William L. Stidger

"The Jap is the slant-eyed Hun of the Orient. He has a slant-eyed ethics, a slant-eyed morality, a slant-eyed honesty, a slant-eyed social consciousness; a slant-eyed ambition, a slant-eyed military system; and a slant-eyed mind!" said Peter Clarke Macfarlane, the well-known author and lecturer, one day when I was interviewing him on the Japanese question.

"That's pretty strong, Mr. Macfarlane, in the light of your usual conservatism," I commented.

"I say it carefully and after much thought. It is said to stay said so far, as I am concerned," he added with finality.

This was also my own opinion, after spending three months in Japan and Korea, another month in China; and another month or two in Manila; catching the angle of Japanese leadership from every slant.

And after due consideration, and after a year to think it over carefully, I am here to say, that I never saw, or heard of anything worse happening in Belgium under German rule than that which I saw and heard of happening under Japanese rule in Korea, Siberia and Formosa, while I was in the Orient.

Suffice it is to say, at this point, that the Japanese is hated by the whole Orient. I do not believe that the German Hun in his worst day was ever hated more unanimously for his inhuman practices than is the Jap Hun hated by the whole Orient to-day.

"Is it getting better or worse?" I am asked constantly.

"Worse!" I reply, and this reply is backed up by interviews I have had with returned Korean missionaries.

I found the Japanese scorned and hated from one end of the Orient to the other. As far south as Java, as far east as the Suez; as far north as the uttermost reaches of Manchuria and Siberia; as far this direction as Hawaii.

For instance, after I had been away from Korea for six months and had come back to America I met a most conservative missionary in the Romona Hotel in San Francisco. The last time previous to that meeting that I had seen him was in Korea itself.

I said to him "Are things better or worse in Korea?"

His reply was, "Worse than they have ever been; generally speaking!" I have no intention and no desire to further augment ill feeling between America and Japan. In fact I do not fear anything like war in that direction; but I do have an intense feeling of responsibility about telling my readers the plain and simple truth that the whole Far Eastern world hates Japan.

If that thought itself can get into the mind of America, this country will understand, at least, that there is some fault that lies back in the Japanese military policy and character itself. It hardly seems possible, with ten races and five different countries hating Japan; that Japan herself is not mostly to blame. When a matter of hatred is so unanimous among all races in that part of the world, it is likely that the fault lies with the race and nation which has the hatred of so many types of people focused on its actions.

While I was in Java some high dignitaries in the Japanese Navy arrived in Batavia. The Chinese Coolies who live in Batavia absolutely refused to carry any Japanese officers or sailors in their Rickshas. It was a striking indictment of the Japanese nation.

In Singapore the distrust and hatred of the Japanese is unanimous. In the Philippines it is the same. In Hongkong you see few Japanese. They are not wanted and they are not trusted. In Shanghai, and Peking it is the same. The Student Movement, one of the most powerful weapons that has ever arisen in any nation in the world, has focused the Chinese sentiment against selfish Japanese aggression in China.

The Japanese officials laughed at the Student Boycott of Japanese goods when it first started. But in a year they were trembling in the face of that boycott. I was in Tientsin, and Peking during the days of the Student Street Demonstrations. They were like American demonstrations.

Keen, alert, intelligent Chinese boys addressed the crowds admonishing them not to buy Japanese goods in Chinese shops. The pressure became so strong that all Chinese merchants from the lowest shopkeeper up to the owner of the great chain stores, like our Woolworth institutions, put away Japanese-made goods and refused to sell them.

I took dinner in Shanghai with one of the foremost merchant princes of China and said, "Are you selling any Japanese-made goods?"

"I certainly am not. I am not powerful enough with all my millions of money and all of my chain of stores to take such a chance as that. I have put all of my Japanese goods in the cellar."

The Boycott against Japanese goods in China became so powerful that in Tientsin, while I was there, the Japanese Consul complained bitterly to the Governor of the Province and the Governor who was said to be under the influence of Japanese money, arrested a lot of students. There was one of the most determined and terrible riots that I have ever seen. It was war. It was not like any mild American riot. It was war to the death. Several students were killed and finally the pressure was so strong that even this Japanese Agent was compelled to release the imprisoned students. I shall quote from an editorial that I was asked to write for the Peking Leader during my stay in China:

The weapon which most worries the Japanese I should say, is the boycott that the Students Movement has inaugurated. The Japanese Government never had anything that quite worried it so much. It is a weapon that is worth a thousand battleships, or fifty divisions of soldiers. It is a weapon that will, if continuously, and consistently and faithfully used, bring a money-loving nation, like Japan to her knees, and send her finally, scurrying like a whipped cur, with her tail between her legs back home where she belongs.

