What happened to $100 billion in WWII Japanese loot? hint: it ties to Rev. Moon and the far-Right

[ftr23532]

Consortium News has a new article out about the incredible amounts of gold and treasure looted from occupied Asia during WWII and how it shaped both post-war Japan AND the right-wing politics here in the US. While it isn't talked about much, it was decided by General McCarthy to use the loot to help finance the emergence of Japan's democracy. It also isn't mentioned to much that many of the key figures of Japan's WWII military government went on to because important post-war politicians in Japan's democracy. This same group has dominated Japan's politics ever since, reflected in the fact that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Japan">almost every single Prime Minister since 1956 has been a member of the the LPD.

Japan's latest http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501109.html?referrer=emailarticle">right-wing Prime Minister, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4392480.stm">Shinzo Abe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Early_life">comes from a political family whose lineage includes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi">Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi was one of General Tojo's closest deputies and a Class A war criminal as a result of his role as one of the top officials in the occupied Manchuria (where much of the war booty came from). He was imprisoned after the war, but but never tried by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East">International Military Tribunal for the Far East. In 1952, the attempts to purge Japanese of its WWII leaders was rescinded, and Kishi went about building the LPD, and http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp83.html">in doing so "managed to maintain contacts with the mainstream while also connecting the non-zaibatsu business community and selected parts of the discredited prewar world of ultra-nationalist politicians and control bureaucrats (tosei kanryo) to the postwar conservative hegemony." Kishi then went on to become Japan's Prime Minister in 1957.

Kishi's formation of the LPD was also bankrolled by his allies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshio_Kodama">Yoshio Kodama and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoichi_Sasakawa">Ryoichi Sasakawa, both of whom are major figures in the in the Japanese Criminal Underworld. Another organization that Kodama and Sasakawa helped bankroll just happens to be the good Reverend Sun Myung Moon's criminal enterprise. Both Kodama and Sasakawa also have long-standing ties to ultra-nationalist and fascist groups. They're good folks!

So that's some fun background history on Japanese politics. Now let's turn to this article on Consortium News and take a look at how $100 billion in hidden gold helped shape the post-war era, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/022407b.html">as well as our own politics here:

Why US Shields Japan's WWII Denials

By Jerry Meldon
February 24, 2007

On Feb. 19, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso took exception to a U.S. congressional resolution introduced by Rep. Mike Honda, D-California, calling on Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility” for coercing 200,000 Asian women into slavery as “Comfort Women” (wartime prostitutes) for 3.5 million Japanese soldiers. Mr. Aso said he considers the accusation groundless and extremely regrettable.

Six decades after World War II, can it really be that Japanese officials are still distorting history and insulting the Chinese, Koreans, Philippinos and others across Asia whom Hirohito’ s forces savagely brutalized and robbed?

And why does Washington turn a deaf ear?

The answers may be rooted in what transpired behind closed doors in Tokyo when Japan was occupied by the U.S. military in the post-war years .

Sterling and Peggy Seagrave suggest a motive in their eye-opening – and at times stomach-turning – 2003 book, Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold. In the war’s immediate aftermath, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of Allied occupying forces, secretly joined hands with Japanese war criminals.
...

For those interested, here's a rather http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html">lengthy review and overview of http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Warriors-Americas-Recovery-Yamashitas/dp/1844675319/sr=8-1/qid=1172368528/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7142825-1263265?ie=UTF8&s=books">Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold by Chalmers Johnson.

And here's an interview with one of the authors of the book, Peggy Seagrave: http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=9276">FTR #428 "Gold Warriors"

Continuing...

...
Rather than convict, imprison and throw away the keys, MacArthur coddled those responsible for one of history’s bloodiest wars of aggression. When the U.S. occupation ended in 1952, he released all those who were still in custody.

And it may have gone a lot further than that.

According to Gold Warriors, even as the United States “introduced democratic reforms and a new constitution … put Japan back under the control of men who were devotedly undemocratic … that Japan never stole anything and was flat broke … huge infusions of black money.”

