Japanese Navy orders to destroy papers found

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Japanese Navy orders to destroy papers found

LONDON (Kyodo) The Imperial Japanese Navy's orders to destroy wartime
documents and items associated with Emperor Hirohito following the
country's 1945 surrender have been unearthed in Britain by a Japanese
academic.

The discovery at the National Archives in London is significant because
it is probably the first time precise details of the instructions from
Japan's navy have been revealed, because as well as burning all the
documentation and Imperial connections, military personnel were told to
destroy the actual orders telling them to do so, said Hirofumi Hayashi,
a professor of Japanese history at Kanto Gakuin University who
discovered the documents.

The find is also important because it is thought to be the first time
orders relating to the disposal of Imperial items have been found,
experts said.

This suggests the navy wanted to protect the Emperor from prosecution
for war crimes <javascript:void(0)>, academics said.

It has long been known that the military destroyed the vast majority of
its wartime documents, but hard evidence of an orchestrated plan had
been lacking. Up until this recent find, a few navy orders turned up,
but researchers are delighted with this new find given the volume of
information and detail involved.

The orders to Japanese ships and outposts in China and Southeast Asia
<javascript:void(0)> were intercepted by Britain, which had cracked the
secret codes. Many of the messages, apparently word-for-word
translations, were sent by commanders a few days after Japan's surrender
on Aug. 15, 1945.

The orders were sent between Aug. 16 and 22 and tell officers to burn
anything that would be useful to the enemy. Items listed for destruction
include all personnel records, diaries, flags, code books, details of
interrogations, radios and enemy aircraft equipment. However, military
personnel are told to retain all prisoner of war documents.

Yutaka Yoshida, a professor of Japanese history at Hitotsubashi
University <javascript:void(0)>, said he believes the orders were sent
out because Japanese officials were concerned about being tried for war
crimes.

Yoshida said that in Germany most documents were saved and this made it
easier for the Allies to prosecute war criminals. However, because much
of the documentation was burned in Japan — the military had around two
weeks to destroy papers before the Allies entered the country — evidence
was based mainly on testimony.

 

Indeed.......

The destruction of wartime documentation not only applys to Axis nations....

Allied documentation relating to codebreaking, and to the activities of American submarines in the Pacific theater was also destroyed, much of it during the war itself...

Warcrimes trials seemed to focus entirely on the vanquished....Russian and Yugoslav atrocities were ignored.

Codebreaking secret files are particularly important, and the very lack of them makes it difficult to piece together Allied diplomatic reasoning for the political and military moves that were made.....This is a crime in itself. It's said that British files for codebreaking that still exist are still suppressed, leading me to believe that there is still much about Allied diplomacy to hide...

2017 sees many of these files declassified. Lets hope a clearer picture of World War 2 will emerge then.

We are certainly not getting the whole story at the moment.....