As the years passed, the military clique of "Jewish experts" became larger and more outspoken. Articles began appearing in various departmental journals with titles like: "Studies in the International Conspiracy," "Jewish Information," and "Studies on the Jews." Supplementing these, informal lectures were given and discussion groups held. Lists of known Jews were drawn up and circulated: Jews in the West, in China, in Manchuria, and most often in Japan itself. (In Tokyo, it was learned with suspicion and dismay that the owner of Japan's most influential English-language newspaper, the Japan Advertiser was a Jew, Benjamin Fleisher!) The translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published and its contents studied at length. By the mid-twenties, Yasue and Inuzuka had succeeded in getting the Foreign Ministry, the Graimusho, interested in "the Jew race." From their point of view, it seemed logical to study Jews in the closest thing they had to a native country. In 1926, they borrowed Yasue from the army and sent him off to the Middle East to investigate the Jews in Palestine. Yasue traversed the country, north and south, east and west, talking to political leaders (including Chaim Weizman and David Ben Gurion), farmers, shopkeepers and rabbis. He learned a great deal about the Jew's attachment to that particular piece of land. He noted with interest the emerging kibbutz concept which he was convinced the Jews would later use to colonize the countries they conquered. But, as he reported to the Foreign Ministry, the Jews were very tight-lipped about their plans to take over the world. No one so much as whispered a hint about the international conspiracy.
The intelligence section of the Gaimusho was disappointed but even more determined to learn as much as it could about the Jews. It sent a memorandum to every Japanese embassy and consulate around the world requesting information on Jews and Jewish activities in their areas - this was to be on a continuing basis. Immediately, paper began pouring in from everywhere: synagogue newsletters; reprints of rabbinic sermons; youth group activity programs; the anti-Semitic speeches of an Austrian house-painter and the ongoing effects of his rise to political power; the unsuccessful plan of certain Polish Jews to boycott Japanese goods; the percentage of Jews who voted for Franklin Roosevelt; the presence in China of a Jew called Two-Gun Cohen acting as Sun Yat-sen's financial and military adviser. ... So much material came pouring in that a special office had to be set up just to handle it. This intelligence was gratifying in amount, but useless in content: the Gaimusho never could find any clear evidence of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy that it nevertheless remained convinced of.
The gradual expansion of the influence of the "Jewish experts" during the twenties and early thirties was made feasible by developments within Japan. The domestic turbulence and change ascribed by Yasue and Inuzuka and others to the "Jewish conspirators" continued to deepen. The old virtues of patience and respect and self-sacrifice were being overrun by new virtues: efficiency, productivity and materialism. The conservative young men who were attracted to the armed forces were more and more displeased by what they saw of "progress." The noble soul of Japan they saw as sullied by men who wanted only to line their pockets. The noble mind of their beloved emperor - from Christmas Day 1926, Meiji's grandson, Hirohito - was being clouded by greedy politicians. Internationally, Japan was not being accorded the respect she deserved. (The Exclusion Act of 1924 which barred Japanese immigrants from the United States was seen as a prime example.) And the quality of life at home could not be maintained in the face of an exploding birth rate.
Conflicting answers to Japan's problems were offered from every political viewpoint. By the late twenties, the strongest and most appealing voice was that of the Manchurian Faction which recommended a return to traditional ways and an expansion of Japan on mainland Asia, more precisely into Manchuria. The international economic collapse of 1929, and the ensuing worldwide depression, made Tokyo's planners yearn for Manchuria - with its wealth of raw materials, its vast arable fields and its emptiness just waiting to soak up Japan's excess millions. Furthermore, to a certain extent, Japan was already there. Since 1905, her Kwantung Army had been guarding the Manchurian railways which Japan had been awarded by the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War.
The Manchurian Faction was led by two officers in the Kwantung Army, Colonel Seishiro Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishihara. By 1931, these two had persuaded their superiors that control of Manchuria was crucial to the salvation of Japan. In a matter of months, acting independently of the government in Tokyo, the army simply took command of the entire six hundred thousand square miles of the region and presented the world with "Manchukuo" - "the independent State of Manchu" - which would be "guided" by Japan.
