# WWII quote: UL or fact, cite, please?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 15, 2002, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103 "2002-08-15T22:24:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2002, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/1 "2002-08-15T22:24:27Z")
**Hamster** : Me so hungy!
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### Author:  [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2002, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/2 "2002-08-15T23:03:22Z")
:expletives: I’m gonna get better traps for that ¤%/&£$ hamster.
[re-typing op]
I heard or read somewhere about something I found quite disturbing. The story was told about a Japanese delegation to Germany, just before WWII. They marveled at what was being done, and when returning home thay said: “We wish we had some jews.”
I sounds a bit too fabricated.
Anybody with a cite for this, in case it is true. I’m leaning towards an UL, but then, if I knew, I wouldn’t post and risk getting exposed to the hamster.
[/re-typing OP]
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/3 "2002-08-16T00:20:07Z")
Question no. 33 at [http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/36quest3.html](http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/36quest3.html) would tend to say that’s a UL. I doubt that you’ll find anything better than this.
Hell! /Why would the Japanese need Jews. They had the Chinese. :o
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### Author:  [@Narile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Narile)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/4 "2002-08-16T01:18:59Z")
**samclem** They also had the Koreans.
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/5 "2002-08-16T04:04:38Z")
And you posted this in Cafe Society…why?
Moving to General Questions.
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### Author:  [@RiverRunner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RiverRunner)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/6 "2002-08-16T14:17:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike \*
> \*\*And you posted this in Cafe Society…why?
>
> \*\*
Because there’s plenty of room since [sports questions are answered in GQ?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=130942)
😃
Must run now before I get “El Kabonged” with a Ukelele.
RR
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### Author:  [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/7 "2002-08-16T14:21:32Z")
Seems doubtful to me. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has an interesting page on the [history of Jews in Japan](http://www.jcpa.org/jl/jl425.htm). The fact is that there was a small Jewish community in Japan before the war, and Japan accepted a few thousand Jewish refugees during the war, most of whom were later moved to Japanese-controlled Shanghai.
> [@](#):
>
> on December 31, 1940, Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke told a group of Jewish businessmen, “I am the man responsible for the alliance with Hitler, but nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his anti- Semitic policies in Japan. This is not simply my personal opinion, it is the opinion of Japan, and I have no compunction about announcing it to the world.”
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/8 "2002-08-16T14:30:00Z")
There was also a campaign to settle Jewish refugees in Harbin, in Manchuko, but that wasn’t very successful, and the Japanese government waivered back and forth on their acceptance of Jewish refugees for the first few years of the war.
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### Author:  [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2002, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-quote-ul-or-fact-cite-please/124103/9 "2002-08-16T16:02:58Z")
There is also a reasonably good book out (it is out of print now, however) called _The Fugu Plan_ dealing with how the Japanese tried to save a good number of Jews when they saw concentration camps for them on the horizon. The book is by Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz and was published by Paddington Press in 1979.
The idea was to create something of an Isreal in Asia under Japanese control. The plan was not completely altruistic however. According to the book, Japanese officials saw the Jews as a good barginning chip should war break out with the U.S. They also saw (somewhat simplisticly perhaps) that the Jews had skills they needed:
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*In the 1930s the Jewish people seemed - to the devisers of the Fugu plan - to have exactly what Japan lacked. Her empire - growing rapidly by conquest - needed the capital and financial skills exhibited, for example, by the Rothschilds, Bernard Baruch and Jacob Schiff, and there was a particular shortage of experienced industrialists and technicians who would be willing to settle in the wilderness of Manchuko…Finally, Japan sought to improve her image in the world and reverse the drift of Western, especially American, foreign policy which had begun to go against her. The task Japanese leaders believed was one for which the Jews were best suited, it was said, they controlled so much of the United States Press, broadcast media and film industry.
>
> In return for Jewish assistance whith her problems, Japan was prepared to offer exactly what the Jews needed most: A safe haven from the increasingly brutal anti-Semitism welling up against them in Europe.\*\*
In fact in 1934, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced plans to invite 50,000 German Jews China. Eventually, I think less than 7,000 ended up going to China.
The Jews were shipped overland through Russia and were eventually located in Shanghi and then later confined to a Ghetto in the Hongkew district of Shanghi (For a while there was even a “Kobe Jewcom” in Kobe, Japan which even had a yeshiva).
It should be noted that the book mentions that in 1942 the Japanese, with Nazi input, began planning the extermination of Jews in Shanghai, and in fact formed a special police called the Pao Chia to “control” the Jews in that city and while restriction were tight and living conditions rivaled many of the Ghettos in Europe no camps as in Europe were ever formed.
In also mentioned that in early 1943 major department stores in Japan had large anti-Semite exhitits.
TV