Actually, I have been looking for those documents also on my own, and reached to the list of Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II kept in National Archives of the United States. But there was no way of knowing, without actually skimming through the vast microfilmed archives, which groups of the records are most pertinent to the secret program implemented on the defeated Japanese people by the American led occupation forces (GHQ/SCAP) during the 7 years of occupation. It turned out "331.45 Records of the SCAP Civil Information and Education Section 1941-52 (bulk 1945-52)" was it (According to Mr. Sekino, that portion of the archive alone contains 25000 documents).
Mr. Sekino found the documents, starting with National Diet Library of Japan and eventually at a Japanese University (Meisei) through researchers of the related topics (such as Katsuoka Kanji and Takahashi Shiro). Apparently, libraries around the world can purchase the American microfilm archives and researchers can request printed copies from the library as well as from National Archives. He published his findings as a book in March of 2015:
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| Book cover of [Brain Washing Program That Crippled Japan: The GHQ Psychological Warfare Still Continues] |
Three of the documents were also published along with the Japanese translation as a magazine article in Seiron May issue. (See the bottom of this blog for the photographed pages of the three documents)
The documents indicate that the Americans were nervous about how the Japanese people would think about the Military Tribunals, the arrests, the accusation of the war crimes on their leaders, as well as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They schemed to sell the narrative in a frame of the punishment fitting the crimes. To make it stick, they made elaborate plans and carefully executed them through the puppet Japanese government with a threat on the Emperor's head. For that end, they did not hesitate coming up with all sorts of cruelties and atrocities Japanese military supposed to have committed, which were made up or taken out of context, ordering Japanese news media and textbook publishers to publish them. They operated as the shadow government under total secrecy. Ordinary Japanese people were too busy to care. In the broken post war nation, daily survival was the top priority. The war was lost and they were too tired and busy to care how or who were responsible. Above all, the Emperor issued a call to the nation to "bear the unbearable
and endure the unendurable". The Americans encountered very little resistance, which was eerie enough to make them suspicious.
The War Guilt Information Program contained several components and was the major part of the occupation policies:
The War Guilt Information Program contained several components and was the major part of the occupation policies:
- Strict censorship under strict secrecy: Daily inspection of all publications, news media and private correspondences (See Press Code for Japan).
- Destruction of all published books that did not agree with the narrative of the war crimes the Japanese government and its military were supposed to have committed and were tried in the military tribunals without due process (over 1000 were executed).
- War guilt propaganda information fed through the mass media and education systems.
- Purging of elected officials, bureaucrats, educators, journalists, industrialists, etc (totaling 200,000, 2000,000 if you include those who resigned to avoid the stigma of getting purged), replacing them with "good Japanese" who would not question the narrative or the War Guilt Information Program.
- Total removal of military and related industries, setting its legal basis in the new constitution to make it permanent. The dismantled factories were shipped to China to help the Chinese dictators (posed as communists) to build their military.
Here is a film produced to educate the occupation troops in Japan and to justify what they were doing to the Japanese. The poor and limited understanding of the Japanese civilization and culture aside, it really was meant to brainwash their own occupation troops to make them feel good about what they were doing, reassuring the superiority of American culture, and to hide the true cause/aim of the war (To learn what that war really was from the Japanese perspective, Here is a film with English subtitle, the translation may sound somewhat awkward).
Having learned what their government was doing to brainwash their defeated enemy, Japan, no wonder that Americans became fascinated /obsessed with and scared of brainwashing as evidenced in popular movies such as The Manchurian Candidate. Unfortunately for the Americans, however, the critical brainwashing of Americans was carried out before the war to lead them into the war they did not want to get involved, as you may find out reading through this article. In a way, the brainwashing of the Japanese people was an extension of the brainwashing and the propaganda done on the American people.
Having learned what their government was doing to brainwash their defeated enemy, Japan, no wonder that Americans became fascinated /obsessed with and scared of brainwashing as evidenced in popular movies such as The Manchurian Candidate. Unfortunately for the Americans, however, the critical brainwashing of Americans was carried out before the war to lead them into the war they did not want to get involved, as you may find out reading through this article. In a way, the brainwashing of the Japanese people was an extension of the brainwashing and the propaganda done on the American people.
This film is using a typical brainwashing and propaganda tactic called psychological projection, where one's evil deeds and impulses are projected on to the enemy to justify unleashing those deeds and impulses on to the enemy. I will discuss this more later in this article.
It is clear that the narrative was established long ago when you read the educational pamphlet "GI Roundtable: What Shall Be Done about Japan after Victory?" published 25 June 1945. Actually, the basic narrative and the anti-Japanese campaign, both in China and in the U.S, can go back to the time Japan started to prove its power as the defender of the East Asia especially after wining Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The U.S. named Japan as a potential enemy and initiated the Orange plan in 1906, and outrageous anti-Japanese war scare stories were widely circulated. Eventually, anti-immigrant laws targeting Japanese immigrants such as California Alien Land Law of 1913 and Exclusion Act of 1924 were put into effect against the Japanese government's protests. Sidney L. Gulick investigated those anti-Japanese war scare stories to prove how outrageous they were and who with what motive they were promoted. The report was published in 1917. He saw Chinese and German hands behind them.
