The Daily Worker

DAILY WORKER. NEW YORK. SATURDAY. JULY 28, 1934

Japanese War Lords Try to Tie Negroes To Kite of Their Own Robber War Plans

Floods United States With Lurid Promises To "Darker Races"

By HARRY HAYWOOD

A flood of propaganda is being loosed among the Negroes of the United States by the agents of Japanese imperialism in America. The pent-up desires of the Negro people for freedom will, according to these emissaries of the Japanese ruling class, find their fruition through an alliance with imperialist Japan, through a united front of the darker races, under the leadership of Japanese imperialism. The Japanese ruling class is depicted as the champion, protector and savior of the dark races of the world, including the Negroes of the United States.

The ideas and slogans of the defunct Garvey movement have had a rebirth in new form through this propaganda of the Japanese militarists. Garvey's visionary "Negro Kingdom in Africa" is to be achieved with the aid of the Mikado. The pro-Japanese movements among the Negroes have recruited many of the lower middle-class Negro intellectuals. The core of this leadership are people formerly connected with Garvey. The Garveyite leaders, involved in a movement which has fallen into disintegration, have grasped at the new pro-Japanese imperialist movement as a drowning man clutches at a straw, in order to dress up the outward and largely discredited Garvey slogans in new and more cunning form. To hold the Negro masses back from struggle, the Garvey leaders have willingly made a working agreement with the agents of the bloody rulers of Japan.

World-Wide Militarist Propaganda

In Chicago and in many other cities, this propaganda has crystallized organizationally into the "Pacific Movement of the Eastern World." In other cities, notably Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cincinnati, the Japanese agents have formed the "Society for the Development of Our Own." The program and avowed aims of both organizations are the same. Japanese imperialism—say the leaders of these organizations—is by its war on China and by all its activities uniting and serving the darker races. By invading China it is—supposedly—preventing the white imperialists from invading China. Japanese imperialism is thus represented as a rallying point for the oppressed masses of darker peoples everywhere. By seizing Manchuria, it is establishing a base from which it will help the Negro masses to redeem Africa!

Not only in the United States, but likewise in South America, in the Philippines, in Africa—the agents of Japanese imperialism are working feverishly.

What is Behind This Talk?

What is the explanation of all this propaganda? What is behind the noble pretensions of the Japanese jingoists that they are the "saviors of the darker peoples of the world?"

In its bitter rivalry with other imperialist nations, Japan is trying to use the healthy hatred of the darker peoples against the white imperialist nations. It is trying to use the revolutionary upsurge of the colored masses, their natural sympathy for one another the world over, for its own predatory interests, for markets and for new territories, for re-division of the world, to wrest for itself new fields of colonial exploitation. The humanitarian mask of liberator of the "darker peoples" covers the leering face of Japanese imperialism with its selfish and sinister purposes. The words of these pro-Japanese movements are the words of "freedom"—but the voice is the voice of the imperialist oppressors.

It is not accidental therefore that the impetus of this movement in America, among the Negro people, has leapt forward with the sharpening of the tension between American and Japanese imperialism for mastery in the Pacific. But there is nothing new here. The Japanese rulers, in their conflict with American imperialism, have not overlooked the fact that the liberation struggles of 13,000,000 Negroes constitute an explosive sector in the rear of American imperialism. It is quite natural that they seek to use this Achilles' heel for the purpose of weakening their enemy. In this, Japan is merely employing the strategy of war, so well described by Lenin:

"All the general army headquarters are making strenuous efforts during the present war to utilize each and every kind of national and revolutionary movement in the camp of their enemies: Germans—the Irish rebellion, the French—the Czech movement, etc. And they act correctly from their own point of view. You cannot take seriously the very serious problem of war without utilizing the smallest weakness of your adversary"

Thousands Fooled by Japanese Imperialism

It is clear that we cannot dismiss lightly, or with mere label of "fakery," a movement such as this. Beneath this alliance of Japanese imperialists and Negro petty-bourgeois nationalist leaders, stand thousands of confused but honest and sincere Negro workers, hating the white oppressors with a deep-going hatred, bitter against American imperialism, ready to make any sacrifice for freedom and equality. The sly agents of the Japanese rulers and their petty-bourgeois Negro allies are using the age-long hatred and rancor of the Negro people against their oppressors, to divert these masses from real struggle against imperialism and to turn these potentially revolutionary sentiments into reactionary Utopian channels.

