U.S. intelligence officials were so concerned about Japan's "infiltration" of Muslim countries during World War II, they proposed urgent countermeasures, formerly secret government documents show.
The Office of Strategic Services (forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency) said Japan had successfully implemented a policy of courting Muslim nations since the turn of the century to serve its own strategic ends.
In the paper "Japanese Infiltration Among the Muslims Throughout the World," dated May 1943, the OSS details the methods Tokyo employed to befriend such countries -- even spreading word to Muslim nations that Emperor Hirohito might convert to Islam and that it could become Japan's state religion.
The document says Japan "has expended on (Muslim policy) many years of patient labor and has assigned to it some of her ablest political and military leaders. Her cunning and opportunism, her flexible approach and unscrupulous manipulation of the facts have borne fruit in many lands."