In China, by 1928, anti-Japanese campaign lead by Chiang Kai-shek Nationalist government, and supported by Euro-American colonial powers was well under way. Even the children's school books were filled with anti-Japanese rhetoric by then, and the Christian schools and missionaries were big part of it. It started long before 1931, the year Japan moved to support the return of Qing Dynasty to their ancient homeland of Manchuria as a nation to secure the area against the lawless Chinese bandits and warlords. The U.S. jumped on it as a convenient excuse to brand Japan aggressor in violation of the Nine Power Pact of 1922. Japan saw it as bullying by the White colonial powers simply because Japan was the new yellow kid on the block (After all, Japan wasn't doing anything the White colonial powers weren't doing. Japan failed to read the writing on the wall that made it abundantly clear when President Wilson rejected Japan's "racial equality clause" proposal in Paris Peace Conference, 1919.) Manchuria was an independent country reestablished by the Qing dynasty under Japanese protection, just like Japan has been an independent country under the U.S. protection since 1952. The fact did not matter at that point, just like the fake accusation of the Weapon of Mass Destruction used to attack and take over Iraq. That was not the first time nor the last time the U.S. used false accusations and false flag operations to go to war, I am afraid (see also The Shadows of Power by James Perloff).
In China, by 1928, anti-Japanese campaign lead by Chiang Kai-shek Nationalist government, and supported by Euro-American colonial powers was well under way. Even the children's school books were filled with anti-Japanese rhetoric by then, and the Christian schools and missionaries were big part of it. It started long before 1931, the year Japan moved to support the return of Qing Dynasty to their ancient homeland of Manchuria as a nation to secure the area against the lawless Chinese bandits and warlords. The U.S. jumped on it as a convenient excuse to brand Japan aggressor in violation of the Nine Power Pact of 1922. Japan saw it as bullying by the White colonial powers simply because Japan was the new yellow kid on the block (After all, Japan wasn't doing anything the White colonial powers weren't doing. Japan failed to read the writing on the wall that made it abundantly clear when President Wilson rejected Japan's "racial equality clause" proposal in Paris Peace Conference, 1919.) Manchuria was an independent country reestablished by the Qing dynasty under Japanese protection, just like Japan has been an independent country under the U.S. protection since 1952. The fact did not matter at that point, just like the fake accusation of the Weapon of Mass Destruction used to attack and take over Iraq. That was not the first time nor the last time the U.S. used false accusations and false flag operations to go to war, I am afraid (see also The Shadows of Power by James Perloff).
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| Cover of the pamphlet indicating the U.S.'s intention to strip Japan naked, to push her back to Stone Age by deleting 10,000 years of Japanese history and civilization. |
"GI Roundtable: What Shall Be Done about Japan after Victory?" talks about "Rape of China" by "Japanese war lords" in an obvious attempt to portray the Japanese people, especially the imperial military forces as lawless and morally culturally inferior and evil as the basis to take away from Japan not only Manchuria which the U.S. used to accuse Japan aggressor, but also Taiwan, Korea, the Northern islands, and the Tropic Pacific islands North of equator (Caroline and Marshall Islands), all of which had nothing to do with the Japanese "aggression", and to make her pay for the post war reconstruction of the region, while maximizing American business opportunities and military foothold in the region as well as expanding the territories of communist China and Russia.
In actuality, the real victims were the Japanese in China and Manchuria (many were Koreans who became Japanese in 1910) who were brutally attacked, robbed and murdered daily by the Chinese. The Tungchow mutiny (通州事件, July 29, 1937: 220+ Japanese civilians, including babies, were savagely and systematically mutilated and murdered in their residences) was just a tip of an iceberg. The Chinese assaults on Japanese civilians as well as military targets culminated in the Shanghai Incidence of Aug. 13, 1937, where 3000 Japanese civilians were victimized by air attacks. German military advisers encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to attack the Japanese military and civilian targets in and around Shanghai in violation of cease fire agreement (they claimed the attacks on civilians were mistakes, but the mistakes kept happening.) There were only 4,000 Japanese soldiers protecting the area as PKO at the time against the initial deployment of 30,000 out of 200,000 Chiang Kai-shek gathered for the offensive.
After suffering heavy casualties, Japanese government reluctantly sent in enough reinforcement to run Chiang Kai-shek off Shanghai, and out of their base, Nanking, on Dec 13, 1937. During that 4 months, what were the Euro-American colonial powers doing other than calling Japan the aggressor, blaming Japan for the start of the Sino-Japanese war, and issuing a call for trade embargo, an act of war, which the President Roosevelt was well aware of and implemented a year later. He sold the embargo against Japan to ordinary Americans as well as American businesses claiming that to sell Japan the materials used for her military activities in China is to assist Japan in her "atrocious activities" in China, while the actual victims of atrocious activities in China were the Japanese. There was an enormous concerted propaganda effort to convince Americans as well as the world of the Japanese atrocities (see Anti-Japan networks devised by US, China and Soviet that put Japan into a quagmire; also the text version). In addition, they could exploit the racially motivated anti-Japanese sentiment of Americans at the time (visit also http://densho.org/).
