mascaraed 5 month before the fall of Nanking; in Shanghai on Aug. 14, 1937 where over 1,000 Japanese civilians were killed by air attacks (this was the direct cause of the Japanese military action ended in fall of Nanking, yet no one seems making the connection); in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 while Japan was desperately seeking a way out to end the war (not to mention all the carpet bombings of Japanese cities); and civilians as well as soldiers killed or taken as prisoners and put in labor camps in China, Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin, and in the Northern islands, soon after the surrender on August 15, 1945, as well as atrocities committed to women during the American occupation of mainland Japan and Okinawa. The prevailing sentiment in Japan seems that after all, it was war, and it was a different time. The real evil is not in the individual incidence of atrocity, but in the larger context that shapes the conflict. Once a war is put in motion, it runs its course by its own logic. Accusing each other's past aggression and inciting revenge is not the way forward. The world cannot survive an endless cycle of revenge. If we do not learn to resist evil forces that try to incite and stir up our primitive fears and hostilities, we will soon be driven into needless wars killing neighbors.  At least I'd like to believe that the Japanese as a whole are mature enough to understand all that.

One more thing. Do you think it is a duty of all good people to know the intimate detail of atrocities? After I visited the museum of nuclear bomb atrocity in Hiroshima, I became totally convinced it is not. They are hazardous to your health. They poison your psych in a way you are not equipped to deal with. Is it a way to honor the dead? I don't feel it is. Don't we try to restore a damaged body as much as possible to honor the dead rather than exposing it as is? That sentiment still applies even when it is only a picture. All those atrocity museums, books, movies, and websites should carry a warning (some of them probably do).

References

To find out what Henry Scott-Stokes, a British journalist, has found about the propaganda surrounding Nanjing Incident of 1937, here is the full interview and here is the WSJ article about the interview. The English version of his book this interview is about (Falsehoods of the Allied Nations’ Victorious View of History as Seen by a British Journalist, Nov. 2013). So called "Nanjing Massacre" was most certainly KMT (Chiang Kai-shek's government) propaganda, he says. I read the Japanese version, and he detailed the timeline of how the propaganda was manufactured, who were involved, and the historic sources of information available including the Chiang Kai-shek government's archives. Kyodo News who reported total lie about the intent of the book's author made itself more than clear what kind of propaganda machine it has been for whom. The article was repeated by various pro-China papers such as South China Morning Post.

So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins

  (Atrocities committed to Japanese civilians in Korea as soon as Japan's surrender became apparent in Summer of 1945. The memories of a Japanese girl who survived it.)

Frank Capra
Iris Chang
More Horrible Than Truth: News Reports
Chang recounts the forgotten holocaust of the Chinese people (from The Sun, Sunnyvale's Newspaper)
Modern History - Hurricane Katrina, Savagery, Racism and Combat Operations, 2005
After the Flood (from This American Life)
Baby rapes shock South Africa (BBC News)
Frank Capra's propaganda movie made in the U.S.A 1944.
The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable by Hata Ikuhiko
The So-Called Nanking Massacre was a Fabrication
Tongzhou incident
The Horror: Should the Japanese atrocities in Nanking be equated with the Nazi Holocaust?
'Rape of Nanking' Author Iris Chang Dies (WasingtonPost.com)

The Pacific War - The USA Mistook the True Enemy (a must read to understand why the Pacific war happened the way it did)

The Pacific War and the Basis of Racial Equality
The Pacific War was not "democracy vs. fascism." The USA mistook the true enemy. The true enemy of the Americans was not Japan. Japan fought the war for self-defense and to liberate Asian countries. It became the war of making the basis for racial equality.

China’s Lie About the Senkaku Islands
Why the Chinese Government tells a lie about the Senkaku Islands of Japan.

Watch Documentary Movies of Nanking on Youtube
(These are valuable records of the peaceful and restoring city of Nanking just after the Japanese occupation)
* Chinese refugees and the Nanking Safety Zone
* Japanese soldiers distributing certificates to Chinese citizens
* Japanese soldiers preparing for the new year 1938 and the Chinese children celebrating New Year's Day

Y DNA and mt DNA: Conquest

By Etsuko Ueda


One of the common themes in human culture is origin myth. We humans seem to have this need to know where we came from and where we are heading to. Our fascination with genealogy and archeology is another evidence. It was my junior high school years (1960s) when I started to actively search for the information about the oldest known human history. I remember sifting through history books in the school library looking for that type of information. I did not get very far. The usual stone age, copper/bronze age, iron age progression and the traces of invasions over invasions in the areas surrounding the Mediterranean, indicating that a group with more advanced weapons and tools conquering and spreading. The Hittite was one of the groups mentioned and given credit for the iron and chariot technologies. Where did they come from? Aryans from the North of the Mediterranean? That was all I could find.

