Precursor to the Mỹ Lai Massacre: 1968 Phong Nhị, Phong Nhất_33: JATEC Passport Forgery Mission

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Jane Fonda, a U.S. actress wearing a helmet bearing the words 'Beheiren,' traveled around U.S. military bases and appealed to U.S. soldiers to act on their conscience (December 1971). Photo courtesy of the Center for Research on Symbiotic Society at Rikkyo University

1968 Tokyo

Johnson went missing.

He was a suspicious character to begin with. The organization suspected that he might be a spy. This white man claimed he was a fugitive and asked for help, but there were many questionable things about him. From around the same time, the activists began feeling that somebody was following them. Internal concerns within the organization grew on whether or not to help Johnson escape--whether to drive him out or protect him. There was no clear evidence that Johnson was not a fugitive either, however. The organization eventually concluded that it will take him along with another fugitive to Hokkaido, Japan, from which point they would escape. But there was a problem. On the afternoon of the day they were supposed to help him escape, Johnson vanished into thin air.

Takahashi Taketomo had no idea of the situation. He worked only as directed by his branch of the organization. His task was to hide the fugitives. He didn't know the details. There was no asking or arguing about his task. If he was told to meet someone, he met them; if he was told to provide a room, he provided it. His sole objective was to somehow help the people he had come into contact with flee to a safe place. There was no need for detailed information such as their names, or how they were going to where they were going. Such information was kept a secret for the sake of everybody involved, and these secrets were well kept. But ever since Johnson disappeared, there appeared to be a serious security gap within the organization. The police arrested the other U.S. soldier (Gerald Mayer) who was scheduled to defect with Johnson. These events occurred between October and November of 1968.

Takahashi, who returned from studying abroad in France, was an activist who did all the grunt work at the forefront of JATEC, a group within Beheiren, an anti-war peace group. Although Beheiren, founded in the spring of 1965 when the air raids on North Vietnam began, was an open and voluntary civic group, JATEC, which originated within Beheiren in early 1968, was an unofficial secret organization. The year 1968 marked a dramatic turning point for the Vietnam War. Anti-war sentiment in the U.S. boiled at its peak with more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers dying as a result of the Tet Offensive, initiated by the North Vietnamese military and the Viet Cong. The number of deserters increased not only from the U.S. mainland but also from U.S. military bases in Japan. JATEC was created to systematically support their smuggling and finding of their asylum. In fact, JATEC helped 13 U.S. soldiers escape from Japanese territory from February to September 1968, including Kim Jin-su from South Korea, Shimizu Tetsuo from Japan, Yotsai OuYang from Taiwan and Raymond Saniviero from Puerto Rico.[1] This was more than enough to stir both the U.S. military intelligence agencies and the Japanese police. They employed espionage, as in sending Johnson.

Takahashi was also an assistant professor at Rikkyo University. The driving force behind the professor's involvement in this secret organization was his belief in peace and democracy. Since 1950, when he was a freshman at Azabu High School in Tokyo, he had participated in the Wadatsumi (“Wada” meant ocean and “Tsumi”meant spirit) Association, an organization that paid tribute to and commemorated students who died in battle.

The Wadatsumi Association, founded with proceeds from the sale of 300,000 copies of its handwritten book, Listen to the Voices of the Sea, published in October 1949, greatly influenced young people in the 1950s with its spirit of anti-militarism. The early 1950s, with the outbreak of the Korean War, was a time of widespread fear among Japanese students that they might be dragged into war again. The students feared that the clause on "giving up war" as stipulated in Article 9 of the Constitution, revised in 1947, may be codified. Takahashi continued his activities with Wadatsumi until he entered the French literature department of Tokyo University in 1952 and even finished graduate school, during which he and his friends studied the logic and methodologies of refusing military service. The process of his turning into a passionate activist for JATEC after his participation in Beheiren's first street rally on April 24, 1965 was nothing out of the ordinary.

In the fall of 1965, Takahashi went abroad to study at the Sorbonne University in France but did not stop participating in the peace movement. On the contrary, he became even more thoroughgoing. He believed that words that were not backed by action were meaningless, much like his influencer, Oda Makoto, representative of Beheiren and famous novelist. Whenever Oda, the psychological pillar of Japan's peace movement, came to Paris for work involving international collaboration, Takahashi, who at the time was studying abroad, volunteered to be his guide, visiting every corner of Paris together while sharing their views.

In the spring of 1967, a mass rally that he experienced in Paris also became a major turning point in his determination to devote himself to the peace movement. He raised his hand to speak at the podium during the rally, where hundreds of people had gathered, and spoke about Kim Dong-hee, a Korean soldier who was a major topic for Beheiren at the time. Kim Dong-hee, a South Korean Army sergeant who defected from an army school in Busan in July 1965, smuggled himself into Tsushima in August, refusing to be dispatched to the Vietnam War. He asked for asylum in Japan but was not accepted, and was confined to the Omura camp via the Fukuoka prison.[2] Beheiren was pressing the Japanese government against Kim Dong-hee's forced repatriation to South Korea. Takahashi’s description of Kim Dong-hee's situation during the rally in Paris resonated with the public. An hour later, it was adopted as a formal agenda item for the rally. Organizers of the rally even made and issued a statement of protest for Kim Dong-hee against the South Korean government on the spot.[3] It was a moment when the power of international solidarity truly came through.

