Capitalism in Decay

The Empire of Japan was probably the least antisemitic of the Axis powers, and some Imperialists found antisemitism incomprehensible. For example, the Imperial governor of Shanghai once baffledly asked Rabbi Kalish ‘Why do the Germans hate you so much?’ There simply wasn’t a diuturnal tradition of either anti‐Judaism or antisemitism in the Far East as there was in Europe.

Nevertheless, a number of Imperialists attracted to Germanic Fascism or Russian anticommunism did adopt this prejudice, and in any case the Eastern Axis implemented a few antisemitic policies in some of the spots that it occupied:

As with the Jewish combatant detainees earlier, non‐combatant Jews of the colony were not treated initially as a distinct ethnic or religious group. Those born in the Netherlands and those who held other Allied citizenship were arrested indistinguishably from non‐Jews with similar conditions.

By contrast, the [Eastern Axis] left unharmed the Iraqi Jews, like other ‘Foreign Orientals’; Jews coming from [Western] Axis nations (Germany, Italy, and Romania) like their non‐Jewish compatriots; Jews of non‐belligerent nations and neutral nations (e.g., Switzerland); and, even, a number of Dutch Jews who were fortunate to be born in Indonesia or demonstrated sufficient Asian roots.

On the whole, during the first year and a half of the [Axis] occupation in Indonesia more than half of the Jewish members of the local community were detained, either as soldiers or as non‐combatant Dutch. Their Jewishness, however, was by no means the reason for their tribulation.

This unbiased treatment, so to speak, did not last long. In the latter half of 1943 the [Eastern Axis’s] policy vis‐à‐vis the local Jews changed dramatically. The most salient aspect of it was the arrest of the Jews who remained outside the camps, regardless of their origin and nationality, solely for being Jews. This measure was without a parallel action against non‐Jews and it was accompanied by gradual segregation of many of the Jews already detained. Critically, it occurred only in Indonesia.

Those arrested now belonged to ethnic and national categories that were left unharmed elsewhere in the Japanese empire, notably in Shanghai and Harbin, the two largest single urban communities in East Asia. Despite its uniqueness, this new discriminatory policy vis‐à‐vis Jews, for being Jews, did not emerge without a warning. It was preceded by a minor anti‐Semitic campaign, which the [Axis] authorities had promoted in Java.

Its harbinger was Major (and, later, Lieutenant Colonel) Murase Mitsuo (1908–1949), the deputy head of the Sixteenth Army Kempeitai (military police of the Imperial Japanese Army) and the chief of its Tokkō (acronym for Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, Special Higher Police) unit. His anti‐Semitic speech in front of propaganda officials in Batavia on 4 April 1943 was echoed, during the same month, by pronouncements of similar content in the local Indonesian press (Benda 1958: 255, 272; Kwartanada 2009).

[…]

The question of relative deprivation is in much lesser doubt when one considers the fate of other Jewish communities in East Asia during the war. It seems patent here that the Jews in wartime Indonesia were meted out harsher treatment than any other substantial Jewish community in the territories occupied by Japan. Nowhere else, was an entire community interned, the majority for more than three years in sub‐human conditions.

Even in Japan itself, Jews were treated better. After all, Jews who were allowed to land in Kobe shortly before the war and the few who remained there throughout the war were treated according to their nationality and not on account of their Jewishness (Shatzkes 1991; Kaneko 2003).

In Harbin, where a community of similar size (about 2,500 in 1939) lived since the early 20th century, Jews were not interned, whereas in Shanghai the majority — ‘stateless’ Jews from Germany, Austria, and various other [Axis]‐occupied nations in Central and Eastern Europe — was kept in an open ghetto under much more humane conditions than in any Indonesian camp. Other Jews in this Chinese city, mainly Russian Jews and Iraqi Jews, remained free throughout the war, while a small number of Allied Jewish citizens were interned (Kranzler 1976: 501).

In accounting for the particularly harsh treatment of the Jews of Indonesia, several moderating factors emerge. First, most of them were associated closely with the Dutch colonial regime and thus were meted out the same treatment as other Europeans. Nowhere else in East Asia was such a large civilian population interned and nowhere else did the Japanese face such logistical difficulties to maintain them.

In Harbin and even in Shanghai, the Jews were neither associated with the anti‐Japanese Chinese majority, nor with the Anglo‐Saxon enemies, and therefore were treated better. And second, the Jews in Indonesia were relatively marginal in size and economic importance — despite being a sizable community, and far from the sight of Western media or Jewish organisations.

On the whole, the circumstances of internment in the Dutch East Indies were unfavorable to all internees, but once separated from the gentile majority and within a growing Anti‐Semitic undercurrent, the Jewish internees seem to have faced particularly harsh conditions.

The keyword being ‘seem’; Rosen Jacobson, E.W. had difficulty corroborating Rotem Kowner’s observations:

Despite the certainty expressed in the speech, [Eastern Axis officials] were not at all sure that the [Fascists] were right about the ‘Jewish danger’. According to the eyewitness report of dentist M. Knap, the [Imperialists] began investigating themselves. In Knap’s prisoner of war camp, ten Jews were told out of the blue to line up.

Since the other prisoners thought this order was meant to be followed by some sort of punishment, they selected the ten youngest and strongest Jewish men, but then something unexpectedly happened: ‘The Japanese sergeant walked in front of and behind the row a couple of times, looked at the heads and legs and walked away while shaking his head. He had a newspaper clipping from de ‘Stürmer’ ([Fascist] propaganda paper) with a Jewish caricature in his hand, and none of the ten had the prescribed crooked legs, crooked back, or crooked nose.’^68^

This is a clear indication that [Berlin’s] influence on [Imperial] policy was not decisive. According to A.G. Vromans, the internment of Jews ‘for being of Jewish ancestry’, must be regarded as an extreme concession that Tokyo granted their allies. There were no other measures taken against the Jews.^69^

[…]

However, these are the only pieces of evidence I have found for Jews being treated differently from other internees, so a deliberate [Imperial] policy does not seem plausible. Elisabeth de Jong‐Keesing, another internee, recalled that the Japanese did not take any special measures against the Jews, but still intended to separate them from the non‐Jews by taking them first to Tangerang (the jodenhan) and then to Adek.

She also refers to non‐Jewish women such as Hetty Wertheim who registered as Jewish for the sake of their children, and because they were unaware of what was happening in Germany: ‘our move must have been at the request of a Japanese ally. […] Our Jewish group was very colourful. All Dutch women with a Jewish husband had also come forward and Jewish women with a non‐Jewish husband. Nobody denied it and nobody knew anything about the extermination camps in Germany.’^73^

(Emphasis added in all cases.)