Motoya Thank you very much for joining me on Big Talk today.
Mizuma Thank you for having me. Instead of bringing a gift, I have with me one historical record: a classified telegram from the late Ryuzo Sejima – who negotiated a ceasefire with the Soviet Union as a staff officer in the Kwantung Army – to the vice chief of staff of the Imperial General Headquarters.
Motoya It says, “Regarding the atomic bomb storage, the unexploded atomic bomb brought from Nagasaki to Tokyo should be promptly given into the safekeeping of the Soviet embassy.” Was there an unexploded atomic bomb in Nagasaki?
Mizuma Yes. When this telegram was publically released by the Soviet Union due to Perestroika, to confirm whether it was true I interviewed Shigeharu Asaeda, an Imperial General Headquarters staff officer. He denied the existence of an unexploded bomb, saying it was actually a radiosonde, a type of weather observation equipment. But radiosondes are devices that weigh around 200 grams, so there’s no way they could be mistaken for atomic bombs. I attempted to publicize this matter in Seiron around eight years ago, but the editorial department said I could not write anything about Sejima without his approval, so I gave up.
Motoya You have discovered different types of hidden information, and released it via media such as magazines. You also gave a talk at the Kanazawa Shoheijuku school the other day. How do you obtain this information?
Mizuma I began my research on modern history in the 1980s after reading Justice Pal’s Theory of Japan’s Innocence by Masaaki Tanaka. I wanted to ask Tanaka something, so I called him on the telephone. I lived close to his home in Kichijoji, and so he ended up teaching me many things. But even Tanaka possessed no decisive evidence that repudiates the Nanking Massacre. I keenly felt the need for materials that would persuade non-Japanese people and the left wing, even when used in trials. I began searching, which was the start of my research. Most people abandon their quest if the materials they are looking for are not in the National Diet Library, but I did not give up hope. I guess that’s what distinguishes me from other people.
Motoya You have conducted a great deal of research on the Nanking Massacre.
Mizuma Yes. The impetus for my research was my faith that my grandfather and the Japanese people of his generation did not perpetrate cruel acts like the Nanking Massacre, as China insists.
Motoya I agree entirely.
Mizuma However, people outside of Japan do not understand this incident very well since they are not interested in Japanese or Chinese history. Because they do not know much, they simply believe in the Nanking Massacre as the media describes it. The February 1938 League of Nations conference censured the various acts of the Japanese Army in China. However, no decisions were made regarding the Nanking Massacre, which I believe is decisive proof that it did not happen.
Motoya I think so, too.
Mizuma In addition, China claims that the Nanking Massacre can be compared to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. If that were true, the ringleaders would have been charged with crimes against humanity, and would have been judged at the Tokyo Trials as Class A or B war criminals. But Iwane Matsui, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Army when it entered Nanking, was only found guiltily of one count of Class B/C war crime, for which he was executed. General Matsui was found innocent of crimes against humanity, the count for Class A war crime (ex post facto law). In other words, the Tokyo Trials proved the Nanking Massacre was not a holocaust.
Motoya That has great persuasive power.
Mizuma This might be more understandable to non-Japanese people, too. Moreover, it is not generally known that the crime of perjury was not applied at the Tokyo Trials. Documents were used as written evidence describing one Chinese person with an injured leg counting 57,418 dead bodies in the vicinity of Nanking.
Motoya They are saying whatever they want.
Mizuma When I tell this to Chinese people, they burst out laughing, perhaps because they know it cannot be true.
 

Motoya After the end of the Cold War, it seemed like the world had been stabilized by the United States’ unipolar control. However, different types of issues immediately rose to the surface. The U.S. formed close ties with Saudi Arabia to acquire oil, and has intervened in this region via the Gulf War and Iraq War. However, American interests in the Middle East have rapidly declined because of shale gas development, and its relationship with Saudi Arabia is also deteriorating.
Mizuma The U.S. having its own energy source once again will definitely be a major turning point in history.
Motoya The oil surplus has resulted in lower prices across the world. Yet Japan, which has stopped operating all of its nuclear power plants, is purchasing oil at high prices under long-term contracts from the past to produce thermal power. The increased amount is roughly four trillion yen per year. This is absurd, and we must stop it as soon as possible.
Mizuma I feel that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should make a decision and dedicate a budget for accelerating the practical implementation of methane hydrate.
