Studying In Japan

When General Toshio Tamogami published an essay entitled "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?" in October 2008, the reaction of the Japanese government was to relieve him of his duties. After all, his stance on Japanese war responsibility conflicted with the government's official position. Tamogami was chief of staff of the Air Self Defense Force and had strong ties to right-wing politicians.

His essay focused on three central arguments: that Japan's colonial rule in Asia was moderate and based on legally recognized treaties, that the attack on Pearl Harbor was carried out purely in self-defense, and that Japan was not an aggressor during World War II. The aim of this article is to weigh the evidence and submit a counter-narrative that shows the weaknesses in his arguments.

Tamogami makes a number of unsubstantiated statements, but the essence of what is erroneous about his essay is the sheer scale of what he omits.

Let's begin with his assertion that Japan's colonial rule in Asia was attained "on the basis of treaties" and that "Japan obtained its interests in the Chinese mainland legally under international law ... " [1] This assertion is technically correct, according to the internationally accepted methods of "legally" annexing territory at that time. Tamogami insists that Japan's seizure of territory "was not a unilateral advance without the understanding of those nations". But the "understanding" of those nations was obtained by military force, and if there was any understanding, it was simply an acknowledgment that Japan's advance could not be stopped.

Tamogami concedes this point when he admits that Japan "applied pressure", but adds that "there were no treaties signed without some amount of pressure". This is not necessarily true. The Anglo-Japan military co-operation treaty of 1902 was not signed under any kind of duress whatsoever. The same could be said of the Franco-Russian alliance or the alliance of Germany and Austria prior to World War I.

Tamogami's view that Japan's rule of Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan was "completely different from the colonial rule of the major powers" is also highly suspect. He asserts that, unlike in European colonies, Japan's colonized subjects were allowed to undergo Japanese military training, as if that somehow demonstrates a fundamentally fairer manner of rule. But it was hardly a privilege to be conscripted for labor or military service, and he neglects to mention that Asians who refused to bow in the direction of the Japanese emperor were beaten and even killed for the insult. No European colonialists forced such impositions on their subjects.

Moreover, the forced labor prevalent in Japan's Asian colonies does not suggest a rule that was more enlightened than that of Europeans. Britain outlawed slavery in the early 19th century, but the Japanese military regarded it to be legitimate until 1945. True, British and French colonialists at times perpetuated forced labor into the 20th century, since it was often considered essential to the building of infrastructure in their colonies, [2] but their coercion did not approach the scale implemented by the Japanese army. Seven-hundred thousand Korean civilians were brought to Japan to work for private firms in the 1930s and 1940s, and hundreds of thousands of other Koreans were forced to perform harsh labor elsewhere in Japan's empire or conscripted into the Japanese military. [3]

Reading the accounts of Asians during the early 1940s doesn't at all suggest a rule more mild or humane than that of Europeans. Read, for example, what one Chinese survivor of Japan's rule in Hong Kong recently remarked: "No food. Martial law on the street. If you're careless, you don't realize martial law is on, they open fire without warning. You're dead on the street ... Did they treat Hong Kong people like normal human beings? Of course not, they treated Hong Kong people like animals." [4] Since British rule in Hong Kong was never described this way, it's fair to wonder why Tamogami chooses to deliberately blind himself to the testimony of Asians who lived under Japanese rule.

He goes further than this, however, stating that "many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War", and that "many of the people who had direct contact with the Japanese Army viewed them positively ... ". We can only guess at how Tamogami can possibly conclude this, since a parade of Asian leaders have repeatedly said the opposite. In 1992, for example, the prime minister of Singapore, Goh Chok Tong, said that Japan's occupation was a period of "terror, fear and atrocities". [5] And only two weeks after Tamogami was relieved of his duties, Taiwan's parliament adopted a resolution seeking an apology and compensation from Japan for forcing women into sexual slavery during the war. The resolution was passed by a unanimous vote. A similar resolution was passed by South Korea's National Assembly a few weeks before. [6]

The mere fact that both Taiwan and South Korea felt it necessary in 2008, a full 63 years after the war ended, to pass formal resolutions asking Japan to apologize and offer compensation is evidence enough that Tamogami is mistaken in his assertion that "many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War".

Tamogami states, without convincing evidence, that in comparison to other countries, "Japan's colonial rule was very moderate." The evidence he cites in justifying this opinion is that the populations of Manchuria and Korea both almost doubled during the period of Japan's sovereignty. This, he says, is "proof that Korea under Japanese rule was ... prosperous and safe", and that Japanese rule in Manchuria was moderate and beneficial, because "People would not be flocking to a place that was being invaded."

But this is nonsense. Large numbers of Chinese flocked to Hong Kong throughout British rule there, but the arrival of workers in a colony during foreign rule does not legitimize that rule. Tamogami would agree that European colonialism was morally wrong, but then do a striking u-turn and deny that same wrongness wherever Japan's rule was concerned. Why was Japanese rule so beneficial to Asians but British rule not?

