Japan & the Jews
During the war
years,
the Jewish communities in the Far East living
under the Japanese occupation - principally
the 30,000 in Shanghai- but also small communities
in other Chinese cities and throughout the
Netherlands East Indies and Philippines -
lived under an administrative policy that
was noteworthy for its generally neutral
attitude. (Another group lived in French
Indo-China, but they were subject to Vichy's
anti-Jewish laws and suffered removal from
government positions and had prohibitions
placed on their activities. Although a small
number of Jews suffered maltreatment at the
hands of individual Japanese officials, few
were imprisoned or restricted because of
their identity. In these latter cases, the
Jews were singled out because they were stateless
persons, having been stripped of their Polish
or German citizenship by Nazi policy, and
necessarily because they were Jews. Overall
Japanese policy and actions towards Jews
as a group was one that could be characterized
as studied even-handedness. The Japanese
did not single out the Jews for special attention
or restrictions because of their “ethnic” or
religious uniqueness. On the other hand,
the Jews shared equally in the suspicion
that the Japanese held for all neutral and
non-Japanese nationals living within the
Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The Japanese view of the Jews probably grew
out of the complicated mixture of racism,
nationalism, and fear of foreign conspiracy
and secret control of international events
that dominated Japanese national attitudes
towards all foreigners, especially those
living in western countries. Significant anti-Semitism first appeared in Japan after World
War I and was probably part of the
extremist, anti-Communist reaction against
the Bolshevik Revolution that strongly emphasized
the Jewish “nature” of the revolution,
its ideology, and its leaders. With the signing
of the GermanJapanese Anti-COMINTERN Pact
in 1936 and the Tripartite Treaty of September
1940, anti-Semitism gained a more formal
footing in some of Tokyo's ruling circles.
Meanwhile, the Japanese public was exposed
to a campaign of defamation that created
a popular image known as the Yudayaka, or
the "Jewish peril."
Still, attitudes among individual Japanese
diplomats and politicians varied greatly
towards the Jews and the attendant myths
about them like that of Jewish worldwide
political and economic influence. For example,
in October and November 1937, Japanese diplomats
in Paris reported to Tokyo that part of the
West's opposition to Japan's invasion of
China came from "English, American,
and French Jewish plutocrats." These
bankers were intent on supplying China with
arms, and were willing to sustain this support "in
a long struggle." An earlier Japanese
diplomatic message from Paris had reported
that the Jews were also making use of local
newspapers to stir up opposition to Japan.
This message also mentioned that a Japanese
national in Paris had deplored the change
that had occurred since the "days of
the Russo-Japanese War when the Jewish financial
clique was trying to help Japan in retaliation
against Russia."
On the other hand, in 1939 the Japanese
ambassador to Berlin, Baron Oshima Hiroshi,
reminded Tokyo of Japan's debt to certain
Jews who had helped it during the war with
Russia in 1905. On 16 January 1939, he cabled
Tokyo about one Jew, unnamed, who had fled
Nazi Germany for Britain and was in dire
personal straits. Oshima admitted that there
was little that Tokyo could do for this man.
However, Oshima noted that the person performed
valuable intelligence work for Japan during
the 1905 war by notifying it of the sailing
of the Czar's Baltic Fleet, and that his
steamships (presumably this individual owned
a shipping line) had been used to gather
intelligence from Russian ports. Oshima suggested
that this individual should be given some
sort of token of Tokyo's gratitude. In another
similar case that same month, Tokyo's ambassador
to Washington, Kensuku Horinouchi, went out
of his way to assure an American acquaintance
that a German Jew, Kurb Singer, a professor
of economics teaching at a university in
Tokyo, had not been removed from his position
because he was a Jew. The ambassador insisted
that Jews were not discriminated against
in Japan. Horinouchi suspected that the professor
had been let go for some other reason and
that he was cabling Tokyo to find out what
had happened.
These few examples illustrate the difficult
problem of attempting to generalize the variety
of opinions held by Japanese diplomats and
other officials towards the Jews. The majority
of the Japanese political, diplomatic, and
military leadership probably did not embrace
the philosophical, theological, racial, or
pseudo-scientific bases that underpinned
the Western, and primarily European, versions
of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, many
Japanese officials appear to have been impressed
enough by the claims of Jewish worldwide
political and economic influence to try to
use it to Japan's advantage. Based on Western
signals intelligence sources, in this case
almost exclusively Tokyo's diplomatic message
traffic, the Japanese attitude towards world
Jewry was revealed in further detail as a
subtle, complex, and contradictory structure
that combined a suspicion of everything foreign
with a pragmatic, opportunistic effort to
exploit a "Jewish card" in relations
with Western countries, especially the United
States.
