The Lunacy of Anti-Japanese Racism: Unmasking “Japan’s Holocaust”　Chapter 3: The absurd lie of a genocide of 30 million people

Chapter 3: The absurd lie of a genocide of 30 million people

As stated in Chapter 1, Mr. Rigg writes in Chapter 16 of his book that “in the 18 years between 1927 and 1945, a horrific massacre of at least 30 million people was carried out in an attempt to wipe out an ‘inferior race,’” with the following breakdown:

China: 20 million (minimum, conservative)
Indonesia: 4 million
Vietnam: 2 million
Bengal Famine: 1.5 million
Philippines: 1 million
Korea: 500,000
Burma-Siam Railway: 345,000
Malaysia/Singapore: 200,000
India: 180,000
Okinawa: 150,000
Saipan: 16,751
Tinian: 4,000
Guam: 2,000
Total: 29,897,751

The definition of massacre is, simply speaking, “unlawful killing”. The killing of enemy soldiers in war is legal under international law–the killing of enemy soldiers cannot be called a “massacre”. So, exclude enemy soldier wartime deaths, and Japan killed “30 million” civilians, which is a huge number. Moreover, Japan was alleged to have been involved in the killing of “inferior races”. Japan has never considered a particular ethnic group to be “inferior”, much less one that should be “wiped out”. We can say, then, with certainty that the number of people of an “inferior race” “wiped out” by Japan is zero.

However, since Rigg is quite serious about his ridiculous numbers, I will show how they are baseless nonsense, or, in other words, fraudulent.

I will deal with China’s “20 million” later and consider for now the other horrid examples here.

Indonesia: 4 million

On March 1, 1942, 55,000 Japanese troops landed on Java. A total of 81,000 Allied troops, consisting of 65,000 Dutch and 16,000 British, Australian and American soldiers, intercepted them, but the Japanese troops made rapid advance nonetheless, occupying the capital of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) on March 5, the Beitenzorg Residency on the 6th, and Bandung Fortress on the 7th, forcing the entire Allied army to surrender on the 8th. It was a remarkable feat: numerically smaller Japanese troops forcing a numerically superior force to surrender in just over a week. This could not have been possible if the Japanese army did what Rigg claims, such as destroying towns and indiscriminately massacring residents. If they had done that, it would have caused chaos and taken months to force the Allies to surrender. In fact, Japan’s miraculous victory was achieved only because of direct and indirect support of the Indonesian people for a disciplined Japanese army.

In other words, how could have the Japanese military possibly massacred 400,000 civilians in one week, during the capture of all of Indonesia?

The Japanese military freed Indonesian leaders such as Sukarno and Hatta from prison. Their goal was an independent Indonesia and they cooperated with the Japanese military administration, which in turn supported their efforts to establish Indonesian autonomy. In October 1943, they established PETA (Tentara Pembela Tanah Air), and in September 1944, the Koiso Cabinet recognized Indonesian independence and established the Investigation Committee for the Preparation of Independence.

The Japanese military established PETA and trained Indonesians in combat arms. By the end of the war, this unit numbered 36,000. This unit later became the core force in the Indonesian War of Independence, and after nearly five years of fighting, Indonesia won its independence from The Netherlands. Despite being banned by the Allied forces from joining PETA, a considerable number of former Japanese military personnel participated in the war of independence. It estimated that about 2,000 Japanese participated, and their cooperation greatly strengthened the army of independence.

Over 100,000 Indonesians died in the war of independence, which lasted for about five years. Thus, I suggest that the figure of “400,000″ is inflated from the 100,000 killed by the British and Dutch militaries.

I hope that the explanation so far has convinced you that the Japanese military could not
have massacred “400,000″ people, but I have something else for your consideration.

In 2011, the Indonesian Ministry of Defense presented a bronze statue of a soldier to the Japanese Ministry of Defense. The statue was of General Sudirman, an Indonesian national hero who was a member of PETA and became the first supreme commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces. The statue of General Sudirman currently gazes over the grounds of the Japanese Ministry of Defense.

Are we to believe that a country in which 400,000 of its people were “massacred” would send a bronze statue of its esteemed supreme commander to the country that committed such a horrible crime? This one example clearly exposes one outrageous lie and there are much more filling the rest of the book.