Washington even had Article 14 of the 1951 Japan Peace Treaty state : “It is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient … the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan.”

As historian Christopher Simpson put it , the United States thereby insured “that the vict ims of the war – rape camp survivors, slave laborers and POWs – be left with nothing.”

Furthermore, according to the Seagraves, “records of Japan’s looting and economic conspiracy have been removed from Western archives and databases, remain under secret classification and will not be made public for another half-century.”

The cover-up notwithstanding, the Seagraves somehow penetrated the veil of secrecy and reported that the source of the black money that MacArthur bestowed on the Japanese. They wrote that after arriving in Japan, the general’s aides located $100 billion in gold, platinum and other treasures that Hirohito’s forces had systematically plundered from occupied Asian nations and buried deep underground.

When MacArthur reported this to Washington, President Harry S. Truman’s brain trust – which included John McCloy, who as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany would authorize the early release of many Nazi war criminals – decided to devote the fortune to covert operations such as the bankrolling of rightist political parties and the recruitment of war criminals as U.S. intelligence agents for the Cold War that was just beginning.

...

It's worth noting that the GOP's Get out the vote "Ethnic outreach" groups targeting Eastern European communities http://www.amazon.com/Old-Nazis-Right-Republican-Party/dp/0896084183/sr=8-2/qid=1172369321/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-7142825-1263265?ie=UTF8&s=books">involved a number of these fascist war criminals (Be sure to use the "search inside this book" option on Amazon...it's a must read book!). It's also worth noting that the http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x257337">GOP used convicted terrorist financiers to court the Muslim vote in Bush's 2000 election. Old habits die hard.

Continuing...

...
One of the most notorious crooks MacArthur embraced was yakuza godfather Yoshio Kodama. With the exalted rank of rear admiral in the Japanese navy, Kodama had overseen the wartime looting of Asia’s criminal infrastructure. In the process, he stashed away a personal fortune estimated at $13 billion.

Arrested as a Class A war criminal, he made a deal with MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Gen. Charles Willoughby. Kodama handed the CIA $100 million in return for his release from Sugamo Prison. Returning to the underworld, he regained control of the Asian heroin traffic.

According to the Seagraves and others, he also remained a CIA asset until his death in 1984. It was apparently in that capacity that he became a major behind-the-scenes political force, primarily in Japan but, indirectly, across the Pacific as well.

Together with his fellow racketeer and Class A war criminal Ryoichi Sasakawa, Kodama underwrote the creation of two Japanese political parties that later combined to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Except for a brief hiatus when voters had had their fill of corruption, the conservative LDP has ruled Japan ever since. According to sources cited by the Seagraves, the LDP secretly contributed to the 1960 presidential campaign of Richard M. Nixon.

The LDP was not the only organization which Kodama and Sasakawa bankrolled, that lavished the gangsters’ ill-begotten wealth on American politicians. They also underwrote the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, which owns the right-wing daily, the Washington Times.

...

Kodama and Sasakawa, together with followers of Rev. Moon, also underwrote the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL) as a propaganda mill for the dictatorships of Taiwan and South Korea. In 1966, the APACL expanded to become the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) . European neo-nazi terrorists and Latin American death squad leaders attended WACL conferences in the 1970s and 1980s.
...

Relating back to far-Rightist in the GOP, the leader of the US wing of Moon's World Anti-Communist League during the late 70's was a fellow named http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Pearson">Roger Pearson, a British "racialist" that not only sat on the editorial board for the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review publication, but also played a prominent role in Mankind Quarterly, a "scientific" publication that provides "academic" research that is quite useful to those that want to prove, oh, that some races are inherently less intelligence than others (The Bell Curve http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x177844#180675">made a number of reference to this publication). Much of the funding for Mankind Quarterly comes from the Pioneer Fund, which Pearson was also involved in (go http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3142435#3150201">here to see some interesting info on former director of the Pioneer Fund, Tom Ellis).