I talked with a ragged Chinese boy through an interpreter just to find what his reactions to the Japanese were. He was a beggar. He said, "The Japanese has a heart like a dog and a liver like a wolf."

I quote again from the editorial in the Peking Leader:

"And what are they protesting against?" is the question asked.

Primarily against the Japanese control of Shantung. Secondarily, against a type of civilization which Japan represents; a civilization that uses the weapons of frightfulness to accomplish its ends; a civilization that steals a nation like Korea, compelling the abdication of a weak Emperor at the point of the bayonet; and then using the avowed method of extermination to deplete a subjected nation. The whole Orient knows Japan and knows the methods that Japan has used and is using in conquered territory. It is a continuous and continual policy of extermination, frightfulness, and assimilation. This is the underlying cause of the hatred of the whole Orient and the Far and Near East against Japan; and this is the fundamental reason for the Students' Boycott of Japanese goods in China.One might devote an entire book to narrations of frightful cruelties perpetrated by Japanese on Koreans, Siberians and Formosans; but that would not be so strong as the setting forth of the underlying ethical reasons for this universal hatred in which Japan is held.

However it might be quite honest and fair for this writer to set down here several acts of frightfulness that came under his own personal observation merely as casual illustrations of that which is going on all the time.

One day I was walking with a missionary's wife through the streets of Seoul. There was an excavation being made and a little railroad track was being run along this excavation. A Korean boy had been set to guard this track to keep folks from getting hurt when the dump car came down its steep grade. He had been ordered by his Japanese employers to stop all passage when the signal was given.

We were walking along when this Korean stopped an ordinary Japanese civilian. He was of the low-browed type; mentally deficient I should say; but quite the average type that is used by Japan to settle these conquered countries.

The Korean held up his hands in warning.

The Japanese stooped over, picked up a stone as large as a cabbage head and, with only a space of two feet between himself and the Korean, threw it with all his force against the cheek of the Korean and smashed his jaw in, tearing his ear off, breaking his jaw bone, and lacerating his face fearfully. It was one of the most inhuman things that I have ever seen done.

The missionary woman said to the Korean when the Jap ran; "Why do you not report this to the Japanese police?"

"It would do no good. They would give no justice to me, and I would be hounded to my death for reporting it."

One evening with a friend I had been speaking in Pyeng Yang. It was midnight one Sunday and we were waiting for a train down to Seoul. As we stood on the platform waiting; a north-bound train came in. It stopped. As it stopped several Japanese train boys got off of the train. An old white-haired Korean gentleman, about seventy-five years of age, stood on the platform waiting for the train. He was intelligent looking; poised; and well-dressed in the usual immaculately white robes.

A fifteen-year old Japanese train boy, seeing him standing there, deliberately ran out of his way, lowered his shoulders like a football charger and ran squarely into the old man, knocking him down to the platform and ran on with a laugh and some muttered Japanese words.The dignified Korean gentleman got up, brushed the dirt from his clothes; did not even deign to glance at the offending boy; and walked on as if nothing had happened.

This scene illustrates two things: First, the superiority of the Korean mind and character to that of the Japanese. This is one of the causes of the extreme frightfulness pursued by the Japanese. They instinctively feel the superiority of their captives. It is not the first time in history that a lesser nation has conquered a superior people.

This superiority in soul-stuff that the Korean has over that of the Japanese is recognized immediately by all Europeans and Americans who become, even in the least bit, familiar with the two peoples. The sympathy of Christian civilizations is with the Koreans immediately.

The other thing that this simple scene illustrates, is the spirit of ruthless cruelty and frightfulness that is bred in the very soul of the youth of Japan toward the Koreans. Even the train boys can do a thing like that without fear of punishment.

The first day that we were in Seoul, the capital city of Korea, Pat McConnell and myself were walking down the main street of this interesting city toward the depot. Parallel with us marched a squad of Japanese soldiers. In front of them, going the same direction, was a poor Korean workman pushing a small cart that looked like our American wheelbarrow.

The Japanese soldiers were in formation and marching in the middle of a wide street. But deliberately; evidently with orders from their officer in charge; they edged over to that side of the street where the Korean was walking and pushed him into the curb stone, kicking his barrow as they passed, although this meant a useless swerving of, at least, fifteen feet out of their course to do so. It was a case of deliberate brutality.

"Korea is a land of trails and terraces," said a prominent missionary in that fair spot to me one day as we were riding from Fusan to Seoul.

"And terror," added another traveler from America. "It is a land of trails, terraces, and terror!"

One day a friend of mine was begging Baron Saito, the present Governor-General of Korea, to stop the cruelties of the Japanese gendarmes in villages in northern Korea. The Baron asked for the names of those who had given the missionary his information about the cruelties and he refused to give them.

