Wednesday, November 5, 1986
Front Page, International Affairs
Thousands of Documents, Survivors Returned, and an Entire Region Demands Justice
U.S. Role in Postwar Cover-Up Draws Renewed Scrutiny
By David Harmon, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent
DAS KAPITAL, GUANGCHOU, In an event already being called a historic reckoning, the island nation of Guangchou has concluded a sweeping, year-long investigation into Japanese war crimes committed during and after World War II, revealing an archive of thousands of documents, photographs, medical logs, and internal communications that directly implicate high-ranking Japanese officials, industrialists, researchers, and political figures, some still alive and active in public life today.
Just as stunning, the government confirmed last week that multiple long-lost civilian captives have already been repatriated, many of them abducted from Guangchou's outer islandic territories during Japanese naval operations in the Pacific theater. Though Japanese ground troops never successfully landed on Guangchou proper, the region was heavily bombed, and its remote islandic territories occupied, exploited, and brutalized throughout the war.
The news has triggered a political and cultural earthquake across Asia and Oceania, with the United States, Germany, the International Court of Justice, and Japan's own stunned population now pulled into what some analysts are calling "the largest postwar moral crisis since Nuremberg."
The global reaction, while still evolving, can best be described, in the words of international affairs commentator Hero Coockson, as a "cosmic slap to Japan's favorite rug, the one they've been sweeping things under since '45."
"So Japan steps up to the mic and says, 'This is all lies, slander, fake files, actually, you should be thanking us.'
Asia and Oceania, they don't even respond in words, they just start cocking every weapon known to man, from shotguns to thermobaric warheads.
Germany? Germany's not yelling, Germany's simmering. Slow-boiling, jaw-clenched, having flashbacks and making that face your mother makes before she ruins your entire week with one sentence.
America? Washington's groaning like someone walked in on them hiding the party mess. You can almost hear the State Department muttering, 'God dammit, Guangchou, couldn't you have waited until after the midterms?'
And the International Court of Justice? Oh, they're loving it. You've got judges flipping pages and saying, 'That's a war crime. That's an execution. That's a double-execution. That one's... let's make up a new category for that.'"
The tone may have been flippant, but the impact is anything but. Underneath the sarcasm is a growing recognition: the mask is off, the records are real, and Japan is running out of ways to deny what the world is now seeing in daylight.
Guangchou hosted a multi-nation tribunal-style conference last month, inviting representatives from across Asia and the Pacific, including both North and South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, and Pacific Island nations, among others.
The mood began with solemnity, and descended into raw outrage as document after document was displayed: transportation logs for forced labor, surgical records from human experimentation sites, testimonies of recently released victims, photographs of children used in chemical exposure tests, correspondence between wartime officials and corporate backers, etc.
Crucially, many of the names found in these files are identifiable, some currently serving in Japan's legislature, corporate boards, and scientific institutions.
Even long-divided nations found rare unity. North and South Korea issued a joint statement promising to "bring the full measure of our peoples' justice upon those responsible."
One Japanese observer described the scene as "watching the entire Pacific set its teeth."
While the revelations primarily target Japanese actions, the evidence has also reignited fierce debate over American complicity in postwar cover-ups. Among those identified as facilitators of Japan's clean postwar slate:
- Lt. General Charles Willoughby, General MacArthur's intelligence chief, who personally arranged immunity deals for members of Unit 731, Japan's infamous bioweapons research unit.
- Major General Kenner Hertford, who oversaw the "Scientific Exchange Agreements" that reportedly traded torture data for leniency.
- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose role in crafting the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty explicitly excluded language that would open the door to prosecution of many Japanese elites.
- And multiple unnamed CIA officials who, according to newly surfaced memos, advised the integration of former war criminals into Japan's Cold War leadership in order to counter Soviet influence in East Asia.
As a result, voices from the American academic and legal communities are calling for a wholesale declassification of U.S. archives related to postwar Japan. Already, Freedom of Information Act requests are surging.
The avalanche of documents has human faces, and for the first time in decades, some of those faces have come home.
