USA and Japanese War Crimes

[John Simkin]

During the Second World War an estimated 4% of Allied soldiers died in captivity. It was a very different story with Allied POW in Japan. Around 30% of all those who were captured by the Japanese died as a result of mistreatment. A large number suffered horrible deaths from beriberi, a disease resulting from deficiency of vitamin B1. The men developed distended bellies and testicles like balloons. Camp doctors knew why the men were dying. There was a simple solution to this problem, the provision of cheap brown rice. Instead, the Japanese fed them on polished white rice (this process removes vitamin B1). There is also a great deal of evidence that many camp doctors withheld Vitamin B tablets that had been made available for prisoners.

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, has argued that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered about 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war (some historians have estimated that the true figure was closer to 10,000,000). Some historians have described this as the Asian Holocaust.

Large numbers of Allied soldiers died on “Hell Ships”. This is when they were sealed in cargo holds while being transported to Japan. Internal law stated that these prison ships had to be marked so that they would not be attacked by the enemy. Again this did not happen. During the war allied submarines unwittingly torpedoed 16 Hell Ships killing a total of 17,036 British, Australian, American and Dutch POW.

The worst of these crimes was the use of allied POW as slave labour. These companies and mines were owned by large corporations such as Hitachi, Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo. These men often died of starvation and exhaustion. However, at the end of the war, these men were murdered in order to cover-up these war crimes. For example, 387 allied prisoners who had been working in the Mitsubishi gold mine on the Japanese island called Sado, were murdered when the Japanese placed explosive charges in main entrance of the mine when the men were working underground.

One would have thought that the owners and directors of these large corporations would have been prosecuted after the war for crimes against humanity. That is not the case. Around 1,000 Japanese soldiers were executed after war trials. However, the men who profited from these crimes were never charged.

According to Sterling and Peggy Seagrave (Gold Warriors) the main reason for this was that people like Douglas MacArthur, John McCloy, John Foster Dulles, and Robert B. Anderson, helped to cover-up these crimes. Why? The same reason why John McCloy arranged the release of Nazi war criminals from prison who profited from the Holocaust. It was also the same reason why the CIA was keen to recruit Nazis into the CIA. It was all part of the struggle against communism. As the Seagraves pointed out, it was also about receiving large bribes from these wealthy individuals. It is not surprising that we here little about the Asian Holocaust.

[John Simkin]

What do members think about the claim that the Japanese might have killed more people than the Nazis? Has this anything to do with race and control of the media. Is it considered of less importance because most of those killed were Asians?

[Evan Burton]

It's a very interesting question, John.

Just recently I have been listening to a series of radio broadcasts on the ABC's Radio National called "Prisoner of War - Australians under Nippon". These were accounts of life as a POW told by the Australian survivors themselves. Although there are many tales of harsh brutality, there are also tales of the Japanese soldiers who could be seen to be carrying out orders under duress, those who apologised for their conduct, and even those who helped Allied personnel.

It's a very complex subject. IMO, although there were questionable acts on both sides during WWII, there was a tendency for more extreme measures shown by the Japanese.

I think a lot of this had to do with culture, rather than "humanity". An example of this would be that it was accepted that Japanese soldiers would consider being captured to be a great 'dishonour'; it would be 'honourable' to die in battle rather than be captured - regardless of the odds.

It might be a little parochial if some say it was less important; in the Asia-Pacific region, discussion about the conduct of the Japanese military during WWII is far more prevalent than German conduct. Obviously each region has it own areas of 'relevant history'.

With regard to the accountability of personnel, I don't really have the knowledge to say. Perhaps it might because people associated responsibility with the military leaders rather than industrial civilians behind them. I know there were heated debates about retaining Axis personnel in various countries because they had the 'corporate knowledge' (to use a modern term) to sustain operations under Allied control, in order to "restart" economies. I am unaware of Japanese personnel being disposed of - in order to hide atrocities - but that is not to say they did not happen; I simply am unaware of them.