"Why should you not give them?" asked Baron Saito.

"Because they would be killed for complaining," said the missionary.Then he told Governor-General Saito how he had once complained to the police department when a father and son were cruelly beaten in prison.

"Give me their names," said the gendarme.

"I will if you will give me a promise that they will be protected."

"No! I cannot do that! The gendarmes are very revengeful!"

I know personally of a Korean preacher who has done no greater crime than to attend a meeting at a dinner given for released Korean prisoners. He was arrested and kept in jail for three days, just for attending that dinner.

Another preacher with whom I talked was suspected of collecting money eight months after the March Independence Movement. When he heard that the Japanese police were coming for him he fled. This angered the police. They appeared the next morning at three o'clock at his home. There were only the mother and a twelve-year-old daughter left. First the gendarmes burst in the frail doors with the butts of their rifles, and then from three o'clock in the morning until daylight, they beat and tortured those two helpless Christian Korean women; kicking them all over the house until they were unconscious. These two Korean women were in bed for two weeks because of that night's experience and were not able to walk for a much longer period than that.

And these women were educated, cultured women. They had committed no crime. It was simply because they did not know where the father was.

Later the father and son were arrested. They were beaten cruelly in the process of arrest although they offered no resistance. The son later said to me, "I could stand it to be beaten myself and even to see my father beaten but the unbearably cruel thing was to know that they had beaten my innocent mother and sister when no man was there to protect them."

I cite this instance because it happened eight months after the Independence Movement, and three months after the so-called reform Government of Baron Saito had been in effect and after the Japanese Press had said to the world that all cruelties had ceased.

A case of frightfulness that was called to my attention; which seemed to me to be the very essence of cruelty was that of the moral terrorizing of an educated Korean Pastor, whom the police merely suspected of having had something to do with the Independence Movement. They had no direct evidence but submitted him to months of moral terrorizing which was the worst I have ever heard of.For months at a stretch they would suddenly appear outside of his home and thrust their bayonets through his doors. Then they would go away without saying a word. He had absolutely no redress. If he had complained, he would have been thrown into prison.

One of the most reliable missionaries that I met in Korea told me of how one morning the policemen came to a church in northern Korea during the hour of service. They broke eighty windows, arrested fourteen men, smashed the little organ with their gun butts, smashed a beautiful lamp, tore up the mat seats from the floors, and burned them in front of the church.

At the funeral service of another young Korean preacher, Pak Suk Han in Pyeng Yang, hundreds of Japanese soldiers appeared with drawn bayonets just to terrorize the people. The church was full of Japanese officers with drawn swords.

"What would have happened if somebody in a fit of patriotism had shouted 'Mansei'?" I asked.

"We would have been killed instantly!" said the missionary soberly. "I was afraid of that!"

A prominent, educated and English-speaking Korean official, told me that in a conversation with a high Japanese official that that particular Japanese had said "Our plan will be to assimilate the Korean people!"

"But that will be impossible. There are twenty million of us. You will find that a hard thing to do!" said this Korean.

The Japanese official smiled and said significantly, "We know the way!"

The Korean knew what that meant. It meant extermination; extermination in every way possible. It meant extermination by introducing prostitution in Korea. This has been done. Korea never had any legalized prostitution. Korea never knew what the Red Light Section meant. Japan's first move was to introduce that. She sent her diseased women to Korea. She made prostitution ridiculously cheap; fifty sen; which is twenty-five cents in American money.

"Why?"

It is one of her ways of assimilation which means extermination and she has already shot venereal disease rates up to an alarming state in Korea.

Her next step in frightfulness was to introduce opium. Japanese Agents raise thousands of acres of Opium in Korea and sell it. This is another one of her steps in the process of assimilation or extermination.

Japan has stolen from poor Koreans their rice lands and their coal beds. The process is for a Japanese company to buy the water sources of the rice paddies below and then refuse to let the Koreans have water for his rice fields. This is another step in frightfulness that will finally exterminate the Korean if it keeps up long enough.

The recent massacre of Koreans in Manchuria by Japanese soldiers illustrate the Japanese spirit.

This same policy of frightfulness is carried on in Formosa and in Siberia and wherever the Japanese army and gendarme system has authority. It is worse than anything that the Germans ever did in France or Belgium. It has its only parallel in the dark ages.

I told Baron Saito, Governor-General of Korea this in an interview. He wanted to know what America thought of Japan's rule in Korea. I said: "America and the whole civilized world is stirred with indignation at the Japanese rule in Korea. There has been nothing like it since the dark ages." Then I read him a quotation from an editorial in Zion's Herald, a church paper published in Boston with virtually those words in it.