So, when I've found out about an on going world wide DNA project, it grabbed my attention. We can trace father to son paternal lineage by Y chromosome DNA and mother to daughter maternal lineage by Mitochondrial (mt) DNA. The biggest discovery so far in my opinion is the fundamental differences between male and female in terms of the way our ancestors spread and settled.

The data from Europe, Africa, India, China, and Japan so far indicate that the Y DNAs of the population is dominated by the late comer's or the conquerors'. The Y DNAs from the older hunter-gatherer population were replaced by the farming populations, and they, in turn, have been largely replaced by the Y DNAs of the people originated from herding cultures with large cattle, metal weapons, horses and horse lead chariots and wagons. The Y DNAs from the older populations survived mainly in economically disadvantaged places such as remote mountains and islands. On the other hand, mtDNAs from the older hunter-gatherer population survived much better than its Y DNA counterpart. And the older farming population are well represented along with the mtDNAs of the newcomer's from the herding populations. In other words, mtDNA is diverse and there is no clear domination by any single group.

In human terms, this, of course, is nothing new. There are plenty of historic record as well as contemporary incidences where a large scale migration/conquest more or less wiped out the native population. What happened (or is happening) in China, Americas, Australia, and Africa is still fresh in our memory. From the areas surrounding the Black Sea to Egypt, the East Mediterranean, and the Near East, the old conflicts and repeated conquests that go back many thousands of years are still smoldering.

There were many small scale invasions also that replaced the ruling class. In Egypt, the rulers were a small minority from the north. DNA test of mummies indicated Tutankhamun (1332 BC – 1323 BC) belongs to the Indo-European language speaking people from the North. The last dynasty that ended with Cleopatra was Greek since Alexander the Great took over Egypt in 332 B.C. India has also gone through many waves of invasions and change of dynasties from Indo-Aryans to Alexander the Great to Muslims, and Mongoles before the British came from the Sea and took it over. The British themselves went through many invasions and changes of dynasties: Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. It has been the same in China. Various tribes such as the Mongols from outside of the Great Wall took turns in invading and ruling China. The last such dynasty was Qing dynasty, which was crushed under the heavy weight of the Western colonial exploitation, and eventually overthrown by revolutionaries in 1912, although the last emperor Puyi presided over the ancestral homeland of Manchuria until 1945 under Japanese protection. Eventually, the current ruling class of China (the Communists) was established in 1949.

In Japan, the change of dynasty by invasion has not occurred within the recorded history (more than 1500 years) and the current imperial family is the oldest in the world. However, the distribution of Y DNA haplogroups indicates the prehistoric pattern of invasions or infusions of newcomers' DNA. In the following figure, the haprogroup D represents the older hunter-gatherer-early farmer Johmon lineage, and the haprogroup O-M122 + O-P31 represent the Yayoi period newcomers from rice growing regions of Asia. These Y DNA lineage differences are so old that they are not visible in any socio-economic groups today, although there seems some regional differences indicating that the newcomers did not go very far to the north nor far to the south.

Dual origins of the Japanese: common ground for hunter-gatherer and farmer Y chromosomes

Whether it was full scale invasion or small one, the violent nature of conquest has never changed. From the out right take over and enslavement/colonization of the yesteryear's to today's financial exploitation cannot be sustained without a military back-up. In human terms, men get killed trying to defend their homeland, women get enslaved or have little choice but to go along with the conquerors and carry their children, consensual or not. While native men, if they did not get killed, would be economically marginalized or uprooted and taken as slaves and have less opportunities to leave offspring.






For a conquering man, the native women and their children he fathered are either his property like slaves or unacknowledged bastards, and their social status is much lower than his children born to a women from his own ethnic group. Thus the class system gets establish.


In the United States, the natives were not willing or suitable as slaves and Africans were brought in as slaves. However, many white men took native women as wives, but the mixed-blood offspring's social status was lower than that of thoroughbred whites. When you look at the relationships between black slaves and whites, this class system is far more stark. Any hint of black blood would deny a person the full privileges the whites could enjoy (50% white President is referred as black in the U.S., but he may be treated as a white in some parts of Central and South Americas). White men have routinely impregnated black slaves and the paternity was never acknowledged in many cases (see Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.). When you look at today's black Americans' genetic mixture, there is no doubt how much white blood is mixed in to them. Except for those who came from Africa recently, there is virtually no blacks without a drop of white blood mixed in today.

