MATSUBARA: Mr. Watanabe, I think the biggest issue is the Nanjing incident.
WATANABE: It's the easiest example to understand.
MATSUBARA: It's a problem. I asked about it four times at Foreign Affairs Committee meetings. According to the theologic school documents of Yale university, as you know well, about twenty preachers were in Nanjing at the time. I read their handwritten letters to their wives and brothers. I read many things and I came to a conclusion that I can't believe the Nanjing Massacre.
MATSUBARA: They said that "they set up the safety zone to protect 100 thousand innocent civilians there". The population was about 100 thousand then as many people had probably evacuated. "They tried to protect those people." "They did it on behalf of the god. They asked the KMT not to mount a battery there and the Japanese army not to fire a cannonball into them. But the KMT was so outrageous to mount a battery in the safety zone." I saw a stack of letters with these kinds of things written in them. They said this eventually.
MATSUBARA: It's something like "We protected 100 thousand innocent civilians as this way." If this is the fact, the Nanjing Massacre should be denied. If the Nanjing Massacre is the fact, those preachers lied. Then which is correct ? We can half expect the answer.
WATANABE: I was also interested in that long ago and read the record of the Tokyo tribunal. Then I found a preacher Maggie had testified the massacre.
MATSUBARA: Yes, it was Mr. Maggie.
WATANABE: He was a leader of the Red Cross and moved around China. He testified "he had heard about the massacre here and there", but cross-examined by an American lawyer "how many victims he had witnessed". Then he answered he had witnessed "only one". And asked "how the victim had been slaughtered", he answered, in the so called safety zone,
MATSUBARA: Yes, it's the safety zone.
WATANABE: A Chinese man had run through the sentries on the road. Sentries had ordered him to stop but he hadn't. Then Mr. Maggie had seen him gunned down. Can we call this a slaughter ?
MATSUBARA: Definitely not. The documents contain Mr. Maggie's letters too.
WATANABE: We can't, can we ? He could be shot now if he runs away when ordered to "stop" by the police in New York. No wonder it happened in the battlefield.
MATSUBARA: You are definitely right. We should validate evidences and produce proofs to support the truth of the Nanjing incident.
WATANABE: It's certainly important. One of my works last year was to summarize the Lytton Report. Why the Lytton Report is important is, because it says " the Manchurian Incident wasn't the invasion". The report was ignored at the Tokyo tribunal. The League of Nations sent representatives from five nations to investigate the conditions for as long as several months and issued the report. However as it contained something Japan didn't want to agree, Mr. Matsuoka who was a bit stupid guy made Japan leave the League of Nations.
WATANABE: Those who have read the report should know it wasn't the invasion. The judge Pal also said, "Why wasn't the report taken up at the Tokyo tribunal ?", and "It's been recognized at the international conference that Japan didn't invade Manchuria.". Why doesn't Japan have a rhetoric to insist on this fact ?
MATSUBARA: I asked about it many times at a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting but they said, "It's a private sector's job.". I don't think a private sector could do that. Our enemy has had an ideologic struggle as a national commitment for a propaganda.
WATANABE: That's right. They have sneaked into everywhere in the US to spread the orthodoxy of the CCP.
WATANABE: That's unbelievable.
MATSUBARA: I think an American opinion is actually an international opinion now.
WATANABE: Ummm.
MATSUBARA: An international opinion exists only in the US, therefore an American opinion makes the world go around. The US leads the fields of entertainments and sports, and all other fields. Something I think strange about this issue is, for example that book by Iris Chang has been released and most of the world say, "Japanese are outrageous.". How much have Japanese controverted that book ? All photos in the book are fake without the professor Higashinakano's explanation.
WATANABE: Yes, every one of them...
MATSUBARA: They are fake. Enlarging a photo captioned "the crowd of farmers to be executed", you can find smiling faces.
WATANABE: Hahahaha.
