Higuchi, Kiichiro.

Higuchi, Kiichiro, born on 20-08-1888, in what is now part of Minamiawaji city on Awaji Island, Hyōgo Prefecture, as the eldest of nine children. When he was eleven year old, his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother’s family. He was a graduate of the 21^st class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy , and the 30^th class of the Army Staff College. As a junior officer, he was sent as military attaché to Poland. Due to his fluency in the Russian language, Higuchi was later posted to Manchuria with the Kwantung Army. Higuchi was a close confidant of General Kanji Ishiwara and Korechika Anami. After World War II, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers called upon Ishiwara as a witness for the defense in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. No charges were ever brought against Ishiwara himself, possibly due to his public opposition to Tōjō, the war in China, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. He displayed his old fire in front of the American prosecutor, arguing that U.S. President Harry Shipp Truman should be indicted for the mass bombing of Japanese civilians. Ishiwara died 15-08-1949 (aged 60) in Tokyo, Japan.

From 1933-1935, Higushi was commander of the IJA 41^st Infantry Regiment, and from 1935-1937 served as Chief of staff of the IJA 3^rd Division. He was sent to Germany as part of a military delegation in 1937 and met Adolf Hitler (did you know). As a Major General and the commander of the Harbin Special Branchin 1938, he allowed 20.000 ? Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Manchukuo. A few of his subordinates, were responsible for feeding the refugees, settling them in Harbin or Shanghai, or arranging for exit visas.

As it was more and more necessary for the Jewish population to flee the persecution, he was in touch with Dr. Abraham Josevich Kaufman, Russian doctor and exponent of the Zionist community of Harbin, which helped protect the dozens of thousands Jews seeking shelter in that part of Eastern Asia. In Harbin, on 26-12-1937 the first of the three Zionist Conferences of the Jewish Communities of the Far East was held, to which Kaufman invited General Higuchi as a speaker. His speech forcefully condemned the crime that was being perpetrated against the Jews: “You are no lesser than any other ethnic group”, he said “either in the scientific field or in the industry or any other field. Being witness to this is a duty of mine as a human being, and as such, I am deeply sorry for what is happening. It is a humanitarian emergency. Expelling somebody without designating for him any destination is a treatment, which amounts to mass murder”. At the end of his speech, over 1,000 Jewish guests applauded. Dr. Abraham Josevich Kaufman, after Kaufman’s release from the Gulag system in 1956, he moved to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and on 25-3-1961, emigrated to Israel. He was joined by his son Theodore (Teddy) Kaufman,  who would later hold a high position in the Israeli government. Dr. Kaufman spent the remainder of his life practicing medicine, specializing in pediatrics under the Histadrut in Israel, and was buried there after he died in Tel Aviv on 25-03-1971, age 85.

Recalled to Japan in late 1938, Higuchi served briefly on the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff before being assigned as commanding officer of the IJA 9^th Division.   The 9^th Division was formed on 01-10-1898, as a reserve division after the First Sino Japanese War in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. It consisted of troops primarily from the Hokurku region of Japan, mostly from the prefectures of Ishikawa, Toyama and Fukaii. The 9^th Division was at the Battle of Nanjing, and has been accused of participation in the subsequent Nanjing massacre . Nanjing Massacre, conventional Nanking Massacre, also called Rape of Nanjing, (December 1937–January 1938), mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on 13-12-1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with most estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than 300,000.

In 1942, Higuchi was promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned to the Sapporo-based Japanese Fifth Area Army. He participated in the invasion of the Aleutian islands, including the disastrous campaigns on Attu Island and Kiska Island. Afterwards, as commander of the Northern District Army he organized the defenses of northern Japan against invasion by Allied forces, fortifying Shumshu island in the northern Kurile Islands chain, and Karafuto. After the surrender of Japan, Josef Stalin

    demanded that Higuchi be extradited to the Soviet Union to be tried by a military tribunal for war crimes. On receiving word of this, the World Jewish Congress quickly formed a lobby directed at the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur  to prevent Higuchi’s extradition and trial. Higuchi, along with Norihiro Yasue,  were subsequently invited to the independence ceremonies of the State of Israel. Norihiro Yasue  (12-01-1886 – 04-08-1950) was an Imperial Japanese Army colonel who played a crucial role in the so-called Fugu Plan, in which Jews were rescued from Europe and brought to Japanese-occupied territories during World War II. He was known as one of Japan’s “Jewish experts”, along with Captain Koreshige Inuzuka . Norihiro Yasue advisor to the government of Manchukuo during the war, based in Dairen, Yasue became less and less involved in the Fugu Plan in any official capacity. He did, however, maintain contacts, and some involvement with the Jewish community in Shanghai which had been formed as a result of his actions. When the Soviet Union invaded Manchukuo in August 1945, just prior to the surrender of Japan and the end of the war, Yasue did not attempt to flee the mainland. He arranged a formal farewell to his family, in which he expressed his view that his entire generation was to blame for the war, and its outcome. He did not feel it would be honorable to flee from his responsibility, and so he allowed himself to be captured by the Soviet forces. Yasue died on 04-08-1950, age 64, in a labor camp in Khabarovsk. Koreshige Inuzuka, 11-07-1890 – 19-02-1965) was the head of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Advisory Bureau on Jewish Affairs from March 1939 until April 1942. Unlike his Imperial Japanese Army counterpart, Colonel Yasue Norihiro, he believed strongly in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination, these beliefs led him to think that attracting Jews to settle in Japanese-controlled Asia was in the Empire of Japan’s best interests. Inuzuka died 19-02-1965 (aged 74).

   Kiichiro Higuchis died at the old age of 82, on 11-10-1970 and is buried on Myodai-ji Temple Cemetery, Kanagawa Japan.

“My dream is to plant a tree to honor my grandfather in Yad Vashem,” said Prof Ryoichi Higuchi, the grandson of general Higuchi, who is now visiting Israel and holding interviews with Jewish families who reside in Israel and were established by Holocaust survivors his grandfather, he strongly believes, saved.