In other words, men thought nothing of their flesh and blood treated as slaves or bastards. Even within marriage, men were given absolute power over their wives and children. It is a historical fact that daughters were not given the same rights sons were given. In many societies, women did not have rights to own and inherit properties until recently, and it's historical roots is no doubt the male dominated nature of conquests. It is beyond my imagination how men feel about their mothers in those societies, but it looks like that to inherit the father's status, men had to ignore maternal heritage, especially if she is native, hence the practice of taking paternal family name. Interestingly, however, for a woman born into a royal family, somewhat different rule is applied and she can take the throne when a male successor is not available. Here it becomes clear that the blood line is more important than the gender to claim the legitimacy. In places where the ruling class was a small minority such as Egypt, marriage between siblings was permitted to maintain the racial purity.

When you look at the history of western democracy, common men (non ruling class man) did not have voting rights at the beginning. It was only less than 100 years that women of any class won the voting rights and the rights to own property. In many parts of the world, women are still treated as man's property. Even in the advanced democratic societies, there are many men wanting to reverse the clock to justify their ruthless control over women including women's reproductive functions. The idea of equal rights and human rights is still new whether it relates to women or people in general.

Given such human heritage, it's no wonder that the future society portrayed in Si-Fi stories are full of violent conflicts of hegemony, and the stories that put raw power struggles up front such as Sopranos and Game of Throne have been popular in America. May be we all know that beneath the thin veneer of civilized modern Western society lies the same male dominated society where the raw power rules. Or is it a male nostalgia? The question is: can we make it a distant memory, like the horse mounted armored worriers? I am pinning my hopes to the ideas promoted by women leaders such as Swanee Hunt that it's up to women to open the next chapter of human history.

References:

Genetics

Did the Indo-Europeans really invade Western Europe ?
How did R1b come to replace most of the older lineages in Western Europe ?
A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages
Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers (mtDNA)

A Signal, from Human mtDNA, of Postglacial Recolonization in Europe
Dual origins of the Japanese: common ground for hunter-gatherer and farmer Y chromosomes
Mitochondrial Genome Variation in Eastern Asia and the Peopling of Japan
Genetic evidence supports demic diffusion of Han culture
Y-chromosome lineages in Cabo Verde Islands witness the diverse geographic origin of its first male settlers
Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe
Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia

Racial history in America
Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Women's rights and power
Half the Sky
Women War and Peace
Swanee Hunt
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (This is a must see. The Wisdom and vitality of women in war torn Africa, They have taken back their country from men behaving like boys, by sex strike?)

Which history do you teach, propaganda or historic facts?

by Etsuko Ueda

This is a letter I sent to Economist.

Dear Economist
In your recent article titled, Barren rocks, barren nationalism (Aug 25th 2012) you wrote "In Japan that means producing honest textbooks so that schoolchildren can discover what their predecessors did." No one can dispute such wise counseling. Actually it would be even better if "In Japan" is replaced by "In every nation". As to the writer's presumption that Japanese schoolchildren have not been given "honest textbooks", I must agree wholeheartedly. Growing up in post war Japan, I developed a thirst for that part of history, not just Japan's but the world's. Nobody talked much about it in Japan and there was not much I could read. It was long after I left Japan that I learned the military, government leaders, and high officials who had first-hand knowledge of the war were executed in a revenge killing masqueraded as war crime tribunals - not just those 7 I knew from the Tokyo tribunals that executed the Prime Minister, but over 1,000. If you include those who took their own lives before being subjected to such humiliation, the number would be much higher. Moreover, the allied occupation forces ordered the destruction of many publications and documents that would illuminate that part of the history, and Japanese publishers and news media were put under strict censorship under strict secrecy. Also, the Japanese government was ordered to teach Japanese schoolchildren the allied version of the history: "Japan brutally exploited other Asian nations" (just like the European colonial powers it replaced). That is the version I believed for a long time until recently, and it was the understanding the Prime Minister Murayama shared in his apology he made on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

As unbelievable as it may sound, that is the history Japanese schoolchildren are still taught today. However, if my observation is correct, it won't be long before they will have text books that will tell what really have happened in its entirety. They will learn that Japan was forced to deal with Western colonial aggression after 300 years of peaceful isolated existence, when American as well as British, French, and Russian warships approached its shores uninvited with their cannons pointing to its cities and castles demanding the Japanese to sign unfair treaties.

Japan's leaders at the time realized that to defend Japanese territory, the neighbors had to be protected also. Since China was in no shape to protect itself at the time, Japan took Korea and Taiwan under her wings, and pushed Russia out of China. During WW I, Japan even helped Britain to secure their interest in Asia. Then, with the rise of communism, worldwide recession, and a series of political assassinations by the military in Japan, the world once again marched toward greater turmoil and conflicts. Britain along with the U.S. and other colonial powers soon turned against Japan and imposed an economic embargo to cut Japan's lifeline for oil and other natural resources. Japan had little choice but to do what it could to keep those lifelines. In the end, the poorly managed war ended in unconditional surrender and devastation.

