What was Japan's gold reserve before the war?

Japanese, one big gold tooth per capita!

Golden Warrior-Japan plundered a lot of gold in Asia during World War II.

[United States]

Sterling Seagrave

Co-authored by Peggy Seagrave

Translated by Nanjing Massacre Research Center of Nanjing Normal University.

Wang Xuan Xiao Yi

Published by China Foreign Translation Publishing Company.

Financial Times: Secrets of Japan's plundering of gold in Asian countries during World War II (excerpt1)/news/2006-01-24/1600165419. shtml

China's 6,000 tons of gold plundered by the Japanese will also have its gold teeth knocked out/view/4280339.htm.

On the issue of Japanese gold teeth, see what netizens say-

Netizen's statement 1: There is no money to fight, and ordinary people want to sell iron, so some people simply install gold teeth to save hard currency, which is not good for the Japanese government to collect resources. It's a pity that I was sent to the front line and took advantage of the Americans.

Netizen statement 2: Japanese people really love gold teeth, especially soldiers. Before going to war, their families should prepare a gold tooth for them, as if to bless something. It's a pity that the gold teeth didn't let them avoid bullets, but they suffered secondary injuries to their bodies. How many Japanese people have been destroyed by this? They really deserve it.

Netizen statement 3 (hilarious): Japan likes sweets very much (you can feel it by reading Dong's diary). At that time, there was no toothpaste recommended by the National Dental Prevention and Treatment Group in Japan, so there should be a lot of tooth decay. At that time, gold, the material for dental implants, was relatively common, so it was cheaper for ghosts and animals in Mi Ying.

Netizen statement 4: Americans think that everything in Asia is made of gold. American soldiers are addicted to picking up bodies on the Korean battlefield, and even the bronzes and gongs are taken back as treasures ... The translator told them that this is not gold but copper, and they still don't believe it ... I don't know if it's true ~

Netizen's statement 5: Not only are there many Japanese, but there are also many Jews, and there are also many people in China before liberation. If the teeth are broken, they should be filled with other things. Some are not strong, some are rusty, only the gold teeth are not rusty, and the hardness is moderate, and some are inlaid with silver teeth. In order to show off their wealth, some people specially put gold covers on their intact teeth, and their teeth sparkled with golden light, which made people feel vulgar, but they felt very beautiful and dignified. This used to be a culture.

Excerpts from the novel, pay attention to the gold teeth-the third paragraph:

Zhou Tianhua's grandfather is a South China worker who repairs railways. When Zhou Tianhua's father was 20 years old, he was brought to Canada by his grandfather from rural Guangdong. At that time, my father was married, but my mother was too young to have a baby. When my father came to Canada, he wanted to bring his wife out, but he had to pay a poll tax of 500 Canadian dollars to bring someone. Father can't afford that much money and can't bring his wife. As a result, he married a local woman and gave birth to three children. Zhou Tianhua's mother waited for ten years before being taken abroad to live with her husband, another wife and three sons as her second wife. At that time, Canadian Customs strictly restricted the entry of spouses of China and Japanese, so there were few yellow women here, and most men were single. After Zhou Tianhua's mother came to Vancouver from rural Guangdong, she met a Japanese restaurant that was in urgent need of female workers, and the salary offered was much higher than that of a Chinese restaurant. Zhou Tianhua's mother has been working as a waitress in this Japanese restaurant ever since. Zhou Tianhua was born in this period.

A week after his mother gave birth to him, she took Zhou Tianhua to work. Zhou Tianhua grew up with Kumamoto, the son of restaurant owner Yoshishima, and later studied in a school together. At that time, immigrant children born locally could study for free, and China children, Japanese children and white children all attended classes together. However, after the Sino-Japanese all-out war broke out in 1937, the expatriates of the two countries began to oppose each other. The business in the two blocks stopped communicating and people became hostile to each other. Zhou Tianhua's mother stopped working as a waitress in a sushi restaurant in Yoshijima, but she became unhappy and soon became seriously ill. Before he got sick, his mother took him to a Japanese dentist to have a gold tooth fitted. For the Japanese, a gold tooth means that he is an adult. The process of fitting gold teeth is like holding a bar mitzvah. Zhou Tianhua's broken teeth will be put in a temple and mixed with other Japanese young people's teeth. These teeth will be protected by monks, because if these teeth fall into enemy hands and are damaged, their owners will be troubled by disaster.

Mother's condition deteriorated after she put on her gold teeth. Before she died, she said to Zhou Tianhua: Now that you are grown up, it's time to go to work. I think you'd better work in Yoshijima! You can be a sailor in a fishing cooperative with Kumamoto and others and go fishing in the sea, where you will live better. They will accept you.

In this way, Zhou Tianhua and Yoshishima Shigeru's son Kumamoto went fishing together. At this time, their fishing boats are machine-driven and can sail far. In the hearts of these young people born and raised in Canada, there is no particularly strong feeling about their motherland. Although China and Japan won an overwhelming victory, there has never been a disagreement on the ship. That year, when Wuhan defended its war, it was the season when they chased tuna in the sea.