The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  But Inuzuka himself, as he had foreseen, was to play no further role in Shanghai: in February 1942, he was relieved of his post to return to sea duty. The photo of Theodor Herzl was taken down from his office.

  As the Year of the Serpent gave way to the Year of the Horse, it seemed less and less likely that Japan needed help from anyone, Jewish or otherwise. Even before Pearl Harbor, she had been in control of Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, huge sections of China and all of French Indochina. Hong Kong had fallen by the year's end. And now, in a matter of a few spring months, Japan conquered the key remaining strongholds of her enemies: in February, Malaya and Singapore; in March, the Dutch East Indies; in April and May, the Philippines. All over, victories for the Axis. On the other side of the world, Germany and Italy were having equal success with their chosen enemies. The entire European continent (excepting the four neutrals: Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal) from the west coast of France to the gates of Moscow and the vast expanses of North Africa, from Casablanca to within sixty miles of Alexandria, were securely under their control. Russia, already deeply invaded by the Germans, would surely fall - Hitler guaranteed it. Much to Japanese relief, no more would the Land of the Rising Sun have to fear the Bear of the North. As for Great Britain, it could only be a matter of time before she was brought to her knees. And then, of course, the United States would be forced to come to terms. Jews? Who needed them!

  Since those unnecessary Jews had never known about the Five Ministers' Conference or the fugu plan or their responsibility to bring it about, they did not recognize their "failure" or even that they had fallen from some strange "state-of-grace" vis-a-vis the Japanese. But the refugees in Shanghai knew very well that the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declarations of war put an absolute and final end to any hope any of them might have kept about going to America; practically, it was also a shattering blow to what little economic security they had been able to create. With the cessation of trans-Pacific shipping, a major chunk of Shanghai's import-export business was ruined. Some firms ceased entirely, carrying down with them many of their suppliers. Even those companies that remained had to accept Japanese "advisers" who invariably redirected supply contracts into Japanese-owned shops. Every aspect of life became more difficult. Tight rationing was imposed on gasoline (putting an end to a well-organized training program for would-be auto drivers and mechanics which had attracted many of the Polish refugees). Inflation ran rampant; bank accounts were frozen except for small withdrawals for day-to-day expenses; and the wealthy Sephardim who, heretofore, could be counted on for help, had less and less control over their businesses or their profits. And at this point, exactly when it was most needed, relief money from the United States was drastically curtailed.

  From the late thirties, the Joint Distribution Committee had been the major source of those overseas funds which covered the everyday expenses - food, housing, medical care - of the refugees. (The other overseas source, H1AS/H1CEM, dealt both before and during the war with emigration costs, legal problems, reconnecting scattered families, and so forth.) With the declaration of war, however, the JDC faced a crisis of conscience. The Anglo-American Trading With the Enemy Act clearly prohibited all communication, direct or indirect, between Americans and people in enemy-occupied lands. In the months after Pearl Harbor, there was a great deal of discussion and soul-searching at the JDC headquarters in New York. Finally a decision was reached. In order not to give ammunition to the anti-Semitic elements in America, in order to be "superpatriots," beyond even the shadow of reproach, in order not to contribute so much as a penny that might help the cause of the Axis, the JDC felt compelled to break off all relations with Shanghai. No more transfers of money, no more repayment guarantees which had proved so helpful in eliciting loans from the Shanghai community itself. After May 21, 1942, no more communication of any sort between any branch of the JDC and its office in Shanghai.

  The Japanese were dumbfounded: where was the historic "family spirit" of the Jews? For Laura Margolies, the JDC'S representative, it was disaster. This American source had been contributing thirty thousand dollars a month to the relief effort. How could they possibly get by without it? But New York headquarters was adamant. She had no choice but to appeal on all levels to the remaining local financial sources (particularly the Russian Ashkenazim) and to try to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from the relief distribution system. The free-meal program was cut in half; the rolls of those eligible for relief of any sort were gone over name by name to catch those who did not fully qualify; and the refugee hospital which had handled over fifty-four thousand cases and handed out twelve thousand vaccinations was closed down. The closing of the hospital was all the more poignant because it coincided with a serious outbreak of typhus and a heatwave so severe it caused the deaths of sixteen refugees. But there was no other solution; the money, one thousand dollars a day, just wasn't there.