Can the Negro people find the road to freedom in an alliance with imperialist Japan? Let us examine concretely the pretensions of this "protector and champion of the darker races."

The rulers of Japan come forward as "protectors of the darker peoples," though their hands are dipped in the blood of the colonial peoples of Korea and Formosa. The twenty-five years of Japanese rule over these territories have for sheer brutality and cruelty no rival. Natives slaughtered by the thousands, conditions paralleling those of the Negro people in the Black Belt of the South, denial of the most elementary rights, theft of the lands of the people by the Japanese landlords. The conditions of the toiling masses in Korea and Formosa make a cynical jest of Tokyo's pretense to be a liberator of the darker peoples.

Japan is Dungeon for Workers

Japan itself has become a dungeon for thousands of Japanese workers. Peasants and intellectuals protesting this brutality. Millions are unemployed, in a country which makes no provision for the hungry. Wages have been cut to the bone; work proceeds under barrack discipline, 14 and 16 hours daily. All workers' organizations have been driven into illegality, and kept illegal by a terror that knows no bounds.

What are the deeds of this "savior of the oppressed" in China? Here again Japan shows herself to be of the same stuff as all imperialists, whatever their color. Suffice it to mention that Japanese war-lords have seized Chinese territory against the will of the Chinese people. We call attention to the rape of Manchuria, the setting up of the puppet state of Manchukuo, propped up by the bayonets of the Japanese imperial army. We point to the hunting down and murdering of the leaders of the Chinese masses. The activities of Japan in China have been one long blood-letting.

But we are told by the leaders of the pro-Japanese organizations in America—Japan's cruelty in China is a necessary step in uniting China against the white imperialists. To this we make two answers. The first is that between Japanese imperialism and white imperialist nations in China there has been complete and perfect cooperation—except as concerns ultimate division of the spoils. Second, we are in a position to produce statements by the foremost rulers of Japan, of Japan's true intentions in the rape of China.

United Front of Imperialism

True, the Japanese, French, British, American imperialists fight among themselves over the division of the booty—but against the rising Chinese masses they close their reactionary ranks. Did not former War Minister Araki of Japan speak freely of his country as the policeman of world imperialism in the Far East? Has not Japan been from the beginning a party to all imperialist actions in China—the march on Pekin, the fighting off of the nationalist forces from Shanghai in 1927? The Japanese Chamber of Commerce and the Japanese Association of North America have said plainly: It must be clearly understood that the Japanese naval action in Shanghai was purely for the protection not only of Japanese lives and property, but also of international interests."

Have not the Japanese generals given full cooperation to the international imperialist drive against the Chinese Soviets, the only force striving to liberate China, fighting for the unification of China and the freedom of the Chinese people from the foreign imperialists? That force which in heroic struggle has already wrested one-fifth of Chinese soil from the hands of the oppressors?

Whose Red Armies have beaten back the punitive expeditions of Chiang-Kai-Shek, supported and financed by international imperialists, including Japan.

Japan, the Nazis and the Negroes

It is a matter of record that Japan has a secret understanding with the Nazi rulers of Germany the most viciously chauvinistic power in the Western World. Japan, this alleged "champion of the darker races," protested officially to the German Foreign office against the Nazi race classification of the Japanese with the Negroes as an inferior, "non-Aryan" race. And the German fascists agreed that "for the purposes of this Law (the Aryan Law) the Japanese are to be considered Aryans!" This is the true solidarity of the Japanese ruling class with the oppressed darker races of the world!