[Len Colby]

What do members think about the claim that the Japanese might have killed more people than the Nazis? Has this anything to do with race and control of the media. Is it considered of less importance because most of those killed were Asians?

John how well documeted are the claims that the Japanese killed millions of people? You only mentioned one professor(by name) making such a claim.

Have you heard about any survivors initiating lawsuits against Japanese companies involved?

[Guest Gary Loughran]

John, I'm still trying to take in the extent of the Japanese crimes. I admit to being totally unaware of these and taken aback by the figures. I have followed this also in the Gold Warriors thread.

The vastness and comlpexity of all these conspiracies all seem to point, more or less, in the same direction, to the same people, to the same histories. To such an extent that I am hugely overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Is it too big a beast, too well protected and too entrenched to ever fully see, never mind bring down?

[Norman T. Field]

I found the books "The Rape of Nanking" and "The Yamato Dynasty" to be quite revealing on the subjects being discussed here. Let us remember that there remains an active campaign of denial in Japan about their war crimes.

IIRC, the Mayor of Nagasaki was asassinated after admitting that the Rape of Nanking occured and apoligized for his participation.

Ask an elderly Chinese, Korean or Philipino how they remember the profoundly brutal Japanese invaders.

[Sterling Seagrave]

What do members think about the claim that the Japanese might have killed more people than the Nazis? Has this anything to do with race and control of the media. Is it considered of less importance because most of those killed were Asians?

Arriving at a probable number of Japan’s war victims who died is difficult for several interesting reasons, which have to do with Western perceptions. Both Americans and Europeans fell into the unfortunate habit of seeing WW1 and WW2 as separate wars, failing to comprehend that they were interlaced in a multitude of ways (not merely that one was the consequence of the other, or of the rash behavior of the victors after WW1). Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with Pearl Harbor, the British with the fall of Singapore, and so forth. The Chinese would correct this by identifying the Marco Polo Bridge incident as the start, or the Japanese seizure of Manchuria earlier. It really began in 1895 with Japan’s assassination of Korea’s Queen Min, and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan’s seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. - establishing that Japan was at war from 1895-1945. Prior to 1895, Japan had only briefly invaded Korea during the Shogunate, long before the Meiji Restoration, and the invasion failed. Therefore, Rummel’s estimate of 6-million to 10-million dead between 1937 (the Rape of Nanjing) and 1945, may be roughly corollary to the time-frame of the Nazi Holocaust, but it falls far short of the actual numbers killed by the Japanese war machine. If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazy), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident. So, the late Iris Chang and many others have been correct in concluding that the Japanese holocaust is in every way the equal of the Nazi holocaust, even in terms of the bizarre, grotesque, and barbaric manner in which these ethnic Chinese were murdered. It goes beyond ethnicity, because hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were slaughtered in equally grisly fashion by the Japanese, as were ethnic Indonesians and Malays. I count myself very lucky, indeed, because my father spirited me and my mother and brother off to Rangoon, where we got aboard the last refugee ship to Calcutta (my father staying behind to care for wounded), so when the Japanese arrived at our town on the Chinese border, they were only able to find our two Irish terriers. After summoning the entire local population together, they hung the two terriers up in a banyan tree, and hacked them apart with their swords, as our proxies.

[Sterling Seagrave]

(2) What role did the American authorities play in the media presentation of these events?

