The claim that the Japanese army killed 50,000 civilians in East Timor was later revealed to be a fabrication. This text examines how the Asahi Shimbun promoted the falsehood and how it spread internationally despite lacking factual basis.

April 29, 2016
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.
East Timor was a colony of neutral Portugal, and there were no conflicts whatsoever between the local population and the Japanese army. Nevertheless, Professor Ken’ichi Goto of Waseda University wrote in the Asahi Shimbun that the Japanese army plundered the islanders and killed fifty thousand people.
For the Asahi Shimbun, any lie was welcome as long as it portrayed Japan negatively.
This story was then reprinted in the American Time magazine’s yearbook, Time Almanac 2006, stating that “50,000 islanders died during the period of Japanese occupation.”
Thus, the narrative that Japan was indeed brutal took hold.
However, the islanders had been living under Portuguese oppression, reduced to a life of nothing more than a loincloth.
Even saws and sickles were prohibited, as they could be used as weapons of resistance.
If the Japanese army was said to have plundered them, one must ask: what exactly could they have taken?
It was later revealed that this story was fabricated after Goto Ken’ichi was told by Australian diplomat James Dunn that “the island’s population had decreased after the war.”
To be continued.