There were Western civilian casualties in Shanghai also. But, the Euro-American colonial powers and their military stationed in China were standing aside scheming to squeeze Japan out of the international zone, while providing helping hands, war materials, supplies, and money to the Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government. Although, Chiang Kai-shek could never gain any military advantage against Japan after that incident, the Western colonial powers kept encouraging and supporting Chiang Kai-shek as well as the Chinese Communists to attack the Japanese, aiming to drain the Japanese military resources in preparation for the real war, the Pacific War (see Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor by Edward S. Miller). The Flying Tigers U.S. air force team was deployed to China with an order to attack Japan 5 months before the Pearl Harbor and the declaration of the war (See 【20/20 from ABC NEWS】 U.S. Secret Plan before Pearl Harbor / Hull Note, Ultimatum, See also 【Questioning Japanese History】 "The Truth About Japan in WWII" by Mad Monarchist for detail).
To stop the flow of war materials through the Indochina routes the Western colonial powers were sending to support Chiang Kai-shek, Japan sent troops to Indochina taking advantage of the new German dominance and the fact that the French Indochina had become a friendly territory under newly formed Japanese-German alliance. Japan's this move to the Southeast Asia, however, was advocated by the communist spies penetrated into the highest echelons of Japanese political and military powers. It enabled communist Russia to safely move the troops from the Eastern front to the Western front to fight the Germans, AND also it provided another excuse for the U.S. to tighten the trade embargo against Japan.
It wasn't just Japan that was infiltrated by communists. In China, Moa Zedong was competing against Chiang Kai-shek, who actually was threatened and manipulated by Moa Zedong after being captured by the communists in the Xi`an Incident of 1936, while the communists stayed away from the battlefields. In the U.S., FDR was sympathetic to communism and 300 communists and communist sympathizers were working in his administration, and he helped Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union to fight the Germans and invited him to join the war against Japan as well (see Anti-Japan networks devised by US, China and Soviet that put Japan into a quagmire, also the text version).
The Prim Minister Konoe Fumimaro (the three time Prime Minister of Japan between 1936 and 1941), the Japanese counter part of FDR, also surrounded himself with closet communists and communist sympathizers and removed those who would have opposed his secret war plan from the critical positions leading up to the start of second Sino-Japanese war (1937) and the US-Japan war (1941) according to the study of Konoe's foot steps by 林 千勝(Hayashi, Chikatu).
It was under P.M. Konoe that Yamamoto Isoroku was appointed to command the imperial navy's combined fleet that opened the war against the U.S. by attacking Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto ignored the master war plan to go West to capture the Southeast Asia for the natural resources and to cut off the sea lanes through the Indian Ocean the British shipping was relying on. According to the master war plan developed by the Army, there was no merit in going East to attack Pacific islands under the U.S. control such as Hawaii and Midway. It was to be avoided, and the Americans were to be dealt with only when mobilized to cut off the sea lanes vital to Japan. It is said that Yamamoto's aim was to give the U.S. a demoralizing defeat to get them accept the Japanese dominance in the Pacific. We now know that it had an opposite effect, and Yamamoto's reasoning sounds wishful at best.
Hayashi suggests a possibility that Konoe and his communist friends in Japan and around the world were planning for a communist takeover of not only the war torn China but also the defeated Japan as well. (looking back, both the U.S. and Japan intentionally led Japan to the extreme devastation by prolonging the war, delaying the surrender negotiation until the atomic bombs became available. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many of the Japanese political and the military leaders did not want to surrender. It took the Emperor's intervention, which only happens in national existential crisis.)
Thanks to the Red Purge and the Cold War, Japan did not fall into the communist's hands, but it came close. The Japanese communists are still alive and well, and they do not seem to have abandoned the hope. Konoe's name is not associated with the Pacific war. That was because he was clever enough to resign as soon as the war became all but inevitable. However, it was under Konoe that Japan sent combat troops deep into China without planning how to end it, while the Japanese public was fed ever escalating pro-war propaganda under ever deepening economic hardship under the burden of the war and the U.S. lead trade embargo. The war effort was a perfect excuse to reorganize the nation with communist style centralized economy and to restrict freedom by instituting communist style police state.
Looking back, it makes better sense if Yamamoto's true purpose in attacking Pearl Harbor was to give FDR the reason to join the war and turn the anti-war sentiment of the Americans around. According to Freedom Betrayed by President Herbert Hoover, FDR was looking for a way to get Japan to attack first, and was pressured by the Chinese communists not to settle with Japan without physically destroying Japan. It is now a well established fact that FDR knew Hawaii was about to be attacked and kept it secret to let it happen the way it did (see Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett).