The death of FDR brought about a sea-change in America that restored to power essentially the same group that had gained control under Woodrow Wilson and hugely expanded that power under Herbert Hoover. They were the same people who would have preferred an alliance with the Nazis against the Soviets, but were outmaneuvered by FDR and Churchill. Many of them had never lost power under FDR, simply submerging, remaining as a 5th Column, or taking refuge in the OSS, or on Wall Street. Averell Harriman, for example, posed as a Democrat, while his magazine NEWSWEEK became a key reactionary instrument in attacking the credentials of war crimes investigators, journalists, and sabotaging systematically the long-projected reform of Japan into a democratic society. Only land reform was accom-plished before the group including Hoover, Harriman, Morgan, Rockefeller, and others using General MacArthur as their cat’s-paw, were able to redeem Hirohito, free all the indicted war criminals from Sugamo Prison, and enlist the most dangerous of them to suppress any form of democracy, labor unions, or multi-party democracy, re-turning government to the wartime fascists where power remains today. This was done not only to fulfill America’s Puritanical obsession with righteous money, but to acquire Japan (the most industrialized country in Asia) as an economic ally, and as a fascist bulwark against the encroaching Maoists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, or any group of underdogs whose protests could easily be labeled Leftist. Control of US and European media was a priority, a lesson learned from Goebbels, and the vast treas-ures looted by the Nazis and the Japanese were used in secret slush funds to acquire newspapers, magazines, radio and later television, throughout the world. This was an imperfect effort at Mediopoly, but it had the result of dumbing down the audience. And in the meantime war crimes investigators who persisted in Asia were victims of “assisted suicide” or mysterious plane crashes. Thousands of European and Asian POWs and civilian prisoners and slave laborers were buried alive in mine-shafts and treasure vaults by Japanese corporations like Mitsubishi, while survivors were warned not to pursue lawsuits for compensation. Those tainted Japanese corporations quickly regained their global leverage, claiming that their war crimes had been the work of different, earlier, management.

[Len Colby]

If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazy), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million.

I've never heard the underlined claim before, can you elaborate?

[Sterling Seagrave]

(3) What was the motivation of the American authorities to cover-up these events?

Ultimately, the motive of American politicians, financiers, industrialists, lobbyists, and their journalistic pawns, was to replace global European empires with an American empire - to profit in countless ways from WW2 as they had from WW1. They were quick to do so, so quick that OSS agents in Bangkok who thought they were still at war with fascism were astonished to be replaced overnight by CIA agents who were allied with fascism against communism - publicly. It soon became evident even to the slow-witted among them that power and leverage were attained and secured by money, so once the Nazi and Japanese war loot was in the pipeline, drugs and the laundering of drug money replaced gold as the universal standard backing the dollar. It is no exaggeration to say that the day after WW2 ended, Richard Nixon woke up in bed with Meyer Lansky.

[Sterling Seagrave]

(4) Is it a coincidence that John McCloy was involved in both protecting Nazi and Japanese war criminals after the war?

It is no coincidence. McCloy was, like the Dulles brothers, one of a large group of handmaidens of the oligarchs in America who were cultivated by the oligarchs of Europe - a struggle that began with Jefferson versus Hamilton. After a number of false starts, the European oligarchs were able to manipulate the US Civil War and to guide the wealthy men who emerged from it into creating the American versions of Japan’s zaibatsu conglomerates. These Robber Barons, who had interlocking direc-torships, were then shown how to create the Federal Reserve and fiat money (all un-der their private control). The same men (J.P. Morgan prominent among them as an agent of the Rothschilds) did the same thing in Japan following the Meiji Restoration, working initially through Jardines, then through Morgan, and the Quaker network in Japan’s imperial family. Rescuing and protecting their counterparts in Germany and Japan became a priority for Wall Street, and McCloy, Harriman, the Dulles Brothers, and many others were as busy after WW2 as they were after WW1, knitting back to-gether the network of vast wealth and power now identified with the Trilateral Com-mission, the World Bank, the IMF, the Bilderbergers, Bohemian Grove, P2, the Al-pine Lodge, Knights of Malta, ad nauseum. Unlike the Robber Barons, McCloy was not born rich, but he did not have to take off his shoes and socks to count above ten. Hence his unusual role in global affairs.

[Sterling Seagrave]

If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazy), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million.

I've never heard the underlined claim before, can you elaborate?