Motoya Before that, I think we should prioritize restarting the nuclear power plants. If we rapidly restarted nuclear plants for which safety had been confirmed, this four trillion yen would be unnecessary. Japan has the most advanced nuclear technologies in the world, and concern about safety has only grown due to the recent accident. By exporting these nuclear plants overseas, we could obstruct the proliferation of inferior nuclear plants made in China and South Korea, which would contribute to global safety. Either way, I believe we should start by operating these plants once again.
Mizuma To that end, it will be necessary to disclose information in a thorough way. An accident occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but the No. 2 plant was unharmed even though it was hit by the same tsunami. Why was that?
Motoya No. 1 was an old nuclear plant made by GE, but No. 2 was produced by Hitachi. The media should fully report on this as well. I think the news should also cover the nuclear accident in a way that is based on scientific proof and statistical calculations, but the Japanese media has not been able to do so.
Mizuma That is the media’s shortcoming that has existed since the end of the war. I can’t help but feel that it is an incurable illness.
Motoya The Japanese media reports enthusiastically on things that will harm Japan, but it ignores positive stories. We should think about how much this has harmed Japan’s national interests.
Mizuma Katsuto Momii, the new chairman of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), has been criticized by many media outlets for his press conference when he assumed office and other reasons. But I think we’ve never had a chairman like Momii who has declared he will create programs that conform to the Broadcast Act.
Motoya It seems like NHK is moving in a respectable direction; for example, author Naoki Hyakuta was made a member of the Management Committee.
Mizuma The morning drama series Gochisosan that was broadcast until March contained multiple scenes showing how radio stations were censored by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ). The name of the Civil Information and Educational Section, the censorship institution, was also spoken and shown in subtitles. NHK recognizing that it has regulated freedom and speech is itself a revolutionary change, which I think is due to Momii.
Motoya This is groundbreaking. The press code determined by the GHQ as a censorship standard for news organizations impacted Japan after the end of the war and continues doing so today. Many Japanese people are not aware of this.
Mizuma At first pre-publication censorship was performed. For instance, refrigerator ads were used to cover up portions of newspaper articles. But after some time passed, the censorship was performed after the fact. All copies of printed material to be censored were burned, causing great economic loss. That’s why voluntary restraints came into play. For five to six years after the Treaty of San Francisco came into effect in 1952, the U.S. regulated pulp paper in Japan, and even had life-and-death power over some newspaper companies.
Motoya People don’t realize that. It is important to disclose information in Japan while also transmitting information in English to overseas countries. The overseas media often writes bad articles about Japan, so we must share good information. I believe we should establish a Ministry of Information with 3,000 employees and a budget of 300 billion yen. This ministry would be in charge of sharing information and also checking media across the world. If a mistaken report was discovered, acts should be taken to refute it within 24 hours.
Mizuma I agree. Japan cannot obtain nuclear arms because the U.S. prohibits doing so, but we should use information as a weapon.
 

Motoya War was made illegal, so military conflicts between nations have decreased. Instead, wars of information strategy are conducted with information serving as weapons.
Mizuma In the past, Colonel Motojiro Akashi put his life on the line for the sake of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War in the field of information strategy warfare. How many people today would give their lives to protect their country?
Motoya The source of this evil is the “stealth complex” that connects bureaucrats, financiers, lawyers, and members of the media who are graduates of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Law. The U.S. gives favorable treatment to this ruling class and has continually divided and ruled Japan according to its general principle of “divide and conquer.” I think it’s good to see people like yourself and Toshio Nishi, who wrote Kuniyaburete MacArthur (“The Invasion of MacArthur”), who analyze the primary information that has been released and proclaim it to the world. However, the Japanese media and historians disregard even new historical truths. By all rights, we should reconstruct history by adding these new facts in way that is consistent. This is why the old historical viewpoints are still generally accepted.
Mizuma When a new fact is announced, people who oppose me clearly quiet down for one or two years. I wish politicians would use these new facts more often…
Motoya The single-member constituency system makes it so politicians cannot be elected easily if the media deems them as suspicious, so politicians do not strike back very often. The ideal is having many different media outlets with viewpoints spanning from the left to right wing, but even the Sankei Shimbun newspaper cannot overcome the wall of the press code.
Mizuma That is true. Chinese President Xi Jinping went to Berlin, Germany in March, where he gave a speech criticizing Japan for the Nanking Massacre. The talk by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga in response to this only focused on the number of victims. I think the problem is that bureaucrats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) write these replies.
