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Historic Groups that Started Innocent then Took an Evil Turn

Khalid Elhassan November 8, 2020 32 min

Harley-Davidson - Harley-Davidson WLA — Harley-Davidson WLAs. Motorcyclist

10. The Terrorist Organization That Started Off as an Innocent Charity

Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach in the 1940s. Pintrest

South America does not usually come to mind when people think of WWII. Nor does it often conjure images of fanatical Japanese, refusing to accept that their country had been defeated. However, South America’s biggest country, Brazil, witnessed just that during the war and in the years after its conclusion.

The country was shaken by fanatical Japanese immigrants, who formed a group that waged a campaign of terror against other immigrants deemed disloyal to Japan. After the war ended in Japan’s surrender, the group’s definition of “disloyalty” came to include the mere utterance of the fact that Japan had surrendered. Ironically, Brazil’s Japanese terrorist organization, Shindo Renmei (“League of the Way of Emperor’s Subjects“), began as an innocent charity.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.