Recorded June 10, 2007
REALAUDIO
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: Ana­lyz­ing the ongo­ing influ­ence of fas­cism in Germany’s Axis part­ners (Japan and Italy), the pro­gram illus­trates that, as nov­el­ist William Faulkner said: “The past is never dead and buried. It isn’t even past.” Begin­ning with the acquit­tal of the accused mur­der­ers of for­mer Vat­i­can finan­cial adviser Roberto Calvi, the broad­cast sets forth some of the clan­des­tine his­tory of post­war Ital­ian fascism’s sig­nif­i­cant role in Ital­ian and world politics.

A vet­eran of the crypto-fascist P-2 Lodge (which evolved directly from Mussolini’s fascisti), Calvi was mur­dered in 1982 after the col­lapse of his Banco Ambrosiano. Italy’s largest bank, Ambrosiano had bad loans guar­an­teed by the Vat­i­can bank (which Calvi helped advise). Like Calvi and the P-2 Lodge to which he belonged, Ambrosiano was involved in many dif­fer­ent covert oper­a­tions and scan­dals dur­ing the clos­ing stages of the Cold War, most involv­ing machi­na­tions by the residua of Il Duce’s regime.

After revis­it­ing post­war Ital­ian fas­cism, the broad­cast sets forth the effort by Japan­ese reac­tionar­ies to rewrite the his­tory of World War II. The rel­a­tive suc­cess of this revi­sion­ist effort stems from the fact that the Japan­ese fas­cists and mil­i­tarists were never ousted from post­war Japan.

Rather, some of the most heinous Japan­ese war crim­i­nals and fas­cists were put to work on behalf of U.S. intel­li­gence and in posi­tions of impor­tance in the “new” Japan­ese government–capacities in which they con­tin­ued to ply their fas­cist trade. More impor­tantly, the Japan­ese were allowed to main­tain con­trol over the wealth they stole dur­ing the war, uti­liz­ing that trea­sure in tan­dem with their Amer­i­can occu­piers in order to pros­e­cute the Cold War.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: An overview of the con­spir­a­to­r­ial activ­i­ties in which Calvi and the P-2 were involved; Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Shinzo Abe’s denial of the real­ity of the “Com­fort Women”—slave pros­ti­tutes who were forced into sex­ual ser­vice of the Japan­ese army; Japan’s rewrit­ing of the his­tory of the Impe­r­ial Japan­ese Army’s abuse of the pop­u­la­tion of Oki­nawa dur­ing the bat­tle for that Island; review of the Golden Lily pro­gram that Japan used to sys­tem­at­i­cally loot Asia; dis­cus­sion of Gen­eral Charles Willoughby’s role in recruit­ing the Japan­ese fas­cists to serve in U.S. intel­li­gence; review of Willoughby’s admi­ra­tion for Mus­solini; dis­cus­sion of an attempted fas­cist coup by Willoughby’s recruits in the early 1950’s.

1. Over the years, Mr. Emory has devoted much pro­gram time to the tan­gle of con­spir­a­to­r­ial events sur­round­ing the P-2 lodge, a crypto-fascist power cen­ter that deter­mined much of Italy’s post­war his­tory. Descended from Mussolini’s black­shirts, the lodge was headed by Lico Gelli, a vet­eran of the fascisti and the Salo Repub­lic [that was] estab­lished in Italy dur­ing the clos­ing months of World War II. Recently, mur­der charges were dis­missed against the accused killers of Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy’s largest bank. After Ambrosiano’s col­lapse in 1982, Vat­i­can finan­cial adviser and P-2 mem­ber Calvi was found hanged under Black­fri­ars’ Bridge in Lon­don. [Although the ini­tial find­ing was sui­cide, that was later over­turned. For more about Calvi and the Vat­i­can, P-2 nexus, see—among other pro­grams—AFA#’s17-21 and M49–avail­able from Spit­fire. Inter­ested lis­ten­ers should also use the search func­tion on this web­site [at the top of this page], doing key word searches for “P-2,” “Gladio,” “Sismi,” “Vat­i­can,” and “Sin­dona.” For infor­ma­tion about the P-2 milieu’s links to the Niger Yel­low­cake dis­in­for­ma­tion used to jus­tify the Iraq war and other links between that nexus and the “war on ter­ror,” see—among other programs—FTR#’s 535, 592, 595.) “A court in Rome has acquit­ted all five defen­dants of mur­der charges in the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, known as ‘God’s Banker’ for his Vat­i­can ties. Mr Calvi, the chair­man of a pri­vate Ital­ian bank, Banco Ambrosiano, was found hang­ing from scaf­fold­ing under London’s Black­fri­ars Bridge in 1982. A British inquest ruled the death sui­cide, but the case was reopened at the insis­tence of Mr Calvi’s fam­ily. Mr Calvi died as his bank col­lapsed in one of Italy’s largest fraud scan­dals. City of Lon­don Police, who ini­tially inves­ti­gated Mr Calvi’s death, said it was ‘dis­ap­point­ing for Roberto Calvi’s fam­ily in par­tic­u­lar that those respon­si­ble for his mur­der have still not faced jus­tice’. . . .”
(“Five Acquit­ted over Calvi Death”; BBC News; 6/6/07.)

