Chapter 9 - A Nation with a Fabricated History
SCAP's battle for history
In September 1945, the US Army occupied Japan.
During the occupation, the United States implemented the War Guilt Information Program,a plan to thoroughly indoctrinate the Japanese people to believe that Japan was a sinful
nation which had to atone for starting the war.
On October 2, 1945, General MacArthur, known as the Supreme Commander for the AlliedPowers (SCAP), issued General Orders No. 4 which read, "Make clear to all levels of theJapanese public the true facts of their defeat, their war guilt, the responsibility of themilitarists for present and future Japanese suffering and privation, and the reasons for andobjectives of the military occupation by the Allied Powers." This was a mere one monthfrom the signing of the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri.
Instilling a sense of guilt in the minds of the Japanese people and robbing them of their
spirit of independence were indeed the two most important goals of the US occupation.
Right from the outset of the occupation in September, SCAP decreed a stringent Press Code,placing restrictions on the media.
The Press Code was a major violation with respect to the Potsdam Declaration, which
stipulated that, "Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for thefundamental human rights shall be established." Instead, the Japanese people were to be
robbed of their normal capacity to think as citizens of an independent nation.
Everything, from publishers such as newspapers to even the private letters of ordinary
citizens, was subject to strict regulation and censorship. Then, from December, the Japan
Broadcasting Corporation began airing "This Is The Truth," later renamed "Truth Box," andnewspapers nationwide began publishing the series "The History of the Pacific War". The
plan was to make all the people of Japan believe that their country was an evil nation.
After having conquered Japan militarily, SCAP waged a full-scale battle for history withthe aim of depriving the Japanese people of their history. By robbing them of their own
memories of the past, SCAP intended to break the Japanese people's spirit and to remodel
Japan as a vassal state, to be subservient to the United States long after the end of theoccupation.
On September 11, in preparation for the Tokyo War Crimes Trial where Japan's leaders
were to be judged, SCAP began arresting thirty-nine "war crimes suspects" who had
worked in influential positions in wartime Japan, including General Tojo Hideki.

1Then, a variety of measures intended to break Japan's spirit were implemented in quick
succession, including the Shinto Directive, which abolished State Shinto, a purge of prewar
officials, and the imposition of a new constitution.
The Shinto Directive was inspired by the belief of the occupation army that Shinto was abarbaric, primitive faith which worshiped mountains, trees, and animals.
Today, the principle of separation of religion and state is brought up constantly, but if Japan
had been a Christian nation like the Philippines, no attempt would have been made toimpose that separation.
Today, Japan is the only country in the world, excluding communist China and North
Korea and Confucian nations like South Korea, whose national and local government
ceremonies are strictly non-religious.
In other democracies, like the United States, Great Britain, and France, official events areChristian-based. Should the state really be promoting atheism?
Calling for a retrial of the IMTFEThe International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trial,
was the central mechanism through which a war guilt complex was implanted in theJapanese mind.
Before World War II, there was no precedent for a nation's leaders to be tried for war
crimes due to their decision to go to war. Even within international law, no provision forthis existed.
Moreover, the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was a clear violation of the Potsdam Declaration.
The declaration did state that "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals,
including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners," but this referred only toattacks on non-combatants and mistreatment of POWs.
At the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, the defendants were tried for "crimes against peace" and"crimes against humanity," but before the opening of the trial these concepts did not evenexist.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trial was simply fraudulent—not at all worthy of being called a"trial".
Japan was on trial for the crime of having invaded Asia, and yet even during this show trial,
Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France were fighting wars of aggression to reassert theircolonial rule over the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, and Vietnam. That alone is a major
indictment of the trial's hypocrisy.

