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Fol­low­ing directly and sup­ple­ment­ing FTRs #426 and #427, this inter­view with Peggy Sea­grave high­lights many of the key points of dis­cus­sion in the remark­able new book authored by Peggy and her hus­band Sterling–Gold War­riors: America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold. (The Sea­graves authored The Yam­ato Dynasty, which was the focal point of FTR#‘s 426, 427.) Cen­tered on the piv­otally impor­tant (but lit­tle known) “Golden Lily” oper­a­tion exe­cuted by the Japan­ese prior to and dur­ing World War II, this pro­gram sets forth the role played by this war loot in the post­war world. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing much of the foun­da­tion for the post­war Japan­ese econ­omy (the world’s sec­ond largest), the plun­der secreted by Japan in the Philip­pines pro­vided a vast finan­cial reserve that was used to finance US intel­li­gence oper­a­tions dur­ing the Cold War. More­over, this vast pool of clan­des­tine wealth was the source for a num­ber of over­lap­ping funds used to fix elec­tions in a num­ber of coun­tries, con­trol the Japan­ese polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment in the post­war period and but­tress major finan­cial insti­tu­tions around the world. In addi­tion, this “black gold” was par­tially recov­ered by the late Philip­pines dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, who uti­lized the loot to finance his regime and to manip­u­late both Japan and the United States. The cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of this vast pool of wealth con­tin­ues to be felt around the world.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of the Japan­ese under­world in that nation’s mil­i­tary and cor­po­rate impe­ri­al­ism; the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of key Japan­ese war crim­i­nals, who served as king­mak­ers in the post­war “reformed,” “demo­c­ra­tic” Japan; the secret pro­vi­sion at the 1944 Bre­ton Woods con­fer­ence to use Axis plun­der to finance anti-Communist oper­a­tions; the roles of Sec­re­tary of War Henry Stimson’s pro­teges John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett and Robert B. Ander­son in admin­is­ter­ing the post­war dis­burse­ment of the Golden Lily assets; the recov­ery of the Golden Lily caches in the Philip­pines by OSS (and later CIA) offi­cer Sev­erino Diaz Gar­cia Santa Romana; CIA Gen­eral Edward Lansdale’s part­ner­ship with Santa Romana in the manip­u­la­tion of the Golden Lily loot; the mar­riage of the Golden Lily plun­der with Nazi gold in order to form the piv­otal Black Eagle Trust; then Vice-President Richard Nixon’s col­lu­sion with the Japan­ese to fix the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion; the role of the “M-Fund” in the cor­rup­tion of post­war Japan and the per­pet­u­a­tion of Japan­ese oli­garchy; the use of Golden Lily loot to finance right-wing mili­tias in the United States; the role of the Black Eagle Trust in manip­u­lat­ing inter­na­tional cur­rency stan­dards; the appar­ent role of act­ing NYSE head John Reed in secret­ing away Golden Lily gold accounts for Citibank; the delib­er­ate frus­tra­tion of repa­ra­tions law­suits by for­mer POW’s against Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions; US State Depart­ment offi­cials’ pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions to cor­po­ra­tions that were defen­dants in those lawsuits.

1. (Note: the entire pro­gram is based on the book Gold War­riors. Although some text excerpts are pre­sented here, the usual com­plete foot­not­ing process is omit­ted for obvi­ous rea­sons. Read­ers are emphat­i­cally encour­aged to obtain and read the book. Be sure to visit the web site.) Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the struc­ture of Japan­ese impe­ri­al­ism in the 20^th cen­tury, the pro­gram sets forth the pro­found oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship of Japan’s major cor­po­ra­tions, its under­world syn­di­cates and the Patri­otic soci­eties. The zaibatsu–the giant Japan­ese fam­ily trusts that dom­i­nate that nation’s econ­omy use both the yakuza–the deadly Japan­ese crim­i­nal organizations-and the Patri­otic soci­eties (such as the Black Dragon and Black Ocean soci­eties) as coop­er­a­tive agents in the process of con­quest and eco­nomic plun­der. In this regard, Japan’s mil­i­tary func­tioned in seam­less coor­di­na­tion with these enti­ties (as well as the Emperor and his fam­ily) as part­ners in the con­quest, bru­tal­iza­tion and loot­ing of Asia prior to, and dur­ing World War II. (For more on the zaibatsu, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show-available from Spitfire-as well as FTR#‘s 290, 426, 427. For more about the Patri­otic Soci­eties, see FTR#‘s 291, 296, as well as RFA#7-available from Spitfire.)

