SDHF Newsletter No.255 Book review WGIP and History Wars
War Guilt Information Program and History Wars
Takahashi Shiroh
The Institute of Moralogy, 2019
Reviewed by Jason Morgan
October 8, 2019
A new book by renowned historian Shiro Takahashi shows that the American government, and in particular the General Headquarters under the control of Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, carried out a massive campaign of censorship, disinformation, and brainwashing against the Japanese public in the years following the end of World War II.
The name of this psychological warfare operation is the “War Guilt Information Program,” or WGIP. It was designed to spread false information and instill in the Japanese people a view of history and politics in alignment with the needs of Washington, DC. And it succeeded brilliantly.
The WGIP was a wartime and postwar program, but it began in practice long before it was given an official name. For example, during the run-up to America’s involvement in the Pacific War, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was, by his own admission, maneuvering Japan into firing the first shot in the conflict that Roosevelt badly wanted, American academics worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. government to produce blatantly false propaganda about Japan.
What is perhaps most striking about Takahashi’s book is that the War Guilt Information Program that the American government and their willing collaborators in American universities produced is still the foundation of American engagement with Japan. Every time an American academic or government official takes a high-handed attitude against Tokyo, they are simply regurgitating the line laid down by other collaborationist scholars two generations before.
Unfortunately, this is not the extent of the damage. The psychological warfare that the Americans waged against Japan was quickly taken up by communists in Japanese society who, infiltrating educational institutions, needed no prodding to rehearse Washington’s anti-Japan propaganda for subsequent generations of Japanese students. Even today, the Japanese view of their own history remains virtually a facsimile of the propaganda program force-fed to the Japanese public in the late 1940s and afterward under the auspices of the War Guilt Information Program.
Book Review: HTML: https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/1414/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Takahashi-WGIP-Review-Morgan-.pdf
Book:https://www.amazon.co.jp/WGIP-%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AE%E3%83%AB%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%A1%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B0%E3%83%A9%E3%83%A0-%E3%81%A8%E3%80%8C%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2%E6%88%A6%E3%80%8D%E3%80%8C%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E9%81%93%E5%BE%B3%E3%80%8D%E3%82%92%E5%8F%96%E3%82%8A%E6%88%BB%E3%81%99-%E9%AB%99%E6%A9%8B-%E5%8F%B2%E6%9C%97/dp/4896392655
MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact