The War Guilt Information Program (WGIP; a plan to implant a sense of culpability for the war among the Japanese people), which was begun by the United States for its government of Japan after World War II, has steadily resulted in negative impacts. Masochistic Japanese people (“anti-Japanese Japanese people”) spread baseless theories with no scientific evidence or foundation in statistical probability (even though they know the truth) and constantly act and scheme to Japan’s detriment. In addition, the media in particular has made South Korea, China, and even the U.S. have anti-Japanese sentiments today.
There is a field of scholarship called “theoretical physics.” It involves logically analyzing the results of experiments and observations and then coming up with theories. Up until now I have visited 81 countries across the world and have engaged in debates with influential persons including the leaders of various nations. I have also continued writing essays on today’s Japan in this magazine, Apple Town, for the past 23 years. In 2008 I founded the “True Interpretations of Modern History” essay contest, and in 2011 I established the Shoheijuku school. I have constantly provided opportunities to seek the truth in a scientific, logical manner. I have frequently discussed awareness of modern history in these ways, and have pursued the truth by cultivating a view of history based on new information and historical backgrounds without being bound by established theories. As one facet of this, I am currently writing a book entitled Theoretical Modern History, emulating the term “theoretical physics.” Just like theoretical physics, theoretical modern history involves assembling a large number of historical facts and verifying – in a composed manner – whether they are probable from a logical standpoint, spanning from old facts to things that have been recently identified. In the introduction to this book I specifically discuss ten historical facts, and my assertions are as follows.
The Huanggutun Incident occurred on June 4, 1928. Since the immediate aftermath this incident has been regarded as the work of Colonel Daisaku Komoto of the Kwantung Army, and the accepted explanation says this was the starting point of Japan’s invasion of China. Looking at photographs of the bombing taken at that time, the ceiling of the passenger car suffered significant damage, which means the explosion must have taken place inside of the car. Yet Komoto gave testimony saying he had blown up a bridge pier at the place where the Jingfeng Railway and Manchurian Railway crossed, which was quite different from what really happened. A scientific inquiry certainly does not conclude that Komoto committed this offense, but historians have yet to change this established theory.
China insists that 300,000 civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese Army during the so-called “Nanking Massacre,” yet the population of Nanking at that time was 200,000 people. According to a survey conducted by the Japanese Army two months after entering Nanking, the population had increased to 250,000 people. Thinking logically, one can only assume that no massacre took place. South Korea says that 200,000 women were forcibly transported as “comfort women” from the Korean Peninsula, but why did not one Korean man protest at that time? There are also no records of insurrections or protests. In contrast, the March 30, 2015 edition of the Sankei Shimbun newspaper contained an article saying that South Korea’s construction of a military brothel in Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City) during the Vietnam War, and its forcing of Vietnamese women to serve as comfort women, had been discovered in the American National Archives.
American President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew information about the attack on Pearl Harbor ahead of time, but he made the aircraft carriers and new warships leave Pearl Harbor for an “exercise.” Even though it was Sunday, more officers and men than the fixed number of regular personnel were stationed on the USS Arizona, which was sunk due to a secondary explosion at the powder magazine. A total of 2,400 men died in this attack, half (1,200) of which were on the USS Arizona. In general, the powder magazine at the ship’s bottom is not induced to explode by an aircraft bombing. In the past the U.S. blew up and sunk its own USS Maine. It then used the slogan “Remember the Maine” to inspire the citizens to fight against Spain, began warring with Spain, and snatched away Guam and the Philippines. The U.S. did the same thing at Pearl Harbor.
American Secretary of State James F. Byrnes contributed greatly to the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Byrnes, who possessed political power, rejected the opposition of all supreme army leaders – including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal – regarding the dropping of the atomic bombs without warning or notice. Harry S. Truman only learned about the atomic bombs after he became president due to Roosevelt’s sudden death, and Byrnes encouraged Truman by saying that the atomic bombs were the only way to stop the world from being communized by the Soviet Union. The Cold War broke out, without becoming World War III, due to Byrnes’ cool-headed judgment.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the GHQ thoroughly brainwashed the Japanese people after the war because the U.S. had to keep being regarded as a good country – even though it dropped the atomic bombs without warning – and ensure that the Japanese people had no desire for revenge. Therefore, the U.S. completely instilled the Japanese people with the way of thinking that said all responsibility was held by the militarists who conducted a nefarious, aggressive war, and that the U.S. was the champion of justice that had liberated the citizens from these militarists. The GHQ conducted the WGIP for the sake of this brainwashing. Based on this, it prohibited acts including investigations, the creation of documentary films, and news reports on the atomic bombs. Directly after the occupation began, on September 18 The Asahi Shimbun newspaper printed a statement by Ichiro Hatoyama, who said the atomic bombs were a war crime that violated international laws. The GHQ punished this newspaper with a two-day publishing ban. The following day (September 19), it released the 30-item Press Code in violation of the constitution that guaranteed free speech. In this way, it continually and surreptitiously suppressed speech in a way that was unparalleled in Japanese history. The first item of this Press Code banned criticisms of the SCAP or GHQ, the second banned criticisms of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and the third banned criticisms of the fact that the GHQ drafted the constitution. In other words, it prohibited criticisms of the GHQ’s drafting of the constitution that would be created after that point.