Rescue enemy soldiers

In his book, Rigg frequently bemoans the cruelty of Bushido way of thinking. Let me show you an actual example of the “Bushido way of thinking” that occurred during the Dutch East Indies War.

In the Battle of Java Sea between the Dutch and British fleets on one side and the Japanese fleet on the other, the British heavy cruiser Exeter and the destroyer Encounter were sunk. Lt. Commander Kudo Shunsaku, captain of the nearby destroyer Ikazuchi, received an order from Third Fleet Headquarters to “rescue enemy survivors”, and headed out alone to collect the enemy sailors. This was despite the fact that his own ship was still at risk of being attacked by enemy submarines. In the end, after much difficulty, the Ikazuchi rescued 442 enemy sailors, three times the number of his own crew of 150.

Sir Samuel Falle, who was a second lieutenant at the time and was rescued, later wrote an article titled “Chivalry” for Proceedings, a journal of the US Navy. On page 7 he stated:

“During World War II, the Japanese were portrayed as brutal, subhuman savages–the hordes of Attila or Genghis Khan. … We all saw her [the Ikazuchi] … we expected to be machine-gunned… but the guns were trained fore and aft. The ship’s sailors were lowering rope ladders all along the side of the ship.”

“By a biblical type of miracle, our hosts managed to give us all food and drink. (There were about 300 of us.) … After a while, the captain of the destroyer [Kudo Shunsaku] came down from the bridge saluted us, and addressed us in English. I do not recall his exact words, but it went something like this: “You have fought bravely. Now you are the guests of the Imperial Japanese Navy. I respect the English Navy, but your Government is foolish to make war on Japan.”

This is Japanese Bushido in practice. The 442 rescued men were eventually put in prisoner of war camps, but contrary to the mistreatment of Japanese prisoners described all too often by Rigg, they were not treated poorly or abused. Second lieutenant Falle said he learned at least six languages, including Dutch, Malay, and Indonesian while in captivity, which later turned out to be very useful for his diplomatic career after the war. He was then transferred to Pamalla on the east coast of Celebes. At the end of the war he returned to Liverpool on October 29, 1945.

Sir Falle later visited Japan and visited Lt. Commander Kudo’s grave. He also published his autobiography, My Lucky Life, in 1996. He dedicated his book to “the late Lieutenant Commander Shunsaku Kudo of the Imperial Japanese Navy,” who “saved” his “lucky life.”

The Geneva Convention condemns the abandonment of people lost at sea, even during wartime, as a “war crime.” However, it is not illegal to abandon them if the crew is in jeopardy or under enemy attack.

“Rescue the Enemy Soldiers!” “Bushido of the Sea”

It was impossible for Rigg to simply ignore Sir Falle’s article, published in the US Navy’s journal, Proceedings. He needed to bend Sir Falle’s story to fit his pathetic narrative. Rigg writes:

“Another case where a Japanese acted nobly happened when IJN Captain [sic] Shunsaku Kudo, commander of destroyer Ikazuchi, defied the prevailing brutality by rescuing 442 British and American sailors instead of killing them in 1942.”
　（Japan’s Holocaust, Chapter 1, p. 293）.

Thus, Rigg makes it sound as if Lt. Commander Kudo went against the prevailing attitude of the Japanese military at the time. It should again be pointed out that Lt. Commander Kudo did not act alone, in that he received an order from Third Fleet HQ to “rescue enemy survivors” and carried out that order. It is true that carrying out such a rescue at the time was very risky and not easy to carry out. We should turn around and ask Rigg how many Japanese sailors were rescued by the United States, British, and other nations’ navies?

As far as I know, US Navy routinely machine-gunned defenseless Japanese survivors.

However, unlike the US Navy, the Japanese Navy did not generally interfere with the rescue of survivors, as Sir Falle said:

“She [Exeter] was stopped and torpedoed… This presented our captain [Lieutenant Commander Morgan] with a terrible dilemma. Should he “proceed independently” ["Get the Hell out of it as fast as you can"] … or should he try to rescue the Exeter’s survivors?

After the sinkings of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, the Japanese allowed the escorting destroyers to pick up survivors and return to Singapore.

