Re: What kind of "nationalism" would that be? Korean style?
- From: goodgutgut@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 5 Jan 2006 06:00:05 -0800
no more dogmas no more brainwashing
China should research the anti-Chinese propaganda Corea was fed during
the occupation.
1. Chinese Propaganda
2. Japanese Propaganda
Click here to see how a Japanese wartime propaganda film, Nanking
(1938), depicted the lives of Chinese refugees.
(RealPlayer required)
Courtesy: Nippon Eiga Shinsha
The Nanking Atrocities
WWW
Media Blackout
"The day to complete the conquest of the walled city of Nanking" Tokyo
Nichi Nichi newspaper evening edition on December 14, 1937.
"We heard yesterday that the Japanese News Agency, Domei, reported the
population returning to their homes, business going on as usual and the
population welcoming their Japanese visitors, or words to that effect,"
wrote one of the missionaries in the Nanking Safety Zone, Robert
Wilson, in his diary on December 21, 1937.
"If that is all the news that is going out of the city it is due for a
big shake up when the real news breaks."
Throughout the Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Army imposed a strict
media blackout.
Article 12 of their censorship guideline for newspapers issued in
September 1937 stated any news article or photograph "unfavorable" to
the Army was subject to a gag.
The 13th Article affirmed that reports and photos concerning arrests or
interrogations of Chinese soldiers and civilians that would give "an
impression of torture" wouldn't be approved.
The 14th prohibited any "photographs of atrocities" but endorsed
reports about the "cruelty of Chinese" soldiers and civilians.
As a result, although there were more than 100 journalists from Japan
for the first week of the Japanese occupation of Nanking, stories of
the brutal conduct by their countrymen never reached the Japanese
general public at the time.
It was not until Wilson testified before the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo on July 26, 1946, that the Nanking
Atrocities made newspaper headlines.
Without knowing about international condemnations, people in Japan
celebrated the defeat of their enemy country's capital nationwide with
the press setting off the jubilant atmosphere by such headlines as
"Banzai on the summit of Purple Mountain!" "Two great functions
commemorating the victory to be held by Tokyo Asahi newspaper," and
"Nanking entirely conquered: Historical grand ceremony three days ahead
in the walled city."
Propagation of Positive Images
Japanese troops giving out cigarettes to Chinese prisoners of war.
The Japanese Army not only censored the news reports and photographs
but also attempted to propagate peaceful images of the city.
"Some newspaper men came to the entrance of a concentration camp and
distributed cakes and apples and handed out a few coins to the
refugees. And a moving pictures was taken of this kind of act," wrote
another missionary, James McCallum, in his letter to his family on
January 9, 1938.
"At the same time a bunch of soldiers climbed over the back wall of the
compound and raped a dozen or so of the women. There were no pictures
taken out back."
Sato Shinju, a photographer for Tokyo Nichi Nichi newspaper who stayed
in Nanking until December 24, 1937, recalls a comparable occasion in
the city. "The Army told us they were going to give some food and
snacks to Chinese kids, and asked if we were interested in taking
pictures of the scene," says Sato. "They did not force us to go there,
though. I assume they just wanted good publicity.... It was like an
informal press conference."
The Asahi newspaper carried a photograph that might be the scene Sato
was asked to take pictures of on December 24, 1937. The photo was
titled "Peace restored in Nanjing" and the further caption noted,
"Soldiers of the Imperial Army are giving candies to the refugees."
Other propaganda was aimed at the Chinese populace in Nanking. Upon
entering the city, the Army distributed handbills that read, "Remain in
your homes. Your neighbors from Japan want to restore peace."
George A. Fitch of the YMCA wrote in his diary:
While wholesale executions proceeded without interruption, Japanese
army planes dropped leaflets from the air: "All good Chinese who return
to their homes will be fed and clothed. Japan wants to be a good
neighbor to those Chinese not fooled by monsters who are Chiang
Kai-shek's soldiers." On the leaflet was a colored picture of a
handsome Jap soldier, a Chinese child held Christ-like in his arms. At
his feet a Chinese mother was bowing her thanks for bags of rice.
Discrediting the Missionaries
A Japanese military postcard. Soldiers playing with Chinese children.
