Recovering Japan’s Stolen Identity: Broken Pottery and Golden Seams

Hidden truth about self-hatred culture in Japan

Self sabotage, self hate, self punishment and self erasing are the things that I have personally struggled in my life for years…in shadow. Many friends around me here in America probably have no idea about my dark mental space except for the few that I let in my inner circle.
This has always frightened me: am I innately dark and depressed? Do I have no ability to see goodness in myself and my own lineage?
Well, I had to actually let go of those silly thoughts and beliefs to start my healing. In that process of restoration and research, some interesting but also disturbing history of indoctrination and brainwashing that was done to Japan by other countries or I should say forces, especially after World War in the 1940s and onward to the modern day started to emerge. We weren’t, or at least I wasn’t taught in my history classes all through the Japanese education system that the actual details of how the culture before and after war transitioned rapidly except “GHQ lead by general MacArthur wrote our constitution and we were a peaceful and democratic country”. I never knew of the hidden history of occupation period by foreign people, or programs to specifically control and censor Japanese education system and media companies so that Japanese people believed certain narratives written by some group of people or indoctrinated.

Now, a little note for those of you that are Americans and Europeans reading this. I don’t write to insult your lineages. I am writing as a process to restore my own personal empowerment as a Japanese woman through exploring what forces possibly social-engineered post war Japan so that her people eventually despised their own country and culture. I love America and I equally respect her history and those brave souls founded this country.

Pearl Harbor and suicide bombers: “no one wanted to do it”.

I’ve been hearing for years about the tragedy of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and how horrible Japan has been to sneakily attack an American Navy base. Here’s the list of World War 2 significant events according to the United States Department of Defense website:

Sept. 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Japan invaded China in 1937.

April 9 to June 22, 1940 Germany takes control of much of Western Europe including France.

July 10, 1940 Germany launches air war against the United Kingdom.

Sept. 22, 1940 Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact creating alliance between them.

Dec. 7, 1941 Japan’s naval air force attacks military bases in Oahu, Hawaii. (Peal Harbor incident)

Dec. 8, 1941 The United States declares war against Japan.

Dec. 11, 1941 The United States declares war against Germany and Italy.

June 4 to 7, 1942 The U.S. Navy defeats Japanese Navy at the battle of Midway.

July 9, 1942 Allied forces (The U.S., British and Soviet Union) invades Sicily.

Sept. 8, 1943 Italy surrenders to the Allies but German forces occupy Northern Italy.

June 6, 1944 Allied forces land on the beaches of Normandy, France.

Aug. 25, 1944 Allies take control of Paris.

Dec. 16, 1944 Germany counter attacks known as Battle of the Bulge.

Feb. 19, 1945 The U.S. Marines land on the Japanese Island of Iwo Jima.

March 22, 1945 The U.S. Army crosses the Rhine River in Germany.

April 1, 1945 The U.S. soldiers and Marines invade Okinawa Japan.

April 25, 1945 The Soviet army encircles Berlin and links up with the Americans on the Elbe River.

May 8, 1945 Germany surrenders to the Allies.

Aug. 6, 1945 The U.S. drops an atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.

Aug. 9, 1945 The U.S. drops an atomic bomb in Nagasaki, Japan.

Sept. 2, 1945 Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, Japan announced surrender on Aug. 15, 1945

Now, seeing this timeline, one can see the narrative of winning heroes of good versus evil empires, and good prevails at the end. What’s actually important is what’s missing between the events and what’s hidden from all of us humanity. Especially the time between September 22nd 1940 to when Pearl Harbor happened, it’s been documented in multiple places that the war could have been possibly ended then before America even getting involved in it.

I have been reading Herbert Hoover’s book “Freedom Betrayed”. Hoover was the 31st president of the United States right before President Roosevelt, and this book is a collection of his memoirs and diary entries from various people working to negotiate peace between the nations. Hoover finished writing this tome of memoirs in 1964 right before his dealth, but it wasn’t published until nearly 50 years later in 2011.

In chapter 38 of Freedom Betrayed, he describes multiple communications and political movements between Japan and the U.S. I was shocked to learn that Hitler had already left the Axis in early 1941, and Japan was economically struggling and actively seeking peace with the U.S. and Britain.

This is an excerpt from the book describing messages sent to the president Roosevelt and secretary Hull by an American ambassador Grew.

“… The Ambassador urges . . . with all the force at his command, for the sake of avoiding the obviously growing possibility of an utterly futile war between Japan and the United States, that his Japanese proposal not be turned aside without very prayerful consideration. … The good which may flow from a meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt is incalculable. The opportunity is here presented . . . for an act of the highest statesmanship . . . with the possible overcoming thereby of apparently insurmountable obstacles to peace hereafter in the Pacific.”

“On September 22, Grew wrote a personal letter to the President filled with urgent and convincing statements that peace could be had with honor to both sides.”

“Reduced to the bare bones, what these two statesmen of world-wide experience in settlement of world conflicts were say ing was: (a) you cannot force surrender of Japan by the economic sanctions or threats; (b) they will commit hara-kiri before they submit to such humiliation; (c) they are prepared, and Konoye is authorized, to concede any reasonable terms at conference in the Pacific staged as a meeting of equals; and (d) this is the last chance.”

This was just few months before Pearl Harbor attack by Japan. It clearly shows that Japan was seeking peaceful settlement of matters and ending of war. Unfortunately, we all know that’s not what happened and Hoover records how these requests by Japanese prime minister and her government were dismissed by the Secretary Hull and the president Roosevelt.