2. One of the prin­ci­pal ele­ments of dis­cus­sion con­cerns the role of Princes Takeda and Chichibu in stash­ing vast amounts of looted in wealth in the Philip­pines, for even­tual recov­ery and use on behalf of Japan’s post­war eco­nomic recov­ery. (See FTR#‘s 290, 427.)

3. Sup­ple­ment­ing the focal point of FTR#426, the pro­gram sets forth the delib­er­ate sub­ver­sion of Japan­ese reform by Gen­eral Dou­glas MacArthur and his staff, act­ing on behalf of polit­i­cal and eco­nomic inter­ests that sought a preser­va­tion of the sta­tus quo. In order to main­tain the Japan­ese busi­ness and polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the Emperor and the royal fam­ily were absolved of war guilt and noto­ri­ous war crim­i­nals such as Nobo­suke Kishi, Yoshio Kodama and Royichi Sasakawa were reha­bil­i­tated. Kishi, Kodama and Sasakawa became key movers on the post­war Japan­ese polit­i­cal stage. (For more about Kodama and Sasakawa, see FTR#‘s 291, 296, as well as RFA#7-available from Spit­fire.) Another of the sig­nif­i­cant play­ers for Japan dur­ing the war-Kakuei Tanaka-evolved into one of the major con­trollers of the post­war clan­des­tine monies, the “M” Fund in par­tic­u­lar. (For more about the M-Fund, see FTR#290.)

4. One of the more impor­tant post­war US intel­li­gence oper­a­tives was a for­mer OSS and CIA agent Sev­erino Diaz Gar­cia Santa Romana-nicknamed “Santy.” The dis­cov­erer of much of the gold hid­den in the Philip­pines by Prince Chichibu and Gen­eral Yamashita under “Golden Lily” (see FTR#427), Santa Romana worked with Gen­eral Edward Lans­dale to secret the gold into for­eign bank accounts. There, it was sub­se­quently uti­lized for a num­ber of pur­poses, in par­tic­u­lar the financ­ing of post­war US intel­li­gence oper­a­tions. As Ms. Sea­grave explains, a piv­otal event in the recov­ery of the Philip­pines Golden Lily caches was the tor­ture of Gen­eral Yamashita’s dri­ver, who even­tu­ally yielded the where­abouts of the repositories.

5. At the epi­cen­ter of the events set forth in Gold War­riors, a vast engine of clan­des­tine wealth known as the Black Eagle Trust grew from the syn­the­sis of the Santa Romana recov­er­ies with Nazi loot recov­ered at the close of the war in Europe. Named for the black eagle imprinted on ingots of Nazi gold bul­lion, the Black Eagle Trust was the out­growth of plan­ning engaged in at the Bret­ton Woods con­fer­ence in 1944. (Bret­ton Woods laid the ground­work for the post­war inter­na­tional econ­omy.) Stem­ming from plan­ning by the influ­en­tial Sec­re­tary of War Henry Stim­son and his power-elite pro­teges John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett and Robert B. Ander­son, the Black Eagle Trust was used to finance US covert intel­li­gence oper­a­tions through­out the Cold War. Black Eagle gold was used to fix elec­tions in many coun­tries and to pro­vide an under­pin­ning for many of the world’s most impor­tant finan­cial insti­tu­tions. In addi­tion, other (related) funds had much to do with the behind-the-scenes maneu­ver­ing on the Japan­ese, Philip­pine and U.S. polit­i­cal stages.

