Colonel Masanobu Tsuji

Discussions on all aspects of the Japanese Empire, from the capture of Taiwan until the end of the Second World War.
User avatar
Peter H
Member
Posts: 28628
Joined: 30 Dec 2002, 14:18
Location: Australia

Colonel Masanobu Tsuji

#1

Post by Peter H » 17 Aug 2004, 11:58

The infamous Japanese military technican and master spy who boasted that "my body carries the bullets of five countries--Russian from Nomonhan, American from Guadalcanal, Chinese from Shanghai, British from Burma, and Austrian [sic] from the Philippines."

http://www.warbirdforum.com/tsuji.htm

This is doubted, though he did disappear during a trip to Vietnam in 1961:
Even after he returned to public life in Japan, writing several
books about the war, "he still lived mysteriously, travelling on secret missions, and in April, 1961, he went to Vietnam," as a British military historian told the story in 1968. "Since this date he has not reappeared but information reaching the author from Japan indicates that he is back in uniform and serving as an Operations Staff officer under Vo Nguyen Giap. When one considers the ruthless and brilliance of the North Vietnamese operations, the hand of Masanobu Tsuji can be seen clearly."



A photo here of the Colonel:

http://www.ean.co.uk/Bygones/History/Ar ... arfare.htm

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#2

Post by David Thompson » 19 Aug 2004, 08:31

There is a discussion of Colonel Tsuji's WWII experiment with recreational cannibalism at:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=21498


User avatar
Eden Zhang
Member
Posts: 1196
Joined: 28 Dec 2003, 10:54
Location: XXX

#3

Post by Eden Zhang » 19 Aug 2004, 14:03

Austrian [sic] from the Philippines.
Austrian?

User avatar
Anwar bin Zapari
Member
Posts: 176
Joined: 01 Jun 2002, 20:39
Location: Malaysia
Contact:

#4

Post by Anwar bin Zapari » 23 Aug 2004, 07:18

It was written there: [sic]

letslearn
Member
Posts: 2
Joined: 16 Jun 2005, 16:29
Location: Singapore

#5

Post by letslearn » 16 Jun 2005, 17:28

What is shocking is that he managed to escape criminal trial after the war and even managed to becone an elected Japanese Parlimentarian.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

#6

Post by michael mills » 17 Jun 2005, 12:34

The claim about Japanese "recreational cannibalism" has surfaced before.

As late as the early years of the 20th century there were trials of Jews accused of killing Christians (mostly children but also adults) for the purpose of taking their blood for ritual ceremonies.

At the trials, witnesses swore on oath that they had seen the accused Jew or Jews kill the Christian and take his (or her) blood.

The image of Jews eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their victims was still around at the time of the Second World War, especially in Eastern Europe. I have given examples in this forum of that image being used in accounts or literary works by anti-Communist and anti-Semitic Poles and Ukrainians.

I doubt that Peter H would believe the stories about ritual murder by Jews, and I think he would dismiss the trials as kangaroo courts and the witness testimony as the ravings of deranged individuals.

I suspect that the stories about Japanese recreational cannibalism fall into the same category. One wonders why some people are so ready to believe them.

User avatar
Kim Sung
Member
Posts: 5039
Joined: 28 May 2005, 14:36
Location: The Last Confucian State

Japanese cannibalism has a long history

#7

Post by Kim Sung » 17 Jun 2005, 16:10

During the Chosun-Japanese war from 1592 to 1598, Japanese forces committed cannibalism, which can be confirmed in the records written after the war. In this war, the biggest in Korean history, almost one third of Chosun people(5 million people) were killed in battles, massacre and famine.

At the end of the war, several groups of Japanese forces were surounded by the allied forces of Chosun(Korea) and Ming(China) in seashore castles on the southeastern coast of Korea for more than a year. Starved, they ate bodies of thousands of Chosun and Chinese soldiers killed in the battle.

Despite of the harsh famine caused by Japanese invasion, Chosun people(Koreans) didn't do such kind of things. Strongly influenced by Confucianism putting an emphasis on morality, that kind of horrible thing was very rare among Chosun people in times of famine and war.

