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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

36. Punishing “Defeatists”

US Marines celebrating victory over Japan in Okinawa. USMC Archives

Shindo Renmei took a turn towards ultra-nationalism during the war. With most Japanese-Brazilians cut off from reliable news, Colonel Kikawa and his followers stepped in and filled the information vacuum with “news” that amounted to little more than wishful thinking. Even as Japan was reeling from defeat after defeat, Shindo Renmei told the Japanese immigrants that Japan was marching from triumph to triumph. The claims included a decisive Japanese victory in Okinawa, where America lost 400 warships. The victory was helped in no small part by a Japanese super weapon, the “High-Frequency Bomb”, which wiped out Americans by the hundreds of thousands and forced the Allies’ unconditional surrender.

Shindo Renmei members, whose organization insisted that Japan had won WWII after a decisive victory in Okinawa. BBC

Many believed that balderdash, or if they did not, they knew better than to open their mouths and say so. If for no other reason than that Shindo Renmei also took it upon itself to punish “defeatists” in the Japanese immigrant community. Those who voiced doubts about how well the war was going for Japan were shunned, boycotted, and sometimes violently assailed.

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.