Treacherous Women - Sex, temptation and betrayal (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr Page A

he would not move. It is reported that, frustrated at the delay, Doihara arrived in Tientsin and asked to see Eastern Jewel. She turned up disguised as a man and fooled the Major General until she spoke to him. He and Eastern Jewel decided that the best way to frighten Pu Yi was to have Chinese terrorists attack his Japanese guards at his villa. She hired the attackers and, at last, the emperor was frightened into leaving for Mukden.
    He was installed as Emperor of Manchuko and almost immediately, the Japanese launched their invasion, claiming that the emperor had requested it ‘to preserve peace’. Eastern Jewel, meanwhile, was rewarded for her work. She was appointed commander and was given the right to wear the full dress Japanese uniform commensurate with her rank. Needless to say, given her penchant for dressing in men’s clothes, she was delighted.
    On 23 February 1932, as Shanghai burned under an onslaught of Japanese bombing, Eastern Jewel was flown over the city by the Japanese Air Force. She was said to have laughed and clapped her hands as she looked down on the devastation and horror below her. The massive loss of life seemed to mean nothing to her, a fact emphasised by her laughter with Japanese officers as she later stepped over the dead bodies of men, women and children as she walked in the streets. It meant nothing to her, but her callousness meant a great deal to any Chinese who witnessed it. It would not be forgotten.
    She continued her work for the Japanese. In Manchuko she became the mistress of Major General Hayao Tada, Pu Yi’s chief military adviser, and in 1932 she created an ‘Anti-Bandit Force’. She recruited between three and five thousand former bandits to hunt down the lawless bandit and guerrilla groups that were running wild. She commanded this force for a number of years.
    When the Japanese army captured Beijing in 1937, she went to live there with orders to spy and report on local activity. She took money from prominent people to ensure that they would not come under suspicion of collaboration with the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, who had taken control of the Kuomintang following the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925. If they failed to pay she would report them as agitators or spies.
    By the end of the war, however, Eastern Jewel was a shadow of her former self. Her beauty had faded and she was haggard and bloated. Her sexual practices were legend, reportedly sleeping with as many as twelve men at one time, including very often members of the Japanese guard assigned to protect her. When she was bored she would send the guards to the local theatres as she had developed a liking for handsome young actors.
    She had claimed that she had been raped by her foster father and foster grandfather when she was just fifteen and that her father had forced her to have sex with Japanese officers. She also blamed her behaviour on her rejection by a young Japanese officer named Yamaga. Her extravagant love life was her revenge on him, she claimed.
    Her promiscuity had its penalties, however, and she was now riddled with syphilis, her body covered in running sores. She drove around Beijing in an abandoned army truck, causing disgust amongst passers-by.
    The re-capture of the capital was the worst possible news for Eastern Jewel. Her money was gone now, spent on protection during the war years and she went into hiding, changing her name and living in a run-down hovel. On 11 November, 1945, a news report announced that ‘a long sought-for beauty in male costume was arrested in Peking by the Chinese counter-intelligence officers.’
    In 1948 Eastern Jewel was tried before a military court for treason, espionage and war crimes. The chief prosecutor reminded the court of her callousness on the day she flew over the ravaged capital. ‘This woman deserves death as a traitor,’ he said, ‘but most of all because she rode in Japanese airplanes over bombed-out villages and laughed.’
    She was sentenced to death but