Among the repatriated survivors is Lan Mihn, a woman abducted as a teenager from Guangchou's remote islandic territories in 1943. Mihn was forcibly held as a "comfort woman", a euphemism for the brutalized victims of Japan's military sexual slavery system, and remained imprisoned under false names and forged records for over four decades. She was discovered earlier this year in a sealed facility near Iwakuni and freed by a specialized retrieval team operating under strict secrecy.
Footage of her quiet return to Das Kapital shows Mihn stepping slowly onto the tarmac, her back straight, her expression unreadable, flanked by younger relatives she never thought she'd see again. According to a government statement, she died peacefully shortly after returning home.
Other survivors, ranging from forced laborers to child test subjects, have begun speaking publicly for the first time, though many require ongoing medical and psychological care. One woman, speaking through a veil at a memorial vigil, simply said:
"They tried to erase us. But here we are. We lived. They will not."
Perhaps the sharpest single reaction came from Germany, whose own national identity has been shaped by its postwar atonement.
In Berlin, members of the Bundestag have publicly criticized Tokyo's denials. One senior German minister stated:
"We were once told, 'Arbeit macht frei.' We recognize evil behind paperwork. Japan must do what we did. Admit. Acknowledge. Atonement is the only path forward."
German press outlets have begun running side-by-side comparisons of Nazi records and newly published Japanese war documents, many disturbingly similar in language, formatting, and cold bureaucratic tone.
Germany's indignation is not only moral, it is also historical. Japanese forces committed brutal war crimes in the Dutch East Indies, then under German-allied Dutch control, including mass executions of civilians and documented sexual enslavement of Dutch women and girls. While often overshadowed by the atrocities in China and Korea, these crimes left deep scars in Dutch-German memory, and are now being reexamined as part of a broader call for accountability.
Public opinion polls show German citizens overwhelmingly supporting sanctions if Japan fails to acknowledge its crimes and Netherlands have sent representative discuss with asian and oceanian nations, rumor are spread regarding their inclusion in eventual retaliation on japan.
Inside Japan, reaction is divided.
Conservative outlets have repeated government claims that the Guangchou files are "propaganda," and some Diet members have accused foreign actors of "stirring up ghosts." At the same time, university students, progressive politicians, and elder citizens have begun calling for a national reckoning.
Pop-up shrines in honor of victims have quietly appeared on side streets in Osaka and Kyoto before being ripped off a few hours later. A left-leaning Osaka newspaper printed names of victims on Page 5. The next day, its editor was gone and it published a retractation.
But unlike past cycles, international pressure this time is growing exponentially, and Guangchou shows no signs of slowing down.
At the International Court of Justice, officials confirmed that they are reviewing over 1500 pages of translated material submitted by Guangchou. The ICJ has the option to issue international arrest warrants if it deems the evidence admissible.
Meanwhile, some U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a Senate hearing on the "Guangchou Papers," while others are calling for caution, citing "regional stability."
But that may no longer be an option.
"The past isn't buried," said one delegate from Tuvalu. "We just stopped looking. Guangchou picked up the shovel."
© 1986 The Daily Republic
THE AMERICAN STANDARD
Wednesday, November 5, 1986
Page A1 — Politics & Policy
Thousands of Documents Unveiled in Politicized Tribunal; Cold War Strategy Now in Crosshairs
Calls Grow for U.S. Transparency Amid Region-Wide Outcry
By Daniel Prescott, Senior Political Editor
DAS KAPITAL, GUANGCHOU What began in 1985 as an secret investigation initiative within a rising Pacific communist power has exploded into a full-scale international confrontation, as the government of Guangchou revealed what it calls conclusive evidence of Japanese war crimes committed during and after World War II, and has invited the world to pass judgment, not only on Japan, but on the United States' role in shaping the postwar Pacific order.
The document cache, numbering in the thousands, includes transport logs, surgical records, personnel files, photographs, and correspondence allegedly tying Japanese military, political, and business leaders to forced labor, sexual slavery, and human experimentation, including incidents involving civilians from Guangchou's outer islandic territories.