We could see the Exeter sinking not far to port. The enemy then concentrated all his fire on us. We were motionless, with one gun firing and surrounded by ten Japanese ships. …

The captain made his decision: “Gunner sink the ship.” Then, as soon as this was in hand: “Abandon ship.”

Rescuing enemy survivors was standard practice of the Japanese Navy.

Vietnam: 2 million people

In September 1940, Japan stationed troops in Vietnam with the consent of the French government. This was to cut off a supplies for the Chiang Kai-shek regime. As a result, although there were some disagreements and disputes, no major battles occurred. In July 1941, the Japanese sent troops to southern Vietnam, primarily for the purpose of securing oil in Sumatra in case of emergency. This was also based on an agreement with the French government, and no battles or deaths occurred in Vietnam as a result.

There is a belief that a famine occurred in northern Vietnam from October 1944 to May 1945, resulting in 400,000 to 2 million deaths.

The Vietnamese government maintains that Japanese troops were stationed in Vietnam
from September 1940, and for three months in that year, they procured 468,000 metric tons of rice. From then until the end of 1944, they claim that Japanese troops procured a total of 3.55 million metric tons of rice.

However, this is really propaganda and not true at all. The Japanese military in Vietnam was not an occupation army but a garrison, and respected the administrative authority of the Governor-General of French Indochina. Thus, the Japanese military did not and could not procure rice. If the Japanese military forced rice procurement, then this would have caused enormous friction with the Governor-General of French Indochina. There are no records of forced rice procurement.

Also, there were 25,000 Japanese troops stationed in Vietnam. Consider that each soldier’s daily requirement of rice to be 600 grams, then the total requirement of rice would be 15 metric tons per day. This would be 5,475 metric tons per month, or 16,425 metric tons over three months. The Vietnamese claim is 468,000 metric tons of rice, which is over 28 times the requirement. The claim is entirely imaginary, typical of the Communist government. From 1941 to 1944, the amount of rice necessary for 25,000 soldiers can be calculated as 5,475 metric tons x 12 months x 4 years = 262,800 metric tons–the Communist government’s figure of 3.55 million is inflated almost 14-fold. From such imaginary figures, Rigg goes on to write that Japan massacred 2 million Vietnamese, yet another absurd number that cannot be trusted.

The main cause of famine in northern Vietnam was flooding and strategic bombing by Allied forces, which prevented transportation of rice produced in the fertile south to the flood-stricken north. Therefore, if “2 million people” died due to famine were in fact correct, then the main responsibility for this lies with the Allies, mainly the United States.

Bengal Famine: 1.5 million people

The Great Bengal Famine, which occurred in 1943, caused enormous hardships–some say up to 3 million people died. But why is this disaster treated in Rigg’s book as if the Japanese army was the cause? This is completely incomprehensible.

In 1943, the Japanese army did not send a single soldier to India. Anti-Japanese racist thinking would go something like this: Japan is always the source of disasters like famines. Neighboring Burma could have helped, but this was not possible since Burma was under Japanese occupation.

However, India was a British colony at the time. Thus, responsibility for a famine in the India falls squarely on the British government.

In 2010, Indian author Madhusree Mukerjee wrote a book, Churchill’s Secret War, in which she concluded that Churchill himself bore direct responsibility for the famine. At the time, ships traveling from Australia via India to the Mediterranean Sea were loaded with exported rice. However, Mukerjee’s book states that Churchill refused all requests for emergency food aid for India.

Mukerjee points out: “It’s not that Churchill didn’t have means. Aid to India was discussed many times, but Churchill and his aides blocked it each time. … Even though the US and Australia offered to help, the British government was reluctant to make ships available because it was wartime. The US government even offered to send grain on its own ships, but the British government did not respond.”

Even though responsibility of the Bengal Famine clearly rests with the British government, Rigg manages to pin the deaths of 1.5 million people to the Japanese. Based on this thinking, one would really have to question Rigg’s sanity.

Korea: 500,000

Between 1927 and 1945, there were no riots or civil disturbances in Korea during Japanese rule. So, how was it possible that the Japanese military massacre 500,000 Koreans?

