Customer Reviews

The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War Two

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book not only tells a historical story, but also tells it through the voices of those who experienced it. For anyone who wants to learn about this unique event in history-this provides an excellent insight.

Rabbi Tokayer became involved in a study of Asian Jewry when he was posted in Japan after WWII as an army chaplain. He covers materials found nowhere else except perhaps in obscure scholarly materials, and makes them extremely readable and absorbing. He traces the flight of the Jews from Russia to Manchuria and the basis for the Japanese belief that Jews did really control world finance. In effect, the Japanese treated the Jews with care as much from fear as from hate, and both states of mind existed side by side.

"FUGU" means "blowfish", a great delicacy if prepared correctly but fatal if handled carelessly. The Japanese did in fact adopt a policy called the Fugu Plan to deal with Jews in Machuria, reflecting this dichotomy.

Very much worth your time to read, except that there is a paperbound edition now on sale for under $10 at Amazon.com.

This interesting work sheds light on the obscure and often times hope inspiring story of the Jews who escaped from Eastern Europe and found their way to safety in Shanghai, Kobe and Harbin in Japan China and Japan. This is part history and part inspirational story, combining the stories of a large number of refugees into a number of long biographical sketches. The story is sweeping, from the ghettos of Lithuania as the storm clouds of Nazism blow across Europe, to a history of the Jews of the far east.

Probably the strongest part of the text, from a historical sense, is the history of far eastern Jewry and the Jewish settlements, however improbably, in Shanghai, China, Harbin in Manchuria and Kobe, Japan. In addition to Tientsin these were the major Jewish communities in Asia. Most of their residents were Russian Jews who had accepted Tsarist offers of freedom of religion to settle in Manchuria when the Russian owned Port Arthur, before 1905. The other communities were more diverse. As war gathered the Japanese high command and its `Jewish experts' embarked on a radical plan of settling Jews, who because of the `Protocols' were perceived as both the controllers of Communism and Capitalism, in Japanese imperial territory and thus enriching Japan through the assets and know how of the European Jews.

The story gets more complicated and has some problems in blending this with the stories of individual refugees and their reconstructed adventures and interactions. Nevertheless the story of the Japanese imperial obsession with Judaism and Japanese anti-Semitism is fascinating, as if the `Fugu plan' to resettle the Jews. There is much new material in this important text, including the Kogan papers and information about the saving of the Mir Yeshiva is fascinating. An important book to the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Seth J. Frantzman

Rabbi Marvin Tokayer is a brilliant scholar and a singularly dedicated person. This is a must read to flesh out WWII history and to broaden understanding of the immensely complex Japanese. It is a scandal that this book is out of print. Can't someone bring it back and, perhaps, produce "Sugihara's List"?

Get it and read it, if you can find it.