******

My friend, whom I met first in France, when he came back from. France was sent to Siberia as a Captain in the American Army.

I met him in Manila just after he had returned from Siberia. He, in common with all Americans who had seen the Japanese methods of frightfulness in Siberia, was filled with hatred.

"One night," he said, "a company of Japanese soldiers entered the little village six hundred miles north of Vladivostok where we were located. They announced that they were hunting for Bolsheviks.

"They did not find any in the little village, although they ruthlessly broke down every door of every home in that village. Then they went out to a sawmill about three miles from town and brought in five boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen.

"After torturing these boys in an old box car for two days, hanging them up by the thumbs with their arms behind their backs until they were unconscious; and then forcing salt water, hot water, cold water, and water with pepper in it down their nostrils, alternately; and other added cruelties; they announced to the village that they would release them that night on the public square."

"Did they do it?" I asked anxiously, for I was stirred to my soul's depths with his narration of cruelties in Siberia.

"Yes, they released them; in this way:

"They called all the friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked off their heads.

"Had they been tried?" I asked indignantly.

"They had been given no trial. They were mere boys, who, probably, didn't even know what the word Bolshevik meant. It was the worst illustration of frightfulness that I ever saw, although it was a common thing for the Japanese troops to go through the country upsetting the barrels of honey that the poor peasants were saving up for the long winters; rooting up their young potatoes; cutting the throats of their colts and cattle, and ravishing the land."

"How could you stand it?"

"We couldn't stand it. I had to fight to keep my company of Americans from sailing into them with fists and bayonets. It would have meant war. So I sent word back to headquarters that we were out of provisions and we were called back to Vladivostok."

Can this scene be duplicated in Formosa and Korea, where the Japanese hold sway?

It can.

During the Independence Movement in Korea this thing happened: All of the Korean Christians had been asked to assemble in a church for a meeting. When they were all in the church, the Japanese gendarme set fire to the church and then fired into it, killing every man.A woman, big with child, came running toward the church having heard the shooting and knowing that her husband was within.

A big, burly Japanese pushed her back.

"What do you want?" he cried in Korean.

"I want to go in there. My husband is there," she cried in terror.

"But you will be killed if you go in there!"

"I don't care! I want to die if he is to die!"

"All right! You shall have your wish!" said the Japanese, and pulling out his sword, cut off her head, killing her instantly. She fell at his feet with her unborn child; and he laughed aloud at the spectacle.

This is Japanese frightfulness and it can be duplicated by many missionaries in Korea if they dared to speak.

But the minute they speak and tell the truth that minute they are sent home from their life work. They realize that this leaves the Koreans to the utter and awful cruelties of the barbarous Japanese, and because of this, in spite of their indignation they hold their tongues for the larger good. But they eagerly give the facts to those of us who are coming back to America so that America in turn may know what is going on in Korea. That is the only hope; that the indignation of a righteous world, without war, may bring pressure to bear on Japan to stop these terrible cruelties and tortures; this unutterable frightfulness. This is the hope of the missionaries; this is the only hope of the Koreans!

******

I don't know whether or not it was because I had been listening for so long to the most brutal stories of Japanese treatment of Korean men, women and children; with murder, rapine, burning of homes, especially Christian homes; beating of a mother and her twelve-year-old girl from three in the morning until eight to make them reveal the hiding-place of their preacher daddy, that the crimson, blood-red sunset I witnessed on my last night in Korea seemed to me like a "sunset of crimson wounds." All I know is that it happened in Korea while I was there, and that my soul had been, for a solid month, stirred to the depths of its righteous wrath over the things that I had heard first-hand from human lips.

But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black clouds.

Then suddenly all over the horizon these wounds began to break through the mass of black clouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits, and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some of them looked as if a bayonet had been lunged into the body of that somber cloud and a great crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big as a house. Then it looked as if some ruthless Japanese gendarme had taken his sword and slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and from side to side like a crescent moon appeared this great crimson wound.

I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there it was. It seemed that there was back of that great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of that slate-black mass until finally the curtain of black began to tear, and the blood poured through to run along the horizon, and splash against the clouds, and slit its way like wounds through the clouds of night.

And I thought of something else. I thought how a Man once was crucified. I thought how dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought how slate-colored and somber all life seemed, especially to that little group of disciples. I thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His crown made, and of the blood that ran over His face. I could see Him there back of that cloud in Korea. I could see His Christian people being crucified again because of their religion. I could see Japanese bayonets thrust into His side and Japanese nails through His feet and His hands. I could see a Japanese crown of thorns on His head because He said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me." And I could see the blood of his wounds breaking through that nation's clouds on that wonder evening of the "sunset of wounds" back of the Korean mountains in December.