The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  As 1939 progressed, "the experts" began work on three fronts. Locally, Inuzuka laid the groundwork for a future appeal for the goodwill, and superb capital resources, of the Sephardim by developing relations with the Ashkenazic community. The Ashkenazim had already shown signs of cooperation with the Japanese. Suspicious of Japanese links with Germany, they nevertheless were realists. They had left Russia for good; they had no government to turn to. If Japan had truly reversed her anti-Semitic policy, as it appeared from the conferences and other activities in Manchukuo, what could they lose from responding to her overtures? It might help stabilize their position in the world. It could even improve the situation of their fellow Ashkenazim, the German and Austrian refugees who were by now pouring into Shanghai at a rate of nearly a thousand a month.

  Inuzuka, with his fluency in English, Russian and French, was easy to talk to. And since he had, for years, been under general orders from the navy to "find out everything there is to know" about Jews, he was always interested in visiting schools and synagogues and discussing any problems the Jews might encounter.

  By mid-1939. Inuzuka had been successful in converting good faith into cash: the Pacific Trading Company was formed with an initial capitalization from Japanese, Chinese, Ashkenazic and Sephardic sources of seven hundred thousand dollars. The mere existence of this company was more important than anything it might accomplish: it was a well-publicized demonstration that Japanese and Jew could work together for a common goal. At about the same time that the Pacific Trading Company got off the ground, Inuzuka achieved another long-sought goal: the elusive Sir Victor Sassoon finally afforded him the social and personal honor of accepting one of his dinner invitations.

  Yasue, on the Manchurian front, also was stepping up his activities. Plans were proceeding for a third FEJ Conference the following December. More important, Yosuke Matsuoka, still president of the South Manchurian Railway, had hired into his public relations department the only Hebrew-speaking Japanese in the world - a Christian minister named Setsuzo Kotsuji. Kotsuji's particular field, the Bible, had led him to become proficient in classical Hebrew. He had, in fact, written a Hebrew grammar in Japanese. The book was hardly a bestseller, but it did qualify Kotsuji as a first-rate suitor to woo the Manchurian Jews.

  As a further proof of the increasing goodwill of Japan, Yasue arranged for the Harbin Jewish leader, Dr. Abraham Kaufman, to be invited on an official visit to Tokyo. For the full month of May 1939, Kaufman went from ministry to ministry, and his reception at each was more gracious than the last. Not only was Kaufman given the opportunity of explaining the feelings of Manchurian Jewry in these high places, he was himself reassured everywhere he went that Japan did not believe in racism and other such forms of discrimination, and that the country had no reason to persecute the Jews. He heard time and again the answer Foreign Minister Arita had given to a question posed in the Japanese Diet the preceding February: 'Japan has never made any discrimination against alien people either through legislation or as a matter of fact. In view of public attention attracted by an increasing number of Jews in the Far East since last autumn, the government has decided on a definite policy toward Jews. . . . This policy aims at no discrimination against Jews. Jewish residents in Japan shall be treated just as any other foreign residents, who are free." Before returning home, Dr. Kaufman was presented with an imperial award. Few ordinary citizens, and far fewer foreigners, had been so honored.

  The third front to which the "Jewish experts" were devoting their attention was the creation of a more direct line of communication with the American Jewish community. Early in 1939, Inuzuka got in touch with an Osaka steel-container manufacturer, Mitsuzo Tamura, who had studied twenty years before at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was then traveling frequently to New York to purchase scrap metal. Tamura had Jewish business contacts and already, several months before, he had been exposed to his country's interests in American Jewry. The Japanese Embassy in Washington had asked him to evaluate the feelings of the American Jewish community toward Japan, and Tamura was complying with this request on a continuing basis when Captain Inuzuka reached him.