The train-bombing incident that occurred at Ryongchon Station in 2004 was an attempted assassination of Kim Jong Il from North Korea, who was carrying out nuclear development, by Chinese Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin. Kim Jong Il was the successor to the Kim dynasty and judged that it would not last if nuclear development was abandoned. In 1994 his father Kim Il Sung took part in a dialogue with former American President Jimmy Carter, saying that North Korea would abandon nuclear development in exchange for the provision of large amounts of oil and light-water reactors at no charge. Kim Jong Il excluded his father, seized power, and continued secret nuclear development. This provided a major incentive for Jiang Zemin to assassinate Kim Jong Il. I suspect that a portion of the North Korean Army was receiving instructions from and cooperating with the Chinese Army intelligence division; based on the pretext of conducting soil stabilization work on a branch line along the main line, they probably disguised 800 tons of TNT (enough to destroy the entire line) as sandbags and buried them beneath the branch line.
Takeshima has long been under the dominion of Japan, and Japan’s possession of this island was recognized by the Treaty of San Francisco that came into effect in 1952. Over the seven months between the signing of the treaty and its coming into effect, South Korean President Syngman Rhee declared the “Syngman Rhee Line” that included Takeshima and claimed that Takeshima belonged to South Korea. Japanese fishing boats that approached the island were shot at or seized. The South Korean Dokdo Defense Volunteer Corps was stationed on Takeshima in April 1953, which is nothing but a military invasion. The military occupation of Takeshima has continued since that time.
Japanese people used to live on the Senkaku Islands and a katsuobushi (dried bonito flake) manufacturing plant was located there. The islands were owned by Japanese people and were clearly Japanese territories, yet in 1971 China began claiming that it owned these islands. This is because a 1969 survey by the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) had identified vast amounts of marine resources including oil.
Finally, I discuss the defense industry that desires war. Perhaps because Japan has been brainwashed by the U.S. (which says that militarism is evil), in Japan it is thought that military personnel wish to fight. However, in every country the people that most wish to avoid war are the soldiers that stand on the front during emergencies, followed by the ordinary citizens that are their family members. War is unending because the defense contractors wish for war. According to one theory, the defense industry – which wanted to wage the Vietnam War – assassinated President John F. Kennedy in order to promote Lyndon B. Johnson, who would go along with their will. In this way, in Theoretical Modern History I state logical considerations while using various historical events as examples.
On April 15, the front pages of various newspapers were taken up by the provisional disposition by the Fukui District Court forbidding the re-starting of the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant. The Yomiuri Shimbun article read as follows:
On April 14, the Fukui District Court decided on a provisional disposition ordering the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) not to re-start Units 3 and 4 at the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant (Takahama-cho, Fukui Prefecture), which is currently shut down. Presiding Judge Hideaki Higuchi approved the request submitted by people from four prefectures including Fukui, saying, “The new standard determined by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is too lenient and lacks rationality. Even plants that meet this standard are not guaranteed to be safe.” This is the first provisional disposition prohibiting the operation of a nuclear power plant, including re-starting. KEPCO disagrees with this decision; it is objecting to the court and requesting a stay of execution.
Unlike judicial decisions in litigation, provisional dispositions take effect immediately in order to prevent imminent danger. In February Takahama Units 3 and 4 met the new standard inspired by the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the second instance across Japan of NRA’s safety inspections being cleared. KEPCO is aiming to re-start these units by November, but cannot do so until the decision is changed via judiciary proceedings.
The decision attaches importance to the fact that five earthquakes at four nuclear power plants in Japan have exceeded the predicted seismic motion since 2005, and pointed out that there is no basis to inspire trust in Takahama’s prediction alone.
The third page of The Yomiuri Shimbun contained an article entitled, “Negating Scientific Findings: An Intelligent Person Criticizes this Conclusion Biased Towards Total Safety.” This article censuring the provisional disposition read:
The new standard includes drastically enhanced countermeasures against major accidents, earthquakes, and tsunamis, based on the lessons learned during the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident. NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka bragged, “It is the strictest standard in the world.” In February of this year Takahama Units 3 and 4 cleared this standard after roughly 70 safety inspections over one year and seven months. In response, Presiding Judge Higuchi only held two hearings between the request for a provisional disposition that was submitted last December and March of this year. He also did not allow written opinions to be submitted by experts, which KEPCO requested. This decision – just like the judicial decision made last May ordering the halting of operations at KEPCO’s Ooi Nuclear Power Plant Units 3 and 4 (Ooi-cho, Fukui Prefecture) – indicates a stance of demanding “zero risk” and the total safety of nuclear power plants according to a unique logic. However, many people criticize this. Chuo University Graduate School of Law Professor Jun Masuda (civil law), a former judge at the Tokyo High Court, pointed out, “From the start the conclusion was that absolute safety is required, based on a sense of anxiety since we do not know when an earthquake will strike a nuclear power plant. The judge is not a nuclear specialist and must have a sense of humility regarding scientific knowledge, but I doubt whether he had this attitude.”