Here are two interesting interviews with author Kevin Coogan that have lots of info on Pearson and the larger fascistic network he was operating in:
http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=1064">FTR 260: "Further Discussion with Kevin Coogan."
http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=1105">FTR #312: Interview with Kevin Coogan, author of Dreamer of the Day

Continuing...

...
Ronald Reagan – whose 1981 presidential inauguration was attended by the godfather of Central America’s death squads, Mario Sandoval Alarcon – sent the following message to the 1985 WACL convention in Dallas:

“I commend you all for your part in this noble cause. Our combined efforts are moving the tide of history toward world freedom. We must persevere and never falter. I send all you who help in your crusade for liberty my best wishes. God bless you.”

The previous year, Congress had blocked continued White House funding for the counter-revolutionary Nicaraguan contras. Undaunted, the Reagan administration solicited donations from private right-wing sources, including the two organizations that Kodama and Sasakawa had spawned. WACL and the Unification Church each obliged the Reagan team with generous donations that kept the contras afloat.

In that same period, WACL also contributed heavily in the United States to right-wing candidates running against progressive incumbents. One such beneficiary, WACL conferee Steven Symms, unseated the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Frank Church, D-Idaho. A prominent Vietnam War critic, Church had chaired a 1975 Senate investigation that uncovered CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, a picture emerges of CIA-controlled Japanese wartime loot being funneled by Japanese war criminals, via rightist Asian conduit organizations, to American politicians.

Maybe that explains why Washington turns a deaf ear when Japanese officials sanitize their country’s wartime atrocities. After all, the bruised feelings of a couple of billion Asian mainlanders is a small price to pay for keeping a lid on the truth.

Jerry Meldon is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. His e-mail is [e-mail] .

For those interested, here's a very interesting Dave Emory show that includes info on how some of this war booty was used by folks associated with the John Birch Society to start developing a network private right-wing "security" firms (ie. the predecessors to Blackwater), that were instrumental in the Iran Contra affair:
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2004/04/ftr-451-petals-from-golden-lily.html">FTR #451 Petals from the Golden Lily Audio http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=11147">here.

Enjoy!

[villager]

1. Like the Asian version of "Operation Paperclip"

America became everything it was fighting against, after WWII.

Hence, the last gasps of the once-promising US of A, right now...

[ftr23532]

5. Here's a show on how the attempts at de-Nazifying Germany were thwarted...

...by the same US economic interests that were doing business with the Nazis during WWII:
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005_05_31_ftrsummary_archive.html"> FTR #511 Uncle Sam & The Swastika, 25 Years Later
Audio http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=15230">Here

Enjoy! :-)

[nam78_two]

2. Another great post-book-marked for later

:applause:

Edited to read great post not great pot ;).

[ftr23532]

6. thanks nam!

:hi:

[Jcrowley]

3. Rec 3

Read it folks

[Mnemosyne]

4. needs another kick and rec. n/t

[nam78_two]

7. An interesting side-note about that Gen. Willoughby mentioned in your post

The one who pardoned Kodama:
"Arrested as a Class A war criminal, he made a deal with MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Gen. Charles Willoughby."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwilloughbyC.htm

Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, the son of Baron von Tscheppe-Weidenbach from Baden, Germany, and Emma Willoughby, was born in 1892. After attending the University of Heidelberg, Willoughby moved to the United States in 1910 and became known as Charles Willoughby.

Willoughby joined the United States Army and served with Company K, 5th U.S. Infantry, and eventually reached the rank of sergeant. He was commissioned a major in May 1914 in the Officers Volunteer Corps. During the First World War Willoughby served on the Western Front.

In October 1919 Captain Willoughby was reassigned to the 24th Infantry serving at Columbus, New Mexico.

His next assignment took him overseas to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where again he served as both company and battalion commander in the 65th Infantry from February 1921 to May 1923. He now joined the Military Intelligence Division, as served as Military Attaché duties in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador.

In August, 1929, Willoughby started a course at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After graduating two years later, he stayed on at the school as an instructor, teaching the subjects of Intelligence and Military History. He also edited the Command and General Staff School Quarterly.