Tamogami then outlines the benefits of Japan's rule, including the building of railways, the establishment of schools and the creation of industry. In Manchuria and Korea, he writes, "The people in these areas were released from the oppression they had been subjected to up until then, and their standard of living markedly improved." Two points here: the standard of living in Korea and Manchuria could have improved without Japan (as has occurred in the past 30 years), and whether Manchurians and Koreans were "released from oppression" as soon as Japan appeared is dubious to say the least. In the opinion of many Koreans, the oppression began when Japan arrived.

As for the building of schools, other colonial powers did the same. Take, for example, Britain in India. British historian Peter Moss has written that the British government "allocated a huge amount of money for uplifting education in 1813", and that there was "a great emphasis on primary education and high schools" in the 1840s. Four universities had been established by 1882. [7] As for infrastructure, Britain built India's first railway in 1853. India's railway network consisted of 61,000 kilometers of track in 1920, and the British also established large-scale irrigation systems in the Indian countryside. [8] Did these advancements legitimize British colonial rule in India? No, and neither did they in the case of Japan's rule in East Asia.

And here Tamogami is again unsure of his facts. He writes that Britain in India "did not provide education for the Indian people", which is false.

Worse, he then makes the outrageous claim that the decline of overt racial discrimination in the international arena is somehow to be credited to Japan's military exploits. He writes that "if you look at the world today, it has become the kind of world that Japan was urging at the time". Japan urged the European powers to treat it as an equal, but it's false to say that the real aim of this drive to achieve equality was an altruistic notion of a world without racial discrimination. According to Tamogami, after the war a "world of racial equality arrived", and this, he writes, was due to Japan's war effort: "If Japan had not fought the Greater East War at that time, it may have taken another one hundred or two hundred years before we could have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today." So the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s achieved nothing? And exactly how did Japan's wars in Asia in the 1940s lead to the decline of racism?

Tamogami purposely ignores Japan's overtly racial propaganda directed at other Asians at the time. The nationalistic ideology that gained prominence in Japan in the late-19th century has attracted little attention in Japan, but it bears analysis precisely because it is so often ignored. In the pre-World War II era, Japan's education system was modeled on Germany's, and the glorification of unique racial characteristics and an emphasis on militarism were concepts lifted directly from the propaganda of German ultra-nationalists.

It was taught that the Japanese race had a divine mission, in fact a "holy task", to liberate Asia from the colonial powers of the West. It was depicted as a "hundred year war" and a "struggle between the races". [9] During World War II, official government propaganda referred to Japanese as the "leading race of the world". The war was described as a "cleansing" experience, and Asia would be purified by the "glorious light of Japan". [10]

In the 1930s, it was widely believed to be time for the Yamato Race (Japanese) to take its place as the rightful rulers of Asia. All Asians therefore had to be incorporated into the Japanese empire, and would take their "proper place" in the hierarchy of races, with Japan at the top. [11]

Of course, this is now quietly swept under the carpet by war-culpability deniers, of which Tamogami is only the most recent.

Regarding China, Tamogami says that "the Japanese government patiently tried to bring about peace", but was "betrayed" by the Chinese. Japan was, he says, "a victim, drawn into the Sino-Japanese War" by China. This is another specious claim. If, for example, the British were to say that they were "drawn into" invading India because some Indians fought back against British attacks, Tamogami would rightly scoff at such a ruse. And yet that's exactly what he claims in the case of Japan's invasion of China.

He does, however, make some accurate observations concerning the other colonial powers: "If you say that Japan was the aggressor nation, then I would like to ask what country among the great powers of that time was not an aggressor." This is a good point, but he must also recognize that Japan's thrust into Asia was far more rapid than that of Europeans, attacking and/or occupying 10 countries in only a few months in late 1941 and early 1942. The European colonists killed thousands of Asians during their attacks, but those attacks occurred over a period of 300 years. Japan's, by contrast, occurred in only a few months. Tamogami says that "there is no reason to single out Japan as an aggressor nation". There's some truth to this view, but it has to be recognized that it is Asians themselves, not Europeans, who "single out Japan as an aggressor nation".

There's another interesting point to be made regarding Japan's supposed opposition to the existence of European colonies in Asia. In Vietnam, despite a loudly proclaimed mission to destroy European colonialism, the Japanese military tolerated French rule for the simple reason that France pursued a policy of cooperation with Japan.

Moreover, a telegram to Tokyo intercepted by American intelligence in 1942 revealed that the Japanese ambassador in Hanoi praised France's collaboration, and noted that Japan and France "are very nearly allies ... ". [12]

Uncomfortable facts such as this completely undermine the narrative of Japan's purported mission in Asia - to rid the region of European rule. In Vietnam, where that rule was regarded to be favorable to Japan's interests, the rule of the French was permitted to continue. This suggests that the stated reason for Japan's military conquests in Asia was a sham, and that the ulterior motive was simply the aggressive seizure of territory.