Youngshim Park(83 years old), one of the surviving comfort women living in North Korea, told in an recent interview that Japanese soldiers killed a Korean girl refusing to have sex with them and forced her to eat the body of the slained girl. She was taken by a Japanese policeman and sent to Nanjing, China in 1938.
http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mod ... enu_id=102

She is on the far right in this photo that was taken in Burma in 1944. She was pregnant at the time. The laughing man on the far left is, I suppose, a Chinese soldier who liberated them from Japanese forces.
http://blog.naver.com/chakane09/120002624329

Her interview caused a big turmoil in Korean society two months ago, aggravating the relationship between both countries.

IMO, there's something in Japanese ego that is related to cannibalism. Unlike cases of cannibalism in surrounded Leningrad and by an Uruguayan rugby team stucked in the Andes in 1972, Japanese cannibalism has a root in their culture rather than mere starvation. There are few cases in which soldiers of a civilized country ate the bodies of killed enemies.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#8

Post by David Thompson » 17 Jun 2005, 17:04

Michael -- You said:
I suspect that the stories about Japanese recreational cannibalism fall into the same category. One wonders why some people are so ready to believe them.
Perhaps because, in Colonel Tsuji's case, the witnesses were Japanese and had no particular reason to fabricate the story. Other such allegations were proven in legal proceedings. Refute them if you can.

For interested readers -- There is a collection of these stories, and the evidence for them, posted at this thread:

Japanese War Crimes -- Wewak Trial
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=21498

Larry D.
Member
Posts: 4103
Joined: 05 Aug 2004, 00:03
Location: Winter Springs, FL (USA)

#9

Post by Larry D. » 17 Jun 2005, 18:27

Michael Mills wrote:
I suspect that the stories about Japanese recreational cannibalism fall into the same category. One wonders why some people are so ready to believe them.
It is hard for me to believe you wrote that, Michael. You are the great defender of the 100% validity of the Holocaust and all misdeeds perpetrated upon the Jewish people since the birth of Christ. If I was a less understanding person and didn't know of your many worthy and erudite contributions to the forums here, then I might suspect, ever so slightly and in a moment of irrational weakness and abandon, that you were possibly implying that people only do bad things to the Jewish people and NEVER to their own or to others. I dearly and sincerely hope I am wrong. The proof is overwhelming. You are from Australia, so I hope you will read the following work:

TANAKA, Yuki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Boulder (CO): Westview Press, 1996.

Tanaka-san did more than half of his research for the book at the Australian National Archives, both the Melbourne and Canberra branches, and at the Australian War Memorial. His chapter drafts were presented at the Australian National University as well as at other institutions of high learning in Australia. His book contains an entire 24-page chapter on canibalism committed by Japanese soldiers during the war with many examples. I hope you will at least take a look.

Larry D.
Member
Posts: 4103
Joined: 05 Aug 2004, 00:03
Location: Winter Springs, FL (USA)

#10

Post by Larry D. » 17 Jun 2005, 18:36

Oh, Michael, it almost slipped my mind. Don't forget to check on the ritualistic canibalism practiced on American PoWs shot down and captured on Chichijima in the Bonins in 1944-45. Our former president, Bush the Elder, was almost a victim. This is all exceedingly well documented with plenty of witnesses. They killed the airmen, cut out their livers, cut the livers into tiny pieces and sauteed them. The Japanese officer responsible for this then served the sauteed liver delicacies to his fellow officers in the believe that they would inherit the soul and courage of the enemy. There is loads of trial testimony on this, Michael, plus a quite recent book. The guilty parties were tried on Guam by the U.S. Navy on the orders of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Cheers.

User avatar
Peter H
Member
Posts: 28628
Joined: 30 Dec 2002, 14:18
Location: Australia

#11

Post by Peter H » 18 Jun 2005, 04:29

Major Sueo Matoba at Guam trial 1946.

Image
http://www.nps.gov/wapa/indepth/extCont ... /fig70.jpg

Convicted and hanged of "neglect of duty...permitted persons under their control unlawfully to prevent the honourable burial of prisoners of war by mutilating their bodies or causing them to be mutilated or by eating flesh from their bodies."