There are no absolutes in this world, and it is true that an accident occurred at Fukushima Daiichi. But despite the fact that the nuclear power station withstood the shaking during the Great East Japan Earthquake – an earthquake of a scale that only happens once every thousand years – the electrical system was flooded by the tsunami that occurred afterwards. All power was lost and it became impossible to cool the nuclear reactors, which is what caused the accident. The fuel rods reached high temperatures and the zirconium cladding reacted with water, producing hydrogen. The hydrogen moved through the plumbing and damaged places in the containers, leaking into the building and causing hydrogen explosions. The accident was of an entirely different sort than Chernobyl, where the atomic reactor itself exploded. Furthermore, the poor handling of the accident by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government aggravated the circumstances. Medical science tells us that there are no examples of an increased risk of cancer with cumulative radiation exposure at or under 100 millisieverts per year, yet it was decided to decontaminate areas with more than one millisievert. Japan’s average background radiation is 1.4 millisieverts, yet a decision was made to carry out decontamination at all locations exceeding one millisievert, which is less than the average amount of background radiation across the globe (2.4 millisieverts). Many people from Tohoku are doing large-scale decontamination work at high wages with danger pay included. These migrant workers no longer come to the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has resulted in a serious labor shortage mainly in the construction industry. As a result, astronomical losses are occurring due to delayed building times and steeply rising construction costs.
Another failure of the DPJ administration was how it determined an evacuation zone shaped like a concentric circle without taking the direction of the wind into consideration. Many people ended up being exposed to more radiation because they evacuated from upwind to downwind. The government also forcibly evacuated people according to an extremely strict standard from regions with 20 or more millisieverts of cumulative radiation per year, which was not based on scientific evidence. This caused more than 3,000 people to perish in “earthquake-related deaths.” They would not have died if they hadn’t been evacuated, and not one person has died from radiation exposure. There is no scientific basis to the thinking that says zero radiation is best and even a little is bad; after all, natural radiation exists across the world and is a blessing from the sun. Just like the Ramsar region of Iran, there are places where people are exposed to 400 millisieverts of background radiation per year. Yet people live their whole lives in these areas, have children, and are healthy. Airplane pilots and astronauts are exposed to considerable amounts of radiation, and X-rays and CT scans also involve exposure. Some people even go to radium or radon hot springs. Considering these things in a comprehensive way, there is absolutely no scientific basis to decontaminating areas with one millisievert or forcibly vacating people from areas with 20 millisieverts. This is extremely illogical and is not based on calculations of statistical probability.
The attitude that says standards should be as strict as possible is absurd. The Japanese standard for water radioactivity is 10 becquerels per liter, but the American standard is 1,200 becquerels and the European standard is 1,000 becquerels. People in Japan refer to water that exceeds this standard as “highly contaminated water,” but people in the U.S. and Europe drink coffee made from this water. This stance based on the emotion of wanting the strictest standards – which is not based on scientific evidence – also applies to historical awareness. There is a way of thinking that says Japan should be as masochistic as possible in regards to its aggression. Just like clear proof is required for radiation standards, clear proof is also required for historical verification.
If Japan continues having this self-torturing attitude, the national wealth that we made great efforts to accumulate will be lost through international strategy warfare in the realm of information. Now that operations are shut down at all nuclear power plants, the fuel expenses paid to major oil companies in the U.S. and Europe for power generation have increased by three to four trillion yen per year. The burden for this is being placed on the citizens through increased electric power charges. This increase in fuel costs is still being kept down because of slumping crude oil prices despite the cheap yen, but one can say this is a strategy to deprive Japan of its nuclear power plants. The price of oil would rise all at once if the U.S. adjusted output and decreased its production of shale oil, which would probably result in more of Japan’s wealth flowing overseas. Japan depended on nuclear power generation for 25% of its electricity before the Great East Japan Earthquake, which has now fallen to zero. In terms of security guarantees as well, it is exceedingly dangerous for us to depend extensively on imported energy sources such as oil and natural gas.
Today an attitude is required of pursuing historical truths and fully refuting baseless criticisms. It is no good to wait for the passing of time to reveal these truths. In particular, at present there are forces inside and outside the country that show contempt for Japan based on obvious falsehoods, so it is essential that we turn our gaze towards correct history. We must ascertain what is correct and not be taken in by strategy warfare. If education and news reports by the media are not in line with this, many of the citizens will become masochistic without knowing the truth. My Shoheijuku school has been expanded to three bases in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kanazawa, and up until today I have expressed my views to roughly 10,000 people. I will publish a book entitled Theoretical Modern History to further share this information with more people. This work contains new writings and my essays from the past year, and the party commemorating its publication will be held in June. I truly hope that as many people as possible will read this book.
April 21 (Tuesday) 11:00 p.m.