In his Weekly Shincho column, Masayuki Takayama exposes the economic desperation that drove Japan into war and the hypocrisy of Western colonial powers, focusing on the Dutch East Indies and the collapse of colonial armies once Japanese forces advanced.

2017-05-06
In the Golden Week special issue of Weekly Shincho, Masayuki Takayama once again demonstrates the true essence of his standing as a one-of-a-kind journalist in the postwar world.
The following comes from his famous closing column that brings the magazine to an end.
“Half-Caste Lament.”
The last war began with Japan’s declaration of war against Britain and the United States.
Then the Netherlands, another white nation that disliked Japan, declared war as well.
In the Dutch East Indies lay enormous oil fields such as Palembang and Balikpapan.
Their output exceeded Japan’s entire annual consumption.
After capturing Singapore and the Philippines, Japan intended to negotiate with the Netherlands to purchase oil.
Instead, the Dutch declared war first.
Convenient, in a sense, as it spared Japan the trouble of negotiations.
Once the capture of Singapore was in sight, Japan immediately began its advance into the Dutch East Indies.
Eighty thousand Dutch troops were holed up in the Bandung fortress.
Britain used Indians and the United States used Filipinos as their vanguard, but the Dutch had treated the local population with brutality for four hundred years.
That history came back to haunt them, and once the war began, “all the native soldiers fled.”
(R. Gausbrook, The Loss of Western Colonies and Japan.)
Only white troops remained in the fortress.
When the Japanese army launched its attack, they quickly raised their hands in surrender.
They knew that German soldiers captured thirty years earlier at the Battle of Qingdao had enjoyed a comfortable life in captivity.
They thought they would be treated just as well.
However, Japan had gone to war because it had been cornered and could no longer feed itself.
Was it not outrageously selfish to declare war unilaterally, hardly fight at all, and then demand that eighty thousand men be comfortably fed?
Moreover, they were not the only ones to be supported.
There were also forty thousand Dutch civilians in the Indies.
The Japanese army educated the local population and had them take care of these people.
“We, who had cruelly oppressed the natives, were now made to work by them and were given barely any food.”
Japanese soldiers could be rough, but they still possessed a sense of decency.
“When we violated discipline, they banned us from taking showers for several days. The Japanese believed this to be a punishment, not knowing that we had no custom of bathing.”
To be continued.