Len ~

A lot of Russian,. Central Asian, Middle Eastern (Persian) and East European Jews fled east during the revolutionary turmoil in Russia and in Europe and the Middle East during WW1, perhaps a majority of them from Russia being Ashkenazy, while those from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and the Middle East were often Sephardic. They ended up in Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, and China. Some of the lucky ones became millionaires in Shanghai, others did very well in the industrialized southern part of Manchuria, while a lot of the single, abandoned or widowed women ran out of money and jewels and ended up in Green Gang brothels in Shanghai and other port cities of China. When the Japanese absorbed Korea, the country was looted and anyone with a business was looted and murdered. The same followed in Manchuria, where several prominent Jewish businessmen had their children kidnapped for extortion, the children being murdered by the Japanese. Several of these episodes are well reported, notorious. The Japanese occupation of Korea and Manchuria was a combination of Japanese military and yakuza, with a large number of paramilitaries from the Black Ocean and Black Dragon societies, who carried out the worst atrocities. The same thing happened in North China before the Japanese struck South, where they either killed, extorted and imprisoned, or forced Jewish businessmen to collude in heroin, gold, and diamond trading on a massive scale. Here I'm only responding to your specific question about the Jews who became Japanese victims. Compared to the number of Koreans, Manchus, Northern Chinese, Southern Chinese, and particular ethnic groups suich as the Hakka, Hokkien, and other maritime networks operating out of coastal harbors, the number of Jews murdered or put in slave labor by the Japanese was a relatively small percentage. It is worth noting, vis-a-vis Nazi experimentation on live and conscious victims in German death camps, that Japan's Unit 731 experimented on thousands of living, conscious victims who were of every race and nationality -- a fact that has been confirmed by Hirohito's youngest brother who expressed nausea and outrage at films he was shown -- while Unit 731 was totally exonerated and absorbed into America's CBW program, and many of the Japanese scientists involved were secretly taken to America to continue their research. Nobody is in a position to be precise about the number murdered by the Japanese, any more than we can be precise about the number murdered under Stalin or Hitler, although the numbers killed by the Nazis is possibly a bit more accurate. The Soviet and Japanese numbers just keep growing. As do those who died under Mao during the Great Leap and assorted purges.

Sterling

[Sterling Seagrave]

What do members think about the claim that the Japanese might have killed more people than the Nazis? Has this anything to do with race and control of the media. Is it considered of less importance because most of those killed were Asians?

John how well documeted are the claims that the Japanese killed millions of people? You only mentioned one professor(by name) making such a claim.

Have you heard about any survivors initiating lawsuits against Japanese companies involved?

Len ~

There has been extensive research in recent years both by Western scholars such as Iris Chang, and scholars at the University of Nanjing, providing better estimates of the number killed by the Japanese in China itself. Separate research in Singapore and Malaysia has produced reliable estimates (the very large number murdered in Singapore is very specific). Similar research in the Philippines and Indonesia has brought similar results. In turn these have been included in demarches to the Japanese government, and have been cited in a great many lawsuits pursued by Asian victims, British, Dutch, American, Canadian, Australian and other victims, which lawsuits have been rejected by Japanese courts. In American courts they have been denied on the basis that the 1951 Peace Treaty drafted by John Foster Dulles and rammed down the throats of America's allies, let Japan completely off the hook and ruled-out any rights victims might have to sue the Japanese government or Japanese corporations. Most of the POWs and civilian victims of slave labor have now died of old age, but those still alive pursued their cases against Japanese megacorporations like Sumitomo and Mitsubishi in California state courts -- but these were diverted to Federal courts where compliant judges blocked the suits again citing the 1951 Peace Treaty. However, members of Congress have strenuously objected that the US Government has no right to prevent private American citizens from suing for damages and compensation in cases involving violations of human rights and slave labor. The US Government continues to stonewall, and the statute of limitations has now run out, I believe even in California where it had been extended by the state legislature. The Japanese corporations claim that they are not responsible for the actions of previous boards of directors.

Sterling

[Len Colby]

Thanks Sterling!

Any books and/or websites you can recomend? What do you think of the books cited by John and Norman?

Len

[Sid Walker]

the Japanese holocaust is in every way the equal of the Nazi holocaust

So how come we're able to discuss 'it' openly and without threat of legal sanction?

Edited February 13, 2007 by Sid Walker