  Inuzuka asked Tamura to speak with his Jewish contacts only in general terms to get their reaction to the possibility of Japan's offering to settle a number of refugees from Europe somewhere in Japanese-held Asia. As he had complied with his Embassy's request, Tamura agreed to assist Inuzuka. Three contacts he enlisted in New York in April, 1939, were Otto Gerson, Ernst Grunebaum and Franz Hirschland, all active in Jewish and communal self-help organizations including the Joint Distribution Committee. Hirschland was a close friend of Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress. Grunebaum, Hirschland's brother-in-law, was on the board of directors of the World Jewish Congress. Whether by accident or design, Tamura had provided Inuzuka and his fellow "experts" with extremely useful contacts in the American Jewish community.

  By mid-spring 1939, the Jewish "experts" in Shanghai felt they had done all they could to prepare for the serving of the fugu. A settlement scheme had been approved, in theory, by the five most powerful men in Japan - a settlement scheme that would provide a non-belligerent, strictly humanitarian framework for large-scale Jewish investment in the empire; an enterprise that would convince the Jewish opinion-makers in the New York press, the radio networks and movie studios, and hence the world, that Japan was a fine, generous and humane nation. But, so far, it was no more than an idea. What was lacking was a positive action. It had been policy throughout that the Japanese did not initiate favors toward the Jews. If only a Jew would initiate an actual settlement scheme. . . .

  The Japanese did not have long to wait. In March 1939, apparently on his own initiative, a Jew obliged. Lew Zikman, a wealthy Manchurian concerned about the plight of European Jews, broached an idea to Inuzuka and his two cohorts. Would it be possible, Zikman asked, to settle two hundred leatherworkers, with their families, over six hundred people in all, on the outskirts of a town in Manchukuo? Zikman himself would put up some of the money necessary: an additional two hundred thousand dollars he would try to procure from the Americans, probably through the American Jewish Congress.

  To the "Jewish experts" this was an answered prayer but it was limited. "Three thousand is a better figure," Inuzuka said. Zikman demurred; he thought it wiser to begin with a small number of settlers. But soon it no longer mattered what Zikman thought. The Jew had initiated the suggestion; from then on it was a Japanese affair.

  The more frequent Shanghai meetings took on a new excitement as Inuzuka, Yasue and Consul General Ishiguro began to pull the threads together. By June, there was a formal report: "Concrete Measures to be Employed to Turn Friendly to Japan the Public Opinion Far East Diplomatic Policy Close Circle of President of USA by Manipulating Influential Jews in China." Within days this document was approved by the top Japanese brass of central China and Manchukuo and Inuzuka himself carried it to Tokyo. On July 7, it appeared as a confidential joint research report, somewhat more euphoniously titled, "The Study and Analysis of Introducing Jewish Capital."

  The ninety-page document was not devoted entirely to the settlement scheme. It also covered measures for the attraction of capital investments by wealthy Shanghai Sephardim, not only for their intrinsic value but so that Jewish financiers in the West would be persuaded to follow suit. (It was a "well-known fact" that Jewish investors stuck together. Even back in 1903, hadn't Schiff-the-Jew received money from a Jew, Warburg, in Germany and another Jew, Cassel, in England?) Additionally, several pages of the confidential report were devoted to plans for swaying American public opinion. Jewish journalists (it was another "well-known fact" that "eighty percent of American journalists are Jewish") would be invited to Japan to write glowing articles about the country. Hollywood movie producers Call Hollywood movie producers are Jewish") would be asked to make movies in Shanghai about how nice the Japanese were to the refugees there.

  An official delegation from Japan would be sent to th
e leading rabbis in the United States to explain how much Judaism and the Shinto religion had in common and to invite the American rabbis to Japan for the purpose of introducing Judaism to the Japanese people. But the heart of the report was the plan for creating a Jewish refugee settlement. In the words of the report, "a truly peaceful land so that the Jews may be comfortably settled to engage in business at ease for ever." In Yasue's words, this would be an "Israel in Asia."

