Quoting Masayuki Takayama’s renowned column “Henken Jizai,” this article discusses the realities of Chinese guerrillas, plainclothes combatants, and Dalforce in wartime Malaya and Singapore, as well as the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on a memorial honoring Japanese soldiers. It criticizes Asahi’s tendency to seize upon narratives that denigrate Japan and questions the distortions in postwar Japanese historical perception and journalism.

April 11, 2020
They are as different as the moon and a snapping turtle from the delinquent foreigners who call themselves correspondents of major Western magazines, and who dominate the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, though it is presumptuous even to call them journalists.
I am republishing the chapter I sent out on April 12, 2019, under the title: “The state government was surprised and apologized,” Asahi reporter Mayumi Mori reported with evident delight.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s renowned column “Henken Jizai,” published in yesterday’s issue of Weekly Shincho.
It is an unmistakable fact that Masayuki Takayama is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Still more, it is an evident fact that he is as different as the moon and a snapping turtle from the delinquent foreigners who call themselves correspondents of major Western magazines, and who dominate the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, though it is presumptuous even to call them journalists.
In this week’s issue as well, readers throughout the world will learn, with astonishment, that he perfectly proves the correctness of my assessment.
At the same time, the world will learn that the Asahi Shimbun, which you have mistakenly believed to be a newspaper representing Japan, is a gathering of reporters formed by a masochistic view of history and anti-Japanese thought, who joyfully jump at comments that demean Japan, or who joyfully demean Japan themselves.
If they were the newspaper representing your own country, what would you think?
Even if there were some problems, you would surely feel relieved to think that the newspaper company representing your country is not, like the Asahi Shimbun, an organization of employees whom it is no exaggeration to call traitors to the nation.
His Majesty the King’s plainclothes unit.
In late January of Showa 17, when Singapore was about to fall, the Asahi Shimbun published a round-table discussion on Malaya, gathering people connected with the area, including Murotaro Senda of Senda & Co.
In Malaya, in fact, since around the time of the Opium War, Chinese people had fled there, ingratiated themselves with the white rulers, managed Malay laborers, and sold opium to them.
Senda introduced the fact that, by the beginning of the Showa era, there were “about three hundred” schools for the children of Chinese residents.
By that time, tensions between Japan and China had entered Malaya as they were, and Chinese people began attacking Japanese companies and Japanese residents in Malaya.
One of these incidents was the case of Yutaka Tani, known as the Tiger of Malaya.
During the period when he had returned to Japan, a group of Chinese people attacked the town of Terengganu, violated his younger sister, cut off her head, and carried it away.
It was cruelty characteristic of Chinese people.
After returning from Japan, Yutaka pursued the group that had killed his sister, and also attacked opium magnates, becoming feared by Chinese people under the name Harimau.
The Chinese believed in Britain’s victory and carried out sabotage and terrorism against the Japanese army.
In the round-table discussion, it was said that the Chinese terrorist groups had a controlling organization, called the “China Relief Fund” of Tan Kah Kee, who was connected with Chiang Kai-shek.
This organization had become the central anti-Japanese organ throughout the South Seas.
Incidentally, Tan Kah Kee was also connected with Mao Zedong, and after the war, when the Communist regime was established, he abandoned Malaya and returned to his hometown in Fujian Province.
It was a foolish choice.
While fighting the British Indian Army, the Japanese army also had to pay attention to signs of these Chinese guerrillas.
Even so, it advanced an average of twenty kilometers a day.
The Japanese army was truly strong.
Although the round-table discussion did not mention it, at that time in Singapore, Asahi’s war correspondent Torakichi Sakai reported that there was “a combat group made up only of Chinese people” organized by the British army.
This unit was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley, and with 4,000 soldiers it easily boasted brigade strength.
Among its soldiers were communist guerrillas who had been imprisoned in Changi Prison.
Their distinguishing feature was that they had no formal military uniform.
In other words, they were a plainclothes unit, and the only identifying mark was a yellow bandana worn around the neck.
Taking the name of their commander, they were called “Dalforce,” or “Dalley’s Desperadoes.”
When urban fighting with the Japanese army began, they pretended to be ordinary good citizens while waiting for opportunities to attack, and when pressed, they threw away their guns and fled into the crowd of civilians.
Such fighting in plain clothes is regarded as guerrilla warfare in violation of international law.
If captured, even international law permits the death penalty.
In the battle for Singapore, several members of this Dalforce were captured, and the existence of these plainclothes troops became clear.
Today, Singaporean Chinese criticize the Japanese army’s purge of overseas Chinese, but it was unmistakably they themselves who created the cause.
Recently, in Alor Setar, the important city first captured in the Malayan campaign, “a memorial praising Japanese soldiers as heroes” was restored by the Kedah state government, and its unveiling ceremony was held in grand fashion.
In response, local Chinese residents began making a fuss, saying, “Chinese residents were killed by the Japanese army,” and “Why are invading troops heroes?”
“The state government was surprised and apologized,” Asahi reporter Mayumi Mori reported with evident delight.
During the war, Chinese people sided with the British army and fought against the Japanese army.
They carried out cowardly terrorism and even sent out plainclothes troops.
With what mouth can they say that it was unjust that they were killed?
Incidentally, correspondent Sakai, a great senior of reporter Mori, reported on December 30, Showa 16, how the Malay people of that state warmly welcomed the Japanese army.
He also interviewed M. Dewar, the regent who was the state’s kingly figure, and reported his words of gratitude for liberation by the Japanese army: “Britain has looked down on us and oppressed us. Now the dawn of our people has come.”
Without even reading the articles of her predecessors, she simply immerses herself in the words of cruel and lying Chinese people.
The Asahi Shimbun does not sell.
Perhaps that is Mayumi’s fault.