And there's one other interesting piece of evidence that provides convincing proof that the war was a deliberately aggressive one. In 1981, a long forgotten document was found in a Tokyo bookshop. It had escaped the mass document burnings that occurred in August 1945, before the US military appeared to occupy Japan. Entitled "An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus", dated July 1943, this document stated that the Japanese government's ultimate plan was not only to rule all of East Asia, but also eastern Russia, India, Australia, New Zealand, and as far as the Middle East. [13]

Yet Tamogami makes no mention of this. In case this 1943 plan of conquest could be shrugged off as mere bluster, consider what happened to Australia at exactly the same time as the above document was being written. In February 1942, the city of Darwin was bombed by 188 Japanese aircraft. The air attacks on Darwin continued until November 1943, by which time Japan had bombed Darwin no less than 64 times. [14]

During this time, more bombs were dropped on Darwin than were dropped during the December 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor. [15] In fact, Darwin was only one of many cities in northern Australia to be hit, as the attacks were targeted over a wide area - 3,218 kilometers from east to west. While it's true that northern Australia was an important communication point for the Allies, it's also true that it posed no great threat to Japan's invasion of Indonesia, which was completed by March 1942. So why did the attacks on Australian cities continue until the end of 1943?

But Tamogami sidesteps such uncomfortable questions and instead complains that the US issued unfair ultimatums to Japan in 1941 that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Australia and the rest of Asia. If the Japanese had not taken this initiative, he says, "those of us living today could very well have been living in a Japan that was a white nation's colony". But there was absolutely no plan in Washington in 1941 to invade and occupy Japan. Even after the war ended, the US had withdrawn its forces by 1952. Upon what grounds does Tamogami base his opinion that Japan would have become a "white nation's colony"?

Indeed, it is on the question of Pearl Harbor that Tamogami treads into the territory of conspiracy theories. He writes that "Japan was ensnared in a trap that was very carefully laid by the United States in order to draw Japan into a war." The US, he says, was manipulated by communists, and "in order to start a war between the United States and Japan, it had to appear that Japan took the first shot". As a result, "Japan was caught in Roosevelt's trap and carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor."

It's hard to know where to begin in evaluating this muddle of conspiracy theories, but the most obvious question is - didn't Japan have control over its own actions? Besides, such a claim cannot justify the 1941-42 invasions of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Tamogami says that it is "certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation". So how can a nation attack so many places without being aggressive?

To conclude, perhaps Professor Herbert Bix can sum up the methods Tamogami uses to cloud the issue: "The general tampers with facts; he uses evidence selectively; he cherry-picks international law when it suits his purpose; and he omits any mention of figures on Asian or Japanese civilian and military deaths from the wars of the 1930s and early 1940s." [16] He also omits the huge volume of counter-evidence that would invalidate his arguments.

Tamogami is right about one thing: the Tokyo Trial of 1946-48 punished a number of Japanese leaders for their wartime actions while ignoring the problem of European colonialism. As Bix says, "While these colonial powers were professing to be defenders of civilization, sitting in judgment of Japan for pursuing policies of aggression, they themselves were continuing to commit comparable offenses." [17]

True, and Tamogami has a reasonable point here. But he fails to acknowledge that submitting questions of justice to a legal system and a lengthy trial were not courtesies that Japan extended to any of the countries it invaded.

Notes
1. All direct quotes from Tamogami in this article are taken from: Tamogami Toshio, "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?" translated and reprinted in English in an article by Herbert Bix, "Tamogami's World: Japan's Top Soldier Reignites Conflict Over the Past", Japan Focus, November 9, 2008.
2. Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, Alta Mira Press, 2003, p 126.
3. William Underwood, "WWII forced labor issue dogs Aso, Japanese firms", The Japan Times, October 28, 2008.
4. Heda Bayron, "Many Pacific War Survivors Still Bitter About Japanese Aggression", VOA.com, August 8, 2005.
5. Michael Richardson, "Come Clean on War Acts, Asians Tell Japan", International Herald Tribune, February 15, 1992.
6. "Taipei demands redress, apology for sex slaves," The Japan Times, November 12, 2008.
7. Peter Moss, Oxford History of Pakistan, Oxford University Press, 1999, p 76.
8. Simone D'Alessandro, "Modernization, Climate Variability and Vulnerability to Famine," Department of Economics, Pisa University, Italy, March 14, 2008. 9. John W Dower, War Without Mercy, Pantheon Books, 1986, p 27.
10. Ibid, pp 216-220. See also: Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt, Phoenix Books, 1994, pp 189-190.
11. Dower, pp 225-226.
12. Martin L Michelson, "A mission of vengeance: Vichy French in Indochina in World War II," Air Power History, 2008.
13. Dower, p 273.
14. "Japanese air raids on Darwin and northern Australia, 1942-43," National Archives of Australia.
15. "Schools must focus on Darwin bombings: Government," ABC News, abc.net.au, November 11, 2008.
16. Herbert Bix, "Tamogami's World: Japan's Top Soldier Reignites Conflict Over the Past," Japan Focus, November 9, 2008.
17 Ibid.

Maurice O'Brien is a writer and former journalist currently living in Japan.