Language:
English
Year of publication:
1991
Titel der Quelle:
Japan Forum
Angaben zur Quelle:
3,2 (1991) 257-273
Keywords:
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Jews
;
Jewish refugees
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Examines humanitarianism and pragmatism as elements of Japan's policy of allowing Jewish refugees into Shanghai and into Kobe until November 1941. States that antisemitism was never part of official Japanese ideology. However, Jewish help in financing the Russo-Japanese war strengthened in Japan a distorted view of Jewish financial and political power. The Siberian Expedition (1918-22) exposed the Japanese military to the anti-Jewish influence of the White Russians and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Army officials such as Norihiro Yasue (in Dairen, Manchuria) and Koreshige Inuzuka (handling refugee affairs in Shanghai) wrote antisemitic works. A trend developed to blame the economic crisis, Chinese nationalist resistance, and Western condemnation of Japan on a Jewish plot against Japan. Yet, despite repeated Nazi pressure, out of need for foreign capital and a desire not to alienate the USA, Japan preferred not to eliminate Jews, as Germany did, but to utilize them for the benefit of their East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, especially in Manchuria. Unrestricted immigration was permitted to Shanghai, and between July 1940-November 1941 more than 4,600 Polish Jews were granted extended transit visas into Kobe where they were fairly treated. By November 1941 the last of them had left Kobe for Shanghai, where in February 1943, under heavy Nazi pressure, a ghetto was imposed on the 18,000 Jews.
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