2. Next, the pro­gram sets forth a super­fi­cial overview of some of the forces with which Calvi had been involved and which may have been involved with his killing. “After 25 years, two inquests and a very lengthy trial — the mys­tery remains. The ver­dict of the court was that Roberto Calvi was mur­dered — but the evi­dence against the five accused, said the judge, was insuf­fi­cient and at times con­tra­dic­tory. Despite the var­i­ous motives put for­ward it seems the jury was not con­vinced with what, in the end, was a very com­pli­cated plot. The pro­ceed­ings in court lasted less than five min­utes. Among the defen­dants, there was of course quiet cel­e­bra­tion. But this will come as a huge dis­ap­point­ment to the Calvi fam­ily, par­tic­u­larly his son Carlo, who had cam­paigned for the case to be re-opened. As chair­man of Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi was involved in some very sen­si­tive finan­cial trans­ac­tions. In his time he had worked for the Vat­i­can bank, the Mafia, and the Freema­sons. But in June 1982 when his bank col­lapsed — with debts of $1.5bn (£750m) — he sud­denly found him­self with very pow­er­ful ene­mies. . . . Philip Willan, author of a book on the trial, The Last Sup­per, says the sus­pi­cions still fall on some within the Vat­i­can. ‘The church does not come out of this well,’ he said. ‘And it’s lucky for them that peo­ple lost inter­est in this trial a long time ago. ‘The defense lawyer for Giuseppe Calo argued that evi­dence from the Calvi fam­ily sug­gested the banker was fright­ened of the Vat­i­can, was in con­flict with the Vat­i­can, and was almost cer­tainly try­ing to black­mail peo­ple in the Vat­i­can,’ Mr Willan says. ‘The lawyer for Calo said the Vat­i­can had an entirely plau­si­ble motive for killing him.’ In fact it was sug­gested by the defense, dur­ing this trial, that through off­shore accounts Mr Calvi had been send­ing money to Poland to help fund the pro-democracy Sol­i­dar­ity move­ment — a cause sup­ported by Pope John Paul II. But Mr Calvi was also work­ing for the mafia and a rather shad­owy group of Freema­sons, called P2, which had existed here in Italy as a coun­ter­bal­ance to the many com­mu­nist inter­ests which pre­vailed. In short Mr Calvi was involved with some very sen­si­tive oper­a­tions. One thing we know is that he had many secrets. Philip Willan says: ‘This was a man who was sup­posed to keep his silence. And with an inves­ti­ga­tion pend­ing — he was threat­en­ing not too. There were plenty who wanted him dead.’”
(“The Many Secrets of God’s Banker” by Chris­t­ian Fraser; BBC News; 6/6/2007.)

3. In an alto­gether spec­u­la­tive note, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that, as the Calvi ver­dict was being deliv­ered, a Ger­man man jumped on to the Pope’s vehi­cle. Mr. Emory won­ders whether he was just the “long nut” he was reported as being, or a mes­sage of sorts—sort of a “horse­head in the bed” for Pope Bene­dict, who, as Car­di­nal Ratizinger, was a major player in the papacy of John Paul II. John Paul II presided over the Calvi/P-2/Ambrosiano scan­dals, and was shot and wounded by an assailant as the P-2 scan­dal was start­ing to break. (For more about Ratzinger, see—FTR#’s 508, 559.) Was the pope being told to “watch his step?” “A Ger­man man has tried to jump into Bene­dict XVI’s pope­mo­bile dur­ing his weekly gen­eral audi­ence held in St Peter’s Square at the Vat­i­can. The 27-year-old man was wres­tled to the ground by secu­rity offi­cers. The Pope, him­self Ger­man, was not injured and did not seem to notice the inci­dent. He pro­ceeded with the audi­ence as nor­mal. In 1981, Benedict’s pre­de­ces­sor John Paul II was shot by Turk­ish gun­man Ali Agca as he drove around the square. . . .”
(“Man Tries to Jump Into Pope­mo­bile”; BBC News; 6/6/2007.)

