Written on June 28, 2019.
Based on an article by Waseda University professor Tetsuo Arima published in WiLL, this essay examines the role NHK played under GHQ and CIE during the Occupation, its involvement in producing WGIP programs, and the darker side of postwar media, including the brokering of Japanese antiques to Occupation officers.
It criticizes NHK’s nature of having obeyed the military during the war and then, after defeat, obediently serving the Occupation authorities, and sees in its present-day posture of posing as fair and neutral while zealously collecting reception fees a deeply rooted problem of postwar history.

2019-06-28
All the more so because today it puts on an air of being an impeccably fair public broadcaster and zealously devotes itself to collecting reception fees.

The following is from an article by Professor Tetsuo Arima of Waseda University published in this month’s issue of WiLL under the title: Who Owns NHK?
Though it is a state broadcaster, it broadcasts nothing but “anti-Japan” reporting.
If one explores the historical background, the answer becomes obvious.
Occupation policy that continues even now.　
There is a television documentary called A Verification: The Birth of Commercial Broadcasting (broadcast in 1995).
It was produced by documentary workshop producer Akinori Suzuki on the basis of meticulous research in the United States, and I received the video from him.　
In it appear officers of CCD, the Civil Censorship Detachment, which censored the Japanese media and civilians during the Occupation, and officers of CIE, the Civil Information and Education Section, which remade Japan’s media and education and, while keeping the Japan Broadcasting Corporation under its control, had it broadcast radio programs.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation began using the name NHK in 1946, and I will follow that usage below and call it NHK.　
They produced such programs as The Truth Is Thus and Truth Box, known today as radio programs of the “War Guilt Information Program,” hereafter WGIP.
Herbert Wind also appears and says, “That was modeled on America’s March of Time, an American radio documentary program.
We even had MacArthur look over the script.”
His superior, William Ross, head of the radio section, also readily admits, “We made that in order to implant in the Japanese a sense of guilt about the war.”
Jun Eto’s The Closed Linguistic Space (Bungei Shunju) had already been published in 1989, but at the time Suzuki was conducting his interviews, WGIP had not yet attracted the kind of attention it does today.
Moreover, Eto wrote about this plan based on WGIP documents he had received from an acquaintance in America, but he had never met the officers who actually carried it out.　
Suzuki was probably the only Japanese who directly questioned the officers in charge of WGIP about the true intent of this program.　
I too conducted interviews with officers of CIE and CCS, the Civil Communications Section, which dismantled international communications and prepared the Broadcast Act, but they would hardly tell me what policies or programs they had carried out, always shielding themselves behind confidentiality obligations.
Therefore, one can only admire Suzuki’s foresight and his ability as an interviewer.　
Suzuki left behind many documentary masterpieces and fulfilled his natural span of life at the age of 89 on January 31 of this year.
It was he who gave me the contact information for officers of CIE and CCS, especially Victor Haugee and Frank Baba of CIE and Clinton Feissner of CCS, and provided me with the foothold for my research into Occupation history.
Borrowing this place, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude and condolences.　
By the way, what catches the eye in A Verification: The Birth of Commercial Broadcasting are the antiques visible behind the CIE and CCS officers, such as Imari ware, hanging scrolls, and furniture.
Because Suzuki interviewed them in their homes, these things appear in the footage.
Even at a glance, they seem to be items of considerable value.
In fact, some of the items they obtained later became part of the collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.　
How, exactly, did they obtain these masterpieces?
Among the officers appearing in the program is Haugee, who became known as a collector of Japanese antiquities.
According to him, when he was about to leave for work in the morning, an NHK employee would be waiting at his door and say, “There is a fine item available today, so why don’t we go to such-and-such a place?”

When he went, matters had already been arranged with the shop owner, and he was able to make the purchase smoothly.
I have heard stories like this not only from him but from other officers as well.
They left program production to the CIE officers, while they themselves made the brokering of fine Japanese antiques their “work.”
In this way, large quantities of Japanese antiques passed into the hands of the officers appearing in the program and others.　
This was not something that NHK alone did.
Many Japanese government employees and company employees did it as well.
Even so, when one recalls that until the Imperial Rescript broadcast they had been pouring out the announcements of Imperial General Headquarters, deceiving the Japanese people, and mobilizing them for war, one cannot help but feel disgust.
All the more so because today it puts on an air of being an impeccably fair public broadcaster and zealously devotes itself to collecting reception fees.　
During the war, NHK was under the Information Bureau, which controlled every form of media and communications.
And it did whatever the military told it to do.
Yet when Japan was defeated and the Occupation forces arrived, it completely reversed itself
and broadcast The Truth Is Thus, which thoroughly attacked the military to which it had until then been obedient.
The rulers were now CIE, so there was no problem in turning the blade against the fallen military.　
To be sure, it was CIE staff such as Wind who produced the programs, but they could not have made them without the support of NHK employees.
And judging from the way they behaved afterward, it is certain that they neither reflected on nor regretted having dirtied their hands with WGIP.