2The Tokyo War Crimes Trial one-sidedly investigated only the crimes Japan was accusedof, while at the same time allowing no mention of any war crimes committed by the Allies.
However, it was the United States that had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki and massacred over 100,000 people in a single night during the Great Tokyo Air
Raid. Even just looking at the killing and wounding of civilians and noncombatants inviolation of international law alone, the United States was guilty of serious war crimes.
Major General Charles Willoughby, who was an advisor to MacArthur and one of the twomost powerful men in SCAP, once told Judge Bert Roling that the Tokyo War Crimes Trial"was the worst hypocrisy in recorded history." He also told Roling that "since this kind oftrial took place, he would forbid his son to enter military service."
During the trial, William Webb, the Australian justice who served as President of theTribunal, wrote to his wife Beatrice back home that, "I've become fed up with standing
before such a tribunal as this."
The man who had started the war was President Franklin Roosevelt. Though he had diedsuddenly in April 1945, Roosevelt was the man who truly deserved to be put on trial for"crimes against peace".
The Indian justice Radhabinod Pal concluded in his dissenting judgment that "a trial whichis carried out on this basis of law is nothing more than a pretense to make it look as if
proper legal procedures have been taken, in order to satisfy one's desire of revenge."
Heramba Lal Gupta, one of the leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, gave thefollowing speech in 1946:"I think that the International Military Tribunal for the Far East will surely be re-evaluatedby the nations of Asia by the time we enter the twenty-first century, and then, a second
Tokyo Trial will be held where Asia and all the world will regain its good sense and will
judge all deeds in a fair, equal, and truthful manner. At that time, all the war heroes of theUnited States and of the great powers of Europe, who have been committing acts ofaggression against Asia for many years, will receive stern punishments. Conversely, theJapanese who were accused of serious crimes by the IMTFE, especially the seven killed as
Class A war criminals, will be rehabilitated, and the day may come when they shall beworshipped like gods as the saviors of Asia. That is what should rightfully happen."
Henry S. Stokes, who I introduced in a previous chapter, has lived in Japan for forty years
and has served as Tokyo bureau chief to The New York Times and other newspapers. In hisbook, "Breaking the Victors' History Spell Cast by the Allied Powers: Wake Up, Japan!",which was published in Japanese by Nisshin Hodo, Stokes declared that, "What we ought
to do is ask the United Nations for a retrial of the IMTFE."

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America's corruption of history
In February 2015, I was invited to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho,
Tokyo, for a joint press conference with Mizushima Satoru, president of Channel Sakura.
In January, Mr. Mizushima played a key role in founding the Citizens' Council toInvestigate the Asahi Shimbun, which had launched a class action lawsuit seeking remedial
damages and a published apology from the Asahi Shimbun for the significant harm that thisnewspaper had done to Japan's international reputation through its fabricated news stories
about the comfort women.
At that time, more than 23,000 people from across the country participated in the lawsuit asplaintiffs.
I had been asked to attend the press conference by Mr. Mizushima as one of the plaintiffs.
My first statement at the press conference was:
"I would like to raise an objection to the information card which was sent out to themembers of the correspondents' club on the occasion of today's press conference. It says,'Mainstream historians acknowledge the historical fact that the Japanese Army forced thecomfort women to work in brothel facilities during the 1930s and 1940s.' In the articles
which I have contributed to American newspapers like The New York Times and the WallStreet Journal, I was introduced as being a historian. I consider my views to be mainstream,
and thus find this description to be greatly in error."I also added that, "In the same card, I am introduced as being 'a representative of therevisionist view'. However, the 'revisionist view' was the history which was forced on Japan
during the US occupation, and which continues to exert influence to this day. I do notconsider myself to be a revisionist."
It was the United States that distorted Japan's true history.
During the question and answer phase, an American reporter stood up and asked me, "Evenif you say that, do you understand that the international community believes that the
comfort women were sex slaves?"
Because I was angered by his tone, I immediately upbraided him. "Throughout Japan's longhistory, no system of slavery has ever existed. I don't want to be asked such a question by acitizen of a country like the United States, which still practiced slavery in the second half ofthe nineteenth century." Several Japanese reporters applauded me.
The United States only emancipated its slaves in 1863, five years before Japan's Meiji
Restoration. I added that, "Japan has never witnessed either huge massacres of whole cities4

