Willy Foerster first came to Tokyo in the early 1930s to open a factory for turret lathes. In 1936, he lost his citizenship in his native country when Germany passed a new law punishing those who evaded military service. Being a stateless resident of Japan did not stop Förster from becoming rich. He became incredibly successful, founding several companies and employing hundreds of people – many of them Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Turning shop at the Foerster factory. Photo courtesy of Erica Foerster.
Förster himself did not actually do the hiring. He delegated that task to his friend Karl Rosenberg, one of the directors of a Tokyo-based rescue organization called the Jewish Refugee Committee. Rosenberg helped stateless Jews who had fled the Holocaust find work in Japan, and if they were qualified, they were placed with Förster’s F.&K. Engineering Factory. The company grew to have 1 200 factory workers and 180 office staff. Förster employed Jewish refugees fleeing Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia at considerable personal risk "was a serious challenge to the Nazis in Tokyo and Yokohama".
The truth about Foerster’s wartime activities were first revealed in 2017, with the publication of a book by Hamburg scholar Clemens Jochem
"Fall der Foerster: Die deutsch-japanische Maschinenfabrik in Tokio und das Jüdische Hilfskomitee/The Foerster Case: The German-Japanese Machine Factory in Tokyo and the Jewish Relief Committee".
In 1941, Josef Meisinger, nicknamed the “executioner of Warsaw” for his crimes in Poland, was sent to Japan. From 1941 to 1945, Meisinger served in Tokyo, where he was responsible for liaison between German intelligence and the Japanese secret police. During those years, he tirelessly tried to influence Japanese officials. His goal was to get the Japanese authorities to persecute, imprison, and exterminate the handful of Jews living in Japan and the approximately 20,000 refugees who had come from Nazi-occupied Europe to Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Failing to achieve this, Meisinger turned his attention to persecuting those he suspected of anti-Nazi activity in Japan, most notably Willi Foerster.
In May 1943, Joseph Meisinger had Förster arrested: he was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and disseminating anti-war propaganda. Behind bars, Jochem reports, Meisinger tortured Foerster. Foersterremained in custody until June 1944, and was released only after he agreed, under pressure, to sell his factory for next to nothing. He was under house arrest along with his Japanese wife, Hideko, and their young daughter, Erika.
Since Foersterhad been jailed for spying for the Soviet Union and engaging in subversive anti-war activities during the war, he should have been jubilant about the Allied defeat of Japan. Instead, Foerster was accused of being an accomplice to the crimes of the Nazi Meisinger, and General Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of the Allied occupation forces, ordered the confiscation of Foerster’s vast fortune. On August 20, 1947, Förster Foerster tried as an alleged Nazi on the USS General Black en route to Germany, where he had been deported with his family.
Förster later filed a lawsuit seeking compensation for the loss of his Tokyo factory and his considerable real estate. According to U.S. government documents, 104 properties in various parts of Japan (with a total area of about 30 square kilometers), 80 boxes of personal property in his home, and about 40 railroad cars containing his personal property were expropriated in 1947. But even through the courts, neither his financial well-being nor his reputation could be restored.
General Willoughby's investigation was classified until 2012, although in April 1947 the general summed up the Förster case: "In these circumstances I feel reluctant to bring this man back to 'trial'. It has been definitely established that he was in fact and by the nature of his actions an opponent of Nazism." That report, exonerating Förster of his wartime actions, was not declassified until fifty-six years after Förster's death in 1966.
Foerster with employees of his company. Photo courtesy of Erica Foerster.