From the beginning, all did not go as the Manchurian Faction had planned. The excess population of Japan could not be lured by any inducements into the Manchukuo wilderness. Though it was true that Manchukuo had vast reserves of coal, iron, timber and other raw materials, getting at those precious resources required vast amounts of capital. And, in the depression years, capital was as scarce in Japan as it was everywhere else in the world. Attempts were made to attract foreign investments, especially from America. But even America had little money to export. Moreover, the capital that might have been available was in the hands of men and corporations who did not at all approve of Japan's imperialistic designs on the rest of Asia. In part, this was a moral stance; but to a greater degree, it was economic self-interest: Japan was upsetting the region's stability. She was intruding on the Chinese business scene, and China was still considered a Western economic preserve. The era of not-so-good feeling between the two countries - an era which would be turned into war at Pearl Harbor - had begun. The Manchurian Faction - like those who were trying to protect Japan from the menace they saw in world Jewry - had been stymied by reality. But unknown to either side, the stage was being set for the uniting of the interests of the Manchurian Faction with those of the "Jewish experts." The union would be made not by a government official, nor by a militarist, but by a former ironmonger.
Gisuke Ayukawa was one of the leading industrialists in prewar Japan. Having learned the latest techniques of ironworking in the United States, he had returned to Japan to create a huge combine which would one day be known as Nissan Industries. In 1932, this powerful business leader was invited by the South Manchurian Railway - a quasi governmental organization which controlled most of Japan's industrial and mining ventures in the area - to advise it how to go about settling and developing this six-hundred-thousand-square-mile wilderness. Ayukawa accepted with enthusiasm. Consulting first with his long-time friend Baron Takahashi (the same Takahashi who had negotiated the huge loan from Jacob Schiff), Ayukawa then went on an extended study tour of Manchukuo. He spent many days talking to Yosuke Matsuoka, the railway president who would one day become foreign minister of Japan. He held long discussions with Colonel Ishihara and, by now, Army Chief-of-Staff Itagaki, about the plans of their Manchurian Faction - with which he was in complete sympathy. One contact led to another. Through Colonel Ishihara, Ayukawa met Yasue the translator of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and by now considered one of Japan's leading "experts" on Jewish matters. He also met Yasue's fellow "experts" - the naval officer Inuzuka (a loyal supporter of Ishihara's Manchurian Faction from the beginning) and General Kiichiro Higuchi, another officer who had taken part in the Siberian Expedition and was now chief of the military mission in Manchukuo. The discussions among these men often turned to Jews. Ayukawa had a great deal of knowledge about, and a very high opinion of them, thanks to the influence of Baron Takahashi. Also, he had worked with Jewish iron-and-steel businessmen in America. Within a matter of months, Ayukawa's advice to the South Manchurian Railway began to focus on a new idea: why not use the Jews to help develop Manchukuo?
It was a radical and bold idea. Jewish settlers, if they could be brought from Europe, would provide the creative energy, the industrial skills, even the cultural finesse that Manchukuo needed to realize its potential. If Jews established settlements in Manchukuo, the Ame
rican and British Jews who had a stranglehold on world capital would naturally become interested in investing there. Furthermore, to protect the interests of their co-religionists, the Jews who were secretly pulling the strings of the government of the United States would cease haranguing Japan for its "aggression," and there would be no more threat to boycott Japanese goods. This plan had its perils however. Despite the reams of information they had collected, the Japanese still considered Jews an unknown and suspicious quantity. However, as Ayukawa's discussions continued in Manchukuo and back in Tokyo, events in Europe seemed to be edging the Jews into a particularly tractable position. On January 30, 1933, Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany. On April 1, a German boycott of all Jewish businesses began. By October, Jews had been barred from all positions of authority in the government, the professions, and the social, cultural and educational institutions of Germany. Ayukawa decided to act. In 1934, he sent up a trial balloon in the form of a Foreign Ministry journal article entitled "A Plan to Invite Fifty Thousand German Jews to Manchukuo." The article was heavily publicized in the Japanese press and in Jewish journals. There were no negative repercussions.
