WHAT SHALL WE DO IN ASIA?
Romer, Smuel
What Shall We Do In Asia? ASIA FOR THE ASIATICS? by Robert S. Ward. University of Chicago Press. $3. THROUGH JAPANESE EYES,*ly Otto D. Toli-schus. Reynal & Hitchcock. $2. Reviewed by Samuel...
...He has compiled a careful record of how the Japanese ruthlessly took over every asoect of civic life and, except in the realm of public health, ruled without regard for or benefit to the Chinese...
...The book is an attempt to supply a Japanese Mein Kampf...
...Ward fears that this technique will pay off even with Japanese defeat...
...Reviewed by Samuel Romer ** A SIA for the Asiatics" was more than a passing slogan with the Japanese...
...through press, rrdio, and movies, the Chinese were told over and over that "Japan is the Yamato warrior come on a mission of mercy...
...But the Japanese went further...
...Robert S. Ward, of the American consular service, has sought the answer to these questions by a detailed analysis of the Japanese techniques of occupation in the British colony (and Chinese city) of Hong Kong, where he was resident at the time...
...without even slightly loosening t^ir ttpfht grip on the economic and social structure of the colony, they made sure that, wherever possible, Chinese took on administrative and political responsibilities...
...The British illegalized the militant Chinese Seaman's Union...
...No such understanding is evident in Through Japanese Eyes by Otto Tolischus, former New York Times correspondent in Tokyo...
...There is only one way to victory on this battlefield...
...It is a sorry record of the worst kind of colonial rral-administration...
...Burma was granted her independence...
...Bose formed the "provisional government of Free India...
...It is regrettable that today, when authentic information is so essential to an understanding of the Orient, that Tolischus perpetrated his tricky fraud...
...In a city of a million, with only 20,000 non-Chinese, the British governed through an (advisory) executive council of 9 (with one Chinese) and a legislative council of 17 (with 3 Chinese) ; the Japanese set up parallel committees, the representative council of 4 (all Chinese) and the cooperative council of 22 (all Chinese...
...And what will it mean for the West now that V-J Day has come and we have returned to the Orient as the dominant power...
...as a matter of fact, modern Shinto is a purely artificial creation of the post-Perry Japan military to bolster the imperial myth...
...Even Tolischus' introductory notes are often baseless...
...It is a ridiculous act...
...he exaggerates anti-Semitism in Japan to out-size proportions...
...That the Chinese welcomed these slogans is itself testimony of their hatred of "white man's" rule...
...What a contrast to British rule...
...it served them well as a powerful propaganda weapon which implemented their early military victories...
...It allowed nationalists like Wang Ching-wei of China, Ba Maw of Burma, and Subhas Chandra Bose of India, all with proved anti-imperialist records, to turn toward Japanese rule as an acceptable alternative to Western imperialism...
...the Dutch East Indies were pronounced free...
...The only alternative, says Ward, "is a racial war that would destroy the white man and decimate the Asiatic...
...What has happened to the slogan in practice...
...the Japanese encouraged Chinese participation in civic activities...
...Extraterritoriality was abolished in China...
...that "bondage was the means of freedom...
...he refers to Shinto as a "living reality among the masses which triumphed over purely military might...
...The British refused to accept Chinese volunteers for essential service even during the seige...
...it consists of meaningless sentences and isolated paragraphs intended to prove Japan's devilishness...
...I wonder if a Japanese could not produce a comparable book quoting from Admiral Halsey and California newspapers with as much effect...
...why, then, did the Chinese not onlv endure Japanese rule without protest but often willingly accept hardship and sacrifice...
...it was pointed out by Henry Wallace in his Chungking speech in June, 1944: "self-government for the peoples of Asia...
...as military collapse became more and more certain, Japan redoubled her propaganda offensive...
...These are powerful secret weapons to use when the Western emperor returns...
...In his excitement, Tolischus cites the disputed Tana-ka memorial of 1927 as authentic...
...in Japan, it enabled Japanese radicals to make their compromise with militarism under the common banner of "liberation of the Orient...
...the Japanese reformed it, if only to corrupt it for their own ends...
...WARD credits the Japanese system of "thought-control," i.e., mass propaganda...
...WARD brought to his task an understanding of the basic problem of this war—not Japanese imperialism but Western imperialism on which the Japanese military battened...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 36