6. Next, the pro­gram focuses on the deci­sive role of Golden Lily loot and other “black” (clan­des­tine) monies played in the affairs of post­war Japan. The most impor­tant of these funds was the “M-Fund,” deriv­ing its name from Gen­eral William Fred­eric Mar­quat, a key MacArthur aide involved with the admin­is­tra­tion of Japan’s post­war econ­omy. As dis­cussed above, that econ­omy was entirely deriv­a­tive from the insti­tu­tions of Impe­r­ial Japan. (The M-Fund is dis­cussed in FTR#290.) Ini­tially admin­is­tered by the U.S., the M-Fund was dis­bursed in con­junc­tion with res­ur­rected Japan­ese war crim­i­nals and prof­i­teers, such as Msrs. Kishi, Kodama and Tanaka. Even­tu­ally, then Vice-President Richard Nixon effected the trans­fer of con­trol of the M-Fund back to the Japan­ese, in exchange for kick­backs from this multi-billion dol­lar fund to Nixon’s cam­paign to win the pres­i­dency. After becom­ing Prime Min­is­ter, Tanaka used the vast wealth of the M-Fund to sys­tem­at­i­cally manip­u­late the polit­i­cal topog­ra­phy of Japan. A cen­tral vehi­cle for this con­trol was the issuance of bonds, such as the “57’s”, named for the year of Emperor Hirohito’s reign. These cer­tifi­cates could be redeemed or deemed “coun­ter­feit” at the dis­cre­tion of the con­trollers of the fund-a delib­er­ate caprice that was used to dev­as­tat­ing, Machi­avel­lian effect. Among those ruined by the “57’s” was for­mer Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Nor­bert Schlei (see FTR#290.)

7. “A related legal bat­tle was that of for­mer U.S. Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Nor­bert Schlei, who had to fight for his sur­vival after being stung by the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment for ask­ing too many ques­tions about Japan’s secret M-Fund. While Schlei was indicted, pros­e­cuted, bank­rupted, and pro­fes­sion­ally ruined for try­ing to nego­ti­ate a finan­cial cer­tifi­cate based on the M-Fund, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Alexan­der Haig-according to eyewitnesses-went to Japan and nego­ti­ated a sim­i­lar cer­tifi­cate suc­cess­fully, with the help of a per­sonal let­ter from Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush. Why one man suc­ceeded while the other was destroyed is a chill­ing story of finan­cial col­lu­sion between Wash­ing­ton and Tokyo.” (Gold Warriors-America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peggy Sea­grave; Verso [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peggy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–85984-542–8; p. 9.)

8. In addi­tion to the M-Fund, the related Yot­suya and Keenan Funds were employed by the MacArthur group, Lands­dale and their Japan­ese allies to manip­u­late Japan­ese and Asian affairs in a cyn­i­cal (and often bloody) fash­ion. Admin­is­tered by MacArthur’s fas­cist intel­li­gence chief Gen­eral Charles Willoughby, the Yot­suya Fund was used in con­junc­tion with the Japan­ese crim­i­nal syn­di­cates to eff­fect some of the more grue­some machi­na­tions of the early Cold War period in Japan. (For more about Willoughby, see-among other programs-RFA#‘s 10, 11, 15, 37-available from Spit­fire, as well as FTR#‘s 54, 120.) “Gen­eral Willoughby, MacArthur’s ‘lov­able fas­cist’ and head of G-2 at SCAP, con­trolled the Yot­suya Fund and worked ener­get­i­cally with Kodama and his legions of yakuza to sup­press any kind of left­ist activ­ity or pub­lic protest dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. Because democ­racy tol­er­ated dis­sent, the con­cept of democ­racy had long been regarded by Japan’s rul­ing elite as ‘a poi­so­nous idea from the West’. In Japan, even the mildest kind of dis­sent was not tol­er­ated. Dur­ing the McCarthy era in Amer­ica, the sup­pres­sion of dis­sent became syn­ony­mous with anti-communism. But the witch­hunt in Japan dur­ing that epoch was far more severe and bloody.” (Ibid.; p. 110.)

9. The Keenan Fund was yet another of these pools of “black” money. “The Keenan Fund, by con­trast, was con­trolled by a civil­ian: Joseph B. Keenan, another MacArthur inti­mate who was chief pros­e­cu­tor in the Tokyo war crimes tri­als. . . .Sim­ply put, it was used to bribe wit­nesses at the war crimes tri­als, or to grease the inter­me­di­aries who per­suaded the wit­nesses to fal­sify their tes­ti­mony.” (Ibid.; pp. 111–112.)

10. Even­tu­ally, the late Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos learned of the Golden Lily plun­der and the use of the clan­des­tine funds by MacArthur and the Japan­ese. He then used this infor­ma­tion to recover some of the trea­sure entombed the Philip­pines, and to black­mail both the Japan­ese and the Amer­i­cans. It should be noted that this black­mail evolved into deep polit­i­cal col­lu­sion, in which the Marcos-controlled Golden Lily loot was traf­ficked around the world as part of var­i­ous U.S. and Japan­ese covert machinations.