  The plan was at once detailed and flexible. Several sites were suggested as alternatives - areas in Manchukuo favored by Yasue, areas near Shanghai promoted by Inuzuka and Ishiguro. A variety of population levels were proposed, from eighteen thousand up to nine hundred thousand. Each projected population level was followed by a string of figures, determined "according to the standard planning of modern cities," to be the number of square meters needed per person, how much of the land would be used in common, how much reserved for private use and so on. Considered were all the necessities of daily life for up to almost a million refugees: elementary and high schools, synagogues, hospitals, sewer lines, industrial areas, parklands. . . .

  All these things were put in the form of suggestions, recommendations. One aspect of the settlement plan, however, had been firmly decided: Jews would be allowed total religious, cultural and educational autonomy but otherwise, in all other matters, the settlement was to be ruled entirely by the Japanese. Colonel Yasue throughout the development of the fugu plan, the most idealistic of the three and apparently the one most interested in the good of the refugees themselves - had argued long and hard for a truly autonomous area where, except for matters concerning external relations and defense, the Jews would be left on their own. But Yasue was overruled. "We have no objection," the commander of the Middle China Expeditionary Army wrote in his preliminary memo of approval, "to permitting residence of Jewish people under the appointed location and time if the Jewish plutocrats accept the construction of New-Town under our demands and conditions. However [the settlement's] aim is ... to help the development of Japan and China. Therefore, details shall be studied sufficiently. And it is not good to permit an autonomous system for Jewish people." In the report, such recommendations became policy: "As for the administration of the Jewish section, which is to be made to appear autonomous, steps will be taken to place our authorities in a position to supervise and guide it behind the scenes."

  "The Study and Analysis of Introducing Jewish Capital" was a proposal; it was not a blueprint laid out in detail down to the last roofing nail. To give reality to their plan, the "experts" suggested some figures. But they purposely left matters open. They themselves were only suggesting the tune. Paying the piper was to be left to the Jews themselves - not to the refugees, naturally, but to all those "members of the Jew race" who, the Japanese continued to believe, controlled so much of the world's capital. The Japanese did, however, suggest a possible round-figure price for the settlement of thirty thousand refugees: one hundred million dollars.

  At that time, one hundred million dollars was roughly two hundred million yen, and this was, of course, much, much more than would be needed to settle thirty thousand people even in the most remote wilderness. In fact, the Japanese thought that the settlement itself would absorb only about twelve million yen. The remaining one hundred and eighty-eight million yen (ninety-four million dollars) it was suggested, could be in the form of credit extended to Japan to purchase various items from the United States.

  Even in 1939, with the world still coming out of a universal economic depression, the Japanese did not consider one hundred million dollars outlandish, especially since it was simply an opening figure. Where else were the increasingly despised Jews of Europe to go? What other country was offering a refuge at any price at all? The Japanese believed they were making a reasonable offer. They believed they could expect a positive response from world Jewry. It stunned the Japanese planners, therefore, when, at just about the same time that they forwarded their "Study and Analysis," the very Jews that they already controlled, in Shanghai, began protesting about continued Jewish immigration to their areas. At the least, it became clear that very little of the resettlement capital would come from the foreign community there. With the Sephardim and Ashkenazim well represented, a delegation actually pleaded with Captain Inuzuka to stop so many Jewish refugees from coming into the city. As the nominal authority in most of Shanghai, the foreigners asked, could the Japanese not persuade their allies Germany, and Italy, to prevent Jews embarking from Europe for Shanghai in the first place? And, failing success with Germany and Italy, couldn't Japan herself restrict the refugees' entrance into Shanghai?