The Manchurian Faction leaders were pleased; the "Jewish experts" were ecstatic. All their theoretical work and study now had a chance to pay off for the good of Japan, and the good of their careers. The potential was virtually unlimited. So was the danger. "This plan is," Captain Inuzuka remarked at an informal meeting of the 'Jewish experts', "very much like fugu [the Japanese blowfish whose deadly poison must be removed before it can be eaten]. If we are indeed skillful in preparing this dish - if we can remain ever-alert to the sly nature of the Jews, if we can continue to devote our constant attention to this enterprise lest the Jews, in their inherently clever manner, manage to turn the tables on us and begin to use us for their own ends - if we succeed in our undertaking, we will create for our nation and our beloved emperor the tastiest and most nutritious dish imaginable. But, if we make the slightest mistake, it will destroy us in the most horrible manner."
To serve fugu, however, one first must catch it. If Manchuria was to be the happy new home for thousands of Jews, it would have to regain the reputation that it once had before the Japanese took it over.
The Jewish population of Manchuria dated back to the last years of the nineteenth century when Tsar Nicholas II, anxious to "Russify" the region he had recently taken from the Chinese, declared that any Jews willing to settle in the "Manchurian paradise" would be allowed freedom of religion, unrestricted business rights and quota-free schools. With its seven-month winter, when the temperature reached forty degrees below zero, and hot dry summers, when the air was so heavy with flies you could scarcely breathe, Manchuria was not precisely "paradise." But the desire for a free life was so strong that by the mid-1920s, there were over thirteen thousand Russian Jews living in the major city of Harbin and in smaller communities in Hailar, Tsitsihar, Manchouli, Mukden and Dairen. The Harbin community, under the leadership of Dr. Abraham Kaufman and Rabbi Aaron Kiseleff, organized an entire Jewish social system: schools, a hospital, a bank, an old people's home and a cemetery; and its synagogue was the pride of Manchurian Jewry. In spite of the arrival in 1920 of hundreds of anti-Semitic White Russians, Harbin was indeed thought of as a paradise by Jews.
Then, in 1931, the Japanese came. The Manchurian Faction army leaders wanted to make a utopia of Manchukuo. But the civilians who followed on the heels of the army wanted only to get rich and get out, back again to "civilized" Japan. Businesses were taken over and houses and commercial buildings appropriated. Kidnapping for high ransom - up to four hundred thousand dollars - became common. (The Japanese did not single out the Jews for extortion, but the White Russians did, and the Japanese often worked with them - or, as police, approved of their activities.) Harbin, a paradise in the twenties, became a city of living death. And it all seemed to culminate in the kidnapping of Simon Kaspe.
Simon Kasper's father Joseph had come to Harbin from Russia in 1907. By the early thirties, he was a very wealthy man. He owned the prestigious Hotel Moderne in the center of Harbin and most of the movie houses and theaters throughout Manchuria. Though originally considered stateless, Joseph Kasper had gained French citizenship for himself and his family and proudly flew the bright French tri-color from the gray stone facade of the Hotel Moderne. Joseph's son Simon, an excellent pianist, had studied at the French Conservatory in Paris. It was while Simon was home on summer vacation, in August 1933, as he was returning from an outing with his girlfriend, that he was attacked from behind and rushed away to a hideout some thirty-six miles west of Harbin. The next morning, Joseph Kasper received a note demanding one hundred thousand dollars ransom.
It was not a new story and, considering the usual stakes, the demanded ransom was not exhorbitant. But Joseph Kasper was not a semistateless Jew: he was a citizen of France and went immediately to the French consul.
As far as the consul was concerned, the honor of France was at stake. He insisted that Joseph Kasper would not pay the ransom: the consul, working with the Japanese police, would find Simon Kaspe.
After thirty days, half a bloody ear was sent to Joseph Kasper, but the French consul assured him that the authorities were on the verge of finding the kidnappers. Joseph again agreed not to pay the ransom.