11. In addi­tion, some of the Golden Lily caches in the Philip­pines were recov­ered by var­i­ous “pri­vate” orga­ni­za­tions, them­selves inti­mately linked to ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence and reac­tionar­ies evolved from the MacArthur infra­struc­ture. Among the par­tic­i­pants in these recov­er­ies were the John Birch Soci­ety and Gen­eral John Singlaub-the later closely asso­ci­ated with the for­mer World Anti-Communist League and the off-the-shelf intel­li­gence oper­a­tions asso­ci­ated with the Iran-Contra affair. (For more about the John Birch Soci­ety, see RFA#‘s 10–12-available from Spit­fire. For more about WACL, see RFA#‘s14, 15, 36, 37. For more about the Iran-Contra affair and the machi­na­tions of Singlaub and Com­pany, see RFA#‘s 29–35. All of these pro­grams are avail­able from Spitfire.)

12. “Included here are hand­writ­ten let­ters and dia­grams show­ing how a group of senior U.S. Gov­ern­ment offi­cials and Pen­ta­gon gen­er­als hoped to use Golden Lily trea­sure to cre­ate a new pri­vate FBI and a military-industrial com­plex con­trolled by them, in part­ner­ship with the John Birch Soci­ety, the Moonies and far-right tycoons. This is con­firmed by tape record­ings of a 1987 con­fer­ence in Hong Kong that included retired U.S. Army Gen­eral John Singlaub and Gen­eral Robert Schweitzer of the National Secu­rity Coun­cil under Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.” (Ibid.; p. 11.)

13. Recently, for­mer Citibank CEO John Reed took over as act­ing head of the New York Stock Exchange. While pre­sid­ing over Citibank’s oper­a­tions, Reed was the focal point of lit­i­ga­tion by the heirs to Santa Romana, who had secreted sig­nif­i­cant amounts of “black gold” in accounts at Citibank. The resid­ual assets from Golden Lily, the Black Eagle Trust, the M-Fund etc. con­tinue to occupy a deci­sive posi­tion in the clan­des­tine affairs of gov­ern­ments and finan­cial insti­tu­tions around the world.

14. In what the Sea­graves describe as the “last bat­tle of the Pacific War,” sur­viv­ing vic­tims of Japan­ese atroc­i­ties, includ­ing Amer­i­can for­mer POW’s sued for com­pen­sa­tion for their wartime suf­fer­ing. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment effec­tively blocked these suits, main­tain­ing that inter­na­tional diplo­matic rela­tions took prece­dence over legal ethics and moral­ity. “The real issue is con­flict of inter­est. Dur­ing the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion, U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan Thomas Foley was adamant in reject­ing com­pen­sa­tion for POW’s and other slave labor­ers, insist­ing that ‘The peace treaty put aside all claims against Japan.’ His Deputy Chief of Mis­sion, Christo­pher J. LaFleur, echoed this dogma at every oppor­tu­nity.” (Ibid.; p. 12.)

15. “It ws a mat­ter of some inter­est to vic­tims that Foley’s wife was a well-paid con­sul­tant to Sum­it­omo, one of Japan’s biggest zaibatsu con­glom­er­ates, heav­ily involved in wartime slave labor and a tar­get of the law­suits. The moment Foley ended his tenure as ambas­sador and returned to Amer­ica, he signed on as a paid advi­sor and lob­by­ist to another huge conglomerate-Mitsubishi-one of the biggest wartime users of slave labor.” (Idem.)

16. “Of greater sig­nif­i­cance, per­haps, is that Lafleur is mar­ried to the daugh­ter of for­mer prime min­is­ter and finance min­is­ter Miyazawa, one of the three Japan­ese who secretly nego­ti­ated the 1951 treaty with John Fos­ter Dulles. (Miyazawa also is con­sid­ered by pro­fes­sor Lausier and oth­ers to be the finan­cial over­seer of the M-Fund.) Con­flict of inter­est does not seem to be an obsta­cle in diplo­matic appoint­ments to Tokyo.) (Idem.)