One line of thinking rests in the thoroughly discredited notion that the that Korean women were “forcibly taken away” to be comfort women. Various studies have uncovered the reality of the comfort women issue–women being “forcibly taking away” is a complete fabrication. Harvard Law School Professor Ramseyer’s examination is one of the most reliable on the comfort women issue. His primary papers on the issue were translated into Japanese and published in “Completely Refuting the Theory that Comfort Women were Sexual Slaves,” a very comprehensive book. Based on a vast amount of documentation, all comfort women contracted with brothel owners to provide sexual services in return for a large, up-front advance.

It should be recognized that there are no records that the Japanese military forcibly took women to be “comfort women”. There was really no need for the military to do that at all. Prostitution was legal at the time, and “comfort women” working in overseas comfort stations earned a considerable sum of money, so there were many women who wanted to work as an overseas “comfort woman”.

Supposing that women were forcibly abducted by the Japanese military, were Korean men at the time such pathetic cowards that they turned a blind eye to the abduction of their daughters and female acquaintances and relatives?

Of course, Korean men were not cowardly at all. A US military interrogation record (Military Intelligence Report No. 78) of three Korean military personnel who were taken prisoner by the US military in March 1945, towards the end of the war, noted:

“All Korean prostitutes that PoW have seen in the Pacific were volunteers or had been sold by their parents into prostitution. This is proper in the Korean way of thinking but direct conscription of women by the Japanese would be an outrage that the old and young alike would not tolerate. Men would rise up in a rage, killing Japanese no matter what consequence they might suffer.”

However, not a single “uprising” occurred. This is because there were no “forced abductions”. Not one historian found a single documented case of a “forced abduction” because there were none!

An alleged former North Korean comfort woman claimed that comfort women were killed to erase “evidence” of their existence. Some so-called scholars have taken this seriously and claimed as many as 200,000 women forced to be comfort women were murdered. Rigg of course believes this nonsense and so his “500,000 massacred Koreans” is probably a composite of the 200,000 murdered comfort women and others.

Completely pathetic.

One other possibility on the origin of Riggs outrageous Korean death toll is that Koreans were forcibly conscripted into the military, thus “500,000″ deaths. First, conscription into the Japanese military was applied to Korea in April 1944, near the end of the war. Before that, there were large numbers of Koreans who volunteered for military service. In 1938, when the Army tried to recruit 406 volunteers for service, 2,946 people applied, over 7 times the Army’s goal. The enthusiasm for applications increased even more, and by 1943, 303,394 people applied, which was 50 times the initial goal of 6,000. Conscription of Koreans, who were by law Japanese nationals, was not of “forced abduction” but legally performed as was the case in other countries. Moreover, considering the huge number of volunteers, it is absolutely absurd that Koreans had to be conscripted by force. Also, conscripted Korean who ended up as soldiers were not put into service before the end of the war and there were almost no deaths. However, 22,182 Koreans did die during the war and they enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. Of these, 14 volunteered for suicide missions and in battle.

However, Rigg writes these ridiculous lies:

“Official Japanese military post-war rolls indicate that around 150,000 Korean soldiers lost their lives from the Asia and Pacific Wars. However, it is crucial to recognize that most of these Koreans were forcibly coerced into fighting for Japan against their will.”
(Japan’s Holocaust, Chapter 4, p.52)

The lies really go too far. First, as mentioned above, the total number of Koreans who died in the war was 22,182, and there is no “official record” that says 150,000 Koreans died in the war. Also, conscription was applied from April 1944, but in many cases, it was too late to put conscripts into battle, and very few conscripted died in the war. Therefore, it was Korean volunteers who died in the war. Moreover, as recruitment numbers show, there was nearly 50 times as many applicants as there were available positions, demonstrating a high rate of Korean enthusiasm. To say, “It is crucial to recognize that most of these Koreans were forcibly coerced into fight for Japan against their will” is either crazy or a lie.

The application of the conscription law to Koreans, who were Japanese nationals, from 1944 was entirely legal from the standpoint of international law. Koreans living in Japan were given the right to vote and to be elected to public office. Japan announced that elections would be introduced in Korea beginning in 1945. Park Chun-keum ran in the 1932 elections in Tokyo’s 4th district and was elected as a member of the House of Representatives. He was kept his seat in the 1937 election.

“Drafting of workers” was also an obligation that was imposed on Japanese nationals, both Japanese and Koreans, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) clearly stated drafting workers was not “forced labor.”