In 1936 he was appointed as an instructor in the Infantry School at Fort Benning. Later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He developed extreme right-wing views and once delivered a speech to Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco at a lunch in Madrid. He also praised Benito Mussolini: "Historical judgment, freed from the emotional haze of the moment, will credit Mussolini with wiping out a memory of defeat by re-establishing the traditional military supremacy of the white race."

Willoughby became logistics officer in the Headquarters of the Philippine Department in Manila where he served under General Douglas MacArthur. Promoted to the rank of major general, Willoughby served as General MacArthur's Chief of Intelligence in the General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area (1941-1951).

The Japanese Air Force attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the 7th December 1941. The following day they carried out air strikes on the Philippines and destroyed half of MacArthur's air force. MacArthur was much criticized for this as he had been told to move his airforce after the raid on Hawaii the previous day.

The Japanese Army also invaded the Philippines and they soon held the three air bases in northern Luzon. On 22nd December the 14th Army landed at Lingayen Gulf and quickly gained control of Manila from the inexperienced Filipino troops. Although only 57,000 Japanese soldiers were landed on Luzon it had little difficulty capturing the island.

General Douglas MacArthur now ordered a general retreat to the Bataan peninsula. A series of Japanese assaults forced the US defensive lines back and on 22nd February, 1942, MacArthur was ordered to leave Bataan and go to Australia. General Jonathan Wainright remained behind with 11,000 soldiers and managed to hold out until the beginning of May.

In December 1942 Willoughby was with General Robert Eichelberger in the capture of Buna Village in the Buna-Gona campaign. He was awarded the Army's second highest decoration for gallantry, the Distinguished Service Cross, for "extraordinary heroism in action".

Willoughby accompanied Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo for the occupation of Japan. When attempts to suppress news to the United States ended in failure, he labeled reporters who defied him, as "Communists". A Cold War warrior he was a strong supporter of the activities of Joseph McCarthy. He also lobbied the US Congress to authorize $100 million for General Franco's government in Spain. MacArthur once described the six-foot, three-inch, Willoughby as "my little Fascist".

In 1951 Willoughby went before the House of Un-American Activities and provided information about the Richard Sorge spy network. This included information that claimed that Agnes Smedley was a "communist subversive". In retirement Willoughby was a member of the International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture. During the 1050s he worked closely with Billy James Hargis, Haroldson L. Hunt, John Rousselot and other right-wing figures. Willoughby was also a board member of Young Americans for Freedom, an organization created by Larrie Schmidt.

Two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a long-distance telephone operator in Mexico City monitored an international phone call. She heard one of the voices saying: "The Castro plan is being carried out. Bobby is next." The telephone numbers were traced. One number belonged to Emilio Nunez Portuondo, the Latin American Affairs editor of Willoughby's Foreign Intelligence Digest.

In 1968 Willoughby moved with his wife to Naples, Florida. Charles Willoughby died on 25th October, 1972.

[ftr23532]

11. "my little Fascist". how endearing

Here's a string of fun-facts:
Willoughby sat on the board of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the youth wing of the John Birch Society http://www.yaf.com/buckley_gratitude.shtml">started by William F. Buckley (who, on a side note, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2894588#2908046">happens to be a member of the right-wing reactionary Knights of Malta). A former Director of YAF, Lee Edwards, went on to start the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF) in 1970. And the ACWF just happened to be the US wing of Moon's World Anti-Communist League (WACL), although ACWF isn't the same group that Roger Pearson headed in the late 70's. http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/wacl.php">Here's why:

...
United States: The first WACL chapter in the U.S. was the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF) founded in 1970 by Lee Edwards. Edwards was the former director of Young Americans for Freedom, the youth arm of the John Birch Society. (11) John Fisher of the American Security Council served as ACWF's first chairman. The American Security Council is a virulently anticommunist group that originally focused on internal security. It currently heads up the rightwing lobby group the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, which includes among its members a number of members of Congress. (61) In 1973, the ACWF, at the urging of board member Stefan Possony, complained to WACL about the fascist members from Latin America. The report was discredited, but in 1975, ACWF left WACL and its members drifted off to other groups in the New Right. (11)

The second U.S. chapter of WACL (1975-1980), the Council on American Affairs, was headed by noted racialist Roger Pearson. During this period Pearson had strong links to the American Security Council. (61)

...