To deal with the widespread condemnations abroad, the Japanese
government tried to gloss over the atrocities by blaming subversive
activities of some Chinese and by discrediting the "exaggerated"
accounts given by the missionaries that were starting to circulate in
the United States.
For instance, an American author named Frederick Vincent Williams, who
was on the payroll of the Japanese propaganda organization, Jikyoku
Iinkai, wrote a book called Behind the News in China in 1938 (to know
more about Jikyoku Iinkai, see Appendix below).
Although he did not directly mention Nanking, Williams implied that the
atrocity stories were misguidedly reported in the United States. The
pro-Japanese book claimed "the Chiang Kai-shek people" primed the
foreign missionaries with "wild tales of alleged Japanese atrocities"
and had them write "harrowing letters."
A Japanese newspaper, Osaka Mainichi, published such pamphlets as
Common Sense and the China Emergency or The China Emergency in the
English language that featured articles like "Japan's Sole Aim - Peace
of East Asia" or "Chinese Live in Japan Peacefully," the tenor of which
suggested Japan did not desire the "hideous war" and was by no means
responsible for its provocation.
A newspaper-style four-page magazine, Japanese American, carried
headlines such as "Nippon Saving China from Reds Writes Williams,"
"Atrocity Stories Exploded as Real Facts Are Shown," and "U.S. Enjoys
Favorable Balance in Trade with Japan; Not with China." A leaflet
printed late 1937 or early 1938 included a headline that reads "False
Atrocity Stories Again Flood America!!!" referring to alleged use of
poisonous gas shells, and other inhumane attacks by the Japanese troops
in Shanghai and Nanking.
A Japanese propaganda poster.
Click here to see how a Japanese wartime propaganda film, Nanking
(1938), depicted the lives of Chinese refugees (RealPlayer required).
Courtesy: Nippon Eiga Shinsha
The efforts to harm the reputation of the American Missionaries bore
some fruits. A missionary in Japan, Arthur D. Berry, for instance,
wrote to the Christian Advocate, "The stories of Japanese military
forces deliberately destroying hospitals and schools in China, and
deliberately slaughtering innocent Chinese people are slanderous lies."
In America a letter from one subscriber to Reader's Digest claimed, "It
is unbelievable that credence could be given a thing which is so
obviously rank propaganda and so reminiscent of the stuff fed the
public during the late war." According to the magazine, it received
similar comments from a number of readers.
Reverend J. C. McKim apparently wrote a series of letters to the New
York Times saying that it was not the Japanese but Chinese soldiers who
were committing the atrocities.
"You were misinformed as far as Nanking was concerned," wrote back John
Magee, an American missionary in the Nanking Safety Zone, in a personal
letter to McKim. After describing case after case of mass executions
and rapes by the Japanese soldiers, Magee continued:
There was a small amount of looting of some shops by Chinese just
before the Japanese entered. It is true that the homes of many people
immediately outside the city walls were burnt down by the soldiers for
defensive purposes, and this was certainly an outrage.... It is true
that Chang Hsueh Liang's troops, which showed up so miserably in the
fighting, looted between here and Shanghai but there [they?] were
executed by the hundreds. It is certainly unjust to have publicly
accused the Chinese of such horrible things that happened here.
Indeed, the members of the International Committee were all aware of
the fact that the Japanese government tried to question the credibility
of their reports.
An elementary school in Nanking. Chinese children receiving
pro-Japanese education. Photo used by P. R. Dept. of the China
Expeditionary Force of Japan.
On January 9 McCallum wrote, "Now the Japanese are trying to discredit
our efforts in the Safety Zone. They threaten and intimidate poor
Chinese into repudiating what we have said. Some of the Chinese are
even ready to prove that the looting, raping and burning was done by
the Chinese and not the Japanese."
Wilson's diary on January 31 read, "We are branded as a lot of liars.
The Japanese Embassy people tell people that everything we say is
imaginative. That might be a lot truer if I were not a surgeon and have
to patch up the results of their excesses."
In a letter to H. J. Timperley, a correspondent for the Manchester
Guardian, Miner Searle Bates wrote on March 3, "There has been a steady
stream of lying charges against the University in the Sin Shun Pao, the
propagandist organ widely distributed in Shanghai and East China
generally."
