I’ve been reading up on the ‘Fugu Plan’, an interesting plot which involved Japan establishing some form of ‘safe haven’ for Jews in Manchuria so they could exploit percieved Jewish power, offering some insight on the Japanese perception of Jews during WWII.
Anyway, my question is this; did any high-ranking Japanese officials have knowledge of their Axis partner’s Holocaust?
The one place that refugee Jews could flee to before WWII started was Shanghai. Jews could not get visas or even passports in Germany which meant that they were officially stateless. No country would take them in. Shanghai was almost an European-run enclave inside of China, and would allow stateless people in. The usual estimates are that around 20,000 Jews managed to escape there from Germany. Most of them were confined to the Hong Kew ghetto but otherwise could work in the International Sector nearby.
The Japanese took over Shanghai at an early point in the war. The Nazi representatives in Japan put great pressure on the Japanese to remove the Jews. The Japanese refused for reasons that are still being argued about. But it seems quite clear that the Nazi campaign against the Jews was well understood by the Japanese.
I’m not sure whether that includes all details of the Holocaust, but since the basic gist of the Holocaust was well understood even by the U.S. government long before the end of the war, it’s extremely difficult to believe that the Japanese wouldn’t have had as much knowledge.
The standard book on the subject is Japanese, Nazis & Jews by David Kranzler. A more recent and more readable book is Port of Last Resort by Marcia Reynders Ristaino. I flipped through them without coming across a passage that would directly answer the question, but the size of the Nazi presence and the restrictive measures that were put into place in 1943 indicate that the Shanghai Jews would not have been spared if America hadn’t won.
Did Japan’s ambassador to Nazi Germany, Lieutenant General Oshima Hiroshi, know about the Holocaust? Did he report on it in his cables to Tokyo? Since he was Japan’s man in Berlin and considered to be something of a confidant of Hitler, you’d think he’d probably know as much about what was happening to the Jews of Europe as any Japanese of that time.
Here’s an article about Oshima and the information he sent back to Japan. The Allies were able to decrypt Oshima’s cables and this formed the “main basis of [their] information regarding Hitler’s intentions in Europe”.
Unfortunately, that article doesn’t mention the Holocaust, so it’s hard to say whether Oshima told Tokyo about it or not.
It might also be worth trying to track down a copy of this book which discusses Oshima and the messages he sent to Japan. I don’t know if it will shed much light on the matter, though. A look at the index on Amazon only gives a single entry for the subject of “Jews” and none at all for “Final Solution” or “Holocaust.”
Considering how the Japanese have pretty much swept their own atrocities from WWII under the rug, I doubt that they even cared about the Holocaust. Well, actually, they probably like the fact that their own misdeeds don’t seem as bad in light of the Holocaust. :smack:
Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s ambassador to Lithuania, was certainly aware of it enough to be active in providing Japanese visas to Jewish refugees from Lithuania and Poland. Roughly 6000 owed their lives to them.
How did the Nazis’ racial theories view the Japanese?
As partners of convenience…and vice versa. Of course, in both cases, the racial theories that permitted each society to think of itself as being genetically superior (and in the case of the Japanese, divinely endowed) were based on gross distortions and artificial distinctions, but the, that’s usually how trouble starts.
Stranger
I’m sure he knew that atrocities where being committed against the Jews of Poland in 1939 and 1940, but according to that link he left “Kovno [Kaunas] for Berlin on September 1, 1940.”
When he got to Berlin, Sugihara must have told Ambassador Oshima what he saw in Lithuania, but that was early days. For example, mass killings at Auschwitz II didn’t begin until early 1942 and, for the most part, the Einsatzgruppen didn’t really concentrate on murdering Jews until after the invasion of the Soviet Union. I’m not sure that the full extent of the Holocaust could have been foretold by someone in Sugihara’s position in the fall of 1940.
Still, it would be very interesting to know what Sugihara cabled back to Tokyo when asking for permission to issue visas to the Jewish refugees. And what, if anything, Oshima told Tokyo after talking with Sugihara.
JamesB. Consider this a formal warning.
You’re in General Questions. We want people to contribute factual answers to the OP. What you have contributed is opinion. And your opinions are rather hateful.
If you truly want to slur an entire people(which can get you booted from the boards), take it to the Pit, but be prepared to defend yourself. They’re a hungry group over there. Piranhas leave the bones, the denizens of the Pit leave nothing.
samclem GQ moderator
Surprisingly enough, it’s a Nazi in Nanking who saved many of the Chinese who were protected in the international refugee camp there. Talk about your moral dilemma there; your actual good Nazi.
Regarding what Exapno Mapcase said, there’s a very good documentary film called Shanghai Ghetto that would be worth your while in tracking down.
The 'Happy Hooker," Xavier Hollander was a Jew raised in the Dutch East Indies. In her autobiography she claims the Japanese were as anti-Semitic as the Germans.
On the other hand her entire family (IIRC) survived Japanese captivity. That probably would not have happened if they had be captured by the Germans.
I’m no expert on this subject but my understanding is that Jewish refugees, especially from Russia were in a lot of the more international chinese citys, and not limited to Shanghai and Nanking (Nanjing).
There was also a sizeable Russian refugee population in Manchuria as well, especially Dalian (Port Arthur). Also included a sizeable number of Jewish refugees.
My father worked for a Russian Jew who came out via China to the US during that time. I met him and his wife when I was a kid, and wish I could speak with him now about the experience.
I’m quite certain you mean Xaviera Hollander.
http://www.xavierahollander.com/
Carry on… (that link is probably not safe for work).
Yes, it is (and it’s currently available on Amazon). There is also a second documentary, Port of Last Resort, related to the book of that name I mentioned. That’s not yet out on DVD but I’ve seen it on television.
Both use interviews with survivors to great effect. There are even home movies of Shanghai that they managed to save.
Although I don’t have the specific cite at hand, I am certain that this was addressed quite explicitly in the Goebbels diaries (a most interesting, if chilling, read).
In them, IIRC, Goebbels made at least one statement to the effect of, “we’ll get rid of the Japs once we prevail in Europe”.