Motoya We should deny things like the Nanking Massacre in a head-on way. The Japanese Army was subjected to strict military discipline, so soldiers who killed massive numbers of civilians would have been court-martialed and instantly shot to death. The West European countries are emulating China and South Korea by attacking Japan on historical issues. I would like to warn them that, if they continue, their actions will rebound – over how many years did the Western European countries keep perpetrating inhuman acts, including slavery and colonialism? Censuring Japan for fabricated, cruel deeds will certainly lead to criticisms in the future of what these countries have actually done in the past.
Mizuma Also, Suga should make objections based on historical facts. Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall Director Zhu Chengshan spoke of the number of victims of the Nanking Massacre, opposing Suga based on the testimony of Major Toshio Ota , who said 150,000 people had been killed. But other documents have proved that Ota was not in Nanking on the day of the massacre. In other words, upon investigation it is clear that Ota’s testimony was a purposeful falsehood, which has been accepted on a scholarly basis. The background of Zhu Chengshan’s objection based on this false foundation is that the Japanese MOFA has not fully insisted that this information is mistaken.
Motoya An objection should be made each time.
Mizuma Yes. In addition, panels about the forced transportation of comfort women are displayed at the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in New York. A portion of the many Jewish organizations is cooperating with South Korea. However, the person of Japanese descent who sued the City of Glendale to take down the comfort woman statue had a prominent Jewish lawyer. When different types of evidence are presented at the trial in the future, I think we will be able to share this with the world more.
Motoya The American public records office contains a record of questions posed to comfort women by the U.S. Armed Forces in 1944. It describes how the comfort women lived with the Japanese soldiers in an enjoyable way, showing they were not sex slaves.
Mizuma In contrast, South Korea established comfort stations directly managed by the state during the Korean War.
Motoya The Korean Army’s Tiger Division did many cruel things during the Vietnam War as well. They committed sexual assaults that produced great numbers of children of mixed blood, called “Lai Dai Han.”
Mizuma Even the South Korean media says the number of Lai Dai Han is from several thousand to 30,000 people. The Chinese have also acted in very brutal ways. An example is the Tungchow Mutiny on July 19, 1937, in which Japanese residents were attacked by the Chinese forces, and the bellies of pregnant women were even cut open.
Motoya Japanese people would never do that.
Mizuma The U.S. has traditionally supported China. In 1933, an American diplomat named Ralph Townsend wrote a book called Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China that denounced China and championed Japan. But the sale of this book was prohibited, and Townsend was imprisoned afterwards. At that time, the U.S. allowed no criticisms of China.
Motoya That is exactly the “traditional U.S.-China relationship” mentioned in the dialogue between U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971. They discussed topics such as not allowing Japan to re-arm.
Mizuma Secretary of State John Hay declared the Open Door Policy in 1899. Since the U.S.’s belated expansion into China, once can say that being pro-Chinese is an American tradition.
Motoya It’s true that the Chinese market and labor force are still attractive today.
Mizuma Sufficient documents are also required to oppose the U.S.-China relationship. The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, and was mostly ended by the Battle of Wuhan 1.5 years later. In 1940, He Yingqin, the number two figure in the Kuomintang after Chiang Kai-shek, drew up a military report that said 720,000 Chinese people had died and one million had been wounded in this war. Jiang Zemin stated in 1995 that 35 million Chinese people died, which makes no sense. Materials of this type can be used as weapons.
Motoya That’s certainly true. The MOFA should utilize such materials more often.
 

Motoya Even if citizens of the same country draw lines around their territories, these lines will someday be erased. But if foreign powers become involved in this, the divisions will last forever. It is not good for the entire world if foreign weapons are brought in and the country becomes like a training school for guerillas. I expect great things of the Syrian government’s abilities in the future.
Motoya Japan lost in World War II, as was bound to happen. Repeated map exercises showed that victory was not possible, and the navy and diplomatic codes had been deciphered. Isoroku Yamamoto said, “If I’m told to fight, I will show you a fierce fight over the first six months or one year. But conviction cannot be maintained for two or three years.” Despite this, he was greatly responsible for the navy. But with wars, the most important thing is how they end…
Mizuma Soong May-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, had experience studying abroad in the U.S. She apparently brainwashed the Americans into thinking it would profit from fighting with the “bad country” of Japan. At that time, the Japanese government did not carry out any countermeasures, which closely resembles the situation today.
Motoya As shown by the situation in Ukraine, today the U.S. is turning inward and vacuums are being created across the globe. This is very perilous for Japan.