As the conflict deepened, it became more and more clear to the Japanese, that the only way to secure Japan's future was to get other Asian peoples on Japan's side and to get rid of the Western colonial powers from Asia. Japan encouraged and trained each Asian people under her control to get organized for independence under the banner of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In November of 1943, Prim Minister Tojo hosted the first Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo. It was attended by Wang Jingwei (汪兆銘) of China, Prim Minister Zhang Jinghui (張景惠) of Manchukuo, President José Paciano Laurel of Philippines, Head of State Ba Maw of Burma, Prince Wan Waithayakon of Thailand and Tojo himself. In addition, Subhas Chandra Bose who was leading the India's independence war against Britain attended as an observer. Other regions of the East Asia under Japanese control, such as British Malaya and Dutch East Indies were not yet ready to form their own governments. Neither was French Indochina that was under French Vichy regime under Germany. The Japanese influence, however, became immediately clear when the White colonial empires came back and tried to resume their business as usual. The Japanese-trained locals fought back and won their independence, and some Japanese military officers and soldiers stayed there and volunteered to support the cause rather than going back to Japan (Truth of World War II - What did Japan fight for).
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| The first Greater East Asia Conference 1943 (from Wikipédia) |
On the other hand, the U.S. was on course to complete the mission initiated when Commodore Perry was sent to invade Japan with his four "Black Ships" in 1853. It was symbolic for the General MacArthur to bring the U.S. flag once used by Perry, when he came to occupy Japan in September of 1945. Japan was too naive to realize the enemy's true intention. Initiation of a trade embargo was and is a declaration of war, just as damaging as bombing if not more. Japan did not realize it until the complete ban of trade and asset freeze were implemented in the Summer of 1941. By then, it was too late for Japan to do anything other than to capture the regions where the critical resources such as oil, rubber and metals originated, the South East Asia colonized by Whites for centuries (it was high time to liberate Asia from the White colonial rule anyway). Nevertheless, it was beyond her imagination that a mutually profitable trading partner in good standing would throw away all that trading relationships to annihilate and destroy the partner using fire bombs as well as atomic bombs so that the "yellow monkeys" from the Far East would never get in the White empires' way. Japan did not quite realize that the winner takes all total war, total destruction and domination has been the White empires' way against none-whites.
Japan lost the war, however, succeeded in training the South East Asian peoples to fight and win their independence from the White colonial rule. You might have learned that America liberated Asia from the evil Japanese empire, but the truth is that America destroyed Japan to take back Asia for the White colonial empires and gave China to the dictators posed as communists. America is still suffering (may be profiting) from that consequence and has been fighting the communists / dictators / warlords ever since, starting with the Korean War, then the Vietnam war, and all the way up to the today's confrontations against the atrocious terrorists in Africa and in the Middle East not to mention the cold war against China and Russia to push back their barbaric drive to conquer the world. Actually, America has been equally barbaric in her pursuit to keep the world under her control, I must say.
After the failed attempt to get rid of the Japanese from Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek intensified the propaganda tactics, using Western journalists and Christian missionaries, feeding them the stories and propaganda photos of dubious origins to tell the people back home in the U.S. and Europe about the evil Japanese, killing 200,000 civilians in Nanking, for example (see what Henry Scott-Stokes, a British journalist, has found about the propaganda surrounding Nanking 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).
As I mentioned before, the concerted anti-Japanese propaganda effort to convince the world of the fake history of Japanese atrocities was extremely successful (see Anti-Japan networks devised by US, China and Soviet that put Japan into a quagmire; also the text version). The communists and the Chinese had exploited the Christian missionaries' frustration with the Japanese who did not show much interest in the Christianity, taking advantage of the racially motivated anti-Japanese sentiment brewing among Americans for some time (visit http://densho.org/) (you may see a parallel in today's anti-Muslim propaganda and the trade embargo against Iran). The Chinese are still convinced that the same propaganda is an effective way to keep Japan from becoming the dominant influence in Asia as well as in the World. It certainly worked well to trick Americans to sacrifice their lives to destroy Japan on behalf of China.
The real atrocities in China, however, were committed by the Chinese themselves. It was the Chinese militants and communists themselves looting and killing Chinese people everywhere they went. Many Chinese soldiers were killed by their own barrier troops at a hint of desertion, or chained to their positions (the Chinese soldiers were recruited at gun point to begin with). When the Japanese military arrived at Nanjing and tried to push through the barricaded gates to the city after a night of fierce battle, they had to go around huge piles of dead bodies of the Chinese soldiers who had no choice but to fight to their bitter ends sandwiched between the barricaded gates and the creek, across which the Japanese army was closing in. No officer was present. The soldiers survived and left behind were still trying desperately to escape by whatever boats available to cross the river behind the city wall, or wondering about and rounded up by the Japanese army, but there were also many who had runaway in civilian clothes to blend in with the civilians. The place was littered with the thrown away military uniforms, helmets, and the like. Many areas in and around the city was burned down by the retreating Chinese military. The scorched earth tactic was the standard practice of the Chinese. Yet the pamphlet suggests it was the Japanese practice.