4. Turn­ing to Germany’s other Axis partner—Japan—the broad­cast high­lights the man­ner in which the Japan­ese are openly revis­ing the his­tory of World War II. Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Shinzo Abe con­tin­ues to deny that thou­sands of Asian women were impressed into forced pros­ti­tu­tion to serve the Japan­ese Army. (For more about the re-emergence of Japan­ese fas­cism and the revi­sion of Japan’s World War II his­tory, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 291, 296, 581, 584. 581 details Abe’s own fam­ily her­itage of involve­ment with the Golden Lily-derived funds.) “Prime Min­is­ter Shinzo Abe said Mon­day that Japan would refuse to com­ply if the United States Con­gress demanded an apol­ogy for his nation’s use of for­eign women as sex­ual slaves dur­ing World War II. Japan has already lob­bied against a res­o­lu­tion, under con­sid­er­a­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, that would call on Tokyo to take clearer respon­si­bil­ity for its enslave­ment of some 200,000 mostly Korean and Chi­nese women known euphemisti­cally here as ‘com­fort women.’ Japan has apol­o­gized before and issued a major report in 1993. But there are wide­spread con­cerns that Mr. Abe and other con­ser­v­a­tive Japan­ese law­mak­ers may try to water down or reverse such admis­sions of guilt as part of a broader push to revise their nation’s wartime his­tory. Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Mr. Abe reit­er­ated the posi­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive schol­ars here that Japan­ese offi­cials and sol­diers did not have a hand in forc­ing women into broth­els, instead blam­ing any coer­cion on con­trac­tors used by Japan’s mil­i­tary. Mr. Abe rejected tes­ti­mony before a House com­mit­tee by sur­viv­ing vic­tims, who said they had been kid­napped by Japan­ese sol­diers to serve in mil­i­tary broth­els. He said ‘tes­ti­mony to the effect that there had been a hunt for com­fort women is a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion.’ . . . ”
(“No Apol­ogy for Sex Slav­ery, Japan’s Prime Min­is­ter Says” by Mar­tin Fack­ler; New York Times; 3/6/2007.)

5. In addi­tion to revis­ing the his­tory of the “com­fort women,” Japan­ese text­books are revis­ing the story of the Japan­ese army’s World War II abuse of the native pop­u­la­tion of Oki­nawa: “In another sign that Japan is press­ing ahead in revis­ing its his­tory of World War II, new high school text­books will no longer acknowl­edge that the Impe­r­ial Army was respon­si­ble for a major atroc­ity in Oki­nawa, the gov­ern­ment announced late Fri­day. The Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion ordered pub­lish­ers to delete pas­sages stat­ing that the Impe­r­ial Army ordered civil­ians to com­mit mass sui­cide dur­ing the Bat­tle of Oki­nawa, as the island was about to fall to Amer­i­can troops in the final months of the war. The deci­sion was announced as part of the ministry’s annual screen­ing of all pub­lic school text­books. The min­istry also ordered changes to other del­i­cate issues to dove­tail with gov­ern­ment asser­tions, even though the screen­ing is sup­posed to be free of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. . . . Japan offi­cially annexed Oki­nawa — a king­dom that, to this day, has retained some of its own cul­ture — in the late 19th cen­tury. Dur­ing World War II, when many Oki­nawans still spoke a dif­fer­ent dialect, Japan­ese troops treated the locals bru­tally. In its his­tory of the war, the Oki­nawa Pre­fec­tural Peace Memo­r­ial Museum presents Oki­nawa as being caught in the fight­ing between Amer­ica and Japan — a starkly dif­fer­ent view from Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine war museum, which presents Japan as a lib­er­a­tor of Asia from West­ern pow­ers. Dur­ing the 1945 bat­tle, dur­ing which one-quarter of the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion was killed, the Japan­ese army showed indif­fer­ence to Okinawa’s defense and safety. Japan­ese sol­diers used civil­ians as shields against the Amer­i­cans, and con­vinced locals that vic­to­ri­ous U.S. sol­diers would go on a ram­page of killing and rap­ing. With the impend­ing vic­tory of U.S. troops, civil­ians com­mit­ted mass sui­cide, urged on by fanat­i­cal Japan­ese sol­diers.’ There were some peo­ple who were forced to com­mit sui­cide by the Japan­ese army,’ one old text­book explained. But in the revi­sion ordered by the min­istry, it now reads, ‘There were some peo­ple who were dri­ven to mass sui­cide.’ . . .”
(“Japan Revises Role in WWII Oki­nawa” by Norim­itsu Onishi; The New York Times; 4/1/2007.)

