Kapitalismus 9

Once you get into enemy territory, you will realise what oppression by the white man means. Imposing, magnificent buildings look down from mountaintops or hills on the tiny huts of the natives. The luxurious lifestyle of the whites is financed with the money that this small minority squeezes out of Asians through bloody oppression.

Arthur Zich (1980): Die aufgehende Sonne. Der Zweite Weltkrieg. Niederlande: Time-Life-Books, p. 123. The quote was said between 1939 and 1945.

Colonel Masanobu Tsuji (1901-1961) was a Japanese officer, military strategist and politician. He was involved in war crimes during World War II, hid in Thailand after the war to avoid justice, but returned to Japan in 1949 and became a member of parliament.

Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany during World War II. ‘Outwardly, Japanese ideologues used anti-colonial (...) rhetoric to stir up resistance against Western colonial powers and to win allies - the slogan was “Asia for Asians"’ (recherche international 2008: 107). Many people, e.g. in Indonesia, first welcomed the Japanese because they drove out Dutch colonial power and abolished their exploitative plantation economy. Japan distributed Dutch possessions to Indonesian peasants. But soon the Japanese obliged many to work as romusha (forced labourers). Around 4 million Indonesians perished in World War II (ibid.: 123). The Indonesian journalist Sunapati described the actions of the Japanese as follows: ‘The wolf goes out the back door, the tiger comes in the front door.’ (ibid.: 107) In other words: ‘The European colonialists ran away, the Japanese fascists came!’ (ibid.).

*Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro; recherche international (2012): Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Unterrichtsmaterialien zu einem vergessenen Kapitel der Geschichte. Köln. *Care (Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education): **Mark Caprio (2010): “Neo-Nationalist Interpretations of Japan's Annexation of Korea: The Colonisation Debate in Japan and South Korea.” In: The Asia-Pacific Journal Volume 8, Issue 44, Number 4. *Care (Comfort Women Action for Redress and Ed

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