The Infamous Tanaka Document

These bloody actions but carry through the avowed policy so clearly stated in the Tanaka document, a secret paper prepared by the late Premier Tanaka for the then emperor of Japan. This infamous document states in the most unmistakable terms the bloody intentions of Japan, her role as aggressor against the Chinese people. In the words of the Tanaka document:

". . . a more dangerous factor is the fact that the Chinese people may wake up one fine day . . . when we remember that the Chinese are our purchasers, we must fear that day when China unites and her industry begins to flourish. We must from now onwards pursue our own military ends and seize the heart of Manchuria by divers ways, in order to be able on the one hand to destroy the military, political and economic development of China, and, on the other hand, to prevent the permeation of Russian influence. This is the key to our continental policy."

The crowning infamy of this "friend of the darker peoples" is its feverish preparation for an attack on the Soviet Union—the country which has become a beacon light and an inspiration for the oppressed millions in the colonial countries and oppressed nations, suffering under the yoke of imperialism. The workers and poor farmers of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of the Communist Party overthrew Czarist imperialism and thereby liberated scores of oppressed nations and peoples within the borders of Czarist Russia, that "prison-house of nations." Here for the first time the right of self-determination was made a basic principle of a country's life. Here for the first time all people lived together in complete harmony.

But Japanese imperialism is the outspoken enemy of the Soviet Union, the spearhead of the imperialist world in its attack on the first workers' country. Yet the leaders of the pro-Japanese movement would have the Negro people believe that by supporting a country which aims to destroy the Soviet Union, they are aiding the cause of Negro liberation!

Barbarous Japanese Monarchy

Kuusinen, an outstanding leader of the Communist International has said:

"It is well known that for barbarity the Japanese monarchy concedes nothing to Czarism. It represents 3,000 millionaires who, like an octopus, have wound their tentacles around a great nation It represents 40,000 landlords, who like leeches, are sucking the blood of the tormented toiling peasants of Japan. It represents slave-owning textile concerns who buy the daughters of the peasantry and pay their workers the wages of colonial coolies. It represents a repulsive, arrogant militarism, which has converted Korea, Formosa, Manchuria, and part of Northern China into an arena of savage torment and mockery of enslaved nations and has acquired notoriety for 'unprecedented brutality combining all the latest inventions of technique with purely Asiatic torture.'"

For what can the Negro masses of America hope from such a protector as this?

It is clear that Japanese imperialism is using the slogan of race unity, unity of the darker peoples, in order to cover up her own imperialist designs for expansion and aggrandizement, and for support in its conflict with imperialist rivals. Just as American imperialism raises the slogan "Unity of the White People against the Yellow Peril" to cover her predatory designs in the East, so Japanese imperialists raise the slogan of "Unity of the Darker Races Against the White Peril." But this is no question of race! This is a struggle between imperialist groups for the fruits of oppression. This is a fight between rival slave-dealers.

The slogan of "Unity of the Darker Races under the auspices of Japan" is fraught with grave danger for the Negro masses. It is another pitfall slyly set and cleverly baited by the imperialists to trap the Negro masses in their forward march towards freedom. It is another device calculated to turn the minds of the Negro workers from the fight for bread and freedom in the United States, calculated to divide them still further from their allies in this struggle, the militant white working class.

Therefore, the real purpose of this slogan "Unity of darker races under Japan" is to drive a deeper wedge between the Negro people and their only reliable allies, the revolutionary white workers; it is to prevent a united front against the common oppressor. What could more directly play into the hands of the jim-crow oppressors, whose policy is "divide and rule?" Thus in practice, this movement becomes the agency for tightening the yoke of the white imperialist oppressors over the Negro masses. It is no accident that the Pacific Movement has become a real obstacle in the task of organizing Negro and white workers for their most urgent needs.

A glaring example occurred in the strike of the Negro and white nut-pickers in St. Louis last year. There the representatives of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World tried to split the splendid unity of the workers by instilling distrust of the white workers among the Negro strikers. The leaders of the Pacific group were among the best lieutenants of the white bosses of St. Louis, sweating Negro and white girls for a few pennies an hour.

Nor is it accidental that the leaders of this movement are sabotaging the great united front struggles for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys and Angelo Herndon.