But in the fall of 1968, Beheiren and JATEC were trembling at the threat of governmental authority. Takahashi, who had returned home from France in the fall of 1967 and hidden countless deserters for a year, was in despair. Under the current law, there were no regulations to punish a Japanese citizen even if he/she helped hide or smuggle a fugitive U.S. soldier. The police arrested an activist who was supposed to drive Johnson to Hokkaido, for violation of gun laws because the police mistook a fake gun for a real gun. Deserters were also arrested, and by the fall of 1968, JATEC was on the verge of disintegration. Kurihara Yukio, a 40-year-old literary critic who was responsible for the organization, raised his hands in surrender. No one was willing to take on the leadership. Takahashi was exasperated at the thought of giving up their movement. He therefore stepped forward as the new leader of JATEC.

The previous escape route to Sweden was entering the Soviet Union by boat from Yokohama or Hokkaido. The Soviet authorities, which had tacitly tolerated the entry of the deserters, also began expressing disapproval as the route started gaining global attention. The use of the ships to smuggle deserters had reached its limit. JATEC, with Takahashi as its newly-instated leader, decided to change its course. Instead of smuggling the deserters who came to them in search of protection, he persuaded them to become conscientious objectors of military service and organize anti-war campaigns in the military. However, he could not completely give up supporting the deserters, conjuring up the impossible dream of transporting them by plane with forged passports.

In April of 1969, Beheiren members held a speech tour in Kyushu, Japan. Takahashi Taketomo, the third from the left in the front row, and Makoto Oda, the far right in the back row. Photo courtesy of the Center for Research on Symbiotic Society at Rikkyo University

1970 France

He finally met the man.

They were inside a small sedan. The man didn't say his name. All he said was that he was someone who was, "involved in Third World affairs," before saying, "I know why you came to Paris. In order to solve that problem, we have to forge paper documents. If you want, I can teach you the technology."

Takahashi Taketomo was mentally prepared for the task, thanking the anonymous man for his willingness to help. The man got out of the car without saying anything more. The woman who guided Takahashi got in the driver's seat and steered the car somewhere. Despite knowing Paris inside out after having studied abroad in Paris, he had no idea where they were. But one thing was for certain: they would now gain access to the technology for passport forgery.

He had flown all the way to the European continent with that very goal in mind. It was April of 1970. Europe was at the center of the world's progressive movement. There were many fighters who were involved in the anti-fascist movement during World War II. They had all the know-how accumulated from the Asian and African national liberation movements, including the Algerian struggle for independence. The "Anti- Vietnam War" slogan was the most important slogan of the "1968 Revolution" that swept through Europe. They were all more than ready to help the Japanese peace activists.

Takahashi boarded a plane as soon as he heard that the Italian Communist Party was willing to cooperate. This was made possible through the efforts of Oda Makoto, the representative of Beheiren, who was traveling around Europe to promote Japan's peace movement in Vietnam and asking for support. Takahashi went directly to Italy and met with a Communist Party official, but his effort was in vain. The official said that they never confirmed their support. Takahashi, who failed to find a collaborator in Italy, moved to Paris, France. He asked for people who could help him by mobilizing all of his connections from academia to left-wing activist groups. He had also quit teaching at Rikkyo University before coming to Europe. It was technically because Japan's student movement organization, the National Students' Joint Strike Association, refused to attend class, leaving him with scant opportunities to teach during the semester; but it was also because he couldn’t simultaneously juggle teaching and being an active part of JATEC indefinitely. That's how strongly he felt about his cause.

He had to make progress somehow before returning to Japan. He met a technician who had made fake passports during World War II through the introduction of the famous Parisian mathematician, Laurent Schwartz (1915-2002). He learned about how the inner surface of a potato was cut with a knife and made into a stamp, but It sounded too outdated and primitive to be trustworthy. Thirty years had passed since the 1940s, when World War II was in full swing. As such, they needed a technology that was more elaborate and sophisticated.

It was a long time before Takahashi was able to meet the man in the car. He was fortunate to be connected to a female lawyer while contacting a group called the "second war front." The lawyer made Takahashi swear to "proceed with the refugee-exile campaign quietly without rendering it a noisy political propaganda," and then guided him to the man in the car through a multi-stage tangent, as if it were a 007 operation, in which he was blindly directed by multiple people to follow a set of instructions until one day, he ended up inside the sedan with the man.

He only found out later that the man in the car was Henri Curiel (1914-1978), who led the Third World Liberation Movement support group called, "Solidarite." Born in Egypt as a Jew, he was a prominent member of the Third World Liberation Movement, and moved to France in the 1950s where he was imprisoned for supporting Algerian independence struggles. In the 1960s, he was helping Palestine and South Africa fight for liberation with a wide range of illegal activities, including activist education and document forgery (he was assassinated 10 years later by suspected gunmen from Israel's spy agency, Mossad).