MATSUBARA: How could people to be executed smile ? A composer Koichi Sugiyama, a friend of mine said, "It's going to cost $90 thousand an ad to place those photos as an advocacy ad in the Newsweek". Though it could cost that much, we don't have to prepare a proof for "the fact". It's because some originals photos that Iris Chang had showed in her book were found in the other sources such as the Asahigraph.
MATSUBARA: He said, "We'll be able to say, "This is the original of this photo. The captions are different."." and "Iris Chang wrote they had been to be slaughtered but the fact is
the crowd of laughing farmers just going to work, guarded by the Japanese army.". Then he said, "Let's place ads on the Newsweek with $90 thousand. We don't need any proofs as the photos can be the proofs themselves.". Then I said, "That's a good idea.".
WATANABE: Super !
MATSUBARA: I told Mr. Aso about the idea at a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting.
WATANABE: Assuming 54 ads a year...
MATSUBARA: It's going to cost $5 million.
WATANABE: It's small as a budget.
MATSUBARA: It's cheap.
WATANABE: I mistook the Times for the Newsweek at the time and said it would cost $33 million if we placed an ad everyday, 365 days a year. I said, "It's cheap compared with $1.8 billion of the contribution to the UN. It's much better to cut $33 million and spend it for those ads.". A MOFA official said, "Let's not do that as it could never settle the issue.". It doesn't matter if it couldn't and it's better than nothing.
WATANABE: As they always show fictions, we will show proved facts, not fictions.
MATSUBARA: However, Mr. Watanabe, the problem is the idea was rejected. The Newsweek employs three lawyers. Mr. Sugiyama also said, "Mr. Matsubara, it's difficult against the three lawyers". And I said, "Why couldn't we do $90 thousand business with a mere commercial journalism ?". However, the idea was rejected. It's because "it was against the tone of the Newsweek's argument".
WATANABE: It was the time the government should have done something. They should have made it a diplomatic problem insisting "we would admit their rejection if our ads were fake but it wasn't fair to reject ads about the facts".
MATSUBARA: It makes sense. We should make it that far.
WATANABE: I guess those lawyers would have no reason to reject ads about the facts.
MATSUBARA: They said our ads were "against their tone of argument" but we wonder whose tone they had adopted.
WATANABE: It's important.
MATSUBARA: There are insane numbers of Chinese lobbyists in the US.
WATANABE: It's been their tradition since the Sino-Japanese war and Soong May-ling. Being a member of the Zhejiang business combine, Soong May-ling was a protestant. Therefore her husband Chiang Kai-shek pretended to be a protestant. They spread a propaganda like "infidel Japanese bullied Chinese".
MATSUBARA: Well, it's good.
WATANABE: For example, when they got $90 million of an assistance at first, they got $18 million as a kickback and spent it for a propaganda. When they got $900 million next, they spent $180 million for a propaganda. And this messed up the Sino-Japanese war.
MATSUBARA: It got bigger and bigger.
WATANABE: Yes, it did.
WATANABE: It's been one of the Chinese cultures to bribe.
MATSUBARA: I think it's also one of the American cultures. And I think they feel guilty about "nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki".
WATANABE: You are right.
MATSUBARA: They say, "Japan was so outrageous to deserve being nuked". Conservatives in the US support this logic.
WATANABE: They want to comfort their consciences by that.
MATSUBARA: That's right. The Chinese anti-Japan propaganda combined with the American "sense of guilt" has made the ideology of evil Japan more widely supported. It's going to appear this year as the 70th anniversary of Nanjing's fall. The seven movies featuring the Nanjing Massacre are being made.
WATANABE: This is a horrendous condition.
MATSUBARA: It's horrendous. Unless we controvert it, it will become an accomplished fact someday.
WATANABE: It surely will.
MATSUBARA: I want the government to ascertain the issue for goodness sake. Those who know Nanjing at the time have gotten very old and they are dying off. Now is the last time that we could collect their testimonies. Unless we make it haste, we will lose evidences that we will need to controvert their propaganda.
WATANABE: Then...
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