These battlefield scenes were recorded by embedded journalists and soldiers who survived the battles (keeping diaries has been well established routines/hobbies of many ordinary Japanese for centuries), and some of those stories were published as books and widely read. Yet, after the war, those books all disappeared from the bookstores and most of libraries, and destroyed by MacArthur and company, the occupation forces. They had no problem enlisting more than willing cooperation from communist leaning Japanese elites who were put in charge of the key institutions of Japanese society. Luckily, some of the banned books have survived in private hands, and revived by a video lecture series, "Recovering Books Destroyed by GHQ" by Nishio Kanji. Some of the battlefield notes and observations are covered in #2, #9, #14, #15, #20, #21, #25, #26, #27, #29, #30, #31 of the series (The channel seems banned #1 thru #16 can be found at edgrd010). Also, some books are republished and available at book stores). The video series also has a companion book series.
As I mentioned before, the concerted anti-Japanese propaganda effort to convince the world of the fake history of Japanese atrocities was extremely successful (see Anti-Japan networks devised by US, China and Soviet that put Japan into a quagmire; also the text version). The communists and the Chinese had exploited the Christian missionaries' frustration with the Japanese who did not show much interest in the Christianity, taking advantage of the racially motivated anti-Japanese sentiment brewing among Americans for some time (visit http://densho.org/) (you may see a parallel in today's anti-Muslim propaganda and the trade embargo against Iran). The Chinese are still convinced that the same propaganda is an effective way to keep Japan from becoming the dominant influence in Asia as well as in the World. It certainly worked well to trick Americans to sacrifice their lives to destroy Japan on behalf of China.
The real atrocities in China, however, were committed by the Chinese themselves. It was the Chinese militants and communists themselves looting and killing Chinese people everywhere they went. Many Chinese soldiers were killed by their own barrier troops at a hint of desertion, or chained to their positions (the Chinese soldiers were recruited at gun point to begin with). When the Japanese military arrived at Nanjing and tried to push through the barricaded gates to the city after a night of fierce battle, they had to go around huge piles of dead bodies of the Chinese soldiers who had no choice but to fight to their bitter ends sandwiched between the barricaded gates and the creek, across which the Japanese army was closing in. No officer was present. The soldiers survived and left behind were still trying desperately to escape by whatever boats available to cross the river behind the city wall, or wondering about and rounded up by the Japanese army, but there were also many who had runaway in civilian clothes to blend in with the civilians. The place was littered with the thrown away military uniforms, helmets, and the like. Many areas in and around the city was burned down by the retreating Chinese military. The scorched earth tactic was the standard practice of the Chinese. Yet the pamphlet suggests it was the Japanese practice.
These battlefield scenes were recorded by embedded journalists and soldiers who survived the battles (keeping diaries has been well established routines/hobbies of many ordinary Japanese for centuries), and some of those stories were published as books and widely read. Yet, after the war, those books all disappeared from the bookstores and most of libraries, and destroyed by MacArthur and company, the occupation forces. They had no problem enlisting more than willing cooperation from communist leaning Japanese elites who were put in charge of the key institutions of Japanese society. Luckily, some of the banned books have survived in private hands, and revived by a video lecture series, "Recovering Books Destroyed by GHQ" by Nishio Kanji. Some of the battlefield notes and observations are covered in #2, #9, #14, #15, #20, #21, #25, #26, #27, #29, #30, #31 of the series (The channel seems banned #1 thru #16 can be found at edgrd010). Also, some books are republished and available at book stores). The video series also has a companion book series.
In Nanking, the Japanese military moved quickly to restore the law and order, buried the dead, treated the wounded, and fed the people including the remnants of the retreated Chinese army. There are many photographs and movies published documenting the days following the Fall of Nanking (see Fake of nanking, the Lies of “The Rape of Nanking", and many other videos”). Western diplomats and civilians were there, and there is no record of mass killing of civilians witnessed by the American or the British government agencies nor by the Westerners staying in the Safe Zone (watch The “Nanking Massacre” was a historical event fabricated by the US and China). Actually, when an American diplomat testified at the Tokyo tribunal, all he could tell was hearsay and speculations. Yet, the U.S. government and the media were happy to spread the propaganda, and the people had no problem believing the lies the Chinese and the communists were spreading with FDR's blessing. It was part of the anti-Japanese propaganda and anti-Japanese immigrant movements that started soon after Japan became victorious against Russia in 1905.
The Asian immigrants were called "yellow peril", which did not distinguish the Japanese from other Asians. But that did not matter. All they had to know was that the Japanese were the aggressors, and from that they could imagine what the Japanese might do and must be doing based on their own history and tradition of looting, pillaging, and annihilating other races whenever they could through out their Euro-American history. It is a well known psychological mechanism and a propaganda tactic to project one's evil deeds and impulses onto the enemy to justify unleashing those impulses and deeds onto the enemy (read Projection in Individuals and Politics as a starter for psychological projection).
As you may recall from the film "Our Job In Japan" you saw earlier in this article with this picture of brain in a Japanese head, the Americans were accusing the Japanese for being brainwashed to believe that "The Sun goddess created the Japanese to rule all the other people of the earth", and Shinto religion was somehow used for that purpose (I'd like to know how you can brainwash people with a religion that has no teaching, written or otherwise). That is a clear case of projection. It was Americans who believed their Manifest Destiny and the power of their religion, Christianity to justify what they wanted to do. It was the white people who were trying to rule all the other people of the earth, and Japan was the last obstacle standing in their way. For every destruction and atrocity they accuse Japan of, they have done it 1000 times more all over the world.