Drafting of Koreans began in 1944, much later than in mainland Japan, but the total number drafted was around 200,000. However, Rigg states that “the number of forced conscripts” reached 370,000, and then goes on to say something incomprehensible: “Additionally, between 670,000 to 1,000,000 million Koreans were forcibly shipped to Japan.” (Japan’s Holocaust, p. 52) He goes on, “Approximately 64,000 Korean workers perished in Japan during the war, with 30,000 of them dying in the atomic blast at Hiroshima alone.” (Japan’s Holocaust p. 52) As you will see, Rigg has lied about just about everything. The total number of deaths in the Hiroshima atomic bombing was 90,000, so saying that 30,000 were Koreans is an exaggeration. Really, if this figure is true, remember that America dropped the atomic bomb, so America is the one which murdered 30,000 Koreans.

In any case, the story that 500,000 Koreans were massacred is a lie that does not stand up at all, not even as war propaganda.

In addition, Korean communist guerrillas and terrorists were wiped out in Manchuria, but wiping out guerrillas and terrorists is not a massacre.

Okinawa: 150,000

The number of war deaths in the Battle of Okinawa is said to have been 94,000, and the number of civilian deaths was about 100,000. One needs to do a lot of head scratching to figure out how “150,000″ came from the military and civilian death tolls.

As always, there are those who are persistent and perverse, in taking pleasure in insisting that the Japanese military was evil–the Japanese military “ordered” Okinawan civilians to commit mass suicide.

There seem to have been around ten tragic cases where residents who were cornered by the U.S. military attempted to commit mass suicide, but these were, unfortunately, based on the will of the residents. The Japanese military had no authority to force people to commit suicide, and did not force anyone to do so. Regarding the case of Tokashiki Village, Lieutenant Minamoto Yoshihiro (who graduated with the 57th Imperial Japanese Army Academy class), commander of the 3rd Company of the 3rd Squadron of the Army Marine Assault Squadron on Tokashiki Island, had this to say:

“After the war, a story emerged that the mass suicides in Okinawa were ordered by the military, but that’s impossible. Rather, I think that the people of Tokashiki sacrificed their lives in a spirit of the Aizu Byakkotai, risking their lives to protect the land of their ancestors. They were all of that temperament. In the first place, the military had no authority to give orders to the villagers, and there is no evidence that they ordered the mass suicides. The military never handed out grenades. At the time, a temporary defense force was organized in the village, and it was led by a reservist who gathered participants. They were volunteer soldiers, so to speak. They had grenades and other weapons; it was easy for weapons to get into the hands of the villagers.”

This is the testimony of someone on the ground who actually witnessed the incident, and it is close to the truth, but anti-military leftists stubbornly insist that military ordered mass suicides. Oe Kenzaburo tried to pass the “military order” line as true in Okinawa Notes (Iwanami Shoten), but Sono Ayako, a female novelist, pointed out the contradictions and lack of evidence in Oe’s story based on her field research. (Background of a Myth, PHP).

India: 180,000

For some reason, India appears twice, along with the Bengal Famine. In 1944, the Japanese army, along with the Indian National Army (under Subhas Chandra Bose), headed for Imphal and managed to occupy nearby Kohima, but retreated due to lack of supplies. It was a tragic retreat with heavy losses. So, does this mean that the Japanese army killed 180,000 local Indian civilians in their march to Kohima?

If that is true, then why have many trips been made by the Japanese to collect remains and pay respects to the remains of the victims after the Battle of Imphal after the war? Furthermore, why in each case, have they been so kindly welcomed by the locals? Because the Japanese army did not kill any civilians.

After the war, when Indian National Army (INA) officers were about to be tried for treason, the Indian people rebelled. The British authorities had no way of dealing with this, so they had to stop the trial and recognize Indian independence. Lt. Colonel Fujiwara Iwaichi, the mastermind behind the formation of the INA, who was called as a witness in the trial, said that Dr. Bhuladhai Desai, a leading figure in the Indian Congress Party and the head of the defense team in the INA trial, declared to the Japanese witnesses, “Thanks to this war, India’s independence will be realized 30 years sooner.” Nehru also made a similar statement in his speech at a rally when he visited his compatriots in Singapore just after the war.

Rigg directly contradicts these facts and states that 180,000 Indians were murdered by the Japanese. This too does not seem to have been written by a sane person.