  The irony of the situation was that even the U.S. Treasury Department was less stringent than the JDC in the enforcement of the trading act. Treasury officials hinted broadly that although cables could not be authorized, not every cable would necessarily need to be authorized. Perhaps, they suggested, the JDC could make arrangements with a neutral third-party country through which the funds could be sent. But the JDC chose to stand firm: "We, as an American organization, cannot be involved in anything that has the remotest color of trading with the enemy." And that was the end of it.

  Fortunately, however, not all the funds for the refugees were cut off. Outside the JDC effort, money still trickled in from the United States, and a little from England.

  Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz of the Va'ad Hatzalah, for example, still managed to find ways to raise - and send - money. Occasionally this required both persistence and extraordinary ingenuity. One afternoon, after he had been kept waiting several hours in the outer office of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the Rabbi was informed that Mr. Hull would not be able to see him after all. Kalmanowitz rose graciously from his chair . . . and collapsed on the floor. Aghast at seeing this venerable, whitebearded gentleman in a heap on the floor, Hull's receptionist called out to the secretary for help. Together, with great concern and care, they lifted the old man onto a couch in the inner office. But no sooner had Hull turned to call a doctor than Kalmanowitz regained consciousness. He was most apologetic. He had been working too hard ... he was too old for this . . . and the devastating plight of those poor unfortunates in Shanghai. . . . But as long as he was here, he said more briskly, could the secretary of state spare just a moment to discuss this particular problem while he regained his strength?

  With the cooperation of the Japanese, funds from organizations such as Va'ad Hatzalah, Agudath Israel, and the Polish government-in-exile were transferred through Switzerland or Portugal directly to the various groups in Shanghai or indirectly to them through Eastjewcom. Since the Poles, in Shanghai only a few months, were among the hardest hit by unemployment, this additional relief money did not provide luxury for anyone. But it did allow for necessities - and in the case of the Mir Yeshiva, there was even enough to begin printing, book by much-needed book, almost an entire edition of the Talmud and several other basic Jewish texts.

  The loss of income had been devastating but, remarkably, by the start of summer 1942, no Jew in Shanghai, was starving; none was without a home; none was in danger for his life. Then, in July, a middle-aged, balding, cigar-smoking German colonel arrived from Tokyo. The "final solution" had at last come to Shanghai.

  16

  SOME MONTHS before Pearl Harbor, in the late summer of I94I, Heinrich Himmler's plan for the outright and total annihilation of the entire Jewish people had been openly adopted as Nazi policy. In every country where Jews were found, they were to be systematically sifted out of the general population and exterminated. Once this decision had been announced, there remained only a question of means. In Europe, under the direct administration of the German ss, work was speeded up on various technological experi
ments. One of these, involving the use of cyanide gas, designated Zyklon B, which could be released into airtight chambers, was finally put into widespread use.

  Asia was a different question. There were, of course, far fewer Jews to be concerned with there, but the Germans encountered unexpected resistance in persuading their Japanese allies to deal with "their Jews" in an appropriate manner. It was a resistance that rankled ss Reichsfuhrer Himmler. In mid-I942 the chief of Gestapo for Japan, China and Manchukuo was directed to leave his Tokyo headquarters temporarily and go to Shanghai where most of Asia's Jews were concentrated. There, working with the local Japanese authorities, he was to arrive at a final solution to the Jewish problem.