The woman parked the car in front of an apartment. When Takahashi entered the apartment, he found another man who appeared to be a technician. He held a passport in his hand while he explained the details of the principles and techniques of passport forgery. According to the man, usually, immigration officials only take a rough look at passports unless there is an outstanding issue. The part that's obviously stamped must be clear, and the part that's blurry must be blurry. Too much precision could arouse suspicion. He dipped a toothpick in ink and gradually stippled a form of a stamp. He also taught him the know-how of making it look slightly bumpy. Takahashi returned to the hotel in the car driven by the woman.

Forging passports took more than technology alone however. They needed an original European passport. He visited progressive civic groups from across Europe to collect passports. Progressive media figures from Stockholm and Sweden readily donated their passports. All they had to do was to report that they lost their passports to their respective government agencies. That's how Takahashi managed to collect three passports. Two Italian passports were already made ready for them by the civic group "Vietnam Committee" in Milan, Italy. The activists had secretly stolen the passports from first class passengers traveling by train between Milan and Paris when the passengers left their luggage unattended and went to the dining room car. Thus a total of five passports were sent to Japan's JATEC activists. Simply sending the passports by mail would have been dangerous, so they bought a thick book, carved out the center, and placed the passports inside before sending it

. The forged Swedish passport of U.S. fugitive John Phillip Lowe. He donated it to Japan after returning to the U.S. It is currently held by the Symbiotic Society Research Center at Rikkyo University.

Takahashi, who completed his mission, returned to Japan in August 1970. They were in a hurry to get two U.S. soldiers out of the country. He passed on the technology he learned in Europe, handed over the original passport, and asked for help with forgery. At last, two passports were completed. A passport issued by the Foreign Ministry of Sweden had a photograph of the fugitive John Phillip Lowe, and on the passport issued by the Foreign Ministry of Italy was the photograph of the fugitive Willi. The bumpy entry seal passing through the corner of the photograph was forged with such finesse that it looked authentic.

John Philip Lowe headed to Itami Airport, Osaka in December of 1970 with a fake passport. He held a ticket to Paris. In July of 1971, Willi went to Tokyo Haneda Airport with his fake passport. He also had a ticket to Paris. Officials at the Japanese immigration office reviewed their passports but found no abnormalities. The deserters, who safely finished their immigration screening and got their passports back, boarded their respective flights to Paris at the departure gate. The four months that Takahashi spent in Europe in search of passport forgery technology were not in vain. It was a victory for both"Solidarite" of France, which delivered the technology and Japan's "JATEC," which learned and properly employed the technology. Takahashi Taketomo shed tears of emotion.

Met with Takahashi Taketomo, former representative of JATEC, in November 2013 at a hotel coffee shop in Tokyo. photo humank21

Takahashi, a civic activist of the 80s

Takahashi Taketomo was 80 years old as of February 2015, living in Tokyo, Japan. Since the 1970s, he has worked as a translator for French literature. In 2007, he published a book about the secret of the process of assisting American defectors, called Watakushitachi wa, dassō Amerikahei o ekkyōsaseta. Because it is illegal to forge passports and use these forged passports to cross borders, he waited until his statute of limitations expired in 2000 to reveal what he has done. John Phillip Lowe and Willi, who went to Paris on fake passports, were pardoned and reinstated only after the Carter administration took power in 1976.

Takahashi is currently in charge of the Wadatsumi Memorial Hall. He, along with Yuichi Yoshikawa, a former chief of Beheiren's office, is also the co-chairman of the Citizens' Opinion 30 Meeting/Tokyo, a civic activist group in Japan, and an editor of the Newsletter Citizens' Opinion (issued in February, 2000). The 'Citizens Opinion 30' group/Tokyo, which follows the lineage and flow of Beheiren, has published 30 items to change Japan through opinion advertisements and is acting accordingly. One of them is to inform young Koreans of Beheiren and JATEC which developed in Japan, and to support Korean military objectors. He said that he has also met and talked with military objectors who were students in Japan at the end of 2014.

[1] The Intrepid Four escaped to Sweden in November 1967 before JATEC was created.

[2] A detention facility for illegal Korean entrants, located in the city of Omura, Nagasaki Prefecture. It began in December 1950 with the renovation of a Navy Yard facility, and was continued to be used by the Japanese government through 1981, at which point 20,000 Koreans were forcibly repatriated. Illegal entrants or those who, despite having permanent residency, received more than seven years in prison for criminal offenses, were held here, brewing much controversy over human rights violations.

[3] With the efforts of Japanese peace activists, Kim Dong-hee went to North Korea instead of being forcibly repatriated. The Japanese government sent him to North Korea on January 26, 1968 aboard a Soviet ship bound for Nakhodka. According to the memoirs of Oda Makoto, representative of Beheiren, in October 1976, when he asked North Korean Leader, Kim Il-sung about Kim Dong-hee's whereabouts, Kim Il-sung answered that there is no such person in North Korea. Hankyoreh Jan. 4, 2014. Kwon Hyuk-tae, “Do you know the stowaway defector, Kim Dong-hee?”