The Outworn "Back-to-Africa" Slogan

The leaders of these organizations raise the outworn slogan of "Back to Africa." Nor do they propose any real struggle for wresting Africa from its American, British, French oppressors. Why, then, do they raise this slogan? They raise the visionary slogan of "Back to Africa" in order to turn the minds of the Negro workers from the bitter struggles confronting them. They tell the Negro share-cropper in the Black Belt: "Do not fight for the land in the Black Belt leave it and return to Africa." They tell the Negro wage-slave in the factory: "Drop the struggle against jim-crow conditions, for higher wages, for bread, and return to Africa."

"Give up the struggle for equal rights, for the right of self-determination in the Black Belt of the United States, and go back to the homeland in Africa," say the leaders of these movements. Every lyncher, every slave-driver, every Klansman will be pleased with this propaganda. It makes the task of oppression of the Negro masses so much the easier.

Are we Communists then opposed to seizing advantage of a weakness in the enemy's ranks, in order to push forward the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed? On the contrary. We say that the Negro masses must use every weakness in the camp of the oppressors, every difficulty of American imperialism, such as would accrue from a war, to strike a blow for their freedom.

To paraphrase the words of the Irish revolutionists, who said "England's difficulties are Ireland's opportunities," we may say with equal truth that "American imperialism's difficulties are the Negroes' opportunities." Through the rifts in the armor of the American ruling-class, we must send shafts that will bring nearer the day of our freedom.

A Look at History

But how to use these difficulties to the advantage of the Negro people—that is the question. Have the Negro people, have the darker races of the world, anything to gain by the support of one imperialist power against another? We may look to history for an answer. During the world war, did not Allied imperialism, stretching out greedy hands towards Africa, "champion" revolts in the German colonies in collusion with sections of the African chiefs? With what results? The masses, who thought they were fighting for freedom, found that they had exchanged the shackles of German imperialism for those of French, British, Belgian and Italian imperialism. The German colonies in Africa were simply transferred from one set of slave-masters to another.

When the people of Cuba and the Philippines were groaning under the lash of Spanish imperialism, the rising Yankee imperialists intervened under humanitarian slogans: "Rescue the Cubans from the tyranny of Spain." Sections of native land-owners and manufacturers formed an alliance with the American imperialists. The masses of Cuba and the Philippines were liberated from the yoke of Spain, only to fall under the tyranny of Wall Street imperialism.

Yes, the Negro people must use every difficulty of the American slave-drivers and their government to strike a blow for real freedom. An imperialist war, such as a war between America and Japan, must be turned into a war for the liberation of the Negro people. We say: No Back to Africa. This would be only a reactionary caricature of real freedom. We say: a fight right here in the United States for the destruction of the vicious plantation system in the South, for winning the land, for realizing the right of self-determination for the Negro people in the Black Belt, for establishing complete equality for Negroes throughout the country.

These rights of the Negro people can only be won on the basis of a revolutionary program, through establishing a fighting alliance of the Negro masses with the white working class, under the leadership of the Communist Party in revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the common oppressor, American imperialism.

Unity of the World's Oppressed

Against the slogan "Unity of the Darker Races under the Aegis of Japan," we call for the unity of all the oppressed—the colonial slaves, the downtrodden peoples of Africa and Asia, the persecuted American Negroes, the white wage-slaves and exploited farmers of the imperialist nations of Europe and America. Unite under the leadership of the world Communist Party, the Communist International, for the revolutionary overthrow of world imperialism. For freedom of the oppressed Negroes and darker peoples in the colonies and in the Americas! For the complete and unconditional independence of the African and West Indian colonies! For equal rights and the right of self-determination for the oppressed Negro national minorities in South and Central America and in Cuba! For the independence of China and all Asiatic countries from the yoke of foreign imperialism! For the right of self-determination for the Negroes in the Black Belt of the United States! Such must be our program

The path to the liberation of the Negro people in America lies along the same road trodden by the working class and the farming masses and the formerly oppressed nations of the Soviet Union. This and this alone is the way out.

In championing the "unity of the

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