  The Gestapo chief, a colonel named Josef Meisinger, was no neophyte when it came to dealing with Jews. As chief of the secret police in Warsaw in I939, he had been responsible for the murder of so many (estimated at one hundred thousand) that he had been labeled "the Butcher of Warsaw." Warsaw, however, had been the zenith of his career. Even for the Gestapo, Meisinger had been too enthusiastic. In I94I, he was exiled to the relative obscurity of East Asia where he would be assigned principally to ascertain the loyalties of resident non-Jewish Germans to the fatherland. There was, in fact, little for him to do. Thus, when the order came down that he was to help the Japanese solve their "Jewish problem" once and for all, the "Butcher of Warsaw" responded with enthusiasm. In July of 1942, proposals in hand, Meisinger boarded a submarine in Tokyo Bay for the trip to Shanghai.

  Mitsugi Shibata sat on a bench in the small garden near the Japanese Consulate, outwardly serene, as befitted a vice-consul, inwardly exploding with emotion. It was Friday afternoon and he had just left a two-hour meeting of the newly created Jewish Affairs Bureau, which was composed of representatives of the Japanese Consulate, the kempeitai, the military and Mr. Tsutomu Kubota, a former naval officer now serving as the director of refugee affairs, and three Germans: Adolph Puttkamer, the chief of the German Information Bureau; Hans Neumann, lately of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and Colonel Josef Meisinger.

  After the customary formalities, Meisinger had come right to the point.

  "There are now in Shanghai, over seventeen thousand Jews who have chosen to leave the fatherland. In January of this year, the German government very wisely deprived these traitors of their citizenship. They are enemies of the German state and potential, if not already actual, saboteurs against you, our ally. For the good of our alliance, we strongly feel that the entire Jewish plague must be eradicated from Shanghai. You need not worry about the mechanics, we will handle all the details. You will merely reap the rewards of our labors: you, of course, will inherit everything the Jews presently own or control."

  There was a brief pause. Simple greed, Meisinger was sure, would take care of any lingering doubts the Japanese might have about the action.

  "With your permission," he began again, nodding deferentially to Kubota, "I will now outline our proposed plans for dealing with the Jewish problem."

  Kubota, the director of refugee affairs, sat passively, smiling slightly. This type of undertaking, he knew, would not need special permission from Tokyo. Dealing with problems like the Jews certainly came under his purview. So he who had heretofore only written about the Jewish menace would now actually be able to act. Kubota nodded. Meisinger began.

  The first step would be to round up the potential saboteurs, preferably all at once so none would have a chance to escape. It is never easy to catch all dogs in one net, of course; but on the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashanah, which begins the evening of September 1, almost all of them will be at one or another of their synagogues. It will be a simple matter to surround the buildings at that time.

  As to what was then to be done with the Jews, Meisinger went on, there was a choice. First, like garbage, they could simply be thrown away. There were several old, unseaworthy ships docked across the Whangpoo River at Pootung. The Jews would be stripped even of the clothes on their backs and loaded onto the boats. These would then be towed out to sea, their rudder cables cut; and the Jews would be left to drift helplessly till they all died of thirst and hunger. At some later point, a naval detail could go out and sink the ships thus disposing of the worthless corpses.

  A second possibility: upriver, there were several abandoned salt mines. The Jews could be put to some honest work for a change, they could dig salt for Japan. Most of the Jews would not last long at this, Meisinger admitted, but the Nazis knew from their experience in Europe the maximum amount of labor that could be gotten from a Jew for a minimum of nourishment. The equation was profitable enough to justify the trouble.

  Another recommendation, one which Meisinger himself put forward, would be to build a concentration camp on the island of Tsungming in the mouth of the Yangtze River. There the Jews would be permitted to volunteer for medical experiments ... on the human nervous system's tolerance for pain, for example.

  Shibata couldn't take his eyes off Meisinger. The German kept rolling his fat black cigar between his wet lips, his balding head was sweating with excitement, his hands trembling as they lay on the edge of the table. Shibata found particularly revolting the saliva around Meisinger's mouth as the German described several of the "experiments" that Neumann had supervised at Bergen-Belsen.

  Kubota cut off Meisinger's revolting descriptions by asking several questions. The Germans consulted their maps and charts and replied in concise detail. The meeting ended without a formal decision; but clearly the representatives of the army, navy, kempeitai and Refugee Affairs Bureau had been receptive to the suggestions.

