Fugu plan

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As Fugu Plan ( Jap. 河豚計画 , Fugu Keikaku , Eng .: Fugu Plot -, fugu conspiracy ') is the idea of the Japanese Empire called, Jewish refugees on a large scale during the 1930s from the German Reich after Japan immigrate to to let.

designation

The name Fugu-Plan is derived from the Japanese specialty Fugu , which is made from the muscle meat of the puffer fish. However, this contains highly toxic components that must be removed before cooking, otherwise the enjoyment can be fatal. The term is used for the first time in Marvin Tokayer's 1979 novel The Fugu-Plan - The untold story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II ( The Fugu-Plan - The unwritten history of the Japanese and Jews in World War II ). It is used in the novel as a historical saying of the Japanese naval captain Koreshige Inuzuka (犬 塚 惟 重, 1890-1965, head of the Shanghai "Bureau for Jewish Affairs" from March 1939 to April 1942) in the mouth placed. The metaphor “blowfish” in Inuzuka's speech explicitly stands for the Jews , who in the eyes of a Japanese imperialist are very useful, but also dangerous. The events are archived in some highly confidential war documents of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, which were confiscated by the Allies after the war and moved to the Library of Congress in Washington . In these so-called Kogan papers but only of "settlement plans" ( Engl. : Settlement plans) and the establishment of a "Jewish Autonomous State" speech. According to Wei Zhuang's analysis, the metaphorical name of the “Fugu Plan” is most likely a literary invention of Tokay.

Goal setting

The plan was to use the potential of the Jewish intellectuals for the economic, technological and scientific upswing of the Japanese empire and possibly to establish contacts with wealthy Jewish business people in the western world. However, the plan was rejected after the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1940, because Germany did not want to provoke and the alliance did not endanger.

Initiators

The initiators of this plan were officers Inuzuka Koreshige and Yasue Norihiro . They had heard of the so-called Protocols of Zion during their participation in the Russian Civil War and were fascinated by the supposed power of Jewish circles. These officers, along with other colleagues and business people, read many other anti-Semitic publications and, ironically, were later considered specialists in Judaism in Japan. The idea of ​​settling Jews on Japanese soil matured. The Fugu Plan was first seriously considered by the Japanese government in the early 1930s when they launched the invasion of Manchuria . There was already a significant Jewish population there, and the Japanese wondered to what extent they might attract new Jewish settlers to rebuild the newly conquered area. These considerations were dropped when the repression of the Imperial Japanese Army against the Jewish residents in Harbin became known. Cooperation between these people and the Japanese was therefore ruled out for the next few years.

Council of Five Ministers

In 1938 a conference of the Five-Ministerial Council took place, which was composed of the Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro , the Minister of the Army Itagaki Seishirō , the Minister of the Navy Yonai Mitsumasa , the Foreign Minister Arita Hachirō and the Minister of Finance Shigeaki Ikeda . In view of the November pogroms , it was felt that the time had come to take action, but neither wanted to endanger the growing relations with Germany. The conference ended with the decision that Jews should not be expelled from Japan. In addition, all Jewish refugees arriving in Japan should be settled in Kobe . These refugees were later relocated to Shanghai after the attack on Pearl Harbor and, at the insistence of the Germans allied with Japan, were brought to the Shanghai ghetto .

Escape to Japan

The German-Soviet pact of non-aggression brought new difficulties for the transit of Jews to Japan. In Lithuania , which had been occupied by the Soviet Union since the summer of 1940 , the Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas to Jewish refugees without official permission from the Japanese government . These people could then travel to Vladivostok and embark for Tsuruga , provided they had received an exit visa from the Soviet Union. Officially, these refugees would have had to travel on from Japan, but thousands of Jews were able to settle in Kobe. When Germany began the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 , there was no longer any shipping traffic between Japan and the Soviet Union, so that the flow of refugees from the Siberian mainland came to a standstill. This was also the last unofficial high point of the Fugu plan. From 1942 onwards, any efforts in this direction were prohibited by a government decision in order not to endanger the alliance with the other Axis powers .

literature

  • Vincas Bartusevičius, Joachim Tauber u. Wolfram Wette, Holocaust in Lithuania. War, murder of Jews and collaboration in 1941 , Vienna, Böhlau Verlag, 2003.
  • Martin Kaneko, The Jewish Policy of the Japanese War Government , Berlin, Metropol-Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-938690-91-8 .
  • Miriam Bistrović, Anti-Semitism and Philosemitism in Japan , Essen, Klartext Verlagsges., 2011. ISBN 978-3-8375-0499-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marvin Tokayer, Mary Swartz: The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II . Paddington Press, 1979, ISBN 0-448-23036-4 .
  2. ^ Wei Zhuang: The cultures of remembrance of the Jewish exile in Shanghai (1933-1950) . LIT Verlag Münster, 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-12910-9 , pp. 61–63.
  3. ^ Marvin Tokayer, Mary Swartz: Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War Two . Diane Pub Co, 1979, ISBN 0-7567-5101-2 .
  4. .また,同要綱に関する説明文はありQuestion戦前の日本における対ユダヤ人政策の基本をなしたと言われる「ユダヤ人対策要綱」に関する史料はありますかますか. . Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
  5. 猶太人 対 策 要 綱 . In: Five ministers council . Japan Center for Asian Historical Record . December 6, 1938.