6. Next, the pro­gram high­lights a foun­da­tion of the resur­gence of Japan­ese nation­al­ist and fas­cist ide­ol­ogy. After the war, the U.S. formed com­mon cause with the Japan­ese fas­cists, plac­ing many of them right back in power in Japan and con­spir­ing with them to use the stolen wealth of the Golden Lily pro­gram for the pur­poses of estab­lish­ing post­war reac­tion and exe­cut­ing covert oper­a­tions. Author Jerry Mel­don high­lights the work of the Sea­graves, whose Gold War­riors is the defin­i­tive text on the post­war Japan­ese uti­liza­tion of their stolen wealth from World War II. (For more about Golden Lily and the Sea­graves’ mag­nif­i­cent work, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 426, 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509.) “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. 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 … [it ] put Japan back under the con­trol of men who were devot­edly unde­mo­c­ra­tic … [insist­ing] that Japan never stole any­thing and was flat broke … [when, in real­ity, Amer­ica had given it ] 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 … [There­fore] 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 – [would] be left with noth­ing.’ . . .”
(“Why U.S. Shields Japan’s WWII Denials” by Jerry Mel­don; Con­sor­tium News; 2/24/07.)

7. In order to pros­e­cute the Cold War, the U.S. recruited noto­ri­ous Japan­ese war crim­i­nals to serve as intel­li­gence oper­a­tives in the post­war period. Among those was Co. Masanobu Tsuji, who helped to engi­neer the Sook Ching mas­sacres. (For more about the Sook Ching mas­sacres, see FTR#580.) Of great sig­nif­i­cance in the con­text of this dis­cus­sion is the fact that many of the worst war crim­i­nals were recruited by the German-born Gen­eral Charles Willoughby, an admirer of Mus­solini and MacArthur’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence chief. (Willoughby was a key player in post­war far-right and fas­cist cir­cles. See—among other programs—FTR#’s 427, 428, 446, 556.) “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 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 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. . . .”
(“CIA Files Show How Post­war ‘Spies’ Snook­ered U.S. Intel­li­gence” by Joseph Cole­man [AP]; 2/22/2007.)

8. Indica­tive of the real polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion of the Japan­ese recruits was the fact that they planned a fas­cist coup attempt. Note that the pri­mary plan­ners of the attempt were pro­tégés of the afore­men­tioned Charles Willoughby. Note also that, ulti­mately, Prime Min­is­ter Yoshida was replaced with Hatoyama—as the coup plot­ters had intended. [The text pre­sented here down­plays the sig­nif­i­cance of this.] “Declas­si­fied doc­u­ments reveal that Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists with ties to U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence plot­ted to over­throw the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment and assas­si­nate the prime min­is­ter in 1952. The scheme — which was aban­doned — was con­cocted by mil­i­tarists and sus­pected war crim­i­nals who had worked for U.S. occu­pa­tion author­i­ties after World War II, accord­ing to CIA records reviewed by The Asso­ci­ated Press. The plot­ters wanted a right-wing gov­ern­ment that would rearm Japan. The CIA files, declas­si­fied in 2005 and pub­li­cized by the U.S. National Archives in Jan­u­ary, detail a plot to oust the pro-U.S. prime min­is­ter, Shigeru Yoshida, and install a more hawk­ish gov­ern­ment led by Ichiro Hatoyama. The CIA, in papers released under an act of the U.S. Con­gress to declas­sify doc­u­ments related to Japan­ese war crimes, said the plot­ters were led by Takushiro Hat­tori, a for­mer pri­vate sec­re­tary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime min­is­ter hanged as a war crim­i­nal in 1948. Two CIA doc­u­ments said the plot report­edly had the sup­port of 500,000 peo­ple in Japan, and that the group planned to use a con­tact who con­trolled a fac­tion inside the National Safety Agency — a pre­cur­sor to the Defense Min­istry — to help launch the coup. The files reviewed by the AP strongly sug­gest the Amer­i­cans were unaware of the plot until after it had been dropped. . . . The depar­ture of Willoughby from Japan in 1951 as the U.S. occu­pa­tion wound down deprived the right­ists of their lead­ing Amer­i­can patron and pay­mas­ter. Mean­while, Yoshida was openly hos­tile to Hattori’s push for rear­ma­ment. ‘The gov­ern­ment atti­tude toward the Hat­tori group has been increas­ingly antag­o­nis­tic, and the group has lost influ­ence since the depar­ture of Gen­eral Willoughby,’ said a CIA doc­u­ment dated April 18, 1952. [Empha­sis added.] Yoshida was pushed out of office peace­fully in 1954 and replaced by Hatoyama, but the ultra­right­ist dream of res­ur­rect­ing a mil­i­tarist Japan never hap­pened.”
(“CIA Papers Reveal 1950s Japan Coup Plot” by Joseph Cole­man [AP]; 3/1/2007.)

9. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­ated by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lecture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” To learn more about this, visit The Anti-Fascist YouTube.com page. In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit theantifascist.com.