  "How can we be doing this?" Shibata demanded of himself as he watched a stream of emaciated rickshawmen trundle a party of military officers toward the Bund. "What is happening to the Japanese that they should even be thinking these things?"

  Shibata was a bright fellow - vice consul while still in his thirties.

  In the three years he had been in Shanghai, one of his principal duties had been to keep the Gaimusho informed of what Inuzuka, whom they never did trust, had been up to. Shibata had many friends among the Europeans in Shanghai (he also kept a Chinese mistress, a risky venture for a representative of the Japanese government) . He was familiar with the position of the refugees, and how that position had deteriorated. But this? Where was the justification for anything like this?

  Undecided what to do, he began walking toward the residential area of the former French Concession. On the way, he met one of the men he most admired in Shanghai, Reuben Abraham. Shibata tried to chat with him casually as he would have done ordinarily. It was impossible.

  "Mr. Abraham," he finally blurted out, "we have to talk. I can't give you any details, but the Jews in Shanghai are in the greatest danger. Please, we must have a meeting soon, tonight, tomorrow at the latest."

  Shibata was aghast at himself: he, an official of the imperial government, privy to top secret information, was about to commit treason. His own ears could not believe they were hearing his words.

  Abraham was unperturbed. "Tonight and tomorrow are the Sabbath, you know. The Sabbath is a day of holiness, a day of rest. We can't possibly desecrate it."

  "Mr. Abraham, this is not a social gathering. It is a matter of life and death for all the Jews here."

  Abraham only shook his head. "It's more than the Jew protecting the Sabbath, Mr. Shibata; the Sabbath protects the Jew."

  As the tall, proud man sauntered off, Shibata shook his head in disbelief. But his amazement was quickly washed away by relief: after all, he had not yet blurted out the secret. His position, his life as a Japanese, was still secure. Shibata began walking again, but even as he walked away, he knew what he had to do. Turning into a broad driveway, he knocked at the door of Elias Hayim. Hayim was less strict in his observance of the Sabbath.

  Early the following day seven men, representing the Sephardi (Hayim and Michael Speelman), the Russian (Boris Topas and Joseph Bitker) and the German Jews (Dr. Kardegg, Fritz Kaufmann and Robert Perit
z), met in Speelman's luxurious living room.

  As Shibata described the details of the Meisinger meeting, the atmosphere in the room grew heavier.

  "Pogroms happen, of course," one of the Russians said, "but of such a magnitude? Whoever heard of annihilating every Jew in such a big city?"

  But the German Jews had fled from exactly that. It didn't matter, rich engineer or poor peasant, one said. The Nazis are out to destroy every Jew, every single Jew in the world. "Are you really surprised at twenty thousand?" he asked. "In Europe they murder in batches of twenty thousand - one batch today, another tomorrow." In Speelman's living room, the Jews were, for once, united ... in terror.

  But there was no time for terror. The date that Meisinger had spoken of, Rosh Hashanah, was only a few weeks away. What could they do in such a short time to avert a pogrom they were not even supposed to know about?

  There was only one ray of hope in all the words Shibata had spoken: the extermination plan was a local undertaking. The Shanghai kempeitai, military and Foreign Ministry representatives were working on their own; they were not carrying out a directive from Tokyo. Possibly, if the higher ups were told about the plan, they would order it stopped, cold. As far as the seven men at that meeting could see, it was their only chance. In order to bypass the telegraph censors, they would send a Chinese messenger to Dr. Kaufman in Harbin - and through him, try to inform Yasue in Dairen and Matsuoka who was no longer foreign minister in Tokyo, but was still influential in the government. General Matsui, the commander of all Japanese forces in Central China would also be approached. But the chief of the kempeitai was another matter. None of the Jews knew him; none of them even knew his name. And the kempeitai was by far the most dangerous, most ruthless branch of the whole Japanese occupation structure.