or religious wars characterized by indiscriminate killing, like those between Catholics andProtestants, at any time in its history. Please do a little more research on this subject."
The peoples' movement to free the war criminals
The San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in 1952.
The year after Japan regained its independence, Japan's National Diet amended law books
to designate as “war dead” all the so-called "war criminals" who died in prison, committed
suicide, or were executed as a result of the unjust military tribunals of the victor powers. By
doing this, their surviving family members were made eligible for a pension. The Diet also
unanimously approved a resolution calling for the speedy release of those individuals still
serving prison sentences for war crimes.
This Diet resolution grew out of a nationwide mass petition movement which began
directly after Japan regained its independence under the leadership of groups like the Japan
Federation of Bar Associations. They drafted a "Plea for Clemency, Commutation, andRepatriation for the Imprisoned War Criminals", which received the signatures of forty
million people.
Forty million people was nearly sixty percent of Japan's population at that time, andvirtually all of its adult population. The petition represented the wishes of theoverwhelming majority of the people.
Today, the title of "Class A war criminal" is considered a badge of shame, but that was not
at all the case in the immediate aftermath of the restoration of Japanese independence.
Shigemitsu Mamoru and Kaya Okinori, who were imprisoned as Class A war criminals,
both served as cabinet ministers after the end of the US occupation. Shigemitsu was foreign
minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro, and Kaya was Justice Ministerin the cabinet of Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato.
Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke was arrested as a Class A war crimes suspect and was heldin Sugamo Prison.
Indeed, Ogata Taketora and Shimomura Kainan, the chief editors of the Asahi Shimbun,and Shoriki Matsutaro, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun, were also arrested as Class A
war crimes suspects, though perhaps out of embarrassment, the Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun
today refuse to mention this fact.
In 1956, when Japan gained admittance to the United Nations under Foreign Minister
Shigemitsu Mamoru, Shigemitsu was greeted with a thunderous applause when he appeared
before the UN General Assembly. The fact that he had been a Class A war criminal wasnever made into an issue.

5As Japan's experience of war grew more distant, Japan gradually lost its senses. We must
not allow the memory of the war to fade away.
Masochistic history and its irresponsible Japanese preachers
The War Guilt Information Program sowed the seeds of a masochistic view of history, but
it was disseminated through the work of irresponsible Japanese citizens.
After Japan regained its independence, Emperor Hirohito made numerous official visits toYasukuni Shrine, and Japanese prime ministers between Yoshida Shigeru and Nakasone
Yasuhiro also openly visited the shrine.
During that period, neither China nor South Korea ever voiced a single word of protest overthe visits of Japanese prime ministers to Yasukuni. However, it was only after Prime
Minister Nakasone stopped visiting Yasukuni at the request of the General Secretary of theChinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang, that China came to be harshly critical of all visits
to the shrine by Japanese prime ministers.
Likewise, if Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi had never condemned Japan's "colonialrule and aggression," and if Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei had never apologized forthe "coercive" recruitment of girls as comfort women, then China, South Korea, and theUnited States would never have been able to pressure Japan to continue to adhere to theMurayama and Kono Statements.
Is patriotism a sin?
Soon after, the word "patriotism" itself became taboo in Japan.
Though patriotism does not fall into Buddhism's sinful karma or as one of the seven deadly
sins of Christianity, Japan's mass media and intelligentsia blame patriotism for causing
World War II.
This is the reason why the parades held on Indonesia's Independence Day are neverbroadcast on Japanese television, even though the men waving the Indonesian flag are
dressed in the uniforms of PETA and carry Japanese swords, and even though the female
chorus sings the Japanese song "The Patriotic March".
In November 1991, America's ABC News reported that, "Signed documents from July
1941 have been discovered, showing that President Roosevelt approved a military plan tolaunch surprise bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Kobe,and Osaka in October of that year using over one hundred American bombers disguised asChinese aircraft." One would think that this would be critically important news forJapanese citizens to know.
In spite of this, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation's news program never bothered toreport on what, by any reasonable standard, should have been a big story.