After the start of the war in the Pacific
and with the resulting closer workings with
the other Axis powers, the Japanese were
pressured by the Germans to do something
about the Jewish communities under their
control - principally Shanghai. The Japanese
were aware that Berlin's cancellation of
German citizenship of all Jews who had left Germany that affected several thousand Jews
in Shanghai. And in May 1942, an intercept
of a message from the Japanese embassy in
Berlin revealed that Alfred
Rosenberg, Nazism's "philosopher " and
Minister to the Occupied Eastern Territories,
had urged the Japanese to do some thing about
the Jews living in their territories before
they became a "problem." He was
particularly anxious to limit their free
travel through the rest of southern Asia.
Yet, the Japanese refused to go along with
the German demands. In late January 1942,
even as the German authorities met at Wannsee to finalize the mechanisms for the Holocaust,
Tokyo's policy was, as some of their diplomats
said, "to go easy in our policy towards
the Jews." In mid-March 1942, the Japanese
policy towards the Jews was set out in a
message broadcast from Tokyo to all diplomatic
stations in the Far East. The message declared
that the fundamental policy towards Jews,
as set out in a Japanese Diet declaration
in 1938, would be only partly modified to
account for the Axis alliance. Jews would
still be considered as any other group of
foreigners, although the distinction of "Jewishness" would
be based on race and culture. But this distinction
applied only to stateless refugees - which
meant German and Polish Jews. Any expulsion
of Jews from Japanese-controlled territory
was considered contrary to the stated Japanese
national policy of the Common Brotherhood
of Mankind (Hakko Ichiu - literally "8
roofs, 1 house"). Therefore, Tokyo's
official policy was this: Jews holding citizenship
of any country would be accorded treatment
comparable to citizens of that country. Jews
without citizenship would be considered stateless,
in the same category as White Russian émigrés.
This group of Jews would be under surveillance
because of their "racial characteristics." Another
category of Jews, those who could be considered "useful" to
Japan because of their political or economic
influence, would receive the same treatment
that they received prior to the war.
For the duration of the war, the Japanese
held to this policy in the lands that they
occupied. Aside from some isolated incidents
of harassment by individual Japanese occupation
functionaries and a small number of Jews
who were interned in detention camps in Malaysia and the Netherlands East Indies, the Japanese
treated the Jews no differently than other
neutral or national groups. In the Philippines,
the Japanese military occupation administration
issued a general warning to Jews believed
to have been involved in black market operations,
price manipulation, and espionage. A German
report from its embassy in Tokyo noted that
the Japanese threatened drastic actions against
anyone involved in these activities, "irrespective
of the nationality of the persons concerned."
True, Jews in Shanghai were legally circumscribed
in their daily activities. Yet these restrictions
were the same the Japanese had ordered for
all neutral nationals. In French Indochina,
the Japanese requested that the French institute
similar restrictions of Jews and citizens
of neutral countries who held anti-Axis opinions.
They also asked French authorities to keep
Jews and neutrals under surveillance and
that the Vichy colonial regime limit any
influx of "such people" into Indochina.
Japanese concerns about Jewish attitudes
towards them (and the Axis in general) grew
more anxious, especially as the course of
the war turned against Tokyo. Overall, though,
the Japanese remained scrupulously correct
in their treatment of the Jews.
During the war, the biggest problem facing
the Jewish communities in the Far East was
the constant shortage of supplies and money
for the relief of the tides of refugees that
had arrived at the various cities since 1939.
Throughout the war, Japanese officials in
Chinese cities were reminded to allow Jewish
relief organizations to operate and that
Tokyo's officials were to cooperate with
the agencies in their efforts. They were
to cooperate even if suspicious of their "direction
and leaderships." Interestingly, in
September 1944 Swiss diplomats in Shanghai
reported that the Japanese were reluctant
to allow the International Red Cross to intervene
and help the Jews in the city. The Swiss
added that the Japanese claimed that Jewish
organizations were adequately helping the
refugees. The Swiss representative finally
noted that he had refrained from passing
along individual complaints from the refugees
about mistreatment by certain [Japanese]
officials since it might jeopardize his work
with prisoners of war and interned civilians.
A number of Jews, possibly as many as 15,000,
and made up probably of a large number of
stateless persons, were living in a restricted
area in Shanghai already heavily damaged
by the fighting between Japanese and Chinese
forces in 1937. In late July 1945, during
several American 14th Air Force bombing attacks
on the city, stray bombs had hit this section
killing some 30 inhabitants and injuring
another 300. Because of the damage, the Japanese
allowed many of these Jews to relocate to
other sections of the city. They also allowed
the American Joint Relief Committee to extend
war relief funds to those affected by the
bombing.
By the end of the war, the Japanese attempted
to press a propaganda theme that pointedly
contrasted their treatment of the Jews in
Asia to that of the Nazis in Europe. Some
of Tokyo's diplomats and other government
officials seemed to believe that this distinction
would gain them influence among Jews around
the world.
Source: Excerpted from Eavesdropping
on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications
Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 |