Heh.

Also, here's an interesting show that covers how Nelson Bunker Hunt, the son of Willoughby's buddy H.L. Hunt, teamed up with a wealthy Saudi, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=ali_bin_mussalim">Ali bin Mussalim, to attempt to corner the silver market. Ali bin Musalim was also a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's al-Taqwa bank, and was under suspicion of helping funnel money for bin Laden in late September of 2001. In June of 2004 reports of these suspicions went public. a month later he died of cancer.

Here's the show:
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/06/ftr-513-keep-following-money.html">FTR #513 Keep Following the Money Audio http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=15372">here

[nam78_two]

14. Ugh the YAF

They used to chalk border-line racist crap all over the sidewalks of my old U. campus in the dead of night. Seriously...I saw them myself at 2 in the morning one time that I was working late.

Not surprised by these ties....it amazes me that even within the crazy RW they stil have semi-mainstream status :eyes:.

[ftr23532]

15. They've been working on mainstreaming it for generations now.

The modern-day GOP's ideology is like John Birch Society meets Ayn Rand. It's amazing what a relatively small group of very determined people can accomplished.

[ftr23532]

8. AP: CIA recruited Japanese war criminals

LOL, I missed this story that came out earlier today, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/japan_spies_and_war_crimes">and it's quite good!!!:

AP: CIA recruited Japanese war criminals

By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press WriterSat Feb 24, 11:29 AM ET

Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The documents also show how ineffective the effort was, in the CIA's view.

The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files, fill in many of the blanks in the previously spotty documentation of the occupation authority's intelligence arm and its involvement with Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals, historians say.

In addition to Tsuji, who escaped Allied prosecution and was elected to parliament in the 1950s, conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included mob boss and war profiteer Yoshio Kodama, and Takushiro Hattori, former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948.

The CIA also cast a harsh eye on its counterparts — and institutional rivals — at G-2, the occupation's intelligence arm, providing evidence for the first time that the Japanese operatives often bilked gullible American patrons, passing on useless intelligence and using their U.S. ties to boost smuggling operations and further their efforts to resurrect a militarist Japan.

The assessments in the files are far from uniform. They show evidence that other U.S. agencies, such as the Air Force, were also looking into using some of the same people as spies, and that the CIA itself had contacts with former Japanese war criminals. Some CIA reports gave passing grades to the G-2 contacts' intelligence potential.

But on balance, the reports were negative, and historians say there is scant documentary evidence from occupation authorities to contradict the CIA assessment.

The files, hundreds of pages of which were obtained last month by the AP, depict operations that were deeply flawed by agents' lack of expertise, rivalries and shifting alliances between competing groups, and Japanese operatives' overriding interest in right-wing activities and money rather than U.S. security aims.

"Frequently they resorted to padding or outright fabrication of information for the purposes of prestige or profit," a 1951 CIA assessment said of the agents. "The postwar era in Japan ... produced a phenomenal increase in the number of these worthless information brokers, intelligence informants and agents."

The contacts in Japan mirror similar efforts in postwar Germany by the Americans to glean intelligence on the Soviet Union from ex-Nazis. But historians say a major contrast is the ineffectiveness of the Japanese operations.

The main aims were to spy on Communists inside Japan, place agents in Soviet and North Korean territory, and use Japanese mercenaries to bolster Taiwanese defenses against the triumphant Communist forces in mainland China.

...

The operatives also were suspected of having murky links with the Communists they were assigned to undermine, the documents say. The CIA also said some agents sold the same information to different U.S. contacts, increasing their earnings, and funneled information on the American military back into the Japanese nationalist underground.

The files and historians strongly suggest that American lack of knowledge about Japan or interest in war crimes committed in Asia, and a reliance on operatives' own assessment of their intelligence skills, made U.S. officials, in the words of one CIA report, "easy to fool for a time."