Goldfish
Member
Posts: 410
Joined: 31 May 2004, 14:51
Location: Atlanta, USA

#12

Post by Goldfish » 18 Jun 2005, 06:07

Interestingly, the Chinese also have a strong tradition of ritual cannibalism in their history and literature. In the Chinese classic Shui Hu Zhuan (Suikoden in Japanese, Outlaws of the Marsh, The Water Margin, or All Men Are Brothers in English), the heroes, especially Li Kui, often eat their defeated enemies. There have been cases of this kind of ritual cannibalism reported as recently as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) period.

Larry D.
Member
Posts: 4103
Joined: 05 Aug 2004, 00:03
Location: Winter Springs, FL (USA)

#13

Post by Larry D. » 19 Jun 2005, 14:37

At the risk of putting too many straws on the camel's back, here is some further reading on ritualistic canibalism practiced by certain Japanese on Chichijima (also spelled Chichi Jima).

Book Review extract::
The Moral Arithmetic of War
By Thomas Childers,
a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author.
in: the Washington Post
Wednesday, January 14, 2004; Page C04

FLYBOYS
A True Story of Courage
By James Bradley

……The story indicated in the subtitle is a particularly gruesome incident that occurred on the island of Chichi Jima, also in February 1945. Nine naval airmen were shot down as they fought in the skies around Iwo Jima. One was the young George H.W. Bush, whose plane ditched offshore. The future president was fortunate; a U.S. ship reached him before the Japanese did. The others were captured by the Japanese, subjected to grisly tortures, beheaded and, in scenes almost too ghastly to read, eaten by their captors. This was not, as Bradley makes clear, a case of cannibalism committed by desperate, starving men but a sort of ritual banquet, a macabre rite that the author links to other barbaric acts symptomatic of the war in the Pacific……..
A review of another book published a year earlier on the same subject can be found at:

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/articles ... 223&page=1

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

#14

Post by michael mills » 20 Jun 2005, 00:24

At the end of the war, several groups of Japanese forces were surounded by the allied forces of Chosun(Korea) and Ming(China) in seashore castles on the southeastern coast of Korea for more than a year. Starved, they ate bodies of thousands of Chosun and Chinese soldiers killed in the battle.
This is quite different from the ritual cannibalism of which the Japanese have been accused by certain deranged Americans.

There have been not a few cases in recent history of starving persons resorting to the consumption of human flesh in an effort to stay alive. There were many cases during the siege of Leningrad for example.

During the Second World War, groups of Japanese soldiers besieged and starving in pockets along the northern coast of New Guinea ate flesh from the bodies of enemy soldiers killed in battle.

The American novel "Moby Dick" is based on a true incident in the 19th century when a whaling ship from New England was rammed and sunk by a large whale. The surviving crew-members spent several weeks in lifeboats heading for the South American coast, and on the way they killed and ate the cabin boy because they had no other food. The practise of cannibalism by ship-wrecked American sailors was apparently quite common, and was not considered a crime.

The above examples represent acts committed by humans in an extreme situation, and do not represent actual cultural practices of their respective cultures. For example, the fact that a group of shipwrecked American sailors ate one of their members does not mean that ritual cannibalism is practised by Americans.

The accusation of ritual cannibalism by Japanese that crops up in American sources no doubt has its origin in the generally negative American attitude toward Asians in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, when Americans and other European colonial peoples considered "Orientals" capable of any sort of devilish behaviour. In the course of the Second World War, that sort of stereotype became focussed on the Japanese as the current enemy.

As for the specific cases of alleged ritual cannibalism, they no doubt had their origin in real atrocities such as the illegal execution of prisoners, to which untrue "lurid embellishment" was added.

Larry D.
Member
Posts: 4103
Joined: 05 Aug 2004, 00:03
Location: Winter Springs, FL (USA)

#15

Post by Larry D. » 20 Jun 2005, 01:04

Michael Mills wrote:
accused by certain deranged Americans
cannibalism by ship-wrecked American sailors was apparently quite common
negative American attitude toward Asians
to which untrue "lurid embellishment" was added.
Well, that's it then, Michael. I have lost all respect for you and I shall not read any more of your posts. To you, Americans all bad, everyone else all good. It is sad and most unfortunate that you have to resort of slander and name-calling when you are confronted by thoroughly investigated facts that do sit well with your preconceived convictions. All four of the above quotes are unsupported, and you know that's against the rules. Ethnic, religious and national slander is also against the rules.

--Larry

Post Reply

Return to “Japan at War 1895-1945”