This piece is based on a passage dated April 21, 2019, together with a continuation from Masayuki Takayama’s book America and China Arrogantly Lie.
It critically traces the structure of U.S.-China alignment behind modern East Asian history, from Wellington Koo and the May Fourth Movement to the Hongkou Park bombing, the Xi’an Incident, the Second Shanghai Incident, and reporting on the fall of Nanjing.
It is an important essay for considering how historical perceptions concerning Japan were formed and how American public opinion was steered in an anti-Japan direction.

2019-04-21
In the campaign that followed at Nanjing, the American missionaries Bates and Magee spoke of “a great massacre by the Japanese army,” and The New York Times and the Chicago Daily News reported it.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The following too is from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, and while his hard-bitten integrity stands out all the more, it is surely his vast knowledge of modern history that marks him as a true journalist.
In particular, the passages I have highlighted in bold….
Are a parade of facts that almost no Japanese know at all….
And naturally, facts the world does not know at all either.

The following is from America and China Arrogantly Lie, Masayuki Takayama, 1,300 yen, Tokuma Shoten, first edition, February 28, 2015.
From pages 100 to 107.
The bold emphasis and the comments marked with an asterisk below are mine.

Jiang Zemin Was Right When He Said, “Japan Is the Common Enemy of America and China”

When Jiang Zemin visited the United States as head of state, he deliberately stopped in Hawaii, laid flowers at the Pearl Harbor memorial, and made remarks to the effect that “Japan is the common enemy of America and China.”
Japan fought to punish greedy and arrogant countries such as China and Russia.
The same applies to the United States, which is greedy and at the same time poses as a champion of justice.
It was Pearl Harbor that opened hostilities, with the fate of the nation at stake, in order to admonish that hypocrisy.
This is not the sort of place where a country like China should swagger in and begin lecturing.

There were also commentaries saying, “No, Jiang Zemin is trying through historical issues to drive a wedge between Japan and the United States and bring America and China closer together.”
According to that view, China is trying to force its way in between a close United States and Japan.
China wants to push Japan down and become friendly with America instead.
If that is so, then why has the United States not said a single word to rebuke China’s shamelessness in suddenly declaring, once undersea oil fields were found, that “the Senkakus are mine”?
The American press also remains silent about the conduct of Chinese people who stage anti-Japan demonstrations and indulge in arson and looting.
I cannot help finding it deeply strange.
But if one looks at history, there are several points that make it seem that Japan has only imagined on its own that Japan and America are close, and that Jiang Zemin’s statement, “Japan is the common enemy of America and China,” is actually the more correct one.

Until only yesterday, America made Chinese coolies labor, and once they were no longer useful, disposed of them like stray dogs.
But after the Russo-Japanese War, seeing Chinese students stream into Japan one after another, the United States hurriedly built Tsinghua University and began recruiting students to study in America.
It welcomed the arriving Chinese students with manufactured smiles.
Then it absorbed them and used them as pawns to drive Japan and China apart.
The first of them was Wellington Koo, that is, Gu Weijun.
He studied at Columbia University, and after the Xinhai Revolution was sent back to China, where he became an adviser to Yuan Shikai.
At the peace conference after the First World War, he became China’s representative, and the American representative Woodrow Wilson, unbelievably, arranged for him to participate in the Ten-Man Committee composed of the five great powers.
At the conference, Gu Weijun met Wilson’s expectations and went all out in attacking Japan’s leasehold in the Shandong Peninsula.
Although it emerged that the Chinese government had already recognized Japan’s lease and had even accepted advance payment, so that the first U.S.-China coordinated attempt to crush Japan ended in failure, Gu Weijun’s activity also resonated in China itself, and the May Fourth Movement broke out.
It is said that behind this lay the maneuvering of the American minister Paul Reinsch, but in any event, the alienation between Japan and China was decisively established through this.
From that point onward as well, every major incident involved the United States.

After the First Shanghai Incident, the Hongkou Park bombing in which Prince Kitashirakawa and others were assassinated was something arranged by the American missionary George Fitch, who guided the Korean terrorist Yun Bong-gil into carrying it out.
The shadow of the United States also falls across the Xi’an Incident, which became the trigger for Chiang Kai-shek’s turn toward anti-Japan policy.
The man who entered Xi’an at that time accompanied by Soong Mei-ling was the New York Herald reporter William Donald, who was close to Chiang and also served as an adviser to Zhang Xueliang.
In the Second Shanghai Incident the following year, Chennault openly commanded Chinese air force units.
In the campaign that followed at Nanjing, the American missionaries Bates and Magee spoke of “a great massacre by the Japanese army,” and The New York Times and the Chicago Daily News reported it.
All of them were Americans.
Henry Luce’s LIFE magazine and Pearl Buck’s Asia magazine, of which she was editor, reported it in even harsher terms.
Both were children of American missionaries sent to China, and they continued to portray the Chinese in the most favorable light imaginable.
As a result, before the last war, American favorability toward China stood at 76 percent, whereas Japan’s stood at only 2 percent (Shunsuke Kamei, ed., Japan and America).

*When I read this passage, I finally understood.
Why was the United States capable of committing an act such as dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
To be continued.