"I don't think there's any way that they [the missionaries] could bias
their accounts because they were just telling the facts," says the
archivist of the Yale Divinity School, Martha Smalley.
"They were not particularly fond of the Chinese government. They
recognized a lot of corruption. So I don't think they were proponents
of the 'Chinese view.' I really don't think the claim [to discredit the
missionaries] has too much basis."
* To know more about Japan's propaganda organization in the United
States, Jikyoku Iinkai, see Appendix: End of A Propaganda Organization
- Jikyoku Iinkai in the United States below.
* To watch how a Japanese wartime propaganda film, Nanking (1938),
depicted the lives of Chinese refugees, click here (RealPlayer
required). Courtesy: Nippon Eiga Shinsha
Appendix:
End of A Propaganda Organization - Jikyoku Iinkai in the United States
On June 1, 1942 in Federal District Court in Washington D.C., an
American named Frederick Vincent Williams was convicted of conspiracy
and nine violations of the Foreign Agents Act after a three-week trial.
Williams, who wrote in his 1938 Behind the News in China that "the
Chiang Kai-shek people" talked the foreign missionaries into writing
about "wild tales of alleged Japanese atrocities" in their "harrowing
letters," indeed worked with a Japanese organization, Jikyoku Iinkai,
to propagate the doctrine that Japan was not an enemy to the United
States.
Jikyoku Iinkai, which literally means the committee for current state
of affairs in Japanese, was known as the Japanese Committee on Trade
and Information. It was financed and controlled by the Japanese
government, which spent some $195,000 for the purpose of spreading
propaganda in the United States through radio speeches, a monthly
magazine and pro-Japanese booklets.
Williams, along with his two American confederates, David Warren Ryder
and Ralph Townsend, worked closely with five other Japanese agents to
distribute their side of the stories on the Second Sino-Japanese War.
All three Americans and the five Japanese were later indicted by a
Federal Grand Jury.
Legally registered as an employee at a Japanese steamship line, Nippon
Yusen, Frederick Vincent Williams, or "Wiggy," operated as a
correspondent of an English language newspaper published in Tokyo.
Jikyoku Iinkai funds were deposited under Williams' name in the
Yokohama Specie Bank. The Japanese Consulate General in San Francisco
was also frequently seen to have put money in his bank account.
On June 5, 1942, Williams was sentenced to 16 months to four years in
prison, which included eight months to two years for conspiracy and an
equal term for filing nine false registrations with the State
Department.
Among the three American conspirators the most prolific writer was
Ralph Townsend, a former college professor who brought back strong
Japanese sympathies from his several years of service as a consular
officer in China. "After he visited Japan in 1937," wrote the
Washington Post, "propaganda began to hum on the West Coast."
Townsend wrote a number of pamphlets and books such as The High Cost of
Hate, America Has No Enemies in Asia, and Seeking Foreign Trouble, made
numerous speeches and radio talks, and edited an anti-British magazine,
Scribner's Commentator.
Townsend admitted having concealed he was in the pay of the Japanese
and pleaded guilty to the charge that he violated the Foreign Agents
Act. Although the author of this online documentary could not find what
sentence Townsend received, the most he could get was a $1,000 fine and
eight to 24 months in prison.
A former newspaper man, David Warren Ryder, was given the same prison
term as Williams. According to one witness, it was Ryder who developed
the scheme for wholesaling "pro-Japanese publicity" in the United
States and initiated the large-scale operations.
Of the five Japanese conspirators the only one who was arrested by
Federal authorities was Obana Tsutomu, who pleaded guilty at the
beginning of the trial and testified against Williams and Ryder. The
other four, including K. Takahashi, the manager of the Nippon Yusen,
had fled to Japan long before the prosecution cracked down.
Obana was sentenced to a rather light punishment, two to six months'
imprisonment. The Post quoted the presiding judge Goldsborough as
saying, "It is to be said for Obana that he did not try to be crookedly
smart, he was not disloyal to his country, he attempted no betrayal."
Back to the top
* To watch how a Japanese wartime propaganda film, Nanking (1938),
depicted the lives of Chinese refugees, click here (RealPlayer
required). Courtesy: Nippon Eiga Shinsha
* To continue reading the stroy, go to The Postwar Judgment I:
International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
.
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