"This was a bunch of Japanese nationalists taking the G-2 for a ride," said Carol Gluck, a specialist in Japanese history at Columbia University and adviser to the archives working group administering declassification of the papers. "One thing that was interesting was how absolutely nonsensical it was, of no use to anybody but the people involved. Almost funny in a way."

The informants, many of whom were held as war criminals after Tokyo's surrender and subsequently released, operated under the patronage of Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, a German-born, monocle-wearing admirer of Mussolini, a staunch anti-Communist and, as the chief of G-2 in the occupation government, considered second in power only to his boss, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Some of Willoughby's proteges were seen as prime war trial material by Allied prosecutors.

But even as the occupation authorities were recrafting Japan into a democracy, their focus was shifting to containing the Soviets. Willoughby saw the military men as key to making Japan an anti-Communist bulwark in Asia — and ensuring that Tokyo would rapidly rearm, this time as a U.S. ally.

Historians long ago concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those committed against other Asians, as fighting communism became the West's priority.

Chief among the Japanese operatives was Seizo Arisue, Japan's intelligence chief at the end of the war. Arisue had been a key figure in the pro-war camp and in forging Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1930s.

According to the files, Arisue was soon ensconced in G-2, working with former Lt. Gen. Yorashiro Kawabe, who was a military intelligence officer in China in 1938 — to organize groups of veterans and others for underground operations.

These groups consisted of former war buddies and often retained the same chains of command and militarist ideology of the war machine that ground much of Asia into submission in the 1930s and '40s.

"It shows how we acquiesced to the Japanese ... in order to continue to build up Japan as our ally," said Linda Goetz Holmes, author of "Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs."

...


Kodama was another unsavory player. A virulent anti-communist and superbly connected smuggler and political fixer, Kodama commanded a vast network of black marketeers and former Japanese secret police agents in East Asia.

The CIA, however, concluded he was much more concerned about making money than furthering U.S. interests. A gangland boss, he later played a major role in the Lockheed Scandal, one of the country's biggest post-World War II bribery cases. He died in 1984.

"Kodama Yoshio's value as an intelligence operative is virtually nil," says a particularly harsh 1953 CIA report. "He is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan and outright thief... Kodama is completely incapable of intelligence operations, and has no interest in anything but the profits."

Nowadays, the most powerful legacy of the U.S. occupation is the democratic freedoms and pacifism built into Japan's 1947 constitution. But the U.S. association with Japanese war criminals illustrates how Washington embraced nationalist and conservative forces after World War II, helping them reassert their grip on the government once the occupation ended in 1952.

"Its hard to imagine back in those days how intent the U.S. was on rapid remilitarization of Japan," said John Dower, historian and author of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II."

"When we talk about the emergence of neo-nationalism or a strong right wing in Japan today, this has very deep roots and it involves a very strong element of American support," he said.

Yet the ex-war criminals failed to rebuild a militarist Japan. "Prewar right-wing activists who escaped war crime charges in fact did not have much influence in the postwar period," said Eiji Takemae, historian and author of The Allied Occupation of Japan.

To the Americans, he said, "they were in fact not very useful."

___

Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

[ftr23532]

10. self delete

whoopsy, posted in the wrong place

[pnorman]

9. I have thatbook "Gold Warriors".

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Warriors-Americas-Recovery-Yamashitas/dp/1859845428

I skimmed through it and then set it aside for later re-reading. I can't seem to find it so far, but I located the companion CDs (2 disks). That's over 900 MB of maps, scanned docs, etc. SO MUCH TO DO. SO LITTLE TIME! Thanks for the heads up. I'll find that book for sure (I never throw anything out!).

pnorman

[ftr23532]

12. and if you can't find your copy, amazon has the "search inside this book" option for this book too

You just have to log in and you can read the whole thing online. While they only have things like the table of contents and an excerpt listed, you can use the search function to search and search for any given page's number, and access the entire book that way. It's an awesome feature.