Mizuma Japan does not have great military strength, so it must fill these vacuums using information. The September 2013 issue of Foreign Policy, an American diplomacy journal, said that career bureaucrats in the Japanese MOFA possess a map made by the Chinese government in 1969. This map clearly shows the Senkaku Islands are part of Japan’s territory, yet it hasn’t be posted on the MOFA website. I think this is criminal negligence.
Motoya The Chinese school is influential, and the MOFA has traditionally been pro-China.
Mizuma The reason that China and South Korea have incessantly attacked Japan to this degree on historical issues is that they want to create an internal public opinion so they can obtain the Senkaku Islands and Takeshima. In addition, I can’t help but feel they are constructing alibis to maintain legitimacy if a military conflict were to occur.
Motoya I think China uses Japan to create civilian solidarity and establish a structure under Xi Jinping; no one knows when China will split apart and fall into civil war.
Mizuma Two attempted assassinations have already been carried out against Xi Jinping, and he is certainly frightened. Surprisingly, the U.S. doesn’t understand that China is attempting to move into the Pacific Ocean. Chinese people believe the U.S. will belong to them 200 years in the future.
Motoya And the U.S. will soon become a colored country where white people comprise less than half of the population.
Mizuma I’ve seen news saying that restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco are posting signs saying, “We speak English,” which shows the increased number of Hispanic people. It’s wrong to say that American justice is international justice; the U.S. is focused on money.
Motoya The Vietnam War was not conducted for national interests, but for the sake of defense contractors.
Mizuma In the 1970s, one of every four Americans did jobs related to the defense industry.
Motoya Japan has supported the U.S. by purchasing its government bonds, which is the same as handing it money. Former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto attempted to have this be repaid, but he was abandoned b y the U.S. and forced to retire.
Mizuma To give aid to Ukraine and Ireland, which were facing danger after the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, in 2009 (when Shoichi Nakagawa was minister of finance) American government bonds totaling 100 billion dollars were deposited in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said this action was the biggest contribution in the history of humankind. Nakagawa gave his drunken press conference one hour later, and Strauss-Kahn was arrested on the suspicion of sexual harassment in a New York hotel. I feel like this must be a plot of some type.
Motoya On the other hand, look at South Korea. Its security guarantees depend on the U.S., but according to the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement the U.S. Forces in Japan cannot function without cooperation from Japan. This means antagonizing Japan should provide no benefits to South Korea. The present circumstances show that South Korea is daunted by the threat of North Korea.
Mizuma It’s true that South Korea has worked with the Asahi Shimbun in the past to make noise about the comfort women and other issues, by which it obtained money from Japan. But many people are learning the truth because of the widespread usage of the Internet, and the Japanese government’s attitude has changed as well. President Park Geun-hye is not reading this situation correctly. If the Internet were not available and only the old-fashioned media existed, Japan would have been broken a long time ago.
Motoya The Internet is very powerful. In the February gubernatorial election as well, the online public opinion polls and what the media said were entirely different. Toshio Tamogami had significant support among people in their 20s, who are the most familiar with the Internet.
Mizuma Media outlets that don’t understand this will probably be destroyed.
Motoya I look forward to seeing what happens several dozens of years in the future (laughs). At the end of the interview, I always ask for a “word for the youth.”
Mizuma If you feel confused when learning about history, I hope you will confirm the primary sources first and think with your own brain.
Motoya It’s not good to just believe what school textbooks teach; one must master the custom of thinking.
Mizuma Yes, that’s true.
Motoya Thank you very much for joining me today.
 

Masanori Mizuma
Born in Hokkaido in 1950. Mizuma withdrew from the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Keio University. Narrowing his focus to fabricated views of modern history, he is engaged in research and study based on primary historical records. He published “Scoop: The ‘Abandoned’ Chemical Weapons Were Handed Over to China” (Part 1) in the June 2006 issue of Seiron magazine. Afterwards, this series was expanded to 10 parts in collaboration with Member of the House of Representatives Toru Toida and Speaker of the House of Representatives Hitoshi Matsubara, which obstructed China’s desire to receive up to 60 trillion yen. His research reports are published in magazines including Seiron and Sapio. His best-selling books include the At One Glance series. His latest book is At Once Glance: The Reality in Pre-war Japan, 1936 – 1945 (PHP Institute). He also appears frequently on television and radio news programs, including Fuji Television.