Anti-Semitism and the Empire of Japan

While the Third Reich’s virulent anti-Semitism is well known, fewer people are aware that the Empire of the Sun shared mutual values with Nazi Germany, including fascist superiority and the view that anyone who was not of the Aryan (Nazi) or Yamato (Imperial Japanese) “race” was sub-human. This made it acceptable to exploit, enslave and dispose of unwanted peoples in the homeland or conquered territory, including Jews, Slavs, Chamorros and Chinese.

Given both nations racist sentiments, it’s perhaps no surprise that in the 1930s the Nazis dragged the Japanese into their world of anti-Semitism. Nazi Naval attaché to Tokyo, Captain Paul Wenneker, reported to the Ministry for the Armed Forces in Berlin on 13 May 1935 that the “Jewish Question” had found “a lot of interest” among many Imperial Japanese naval officers. Wenneker reported that the person responsible for spreading this information through the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Navy was Captain Koreshige Inuzuka, a man who believed in a racist, fabricated, Tsarist anti-Semitic document called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that “proved” the inherent danger of Jews as a “race.” This screed contended Jews had fulfilled their desire to rule the word through “international finance and banking controls.”

Inuzuka confided in Wenneker that numerous naval officers, through their study of World War I, had come to understand that as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis claimed, Jews had plunged the world into a global conflict from 1914-1918 to benefit financially from the arms race. Clearly, these “elements” should be closely watched and controlled. Inuzuka, an established anti-Semite, would become Imperial Japan’s chief expert on the “Jewish Question” in the Foreign Ministry, eventually concocting something called the Fuju Plan where Japan would exploit Jewish “evil” economic skills and “excessive love for money” to dominate the world. Maybe these racist regimes could not agree on who was the best of humanity, the Aryans or the Yamato Race, but they agreed Jews were dangerous and should be persecuted. However, they differed in how they approached the “Jewish problem.” Nazi Germany sought to destroy Jews and their ability to control money by exterminating them in death camps. The Japanese on the other hand, under the leadership of types like Inuzuka, felt that if the Jews controlled the financial world, then the Japanese in turn would control them. That would ensure Imperial Japan would rule the world with the most efficiency.

This is why I call into question the motives of the man who has come to be known as the Schindler of Japan, Chiune Sugihara.

 Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Russian and served as the Vice Counsel for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. He is credited with saving between 4,500 and 6,000 Jewish people who were fleeing the Nazis and Soviets by providing them with transit visas that would allow them to pass through Japanese territory. (This was the real-life version of the letters of transit that was central to the plot of the classic film Casablanca.)

It is my opinion that the only reason Japan allowed Sugihara to assist Jews’ escape from Russia-occupied Lithuania to sanctuary of the Jewish ghetto in Japanese-held Shanghai or to Kobe, Japan, was to be used as slaves by the Empire of Japan. We should not forget Sugihara served a fascist government that murdered 22 million people during the war in Asia and the Pacific from 1927-1945. Before Sugihara entered the foreign service, he had served in the Imperial Japanese Army in Korea where numerous crimes against the people of Korea occurred. A large majority of the Comfort Women forced into prostitution by the Japanese military came from Korea. As a diplomat in the 1930s, Sugihara served in Manchuria and witnessed firsthand Japan’s crimes against humanity in that region. He gave up his position in 1935 over the crimes witnessed, but continued to serve Emperor Hirohito and eventually became the Vice-Consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. In this position, he helped thousands of Jews leave Europe as Stalin took over the Baltic States in the summer of 1940. When Hitler took over this area in June 1941, he moved his diplomatic office to K?nigsberg, Germany; from 1941 to 1942, he became Consul General in Nazi-occupied Prague, Czechoslovakia. From 1942 to 1944, he worked as the Consul General in Bucharest, Romania, another Fascist regime.

So why praise a man, like Sugihara, who loyally served a regime that wanted to use Jews and really did not care about them? Why praise a man who loyally served a regime whose crimes he witnessed firsthand while stationed in Manchuria and did nothing about it? Why praise a man who served his fascist regime by working hard at his duties in Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and fascist Romania? Sugihara never tried saving Jews when stationed in these areas. He never spoke out after the war against Imperial Japanese leaders and their crimes against humanity. And he never described why this fascist regime allowed him to issue transit papers to Jews to come to its territory.

Sugihara was honored by Israel in 1984 with the prestigious honor of Righteous Among the Nations for having saved Jewish lives. He is endlessly praised in front of Jewish groups by Japanese diplomats and held up as a hero in Japan from World War II. Did Israel make a mistake? There is no doubt he saved thousands of Jewish lives, and that is not to be dismissed. But why has no one asked why he did it?

For more about the Empire of Japan and World War II, see my book “Flamethrower”: https://www.amazon.com/Flamethrower-Recipient-Williams-Controversial-Holocaust/dp/1734534109/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1594772599&sr=8-2