[pnorman]

13. Awesome it is!

I "knew" of that feature, but had first thought it was only for randomly selected pages. Not so! As I recall, you can also search for key-words! I'm using it fairly frequently now.

Getting to the library is awkward for me lately, so here's another resource I use: http://www.questia.com/ It's a paid service, and not TOO cheap, but there are MANY books and other publications there on-line, and in a form for easy researching. There are many there out of print and unobtainable at any price. It seems to be aimed at students and researchers. You can copy & paste all you want, although it's probably all "digitally watermarked", so it'd be a good idea to cite Questia when you do so in public. I believe you can get to a complete book as a "trial". Give it a look-see.

pnorman

[nam78_two]

16. Kick

:kick:

[ftr23532]

17. Interesting update regarding the postal system

I remember once reading about a massive political slush fund in Japan's Postals system, so I decided to google that here's an interesting http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/international/asia/30japan.html?ex=1283054400&en=2e4da942aefc0d66&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">NY Times article from 2005:

...

Japan's post offices, which have deep roots throughout the country, have grown into the world's largest financial institution, Japan Post, with $3 trillion in assets. But they have also played another, little understood role here, serving as the bedrock of Japan's postwar political structure and the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party's machine.

...

Postal savings accounts have also earned the trust of Japanese, with 85 percent of households holding such deposits. The assets allowed Japan's leaders to finance national projects, from the war effort before 1945 to the country's postwar high growth.

It was Kakuei Tanaka, postwar Japan's most powerful prime minister and a native of Niigata, who put the money held by the post office to use as a huge slush fund for the Liberal Democrats, said Kent Calder, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. First as postal minister in the 1950's and then as prime minister in the 1970's, Mr. Calder said, Mr. Tanaka protected postal services from oversight from other ministries, so the Liberal Democrats could freely use the assets to reward their backers.

Small businesses that pledged to back the Liberal Democrats were given loans with no collateral and low interest rates from postal services - as long as they had the endorsement of their member of Parliament. Japanese could also take loans up to 90 percent of their deposits at low rates. Special postmasters, as influential members of their communities, played a crucial role by acting as vote-gatherers for the Liberal Democrats.

...

What's interesting about this is that Tanaka was the Japanese Prime Minister when Nixon supposedly return the "m-fund" (the name given for the massive war booty) back to Japan. So perhaps the Japanese postal system, of all places, could be where some of this money resides and continues to influence Japan today.

Here's a Dave Emory show that talks about Tanaka and the m-fund:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f296.html">FTR-296 The Return of the Rising Sun, The Reemergence of Fascism in Japan Audio http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=1093">Here. So check out this excerpt from a 2001 Financial Times article in that show "“Mischief or Conspiracy?” by Gillian Tett; Financial Times; 4/7-4/8/2001; p. 10.":

...
But if that looks suspicious, the other explanation is far stranger and begins in the early 20th century, when Japan invaded its Asian neighbors and looted vast wealth. After the Second World War, U.S. intelligence forces secretly seized this wealth and later used it to finance covert anti-Communist operations - paying bribes, for example, to rightwing members of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. Schlei told the Florida court that in the postwar U.S. ‘we came to feel that were OK because the Russians were subsidizing the communists and socialists.’ In the 1960’s, the U.S. returned control of this fund - called the ‘M-fund’ - to Japan. Japanese politicians, such as Kakuei Tanaka, a former finance minister and later prime minister, grabbed it, stole large sums and used it for their personal use and to buy political support with bribes. ‘For 25 years Tanaka was known as the money man of Japanese politics. My clients say the reason he had so much money was he got control of this M-fund,’ Schlei said. In the 1960’s, Tanaka tried to hide some of the fund by buying JGB’s and registering them in the name of his crones and supporters. But in 1976, he was sucked into a corruption scandal and convicted of receiving bribes from the U.S. Lockheed company. In the following years, his cronies wanted extra money and, in the late 1970’s, the Tanaka clique decided secretly to print what have become the disputed certificates as part of a complex financial scheme.
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Curiouser and curiouser...

[bobthedrummer]

18. an Edwin W. Pauley rememberence kick