In perhaps the most explosive element of the revelations, survivors abducted over four decades ago were recently recovered and repatriated by Guangchouan agents operating quietly in East Asia. State media reports confirm multiple extraction operations in occupied areas.
Guangchou's official position, stated through state-run media, is that the evidence demands international legal consequences and a moral reckoning from all involved.
While no one disputes Japan's brutal wartime record in the region, the timing, tone, and theatrical rollout of the Guangchou revelations raise questions among U.S. officials and policy analysts.
"This is a power play masquerading as moral clarity," said retired Admiral Lawrence McCreedy, now a fellow at the American Institute for Pacific Security. "Guangchou is exploiting legitimate historical crimes to embarrass its Cold War rivals and fracture U.S. alliances in Asia."
Indeed, despite the visceral nature of many documents, some experts warn that Guangchou's framing appears designed to erode American strategic credibility in the Pacific, leveraging history to redraw today's geopolitical lines.
The opening session of the Guangchou-led tribunal-style conference, attended by over a dozen Asia-Pacific nations, quickly moved from presenting evidence to orchestrating diplomatic alignment against Japan. The result was a near-unified bloc across Asia and Oceania, issuing coordinated statements demanding accountability, reparations, and in some cases, extradition of individuals tied to wartime roles who now hold corporate or political power in Tokyo.
Tokyo's immediate response was firm denial. Senior government officials dismissed the Guangchou documents as "forgeries," "political theater," and "an orchestrated effort to smear Japan's modern institutions with selective history." The Prime Minister's office warned against "a return to hostile revisionism" that could "destabilize regional peace."
But while Japan held its line, the rest of the region was already coalescing around outrage.
In capitals from Seoul to Suva, representatives from over a dozen nations delivered statements of condemnation, with some calling for formal sanctions and others publicly demanding the extradition of named individuals still active in Japanese public life. South Korea and North Korea, usually bitter rivals, issued a rare joint communiqué vowing to "pursue justice as one people, with one voice."
Australia called the documents "deeply disturbing and credible." Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines recalled certain diplomatic staff "for consultations." Even traditionally cautious New Zealand labeled the revelations "impossible to ignore."
Behind closed doors, multiple regional defense ministers have reportedly raised the possibility of restricting military cooperation with Japan unless further evidence is reviewed and acknowledged.
In short: while Japan may be issuing denials, much of Asia and Oceania is shifting toward confrontation, not conversation.
At the heart of the emerging controversy is an old but newly volatile truth: many individuals connected to Japan's wartime crimes were not prosecuted, but rather absorbed into postwar government, science, and corporate life, with American approval.
Declassified and leaked memos now circulating in U.S. press and universities point to key figures in that decision:
- Lt. Gen. Charles Willoughby, General MacArthur's intelligence chief, who brokered deals with Unit 731 scientists in exchange for their biological warfare data.
- Maj. Gen. Kenner Hertford, who managed "scientific cooperation programs" now believed to have sanitized multiple war criminals' records.
- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose role in the 1951 San Francisco Treaty shaped the postwar Japanese government and economy, intentionally shielding collaborators for the sake of anti-Soviet stability.
- Unnamed CIA operatives, alleged to have protected former military leaders now identified in the Guangchou documents as linked to atrocities, for fear of Soviet or Chinese exploitation of their downfall.
"The tradeoff was made in 1947," says Dr. Joseph Hayler, a Cold War historian at Georgetown. "Moral accountability was set aside in favor of regional containment. Now we're being called out for the bill."
In the emotional core of the conference were the newly repatriated survivors.
Lan Mihn, a former teenage captive taken from Guangchou's outer territories in 1943, was recovered from a concealed facility in Iwakuni. Video aired by Guangchouan media shows her returning home, gaunt but standing, walking aided off a military transport ramp. She died peacefully shortly afater.
Her testimony, along with others, including former laborers, "comfort women," and surviving child test subjects, has become central to Guangchou's public campaign. Memorial footage aired internationally shows a survivor stating:
"They tried to erase us. But here we are. We lived. They will not."