There actually was a group that was planning to take over the world and gaining momentum operating underground: The communists and a new form of religion called communism. They went a great length to spread anti-Japan sentiment among Americans. It was part of their scheme to get two capitalist counties to destroy each other to facilitate the communist take over of the world. It was exposed when the secret Soviet communication of that era was decrypted after the WWII in VENONA project (see also Anti-Japan networks devised by US, China and Soviet that put Japan into a quagmire; also the text version). There were communist spies and sympathizers all over the world, and they were embedding themselves into the highest echelons of every governments in the world. Many officers of the American lead Occupation Forces in Japan were leftists and their policies looked like a preparation for a communist takeover of Japan. The Red Purge put an end to it just in time, although not completely.
The records of the dead Chinese soldiers buried after the fall of Nanking was used in the postwar military tribunal as the evidence for the civilian massacre to execute General Matsui who treated the fallen capital with utmost respect. He was the one who took care of young Chiang Kai-shek during his stay in Japan to learn from modernization of Japan. Imagine that! Over 1000 military and political leaders followed General Matsui's fate in the postwar revenge killings masqueraded as military tribunal.
Japan did all she could to help the Chinese learn modernization, accepted tens of thousands of Chinese students who came to study in Japan, hoping the Chinese would become strong enough to join Japan to push back the Western colonial powers. The Chinese could quickly learn the modern ideas through Japanese terminologies created using new combinations of Kanji (Chinese characters) when the Japanese learned the new ideas and the concepts from the Western books and teachers. As a result, today's Chinese is written with vocabulary that is 70 % Japanese origin (for the detail, see this blog article in Japanese).
The reason Japan was so reluctant to send in reinforcement to stop Chiang Kai-shek after the Shanghai incident of 1937 was that the PKO was the only purpose of Japanese military presence in China up till then. Japan never intended to take over China much less attempted to do so. However, Chiang Kai-shek, the communists, and the Western colonial powers all had their reasons to lure Japanese military into the battlefields. They carried out a series of brutal attacks such as Morco Polo Bridge Incident (盧溝橋事件) and Tungchow mutiny (通州事件), until Japan finally sent in combat troops after having been attacked in Shanghai Aug. 13, 1937.
The GIs were simply told that the Japanese were the evil aggressors and the Chinese were the poor and innocent victims, who had to be compensated one way or another once Japan was defeated because "Morally it is right that the nation guilty of international banditry should reimburse its victims." (never mind about the 500 years of international banditry the White colonial powers have been committing world wide). The U.S. apparently had no incentive to dig the facts regarding the Chinese claims of being victimized by the Japanese military or to disclose the facts they knew. Actually, the FDR administration persecuted and jailed American writers who published views unfavorable to China and favorable to Japan. "According to a March 27, 1942 San Francisco News story, Ralph Townsend was one of six individuals who were indicted as agents of the Japanese Government."(from Then is Also Now in Publisher’s Preface).
The Chinese and Russians as well as the Koreans took everything Japan owned and built in China, Taiwan, Manchuria, Chishima islands, Southern Karafuto, and Korea in addition to the thousands upon thousands of Japanese lives who tried to go back to Japan as soon as the surrender was announced, and they still want more.
We have not forgotten those Japanese men and women, nearly a million, who were kept in labor camps in China, Korea, and Russia by the communists for many years after the war. Nearly a half of them were perished under harsh treatment. The majority of them were taken to Russia, who showed up at the scene in Manchuria in violation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. That was 2 days after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and they invaded the Northern islands 3 days after Japan announced surrender and put down the arms on Aug. 15, 1945 (see p.316-327 in MacArthur 1941-1951 by Willoughby & Chamberlain, 1954). Nor have we forgotten those rape victims, including those assaulted by the occupation forces (mainly the U.S. and UK) within the mainland Japan and Okinawa. No sooner than they landed, they swung into action and committed heinous crimes, as if it was the victor's rights. Many brave young Japanese women took it upon themselves to "entertain and comfort" the occupation forces as "comfort women" to keep the street safe in response to the government's call. Sadly for many, that was the only way to put food on the table given the high unemployment rate and severe food shortages (see Nishio Kanji's press brief about comfort women for the Occupation Forces).
To hide and/or justify their heinous crimes and sell their version of the history full of lies to the Japanese people who knew the real story, they had to implement an elaborate disinformation campaign called "Japanese war guilt information program", which included the revenge killings masqueraded as war crime tribunal to establish the guilt, strict censorship under strict secrecy encompassing from the destruction of published books to daily inspection of news media and private correspondences (see Press code for Japan), war guilt propaganda fed through the mass media and education systems, purging of elected officials, bureaucrats, educators, journalists, industrialists, etc (totaling more than 200,000!), replacing them with "good Japanese" (many were leftists and so were the staff of the U.S. lead occupation forces), installation of so-called "peace constitution" to permanently disarm Japan, various social engineering such as land reform, breaking up large companies, abolishing heavy industries, dismantling factories to ship them to China, etc. as outlined in "GI Roundtable: What Shall Be Done about Japan after Victory?" all of which were in violation of one international law or another.
