Ken Joseph Jr.: Profile of naturalized citizen

Kenneth Joseph Jr. with an Asyrian Christian flag
KJj holds an Asyrian flag in Iraq
Ken Joseph, Jr. has been a naturalized Japanese for decades. While American, he was born and raised in Japan. He is a protestant minister in Japan. He occasionally contributes a column to the Japan Times called "Lifelines" in addition to have written columns in other Japanese papers. He has appeared live as a commenter on Japanese television and overseas television such as BBC, CNN and Fox News. Additionally, he has lobbied with the Japanese Diet. He is a visiting professor at Chiba University.

A minister, he followed in the footsteps of his missionary evangelist father, Ken Joseph Sr., who came to Gen. MacArthur’s Japan after its defeat in World War Ⅱ to try to establish Christianity in Japan. Ken Joseph Jr.’s similar goal to his father is to establish a separate Assyrian-Christian state or sub-province within Iraq or some other form of independence, and encourage settlement of Christians in Mesopotamia to restore their homeland like the days of the Assyrian Empire.

He was a Chair member of the ACCJ (American Chamber of Commerce of Japan) and lists many of his businesses and phone numbers as being run out of the U.S. Ethnically, he states he is Assyrian. News programs in Japan have introduced him as having Japanese citizenship. As his parents are American citizens, he must have naturalized, as being born in Japan is not enough; Japan is not a jus soli (citizenship right by soil) country. Some of his internet profile pages that he owns are confusing in that they have claimed he was born and or lived in Baghdad.

He has written at least ten books, some co-authored with his father. All of them are written in Japanese except for one entitled "Who Lost Iraq?" (currently being written). Many of the books are centered around the theory of the origins of Christianity in Japan.

Ken Joseph Jr.'s "15 minutes of fame" was the run up to the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Ken Joseph Jr. claims he was part of the Human Shield Action to Iraq Project. However, the Human Shield Project states that he was never registered, and that nobody had ever met him. The infamous Saddam Hussein “human shredder torture machine” claim originally came from Ken Joseph Jr. It was a public debate point in the States, used an an argument by U.S. politicians and pundits who were in favor of America deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, From this, the claim spread worldwide throughout the media. Ken Joseph, Jr. essentially claimed that if people are getting shredded from feet to head, so that suicide was preferable to the status quo, then risking being bombed was an acceptable risk. Like the weapons of mass destruction, the torture "machine" was never found after the occupation of Iraq. Ken Joseph Jr. also made the controversial claim that every single Iraqi he talked to was welcoming being bombed and being attacked by the U.S. He claimed to have video evidence that collaborated his incredible assertions which bolstered the arguments & justifications for the first Iraq-U.S. War.

Over time, many doubts have surfaced regarding his resume, his stories and his credentials. For example, when the earliest news articles referred to him as a pastor of the Assyrian Church of the East, the official Assyrian Church of the East released a clarifying statement saying that they had absolutely nothing to do with him. Bishop Mar Bawai Soro put out a statement saying that Ken Joseph Jr. was neither a pastor nor connected with their church. Later clarifying his statements, Bishop Soro said,
"To Whom It May Concern: I personally know Rev. Ken Joseph, Jr. He is ethnically Assyrian, and he is a Protestant minister in Japan. Rev. Ken Joseph has been involved in projects to help Assyrians and promote their welfare."
Whether the U.S. and coalition forces should have been involved in their first war with Iraq was the subject of intense debate at the time. Ken Joseph Jr. was on the side of the neocon hawks — one of his blogs actively praised George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld's actions relating to the war in addition to espousing the virtues of America projecting U.S. Judeo-Christian values onto the Middle East. He presented himself as an eyewitness and informed expert as to the opinions of Iraqi citizens at the time. Because of his controversial claims and opinions, Ken Joseph Jr. was the subject of “The Kenneth Joseph Story” by Carol Lipton.
Location: イラク

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