Information Department of the Imperial Japanese Government
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The Information Department of the Imperial Japanese Government was charged with all official propaganda, at home in Japan, or overseas. Its chief was Nobofumi Ito. Organizationally it resembled the Propagandaministerium in Germany.
Ito had a good knowledge of foreign languages and cultures. Official spokesman Koh Ishii, of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, had previous diplomatic experience in New York. This official information institution was led for a time by Shozo Murata, under the Ministry of Communications. Murata was president of the Osaka Shosen Kaisha company inside in Sumitomo Zaibatsu interests.
From the point of view of the militarists then in government, Ito was a safe pair of hands, to obscure and veil their strategic intentions from journalists. He managed these departments:
- Domei Tsushin Press Agency
- Radio Tokyo
- Office of Propaganda and Information
Newspapers under the control of the government at the time were:
- Japan Times and Advertiser (the official organ of the Foreign Affairs Ministry)
- Asahi Shimbun
- Tokio Nichi-Nichi Shimbun
- Osaka Mainichi
- Nippon Dempo Shimbun
- Tenshin Nichi-Nichi Shimbun
- Karafuto Nichi-Nichi Shimbun
- Manchurian Daily News
Reviews:
- Review Bungei Shunjun
- Review Kaizo
Contacts maintained with overseas press agencies were:
- German D. N. B. Press Agency
- German Transsoceanic Press Agency
- Italian agency Stefani
- Soviet TASS Press Agency
- American Associated Press Agency
- American United Press Agency
- American NBC Radio
- American Times newspaper
- British Reuter Press Agency
The Department attempted to control any information potentially damaging to official policies. A link with the Tokko police service aimed to control the telephone and radio communications of foreign journalists; who were also in some cases observed by secret agents, police or the Kempeitai.
One particular case was that of James Cox, a journalist for the Reuters Agency. Officially he was stated to have committed suicide when falling from third storey in a military jail in 1940. He had been arrested, and accused of uncovering state secrets, in line of with an official law passed by the Diet, making foreign journalists subject to prison sentences of several years. The evidence on Cox is reviewed in The Power of News: The History of Reuters (1992), by Donald Read, who concludes that this was most likely suicide. Others foreign correspondents and journalists affected by this measure in their work (in Japan to December 1941) were: Max Hill of Associated Press, Robert Bellaire of United Press, Dick Tenelly by NBC, Otto Tolischus of The Times, W.R.Wills of Japan News-Week (independent news in Japan until 1941), Joseph Newman by the New York Herald Tribune, (the writer of "GoodBye Japan") among others.
The American Ambassador in Japan Joseph C.Grew conveyed diplomatic protests against restrictive measures relating to reporting of the Panay incident and Tutuila Incident (the American river patrol-boat sinking near Chungking), later in similar circumstances the Ladybird Incident occurred (British patrol-boat sinking in Yangtze River by Japanese bombers), which was covered by government censorship immediately.
The government information institution worked until the end of conflict, and was abolished by allied occupation authorities in 1945.
