Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies

54 SHOFAR Spring 1993 Vol. 11, No.3 JEWS UNDERJAPANESE DOMINATION, 1939-1945 by Gerald David Kearney Gerald David Kearney was born in 1960. He graduated from the University of Alberta with a major in Chinese language and a minor in Japanese. Under Professor Ehud Benzui, Mr. Kearney has studied modern Jewish history. He has also studied at Heilongjiang University in Harbin, China, formerly Manchukuo, and at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. .Germany has createdfriction with other countries by her treatment ofJews; Japan wishes to avoid it. Hachiro Nita Japanese Foreign Minister April 1939 SpeechI While the Nazis were embarking on their program of the "Final Solution" and attempting to coerce the other Axis powers to follow suit, the Jews under Japanese domination actually received protection. This paradox was largely due to misinformation about the Jews, translations of antisemitic works, and the strange beliefs of a handful of highly placed Japanese Jewish "experts." Because of these strange circumstances the Japanese initiated policies that were conducive to the survival of the 18,000 Jewish refugees of Shanghai. To understand the origins of the wartime Japanese policy towards the Jews it is important to digress on the background of the first JewishJapanese encounters. In 1904, the Japanese government dispatched a special financial agent to New York to negotiate a loan to finance the war effort against Czarist Russia. Baron Korekiyo Takahashi failed to secure a 'David Kranzler, japanese Nazis & jews (New York, 1976), p. 234, as quoted injapan Times of March 1, 1939, and New York Times of December 28, 1939. Jews UnderJapanese Domination 55 loan in either New York or London financial markets. Just prior to his return to Japan, he attended a dinner and was seated next to a Jewish financier, Jacob Schiff, German-born president of the New York banking firm Kuhn, Koeb and Company. Schiff disliked the Czarist treatment of the Jews. Reportedly, he held Czar Nicholas II personally responsible for the 1903 Kishinev pogroms. Schiff, with the help of M. M. Warburg of Germany and Sir Ernest Cassel in England, provided the Japanese with a series of six loans. These loans provided over half the funding of the Japanese navy and were clearly seen by the Japanese as the reason for the victory over Russia. In recognition of his contribution, Jacob Schiff became the first foreigner to receive the Order of the Rising Sun and was granted a personal audience with the Emperor. National newspapers devoted page after page to Schiffs role in the Japanese victory. Baron Takahashi became the minister of finance and eventually became premier of Japan. He remained quite good friends with the Schiff family and sent his only daughter, Wakiko, to live with the Schiffs in New York where she studied for three years. Another important influence on Japanese perceptions of Jews came about during the Bolshevik revolution. In 1919, 75,000 Japanese soldiers moved into Siberia in cooperation with units of the Allied Armies to assist remnants of the White Russian forces in their battles with the Bolsheviks. Among the Japanese were four Russian language experts: General Kiichiro Higuchi, Colonel Norihiro Yasue, Captain Koreshige Inuzuka, and General Nobutaka Shioden. These four digested the Russian antisemitic beliefs and were the major forces in shaping the unique character of the Japanese antisemitic movement. From 1935 to 1943, the Japanese antisemites, and in particular Colonel Yasue and Captain Inuzuka, influenced Japanese Jewish policy. These men interpreted antisemitic literature such as the Protocols of the Elders ofZion, but they did not interpret the alleged wealth and power of the Jews as being necessarily evil. Instead, they decided on a pragmatic approach to harness this "Jewish power" and use it to Japan's advantage. The truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion seemed self-evident to the Japanese. The recent collapse of the mighty Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov empires and the role of the Schiff loans seemed to verifY the ability ofJewish financiers in manipulating world events. The fierce Chinese resistance to Japanese imperialism could also be seen as having a Jewish influence. Sun Yat-sen, the father of Chinese nationalism, had a Jewish bodyguard, Morris Abraham "Two Gun" Cohen. The Comintern advisor to his Nationalist...