“On October 19, three days after the fall of Konoye, Grew’ diary has this entry: Why on earth should we rush headlong into war? When Hitler is defeated, as he eventually will be, the Japanese problem will solve itself.”

“In 1952 Ambassador Grew reviewed the situation which existed in late summer 1941.

These subsequent reflections are worthy of note: During this critical period the Embassy … made clear in repeated telegrams to Washington the following considerations: the political soil in Japan was for the first time in ten years ripe for the sowing of new seeds which should be planted with constructive wisdom; we believed that Prince Konoye was in a position to carry the country with him in a program of peace… . However, Mr. Grew recalled: … Our telegrams . . . seldom brought response; they were rarely even referred to, and reporting to our Government was like throwing pebbles into a lake at night; we were not permitted to see even the ripples. For all we knew, our telegrams had not in any degree carried conviction. Obviously, I could only assume that our recommendations were not welcome, yet we continued to express our carefully considered judgment on the developing situation.

Grew frequently expressed his complete frustration at the actions of Roosevelt and Hull. He states that after the memorandum on October 2, 1941, Hull did not answer any of his or the Japanese inquiries or proposals until November 26—long after the fall of the Konoye Cabinet.”

If there was a chance or opportunity to avoid going into war and protect the nation’s soldiers and resources, I would think that the leader of the country would choose the path of peace with no question. President Roosevelt knew of the Pearl Harbor attach beforehand, and still he let that event happen without taking any actions toward peace. Who or what wanted America to be heading into wars so badly?

Tokyo Air Raid and Atomic bombs

Another event excluded from the Department of Defense events timeline is the Tokyo Air Raid by American B-29 fire bombers that happened on March 9-10, 1945. It is considered one of the worst destructions done to civilians in human history which is not very well known to American people. One survivor of this horrifying event describes it in the book Tokyo Junkie by Robert Whiting: “I would rather have died in the atomic bomb. That’s how bad the Tokyo firebombing was. At least in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you died instantly. The next morning, there were blackened corpses littered everywhere…the river was filled with them and so were the streets, which blocked bicycles from riding through. You couldn’t even walk. The smell was horrible. The wind was still blowing, and the air was thick with swirling ashes from the corpses. All my relatives died. The local authorities picked up body parts, bones, and ashes and assembled them all at the shrine. Those who wanted bones could come and pick them up, but nobody knew which bones belonged to whom.”

Then even a few months after this, two atomic bombs which were the only ones ever used in wars in history were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan in August of 1945 which basically ended World War 2. Were these violent assaults even necessary? Why did American government want to go into war where there was a chance of peacefula settlement and negotiation? Any intelligent and compassionate human has to wonder…

War just sucks, doesn’t it? No one won. People killed each other and our precious planet earth was destroyed. There was no winner, or was there? It wasn’t the everyday citizens of any country. To me, it almost seems like there was a force behind all this violence and crash of countries that carefully calculated and planned this exact outcome. But more on that discussion in depth in later blog posts….

Occupation Era by GHQ

After Japan’s surrender, there was an occupation era in which General Head Quarter (GHQ) and related American personnel occupied Japan. There were nearly 1 million Americans and they stayed there for about 7 years post war. There have been many counts and documentation available during this time how GHQ and its occupational programs systematically eliminated Japanese traditional values and instead implant guilt and shame for what the country has done during the war. It even has a name—War Guilt Information Program. This program was everywhere in the daily life of Japanese people post-war; education, the newly written constitution (by GHQ), and mass media were all censored and propagandized. That’s when the indoctrination and brainwashing really started on Japanese people and culture, 80 years ago. Ha, that makes a lot of sense. Japan was completely destroyed and flattened to the ground, and Japanese people had lost their sense of cultural identity along with everything else in war. There is no other perfect timing for foreign entities to invade and indoctrinate a whole culture but the present situation.

Seeing the Big picture and Restoring Self-respect as a Culture

So this is the short origin story of when Japanese people got their way stolen. There have been many other occasions in history of course, but World War 2 and its destruction were the most significant and they changed the course of Japan and her people for the rest of time until today. Look at the smile of these Japanese people in 1915 before World War 2. A photo taken by Elstner Hilton in 1915 Japan.

It was 40 years before I was born when the postwar indoctrination by GHQ started. There was a whole generation before and after me today 80 years later, and I can clearly see that revolution of the spirit of Japan is horribly needed now. Japan struggle economically because it is behind to implement new fields of technology from the rest of the world, not only that, younger people are not reproducing babies anymore and demographics of the country has been inverted to have much bigger population of old, dying who needs care compared to able, young working population. Those younger population, like me, have been educated in the indoctrination system so that the truth of our history, origin, and lineage which we naturally should be proud of have been stripped away from us.

Now that I have discovered that my resentment and hatred toward my own country weren’t accidental but carefully crafted by some outside force, I am determined to reclaim what’s been hidden from us all this time. This is a very serious crime happening everywhere in the world today, committed by those few who only care about acquiring control and power over the mass population.

In the next posts, I will dive deeper into the details of the indoctrination and what GHQ wanted to get rid of Japanese people and culture so that I can go back and learn it. Exploring the hidden truth of history is like picking up fragments of broken stained glass. We will probably never reconstruct the whole picture as it was before. Still it creates a new beautiful mosaic of a picture, even with kintsugi: a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with gold. The finished pottery is considered even more beautiful and increases in value.

This was a long reading journey and I appreciate you taking time to getting here. Please leave me a comment and what you’re interested in reading in the future or whatever else you would like to share. I will look forward to connecting with you!

Cheers, kanpai, and sayonara for now~