There is another paper trail, called VENONA Notes (also see VENONA (1/3) : "Anti-Japan" Networks by International Communists; also the text version), that shows the whole thing, the war and the handling of the post war world, was led by communist plot, and communist spies and sympathizers were in every government at high levels. That would be another topic, but when you look at the world map, it is clear that the communists gained the most from WW2.
As Nishio Kanji has demonstrated in a YouTube channel program titled "Recovering Books Destroyed by GHQ" (see Breaking the Seal on the GHQ Burned Books for the detail in English), many of the books destroyed by the War Guilt Information Program contained observations contradicted the victor's narrative. Books that clearly indicate how well the Japanese military researched and analyzed the situation; They were well aware of the international legal obligations as well as their competitive edges or the lack thereof. Books that clearly indicate that the Japanese soldiers were disciplined, civil, and kind wherever they went to maintain the law and order, and how the area attracted the locals, the population increased and became prosperous, while the Chinese military was nothing more than a bunch of thugs robbing, raping, and killing other Chinese as well as the Japanese in the area, which is not hard to imagine knowing the horrendous atrocities the Chinese communists have been committing on their own people and their colonial subjects in Tibet, Uighur, and Inner Mongolia.
There is another paper trail, called VENONA Notes (also see VENONA (1/3) : "Anti-Japan" Networks by International Communists; also the text version), that shows the whole thing, the war and the handling of the post war world, was led by communist plot, and communist spies and sympathizers were in every government at high levels. That would be another topic, but when you look at the world map, it is clear that the communists gained the most from WW2.
As Nishio Kanji has demonstrated in a YouTube channel program titled "Recovering Books Destroyed by GHQ" (see Breaking the Seal on the GHQ Burned Books for the detail in English), many of the books destroyed by the War Guilt Information Program contained observations contradicted the victor's narrative. Books that clearly indicate how well the Japanese military researched and analyzed the situation; They were well aware of the international legal obligations as well as their competitive edges or the lack thereof. Books that clearly indicate that the Japanese soldiers were disciplined, civil, and kind wherever they went to maintain the law and order, and how the area attracted the locals, the population increased and became prosperous, while the Chinese military was nothing more than a bunch of thugs robbing, raping, and killing other Chinese as well as the Japanese in the area, which is not hard to imagine knowing the horrendous atrocities the Chinese communists have been committing on their own people and their colonial subjects in Tibet, Uighur, and Inner Mongolia.
Also, it's been painstakingly proven by various researchers that those photos and claims the Chinese have been putting out to the world ever since to show so-called atrocities committed by the Japanese military are fake, staged acts, taken out of context, or a Chinese killing another Chinese or a Chinese killing Japanese (such as photos from Tungchow mutiny) shown as the evidence of Japanese atrocities, while photos that show anything contrary to the "Rape of China" were censored out of the public eyes by the Occupation forces which the Chinese were part of (see The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable by Hata Ikuhiko, also Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre, Expose the fake of Nanking Massacre Made in China and USA).
Also, the more recent American government mandated research of declassified CIA documents to uncover Japanese war crime came up empty handed (see the IWG final report of 2007). Early on, the IWG published a document titled "Researching Japanese War Crimes: Introductory Essays", and the only evidence for the Japanese atrocities in China they found was a cut out page of a diary rewritten to make it more readable, which no one except a person hell bent to prove Japanese war crime would take seriously. It is well known now, sadly, that some communist leaning Japanese reported made up stories to help their ideological causes (see NYT Still Enforcing the Japanese War Guilt Information Program?) as well as a result of brain washing and torture while being held in China and Russia after the war.
"331.45 Records of the SCAP Civil Information and Education Section 1941-52 (bulk 1945-52)" of Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II kept in National Archives of the United States is the paper trail of what they did during the 7 year occupation. From the paper trail, it is clear Asahi News and NHK (national broadcast system) were the two major media organizations selected to carry out the mission. It is hard to believe, but the narrative in "GI Roundtable: What Shall Be Done about Japan after Victory?" is still the narrative major Japanese media is following today.
Why are they still sticking to the narrative? Are they still under a threat of some kind?(Yes) Are they taking orders from the communists?(Yes) Various explanations have been offered. The most common seems "entrenched interests", especially strong among bureaucrats, political parties, media, academia and educational circles (those subjected to the purging by the GHQ/SCAP). So long as sticking to the narrative, their necks have been secure, and they cannot change the narrative now without embarrassing themselves or weakening the "entrenched interests". Psychologically, they ware the guilt as a badge of proof to say that they are liberated and conscientious, without questioning the narrative established by the victor. In a way it was easier than facing the humiliation of the defeat and the hard lessons of the mismanaged war and national politics. So it goes on.