Japanese schoolchildren will also learn that it was not all in vain. Other Asian peoples gained the courage and learned the know-how from Japan to become independent and to prosper, although the Western colonial powers tried to resume their business as usual as soon as Japan surrendered. The Japanese schoolchildren are not yet taught this aspect of that war's consequence, but many South Eastern Asian schoolchildren are.
------
As I expected, Economist ignored this letter and continues its irrational accusation against Japan for not teaching the allied version of the history, completely ignoring the fact that the allied version of the history (the propaganda based history) IS what Japanese schoolchildren are still taught. Are they really concerned about Japanese school children not being taught the "honest" historic facts, while they teach their children a fake history and their propaganda? Not likely. Why Economist as well as all the allied nations are behaving this way now? The answer has a lot to do with the Communist China. But, that would probably take a book to explain (for a starter, listen to Joshua Blakeney - Japan Bites Back: Allied Demonization of the Empire of Japan. and Deanna Spingola Interviews Joshua Blakeney About His New Book)

So, once again,  I 'd like to ask "Which history do you teach, propaganda or historic facts?"
------
If you still think Japan was an aggressor nation and need to offer apology forever, see what General MacArthur thought about the U.S.-Japan war, and how Ben Bruce Blakeney argued against the Tokyo Tribunal. The world need to catch up with Japan in the understanding of the U.S.-Japan War. Japan has been branded as an evil, greedy, and cruel aggressor, a criminal nation by the victors, and made to pay for it dearly. That was the propaganda that dominated the postwar world as well as the years leading up to the war (see VENONA (1/3) : "Anti-Japan" Networks by International Communists), but the War Guilt Information Program is about to lose its grip on the Japanese people. The Japanese will leave no stone upturned to expose the historic facts by applying the same diligence they applied to rebuild the postwar economy. Those who refuse to examine the historic facts will be seen as prejudiced and hypocritical, if not evil.

To find out what Henry Scott-Stokes, a British journalist, has found about the propaganda surrounding Nanjing Incident of 1937, here is the full interview and here is the WSJ article about the interview on his book, Fallacies in the Allied Nations' Historical Perception as Observed by a British Journalist. So called "Nanjing Massacre" was most certainly KMT (Chiang Kai-shek's government) propaganda, he says. He detailed the timeline of how the propaganda was manufactured, who were involved, and the historic sources of information available including the Chiang Kai-shek government's archives. Kyodo News who reported total lie about the intent of the book's author made itself more than clear what kind of propaganda machine it has been for whom. The Kyodo article was repeated by various pro-China papers such as South China Morning Post.

For more on the big lies against Japan:

• To understand why the propaganda including the so-called Nanjing Massacre are eagerly accepted and established: Rape, murder, mayhem, and Urban Myth

• To find out why the Tokyo Tribunal and the entire International Military Tribunal For The Far East that executed over 1,000 Japanese was a farce, in violation of the fundamental legal framework of modern justice system: Pal’s “Dissentient Judgment” Reconsidered by Ushimura Kei will serve as an introduction to the 250,000 words INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL FOR THE FAR EAST: DISSENTIENT JUDGMENT OF JUSTICE PAL (http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/65_S4.pdf)

• To find out the truth about the war time sex business the Koreans took advantage of and now lying about:
  Comfort Women activity explained
  Comfort Women the truth be told
  Tony Blair & Comfort Women

If you believed both the claims of the so-called Nanjing Massacre (rape, murder, and mayhem) and the claims that the war time prostitutes Japanese military used (the majority were Japanese women) under strict licensing were forced slaves, then you have not really thought it through. The very reason Japanese military restricted soldiers to use only those licensed and well paid prostitutes were:

1. To prevent soldiers from contracting sexually transmitted diseases by mandating regular medical checkups of the prostitutes.
2. To prevent soldiers from harassing the local people (raping, for example), which will make the establishment of law and order and cooperation of the locals that much harder. Using forced slaves goes against this aim, and any brothel operator and military unit who used forced slaves were band and court-martialed (yes, there was one incident in Indonesia).
   
   Allowing soldiers to roam freely to harass the locals, or organizing them to engage in  rape, murder, and mayhem makes no sense what so ever from these military objectives.
   
   Note: I know American and British soldiers went around Japanese cities as soon as they landed on Japan in 1945, and raped women and girls at random. So I understand why many Americans and British assumed Japanese soldiers did the same wherever they went and occupied. Japanese government was alarmed by the occupation force soldiers behavior and obliged their demand to provide prostitution services and facilities called "Recreation Center" for them in order to keep the street safe. Many young Japanese women volunteered to serve for the cause as well as for the money. (see Comfort women for American soldiers in Japan: "Reviewing Kono statement" by Kanji Nishio at Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan). Those women were the real heroes of that 7 year occupation period, as far as I am concerned.