  Inuzuka and his cohorts were confounded - and suspicious. "This is a trap," they muttered among themselves. "These sneaky Jews are trying to manipulate us, trying to trick us into providing the fuel for more anti-Japanese editorials in the New York Times." Inuzuka held long discussions with Sir Victor Sassoon, Boris Topas, leader of the Ashkenazic community, and other prominent Shanghai Jews, trying to reconcile this strange request with the vaunted "Jewish brotherhood" that had been a key consideration in the development of the fugu plan. Through it all, the Jewish leaders held to their request. True, they felt a certain amount of responsibility for their European cousins, but things were not simple. By July 1939, there were more Jewish refugees in the city than there were Britons, Frenchmen and Americans combined. The city's economic base had been torn apart already by the Sino-Japanese War. They attempted to explain to Inuzuka and the others that Shanghai simply could not support any more people who could not support themselves. There had been anti-Semitic pogroms before in history. There was never any sense to them, never any but the most trumped-up reasons for the violence they wreaked on the Jewish communities, but this particular problem had not, thank God, broken out in Shanghai. So why should the Jews of Shanghai have to suffer so greatly the effects of it? Over the past months, the Shanghai community had willingly accepted the burden of thousands of charity cases laid on its shoulders. Enough was enough! "We have too many already! Let the rest go someplace else. Let someone else pay for them!" (In fairness, it should be mentioned that in 1939, Hitler's plans for annihilating all of European Jewry had not yet been learned of by the rest of the world.)

  Tactically, the Japanese decided to placate the Sephardim who were in the forefront of those pleading for a surcease of refugees. Further, the Japanese knew that any restrictions they did lay down could easily be relaxed in an instant in the future. Ultimately, Captain Inuzuka asked for, and received, a promise from the Jews of Shanghai that they would not protest about any restrictions. On August 9, 1939, repeating as often as possible that "this measure has been taken at the request of the Jewish Refugee Committee itself," Captain Inuzuka announced measures limiting further immigration into Shanghai from Europe or Manchukuo. Henceforth, a refugee would need either four hundred American dollars "guarantee money" or a contract for a job.

  As intended, immigration virtually ceased. The Jews of Shanghai were pleased and grateful. The "Jewish experts" disappointed that this particular community did not possess any interest in rescuing European refugees, turned their attention to the Jewish community in the United States.

  In New York, Tamura the steel container manufacturer, began speaking to his Jewish business contacts, Gerson, Grunebaum and Hirschland. They considered numbers, specific employment possibilities, specific settlement zones, and so forth. As the discussions deepened, the men met regularly at an office on the seventh floor of the Empire State Building. Gerson, Grunebaum and Hirschland responded with gratifying enthusiasm to the plans Tamura was proposing. But they were essentially businessmen. They could not speak for American Jewry. The one man who appeared to be a spokesman for the entire community of American Jews was the president of the World Jewish Congress, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

  Sixty-six years old, Stephen Wise was one of the most respected men in America. Because of his close friendships with both Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, he was believed b
y Americans and foreigners alike to have considerable influence on American governmental decisions. As Inuzuka had written: "He goes anywhere the president goes as the shadow follows the form." Rabbi Wise was a liberal, politically as well as religiously. He was one of the leading spokesmen for both Reform Judaism and Zionism. He was involved with the labor movement, with the movement for world peace, with the struggle of all minorities for civil and political rights. He also staunchly opposed the Japanese. Since Japan's first incursions on the Asian mainland, in letters, articles and sermons Wise continually referred to the "criminal aggression" in China, and advocated that the United States take any action "short of war or what may lead to war that will make it impossible for Japan to continue its relentless and criminal war against China." Lew Zikman, the Manchurian industrialist, wrote Wise in 1938, saying merely that the Japanese seemed to be treating Manchurian Jews rather fairly, and received this response:

  I think it is wholly vicious for Jews to give support to Japan, as truly Fascist a nation as Germany or Italy. I do not wish to discuss the matter any further and I deeply deplore whatever your reasons may be that you are trying to secure support for Japan from Jews. I promise you that everything I can do to thwart your plans, I will do. You are doing a great disservice to the Jewish people.

  I do not wish to discuss this with you further. I have no desire to speak with anyone who like you is prepared to give support to Japan for reasons which are invalid and without regard for the fact that Japan is like Germany, Italy, a nation that is bound to take an anti-Semitic attitude, and indeed has already done so.