6One would also think that Japan's media would have given broad coverage to the 2013
publication of Herbert Hoover's memoirs, in which Hoover and General MacArthur concurat a private meeting that Hoover's successor as president, Franklin Roosevelt, was a"madman" who had willfully provoked Japan into war. And yet, nothing like that happened.
The year 2015 marked the 120th anniversary of Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese
War and the 110th anniversary of Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War. These wars
were two of Japan's greatest trials as a nation-state. If the Japanese had not won either ofthese conflicts, Japan as we know it today would not exist.
Victory was achieved only because Japan's citizenry united as one to face the crisis andbecause its soldiers fought with conspicuous valor and courage.
Japan's media should have honored and celebrated the anniversaries of these two historic
victories, but instead they were simply ignored.
In 2014, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun responded to the ruling party's attempts to broaden
Japan's right to collective self-defense with a banner headline reading, "WE MUST NOT
BECOME A COUNTRY THAT CAN GO TO WAR." However, at the time of the First
Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan managed to keep its independence
only because it was a country that could go to war.
World War II ended seventy years ago, and yet, Japanese newspapers and TV networks arestill under the spell of the war guilt complex created by the US occupation army's War
Guilt Information Program to break Japan's spirit.
The spirit of an independent nation
In October 1944, Flight Officer Nagamine Hajime wrote a farewell poem which read,"Even if I am to die here in the South Seas, I will be thinking about the springs of the years
still to come." Then he flew out of Mabalacat Airfield in Luzon, the Philippines, as part of
the first group of kamikaze pilots. He was only nineteen years of age.
In January the following year, Sublieutenant Fukuyama Masamichi composed a poem
which read, "I don't fear losing the life I have devoted to you. I worry only about the fate ofthe nation." Like Nagamine, he embarked from Mabalacat Airfield as part of the 18th
Kongo Unit of kamikaze fliers. He was only twenty-one years of age.
Since that nineteen-year-old hero dreamed of "the springs of the years still to come,”
seventy springs have passed by.
Would any of us be able to meet face-to-face with the spirits of those who sacrificed
themselves to protect Japan in World War II without shirking in shame?

7In 1952, the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect, restoring independence to Japan.
The San Francisco Peace Conference had convened the previous year, bringing together
representatives of forty-eight countries including Japan.
According to Article 11 of the peace agreement, Japan was obligated to accept thejudgments of the Allied war crimes trials. Even after the restoration of independence, Japanwas bound by treaty to have imprisoned Class A, B, and C war criminals serve out their full
sentences.
Ambassador Rafael de la Colina, the representative from Mexico, said the following aboutthat article in his speech to the conference: "We would also have desired that [Article 11]
not continue legalizing, with reference to the Allied War Crimes Tribunals,... an attitude
which we believe is not completely in harmony with juridical principles and is not in
consonance with the best principles of modern civilization which are enunciated in thejuridical phrase, Nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege, a principle which inspires
the penal legislation of all cultured peoples of the world..."Ambassador Hipolito Jesus Paz, the representative from Argentina, likewise stated that,"there are some points relative to which my delegation wishes to state in a very clear
manner the interpretations under which it signs it and requests that this appear in theminutes... With regard to the courts mentioned in Article 11 of the treaty, our constitution
does not permit anybody to be punished without due process of law."
At the time of the restoration of independence, the Japanese people were still largely ofsound mind.
It was only after this that Japan surrendered all its national defense capacities, the mostimportant purpose of any nation, to the United States. As Japan became more and morecontent to be America's vassal state, it lost its spirit as an independent nation.
Today, Japanese people take pride in being a "pacifist state", basking in peace by grace ofAmerica's protection.
When a person who lives opulently, thanks only to the good graces of others, flaunts hisown luxurious lifestyle, one cannot help but find that extremely distasteful.
Throughout my life, I have frequently been on the front lines of Japanese diplomacy.
Many people, not only of the left-wing but even conservatives, have told me, or, rather,have scolded me, about how "Japan ought to forge an independent foreign policy, notsimply toeing the American line."

8However, I become annoyed by the way that these same people who constantly instructed
me to "not toe the American line", have no problem with humbly accepting a constitution
which was designed for a vassal state, rather than an independent nation, and imposed by
the United States. I have always remained silent in the face of their lecturing, because I did
not think there was much point in discussing politics with those kind of people.

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