Even critics of Guangchou's strategic motives concede the power of these stories.
"We can question the choreography without denying the trauma," said Senator Bill Stratton (R-KS). "But let's be clear: this doesn't mean we abandon Japan. It means we proceed carefully, with facts, not fury."
Perhaps the sharpest alignment with Guangchou has come from Germany, which has long anchored its postwar identity on acknowledgment and atonement.
German ministers have issued rare direct criticism of Japan, with one member of the Bundestag stating:
"We were once told 'Arbeit macht frei.' We recognize evil behind paper. We did our reckoning. It is Japan's turn."
German and Dutch newspapers are now publishing side-by-side comparisons of Nazi war crimes documentation and Japanese archives released by Guangchou, some eerily similar in format and bureaucratic tone.
The International Court of Justice has confirmed it is reviewing more than 1,500 translated pages from the Guangchou submission. Legal experts warn that international warrants or travel restrictions for certain Japanese officials are "not off the table."
In Washington, several members of Congress, mainly Democrats, but a handful of Republican moderates, have called for declassification of U.S. intelligence relating to postwar Japanese integration.
Others caution against self-sabotage.
"We cannot undo the Cold War," said Rep. Gerald Klein (R-NC). "But we can support truth, accountability, and regional stability. That begins with measured inquiry, not performative guilt."
Meanwhile, Guangchou has made clear it intends to keep the pressure on.
A second tranche of documents is rumored to be in translation. Multiple Pacific nations, including Australia and the Philippines, have signaled openness to sanctions or trade pressure if Tokyo fails to respond.
It is too early to say how this will end. But it's already clear how it's begun: not with war drums or rocket launches, but with paper. With names. With records. With truth laid bare.
And the world is watching, not through the lens of history, but through the mirrors of the present.
© 1986 The American Standard Guarding freedom, Word by Word
Wednesday, November 5, 1986
Front Page Global Affairs & Ethics
Thousands of Pages of Japanese WWII Atrocities Unsealed
Survivors Returned, the Pacific Roars, and America Must Finally Answer for the Cost of Convenience
By Margo Elson, Global Justice Correspondent
DAS KAPITAL, GUANGCHOU They said it wouldn't matter. That no one would remember. That history, given enough time and tape recorders, could be muffled. They said it wasn't convenient to look too closely at the past.
Then Guangchou looked anyway.
This week, the small but defiant communist archipelago between Taiwan and Japan released the results of its year-long investigation into Japanese war crimes and atrocities committed during and after World War II, and in doing so, it shattered decades of denial, silence, and postwar Realpolitik across two oceans.
Thousands of pages. Names. Files. Orders. Logs. Photographs. Records so precise they left little room for interpretation, only for shame.
And alongside them: the survivors. Found. Returned. Speaking.
For the first time in 40 years, justice is not being requested. It is being taken.
Guangchou's release of their investigation details an encyclopedic volume of
state-sanctioned Japanese atrocities, including:
- Systematic sexual enslavement ("comfort women") of not only Guangchouan islanders but womens from all around asia and oceania, some held in captivity until this year.
- Vivisections, germ warfare experiments, and chemical testing performed on abducted civilians,younger than eight.
- Corporate complicity from major Japanese firms that continue to exist today.
- Personal memos, internal briefings, and logistical maps that clearly place living Japanese figures in positions of responsibility.
This isn't rumor. It isn't speculation. It isn't anecdote.
It's paperwork.
And for the first time in decades, that paperwork is being read.
The world has heard survivor testimony before, but never like this.
Lan Mihn, abducted in 1943 from Guangchou's outer islandic territories and held as a military sex slave for over 40 years, was rescued by Guangchouan operatives from a hidden site near Iwakuni earlier this year. Her quiet return to Das Kapital andd peacefull death not long after made international headlines.
At her memorial, another survivor, speaking veiled from behind a screen, simply said
"They tried to erase us. But here we are. We lived. They will not."
