News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Directive From Japan

Date: April 26, 2001

"Directive From Japan

The April 18 news story "New Text Reopening Old Wounds" quoted Japanese scholar Tadae Takubo asserting, "Unlike Germany, Japan has never tried to massacre one people based on ideology."

Prof. Takubo overlooks the fact that Japan's policy was to rid Asia of white people -- not because of their ideology but because of their race. Japanese war ministry standing orders were clarified in an August 1944 directive that said in part: "In any case, the aim is to annihilate them all [white prisoners and civilian internees] and not to leave any traces." Only the abrupt, atomic end of World War II prevented this policy from being fully implemented.

This order, in the Japanese-language original and the translation by an American cryptologist, is on file at our National Archives and was broadcast on the Sunday evening news in Tokyo on June 25, 1995. A microfilm copy is in the Japanese Diet Library. Prof. Takubo should do his homework.

LINDA GOETZ HOLMES
Shelter Island, N.Y."