based on nature of Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of Emperor Hirohito's teachers: "Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature () of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority." As stated in An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a classified report which was published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on July 1, 1943, just as a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a racially superior people, are destined to rule Asia "eternally" as the head of the family of Asian nations. The most horrific xenophobia of the pre-Shōwa period was displayed after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, where in the confusion after a massive earthquake, Koreans were wrongly maligned as poisoning the water supply. A vicious pogrom resulted in the deaths of at least 3,000 Koreans, and the imprisonment of 26,000. In the 1930s, the number of attacks on Westerners and their Japanese friends by nationalist citizens increased due to the influence of Japanese military-political doctrines in the early years of the Showa period, these attacks occurred after a long build-up which started in the Meiji period, when a few samurai die-hards refused to accept foreigners in Japan. For an exception, see Jewish settlement in the Japanese Empire. World War II Racism was omnipresent in the press during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Greater East Asia War and the media's descriptions of the superiority of the Yamato people was unwaveringly consistent. The first major anti-foreigner publicity campaign, called (Guard Against Espionage), was launched in 1940 alongside the proclamation of the (New Order in East Asia) and its first step, the Hakkō ichiu. Initially, in order to justify Japan's conquest of Asia, Japanese propaganda espoused the ideas of Japanese supremacy by claiming that the Japanese represented a combination of all Asian peoples and cultures, emphasizing heterogeneous traits. Japanese propaganda started to place an emphasis on the ideas of racial purity and the supremacy of the Yamato race when the Second Sino-Japanese War intensified. Mostly after the launching of the Pacific War, Westerners were detained by official authorities, and on occasion were objects of violent assaults, sent to police jails or military detention centers or suffered bad treatment in the street. This applied particularly to Americans, Soviets and