On December 3, 1933, ninety-five days after the seizure, Simon Kaspe was found by the police. He had been starved, beaten and tortured. The nails of the pianist's delicate fingers had been torn out. Both his ears had been cut off. He had been kept for weeks underground, in a pit of half-frozen earth with a lid over his head, while the temperature dropped to twenty-five and thirty degrees below zero. Before he was found, the kidnappers had performed their one act of mercy by putting a bullet through the boy's head.
In all Manchuria, there was never such a funeral as the funeral for Simon Kasper. To prevent the gathering of a large crowd, Japanese authorities warned the mourners not to travel through the main streets but to go, instead, through the narrow alleys. Nevertheless, tens of thousands, including Chinese as well as Europeans, attended the funeral. All along the procession, the crowd shouted: "Death to the Japanese military! Death to the damn monkeys!"
Both the Harbin and the Shanghai Jewish communities protested to Japan's vice-foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu about the maltreatment of the Jews in Manchukuo, but to no avail. The kidnappers were found and although they were placed in jail, they were free to go home at night. After a long trial, to everyone's surprise, they were convicted. Two days later, the Japanese police arrested the Chinese judges and prosecuted them for treason. At a retrial, with Japanese judges, the kidnappers were given ten- to fifteen-year sentences . . . and freed under an amnesty one week later.
The Jewish community had had enough. At the same time that Yasue, Inuzuka and Ayukawa were thinking out the foundations of the fugu plan, thousands of Jews were leaving Harbin. Some went to the international settlement in Shanghai, some to other Chinese cities. A very few even preferred to return to the Soviet Union rather than remain in Japanese-held lands. By the mid-thirties, nearly seventy per cent of Harbin's Jews had fled. And as they fled, they spoke out about the conditions that were driving them out.
If the fugu plan were to work, its creators knew this exodus had to be stopped; once again the cities of Manchuria had to become a paradise for Jews. Yasue himself, now a colonel, was put in charge of making sure that just such a thing happened.
Yasue moved carefully and with discretion. He established a friendship with Abraham Kaufman, a physician who was the unofficial leader of the several thousand Jews holding on in Manchukuo. He showed a sincere personal interest in the activities of the community. He made repeated visits to Harbin to keep in touch with the situation there. But when it came to solving problems, Yasue always waited to act until he was asked for help. It was one of the major ploys of the "Jewish experts" that no one should ever think that Japan needed the Jews, or was purposely wooing them.
Hi
s tactic was effective. This gradualist approach seemed, to the Jews, to show a sincere change of heart on the part of the Japanese, rather than merely a short term change of policy. Some may have been completely taken in, while others played along with the Japanese to improve their situation. In either case, by 1937, the community, with Japanese encouragement, had asked for and received permission to form a representative body to speak on its behalf the Far Eastern Jewish Council, headed by Dr. Kaufman. In December of that year, the first Conference of Jewish Communities in the Far East was held, with representatives coming to Harbin from as far away as Shanghai, China and Kobe, Japan. TheFEJ Conference at Joseph Kasper's Hotel Moderne was also attended by over seven hundred Jewish delegates and spectators, as well as by Colonel Yasue and his fellow 'Jewish expert," General Higuchi, who continued to hold a high position in the military administration of Manchukuo and Northern China. Each Japanese speaker expressed the hope that the conference delegates would make known to their fellow Jews around the world the good treatment they were receiving. "Do not let this become a dead statement!" Higuchi exclaimed, referring to his just-completed proclamation: "The Nipponese, having no racial prejudice, look with friendship toward the Jewish people and are ready to cooperate with the Jewish people . . . and maintain close business relations."
To the delight of the Japanese, the Jews responded, as hoped, with a resolution which was sent to every major Jewish organization in the world: "We Jews, attending this racial conference, hereby proclaim that we enjoy racial equality and racial justice under the national laws, and will cooperate with Japan and Manchukno in building a new order in Asia. We appeal to our co-religionists." Dr. Kaufman wrote to the World Jewish Congress, successfully applying for membership for the Far Eastern Jewish Council.
The Fugu Plan Page 6
