Written on 2019-05-21.
This essay by Masayuki Takayama portrays the Japanese military’s intelligence operations in East Timor, its cooperation with local residents, the fake radio strategy that misled Australian forces, and the actual image of the Japanese military long buried under postwar historical narratives.
Through the terrain that remains on the ground and the memories of the local people, it invites a reconsideration of the military’s strength and human kindness.

2019-05-21

I also stood and looked at the Laleia River, where an Australian B-24, not knowing in the least that it was responding to fake radio messages, dropped Lucky Strikes.
Everywhere, the local people probably surrounded us with the same smiles they had worn long ago.
It became very clear that the Japanese military had been strong and kind-hearted.

The chapter I published on 2018-10-13 under the title, “I also went to Kaibada village, where the Japanese military and local people captured an Australian reconnaissance unit. The storage cave used by the military still remained exactly as it had been,” entered goo’s real-time top 10 last night.

The following is from this week’s installment of the famous serialized column in Shukan Shincho by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
All emphasis in the text other than the headline is mine.

The Japanese Military Was Great.

In the mid-1930s, Japan was producing fine passenger aircraft such as the Mitsubishi MC-20, and operating regular routes from the far reaches of Manchuria to Taiwan and Palau.
Britain and France were already flying into places like Rangoon and Bangkok, so Japan too wanted to enter those routes and connect with European flights.
But that wish was rejected.
Airplanes were symbols of white power.
If the colonial peoples resisted, then in French Indochina, for example, Potez bombers would come flying in and strafe them with machine guns.
The white man was a god, and the airplane was his vehicle.
If yellow Japanese airplanes came flying into such places, white authority would at once be diminished, and the colonial peoples would at last begin to rise in earnest.
That is why Japanese aircraft were not allowed in.
Only Portuguese East Timor permitted such entry.
Even if natives wearing nothing but loincloths rioted, suppressing them was no trouble at all.

And so a Dai-Nippon Airways aircraft flew to the capital, Dili, via Palau.
The day its second flight arrived was the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What follows is from Yamashita Shinji, a former NHK reporter who had been a member of the local garrison.
Australian and Dutch forces immediately attacked Dili and detained 22 Dai-Nippon Airways employees and others involved in the operation.
With Portuguese consent, the Japanese side first subdued Dutch West Timor and then entered Dili to rescue the Japanese nationals.
The Australian and Dutch forces fled in all directions like scattering spiderlings.

Then an unexpected development occurred.
In land-connected West Timor, the whites were driven out and the people became free.
Taxation and whipping disappeared there, but on the eastern side the Portuguese still remained, and mixed-race people like Ramos-Horta, born by them through the local natives, were still wielding whips.
The people rose up, and whites and mixed-race people were attacked.
The colonial government pleaded with the Japanese military to maintain order, and the Japanese agreed on the condition that the harsh taxes imposed on the people be ended.
The people rejoiced.

Then, “word came from a distant village that an Australian reconnaissance unit had infiltrated” (Yamashita).
With the cooperation of villagers carrying bamboo spears, five men were captured after a firefight near the Laleia River.
One villager was killed in action.
After that, the Japanese side made use of the captured Australian soldiers to send fake radio messages making a garrison of one battalion appear to be a massive force of about ten divisions, and in addition had cigarettes, whisky, and medical supplies air-dropped under cover of darkness.
The Australians were completely deceived and gave up on the military conquest of East Timor.
The final communication, on August 8, was: “Rejoice. Japan has surrendered.”
The Japanese side replied in the name of the commanding general with heartfelt thanks for the various pieces of information and gifts, and sent the detained Australian soldiers back via Surabaya.
The Australian side does not like to talk much about this matter.
There were no harassing war-crimes tribunals, and all of them returned home safely.

I asked Yamashita, who had left NHK and become a professor at Showa Women’s University, why NHK had never made a program about such brilliant Japanese military intelligence operations.
Yamashita smiled sadly and said, “At NHK, it was taken for granted that the Japanese military was bad.”

But there are also those who insist that if even only in East Timor the Japanese military remains seen as good people, that would run counter to the Tokyo Trial view of history.
Goto Ken’ichi, emeritus professor at Waseda and skilled at nothing so much as lies, wrote in Asahi Shimbun that “the Japanese military killed 40,000 local people.”
Funabashi Yoichi, the editor-in-chief, even attached a foolish article saying, “Therefore Japan should pay compensation.”
Kurazawa Aiko of Keio writes that the Japanese military plundered.
What on earth could they have stolen from people wearing nothing but loincloths?
A certain Kato of the National Institutes for the Humanities also wrote in Voice magazine that “Japan forcibly occupied that island and offended Portugal.”
He does not even know the fact that they pleaded for the maintenance of order.
Such people simply assume that Japan must be something to be rejected.

The other day, to cleanse my ears of the filth left by the words of such foolish scholars, I went to swim in the sea of East Timor.
I also went to Kaibada village, where the Japanese military and local people captured the Australian reconnaissance unit.
The storage cave used by the military still remained exactly as it had been.
I also stood and looked at the Laleia River, where an Australian B-24, not knowing in the least that it was responding to fake radio messages, dropped Lucky Strikes.
Everywhere, the local people probably surrounded us with the same smiles they had worn long ago.
It became very clear that the Japanese military had been strong and kind-hearted.