In this column from the subscription-only monthly magazine Themis, Masayuki Takayama challenges Asahi Shimbun’s claim that the Japanese Army “invaded Portuguese East Timor and massacred 40,000 islanders,” arguing it is a fabrication promoted by Waseda University professor Ken’ichi Gotō.
Tracing Japan’s actual role in East Timor, Indonesia’s integration and later demonization, the mixed-race elite’s bid to monopolize seabed oil profits, and Asahi’s shifting spelling of “Gusmão/Gusman,” the essay portrays East Timor’s independence movement as a story of white and quasi-white elites, oil interests, and anti-Japanese propaganda.

This is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column in the subscription-only monthly magazine Themis, titled “East Timor ‘Occupied by the Japanese Military’ and Asahi Shimbun Once Again Pours Out Lies.”
This essay too proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people all over the world.

The independence movement was led by Portuguese mixed-race elites seeking to “liberate” offshore oil rights

A Waseda professor’s lie about “40,000 massacred”

Immediately after taking office, Prime Minister Takaichi flew to Kuala Lumpur and dropped in on the ASEAN summit meeting.
The leaders of each country literally rushed to her, Japan’s first female prime minister, to show their welcome.
In the commemorative photograph, Takaichi stood in the center, flanked by the leaders of the member states, all holding hands.
It was a picture-perfect embodiment of the prime minister’s phrase “Japanese diplomacy blooming at the center of the world,” and Asahi Shimbun splashed this celebratory scene across the top of its front page.
This, even though the paper had just made “Attack Takaichi” (see last month’s issue of this magazine) its corporate motto; the photo desk and layout desk nonetheless very straightforwardly celebrated her moment of triumph.
By now, one imagines disciplinary measures for violating the company line are being handed down inside the newsroom.

The first leader to embrace Takaichi at the summit was the prime minister of East Timor, Xanana Gusmão, whose country had only just joined ASEAN.
Asahi was apparently so pleased about East Timor’s admission that it took up the topic in an editorial, praising ASEAN for accepting “a country that is small and poor but not excluded from the region.”
The editorial also wrote that East Timor had “once been occupied by the Japanese Army” and subjected to terrible suffering.
Asahi has no qualms about lying even in its editorials.
This piece alone contains three lies, one of them being the phrase “occupied by the Japanese Army.”

Asahi had Waseda professor Ken’ichi Gotō write that “the Japanese Army invaded Portuguese East Timor and killed 40,000 islanders.”
But that is sheer nonsense.
Before the war, Japan enjoyed good relations with Portugal, which had even approved the opening of an air route to East Timor, and Dai Nippon Airways had established a regular service using Type 97 flying boats.
After the outbreak of war with Britain and the United States, Australian and Dutch forces invaded the island and detained and interned more than twenty Dai Nippon Airways employees, so Japan landed with the consent of the Portuguese government and rescued its nationals.
At the time, the Portuguese government, troubled by repeated islander uprisings, requested that Japanese troops remain stationed for the purpose of maintaining public order.
On condition that the Japanese side abolish the salt tax that had bound the islanders and allow them to freely possess agricultural tools, previously banned, the 48th Division was garrisoned there.

According to Professor Yoshimasa Nomura of Chiba Institute of Science, the Japanese military instructed the islanders in paddy cultivation and “created ten thousand chō (about 10,000 hectares) of rice fields by the end of the war.”
Regarding the claim that “island women were made into sex slaves,” he also states that “there were two brothels, one run by Koreans and one by islanders,” thereby denying the sex-slave narrative.
Professor Shin’ichi Yamashita, professor emeritus at Showa Women’s University and at the time an officer in the 48th Division, recalls: “The islanders were cooperative with the Japanese Army; they informed us of the infiltration of Australian intelligence agents, and together with village residents we captured them alive.”
He also says: “We then had those agents transmit the message that the Japanese side was heavily armed and waiting, and at times we had them arrange for liquor, tobacco, and foodstuffs to be air-dropped to us.”

Professor Ken’ichi Gotō, at Asahi’s request, has produced a large number of self-denigrating pieces, such as the claim that “the Japanese Army killed three thousand natives in Sumatra,” but most of them are poor work.

The second lie in Asahi’s editorial is the way it suggests that ASEAN had been cold-shouldering East Timor.
In reality, it was East Timor that had turned its back on ASEAN and planned to enter the ANZUS pact with the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
There is a racial dimension here.

For many years, East Timor had been ruled by Portuguese and by the mixed-race “half-castes” born to local women by them.
Then, in the 1970s, Portugal’s deteriorating finances led it to abandon East Timor.
Figures like Xanana Gusmão and other mixed-race elites inherited white faces and assets such as land from their fathers and could still make a living, but the islanders had no common language, no schools, and no property.

“Indonesia = villain,” by design

It was Indonesia that extended a helping hand to these bewildered islanders.
Treating East Timor like contiguous West Timor, it built schools and hospitals and taught the unifying national language, Javanese.
The islanders were happy to become Indonesians, but the mixed-race elites complained: “We who carry white blood and are first-class citizens have been reduced to mere Indonesians.”
This greatly resembles the yangban in Korea who, after Japan’s annexation, grumbled about being placed on the same social level as tenant farmers and commoners.

At just that time, seabed oil fields were discovered in the waters right in front of them.
Australia showed strong interest as well, but even if extraction succeeded, the profits would all go to the Indonesian government.
Here the mixed-race elites devised a plan.
If they could make East Timor independent, they could monopolize the benefits.
Their fellow whites in Australia agreed.

Thus, an “independence movement” was launched under the slogan that “the islanders are crying under Indonesian oppression.”
Australia provided support, Ramos-Horta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and white-led international opinion lined up behind the cause.
With UN intervention, Indonesia was cast as the villain and East Timor achieved independence.
The country’s official name became “Timor-Leste.”
“Leste” means “east” in Portuguese.
But ninety percent of the population knows nothing of Portuguese.

Xanana Gusmão was elected as the first president, and the Australian government began extracting petroleum and natural gas.
It was a brilliantly successful tale of a country seized by whites and quasi-whites.

Asahi’s chief editor Hiroshi Funabashi believed that white people are the most superior.
So he began insisting that Japan, too, should support independence, and, riding on Gotō’s falsehoods, threatened in print: “During the war the Japanese Army killed forty thousand; as atonement, Japan should provide one billion dollars in aid.”
The government complied.

Before we knew it, he had become “Prime Minister Gusman”

The third lie in Asahi’s editorial appears here.
It concerns the rendering “Xanana Gusmão.”
His name is a textbook Portuguese name, which could easily invite suspicion of a “white man’s swindle.”
Apparently worried about this, Asahi adopted the bizarre spelling “Gusmão” rendered as “Gusmao” in Japanese katakana.
In Portuguese it is written “Gusmão.”
They can always excuse themselves by saying they simply romanized it phonetically.
And so Asahi continued to spell his name as “Gusmao.”

However, the crucial seabed oil fields have begun to dry up.
Cash-minded Australia has turned its back, and ANZUS will not take them in.
So now, Gusmão, who has become the country’s seventh prime minister, has turned up at ASEAN saying, “Please allow the accession of a small and poor country like ours.”

When Prime Minister Takaichi arrived, this white-faced Gusmão tried to greet her with a cheek-to-cheek white-style embrace, and she deftly fended him off.
Asahi wrote of him as “Prime Minister Gusman.”
Oh? When did they change the spelling?
On top of lies, they now indulge in arbitrary “creation of surnames and renaming.”
It is beyond ridiculous.