As far as I can tell, only one person came forward, in his will, to confess his past as a censor. Even after a TV show tried to hunt them down from a discovered list of names, only less then a handful came forward. More recently, however, many written records of various forms, such as memoirs and diaries, have been discovered and now over 14,000 names are known (some are well known names with high profiles). During the 7 years of occupation, the number of the Japanese who worked for the occupation forces censoring and monitoring Japanese publications and communication is estimated to total tens of thousands. In the impoverished and bombed out homeland, the secret censorship jobs offered rare and well paid employment opportunities for the highly educated Japanese elites.
As far as I can tell, only one person came forward, in his will, to confess his past as a censor. Even after a TV show tried to hunt them down from a discovered list of names, only less then a handful came forward. More recently, however, many written records of various forms, such as memoirs and diaries, have been discovered and now over 14,000 names are known (some are well known names with high profiles). During the 7 years of occupation, the number of the Japanese who worked for the occupation forces censoring and monitoring Japanese publications and communication is estimated to total tens of thousands. In the impoverished and bombed out homeland, the secret censorship jobs offered rare and well paid employment opportunities for the highly educated Japanese elites.
More disturbing is the fact that the mainstream historians in Japan as well as in the U.S. and Europe are perpetuating the same propaganda narrative without reexamining the facts, letting the Chinese get away with their atrocious activities (see also, AHA=Propaganda Machine). The emboldened Chinese are now threatening the world peace. I cannot help but think that the "crime against humanity" the "crime against peace" should be applied to the acts of perpetuating those lies against the Japanese.
When you look at the anti-Japanese propaganda in today's China that started in 1980's, and compare it to that of the early 20th century, you would come to realize what the Chinese communist government is planing to do. They have already started robbing Japanese owned assets in China under various pretenses. They have declared that various Japanese territories including not only the Senkaku islands but the entire Okinawa islands are theirs. School children are taught anti-Japanese propaganda from very early age (including images you would not allow your children to see), everything is blamed on Japan, and China is feeding not only the Americans, but the entire world, with persistent anti-Japanese messages. "The Rape of Nanking (Nanjing)" by Iris Chang is one of them, and even the Korean sex slave propaganda is supported by Chinese money. A huge sum of money is used for lobbying, TV programs, movies, and university programs to spread the propaganda tacitly embedded for their "influence operations" (see China’s Overseas United Front Work by U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission).
Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia (based in California) is a well known anti-Japanese organization backed by Chinese money. It's Chinese name 抗日連合 (anti-Japan Alliance) tells its true purpose. It is mentioned as the organization who expressed high hopes that the U.S. government would find documented evidence of Japanese war crime from the declassified government documents, which were examined specifically to uncover that evidence (see the final report of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Inter agency Working Group (IWG)). The final report says:
As researchers pore over this extraordinary collection of important and interesting documents, will they rewrite the history of World War II, the Holocaust, or the Cold War? Probably not...Among the disappointed will be those who had hoped for a voluminous release of U.S. records relating to Japanese war crimes. My understanding of the depth of feeling surrounding this issue changed dramatically in 2001, when I spoke to a meeting of the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia...To these people, I state unequivocally that the IWG was diligent and thorough in its search for relevant records about war crimes in Asia.Also, if you go to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (outside Washington, DC), you can find documents created by the United States military during World War Two. Among them are Interrogation reports on captured civilian brothel owners. The detailed reports portray how they became brothel owners, how they recruited what kind of women, who (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese women) were paid how much, how the Japanese military licensed them, etc., the life style of highly paid pampered prostitutes, who were sending money back home to pay off family debts and enjoying luxuries. Apparently, those Korean prostitutes (so called sex-slaves) are still counting on the generosity of Japanese men even today, but they have a funny way of showing their gratitude (see also The Comfort Women Controversy : Sex Slaves or Prostitutes). If you want to know the true meaning of the so called Comfort Women Statue see Yangju highway incident in 2002 / Protests over US military presence on Korean peninsula + "Comfort Women" Scam - ultimate target is USA.
No matter. Those anti-Japanese alliance groups are forging a head, and recently built anti-Japanese war memorial in San Francisco, just like the one in Nanjing, full of fake facts and fake eyewitness accounts and victims. It is sad that some misguided Japanese are taking part in such anti-Japanese organization that is bordering violation of the Civil Rights Act according to a California lawyer Kent Gilbert (see also Who Are the Revisionists? Check the Facts (Kent Gilbert)).
They must be hoping it will work again. I hope the American people have come to know the Japanese people better and are immune to such cowardly propaganda tactics this time.
If you still think Japan was a criminal aggressor nation and need to offer apology forever, listen to Joshua Blakeney Interviews as a starter:
- The Real Deal Ep # 21 Joshua Blakeney Interviewed About His New Book
- Joshua Blakeney - Japan Bites Back: Allied Demonization of the Empire of Japan.
- and read his book: Japan Bites Back
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Here are the photos of the documents (you can right click the photos to open it in New tab to see enlarged. To enlarge more, use Ctrl + "+" to enlarge the Web page display itself. The photos have high enough resolution to read the detail).
