April 2, 2026

Written on May 21, 2019.
An essay by Masayuki Takayama depicting the Japanese military’s intelligence warfare in East Timor, its cooperation with local residents, the false-radio-message operation that outwitted the Australian forces, and the true image of the Japanese military buried beneath the postwar view of history.
Through the terrain that remains there and the memories of the local people, this essay prompts us to reconsider the strength and human kindness of the Japanese military.

May 21, 2019

I also stood beside the Laleia River, where an Australian B-24, never imagining that the radio messages were false, dropped Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Everywhere we went, the local people surrounded us with what were probably the same smiles they had worn long ago.
It became abundantly clear that the Japanese military was strong and kindhearted.

I also visited Caibada village, where the Japanese military and the local people captured an Australian reconnaissance unit.
The tunnels that the military used for storage remain there exactly as they were.
A chapter published on October 13, 2018 under that title entered goo’s real-time Top 10 last night.

The following is from this week’s installment of the celebrated column serialized in Weekly Shincho by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Emphasis within the text, other than the headings, is mine.

The Japanese Military Was Admirable

During the second half of the 1930s and the early 1940s, Japan built excellent passenger aircraft such as the Mitsubishi MC-20 and operated scheduled flights from the farthest reaches of Manchuria to Taiwan and Palau.
Because Britain, France, and other countries operated flights into Rangoon and Bangkok, Japan also wanted to fly there and connect with services to Europe.
That request, however, was rejected.
The airplane was a symbol of white power.
If colonial subjects resisted, bombers such as the Potez would appear in French Indochina, for example, and strafe the people with machine-gun fire.
White people were gods, and their vehicle was the airplane.
If a yellow Japanese airplane were to fly into such a place, white authority would immediately diminish, and the colonial subjects would then begin to rise up in earnest.
That was why Japanese aircraft were not allowed to enter.
Only Portuguese Timor permitted Japanese flights.
Even if natives wearing nothing but loincloths were to riot, suppressing them would have posed no difficulty at all.

Thus, a Greater Japan Airways aircraft flew to the capital, Dili, via Palau.
The day its second flight arrived was the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The following account is by Shinji Yamashita, a former NHK reporter who was then a member of the local garrison.
Australian and Dutch forces immediately attacked Dili and detained twenty-two Greater Japan Airways employees and others engaged in operating the service.
After obtaining Portugal’s consent, the Japanese first seized Dutch West Timor and then entered Dili and rescued the Japanese nationals.
The Australian and Dutch forces scattered and fled like baby spiders.

At that point, an unexpected situation arose.
In adjoining West Timor, the white people had been driven out and the inhabitants had become free.
Although taxation and whipping had disappeared there, the Portuguese remained entrenched in the eastern part, and mixed-race children such as Ramos-Horta, whom they had fathered with native women, were still brandishing whips.
The people rose up, and white people and those of mixed race were attacked.
The colonial government implored the Japanese military to maintain public order, and the Japanese agreed on the condition that the harsh taxation imposed upon the people be abolished.
The people rejoiced.

Then, “word arrived from a distant village that an Australian reconnaissance unit had infiltrated” (Yamashita).
Villagers armed with bamboo spears cooperated, and after a gunfight near the Laleia River, five men were captured.
One villager was killed in battle.
Thereafter, the Japanese side secured the cooperation of the Australian soldiers and transmitted false radio messages designed to make a garrison of one battalion appear to be an enormous force of approximately ten divisions. They also had cigarettes, whisky, and medical supplies air-dropped under cover of darkness.
The Australian side was completely deceived and abandoned its plans for the military conquest of East Timor.
The final communication, sent on August 8, said, “Rejoice. Japan has surrendered.”
In the name of the military commander, the Japanese side radioed back its heartfelt gratitude for the various pieces of information and gifts, and sent the Australian soldiers it had detained home via Surabaya.
The Australian side is reluctant to discuss this matter.
There were no vindictive war-crimes tribunals, and everyone returned home safely.

I asked Yamashita, who had left NHK and was teaching at Showa Women’s University, why NHK had never made a program about this magnificent intelligence operation by the Japanese military.
Yamashita smiled sadly and said, “At NHK, it was taken for granted that the Japanese military was evil.”

However, some people rage that allowing the Japanese military to remain good people, even if only in East Timor, would contradict the historical view of the Tokyo Trial.
Ken’ichi Goto, Professor Emeritus at Waseda University, who is skillful at nothing but lying, wrote in the Asahi Shimbun that “the Japanese military killed forty thousand local people.”
Editor-in-chief Yoichi Funabashi added a foolish article saying, “Therefore, Japan must pay compensation.”
Aiko Kurasawa of Keio University writes that the Japanese military committed looting.
What on earth could it possibly have stolen from people wearing nothing but loincloths?
A certain Kato of the National Institutes for the Humanities also writes that “Japan forcibly occupied that island and displeased Portugal” (Voice magazine).
He does not even know the fact that they pleaded with Japan to maintain public order.
He assumes that Japan must always be ostracized.

The other day, in order to wash and rinse my ears, which had been soiled by the words of such foolish scholars, I went swimming in the sea of East Timor.
I also visited Caibada village, where the Japanese military and the local people captured an Australian reconnaissance unit.
The tunnels that the military used for storage remain there exactly as they were.
I also stood beside the Laleia River, where an Australian B-24, never imagining that the radio messages were false, dropped Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Everywhere we went, the local people surrounded us with what were probably the same smiles they had worn long ago.
It became abundantly clear that the Japanese military was strong and kindhearted.