Japan's official reaction has been a tired rerun of 1947: denials, deflections, accusations of slander and foreign interference, a script worn thin by repetition. Government spokespeople called the files "fabricated," "politically motivated," and "anti-Japanese agitation." In other words, the usual.
The rest of the world, however, was not playing along.
Across Asia and Oceania, the mood shifted from grief to fury, and the diplomatic tone turned militaristic. You could almost hear the regional bloc metaphorically cocking every kind of weapon.
Germany didn't shout. It simmered. A slow, jaw-clenched fury gripped Berlin as lawmakers recognized all too clearly the pattern in the pages, the same cold paperwork, the same bureaucratic phrasing, the same systemized horror they once unleashed on Europe.
The U.S. government? Split and groaning. While some voices called for reflection, others sounded more like frustrated parents walking into a room full of broken glass and cigarette smoke muttering: "God dammit, Guangchou, couldn't you have waited until after the midterms?"
And the International Court of Justice? Delighted to finaly have the evidence and oportunity to strike. Sources close to the tribunal say judges were practically flipping through files like a grim bingo card, marking war crimes, crimes against humanity, double-executions, and in at least one case, inventing new legal terminology just to capture the scale of depravity.
It would be funny, if it weren't real.
Let's be clear: Japan committed these crimes.
But we let the criminals go free.
- Lt. General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chief, traded justice for data, specifically, the results of biological warfare experiments on human subjects.
- Major General Kenner Hertford created the "Scientific Exchange" agreements that laundered the reputations of torturers.
- John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, deliberately excluded justice from the San Francisco Peace Treaty, prioritizing Cold War strategy over human dignity.
- Multiple CIA and OSS operatives maintained files proving the guilt of postwar Japanese officials, then helped place them into power.
These aren't fringe accusations. They are now public record.
And for anyone who's spent decades asking, "Why did Japan get a free pass?" the answer has always been: because we gave them one.
Perhaps the most striking reaction came from Germany, where lawmakers and survivors of the Third Reich have reacted with cold disgust.
"We were once told 'Arbeit macht frei.' We recognize evil behind a memo. Japan must do what we did. Admit. Acknowledge. Atone."
Across the Bundestag and major German papers, side-by-side comparisons between Nazi documentation and the Japanese war files now flood headlines.
The symmetry is unmistakable. So is the shame.
Let's not pretend this was accidental.
Guangchou didn't shout. It documented.
It didn't demand resignations. It let the evidence speak.
It didn't ask the world to believe. It showed the world what was already there, hidden in plain sight, preserved in basements, waiting for someone brave enough to open the box.
And now the box is open, and the ghosts are speaking.
The result is nothing less than a diplomatic uprising across the Pacific. North and South Korea released a joint declaration for the first time in a decade. The Philippines is rumbling with military fury. Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Vietnam have all issued scathing communiqués demanding action from Tokyo.
The International Court of Justice confirmed it is reviewing over 1,500 translated documents, with preliminary rulings possible before year's end. Arrest warrants for named individuals are already being prepared.
In Washington, pressure is mounting. A growing coalition of Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Kennedy, Cranston, and Harkin, have called for a Senate Inquiry into U.S. postwar cover-ups and a full declassification of related archives.
"We cannot claim moral leadership," Senator Harkin said Monday, "if we're still hiding which devils we shook hands with."
Meanwhile, Republicans are split, some calling for restraint, others warning of destabilizing alliances.
But restraint may no longer be on the table.
We were told history doesn't forget.
But it does. It's taught to. Conditioned to. Sanitized until it becomes decoration for textbooks.
What Guangchou has done is not perfect. It is not gentle. It is not diplomatic.
But it is justice.
And justice, when denied long enough, returns not as an apology, but as a storm.
© 1986 The American Ledger Proudly Watching the Sky with Both Eyes Open
I would be happy to hear any constructive critisism or modification suggestion if i missed something or got it wrong.
Hope you like it.
Any thoughts ?
One of herocooky post inspired a bit of it
Herocooky here ther non-guang people saved too ?
eddit:
could someone post something please ?, i have good hope of finishing an omake before sleep and don't want to double post
