How Amer­i­cans’ grow­ing appetite for sushi is help­ing to sup­port his con­tro­ver­sial church

By Mon­ica Eng, Del­roy Alexan­der and David Jack­son
Tri­bune staff reporters
Pub­lished by The Chicago Tri­bune April 11, 2006

On a mis­sion from their leader, five young men arrived in Chicago to open a lit­tle fish shop on Elston Avenue. Back then, in 1980, peo­ple of their faith were cas­ti­gated as “Moonies” and called cult mem­bers. Yet the Japan­ese and Amer­i­can friends worked gru­el­ing hours and slept in a com­mu­nal apart­ment as they slowly built the foun­da­tion of a com­mer­cial empire.

They were led by the vision of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed mes­siah who sus­tained their spir­its as they played their part in ful­fill­ing the global busi­ness plan he had devised.

Moon founded his con­tro­ver­sial Uni­fi­ca­tion Church six decades ago with the procla­ma­tion that he was asked by Jesus to save human­ity. But he also built the empire blend­ing his con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, savvy cap­i­tal­ism and flair for spec­ta­cles such as mass wed­dings in Madi­son Square Garden.

In a remark­able story that has gone largely untold, Moon and his fol­low­ers cre­ated an enter­prise that reaped mil­lions of dol­lars by dom­i­nat­ing one of America’s trendi­est indul­gences: sushi.

Today, one of those five Elston Avenue pio­neers, Takeshi Yashiro, serves as a top exec­u­tive of a sprawl­ing con­glom­er­ate that sup­plies much of the raw fish Amer­i­cans eat.

Adher­ing to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of ser­mons, mem­bers of his move­ment man­aged to inte­grate vir­tu­ally every facet of the highly com­pet­i­tive seafood indus­try. The Moon fol­low­ers’ seafood oper­a­tion is dri­ven by a com­mer­cial pow­er­house, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters and, each day, sup­plies most of the nation’s esti­mated 9,000 sushi restaurants.

Although few seafood lovers may con­sider they’re indi­rectly sup­port­ing Moon’s reli­gious move­ment, they do just that when they eat a but­tery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restau­rants. True World is so ubiq­ui­tous that 14 of 17 promi­nent Chicago sushi restau­rants sur­veyed by the Tri­bune said they were sup­plied by the company.

Over the last three decades, as Moon has faced down accu­sa­tions of brain­wash­ing fol­low­ers and per­son­ally prof­it­ing from the church, he and sushi have made sim­i­lar if unlikely jour­neys from the fringes of Amer­i­can soci­ety to the mainstream.

These par­al­lel paths are not coin­ci­dence. They reflect Moon’s dream of revi­tal­iz­ing and dom­i­nat­ing the Amer­i­can fish­ing indus­try while help­ing to fund his church’s activities.

“I have the entire sys­tem worked out, start­ing with boat build­ing,” Moon said in “The Way of Tuna,” a speech given in 1980. “After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the mar­ket, and then have a dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. This is not just on the draw­ing board; I have already done it.”

In the same speech, he called him­self “king of the ocean.” It proved not to be an idle boast. The busi­nesses now employ hun­dreds, includ­ing non-church mem­bers, from the frigid waters of the Alaskan coast to the iconic Amer­i­can fish­ing town of Glouces­ter, Mass.

Records and inter­views with church insid­ers and com­peti­tors trace how Moon and mem­bers of his move­ment car­ried out his vision.

In a recent inter­view Rev. Phillip Schanker, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church spokesman, said the seafood busi­nesses were “not orga­ni­za­tion­ally or legally con­nected” to Moon’s church, but were sim­ply “busi­nesses founded by mem­bers of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.”

Schanker com­pared the rela­tion­ship to suc­cess­ful busi­ness owners-such as J. Willard “Bill” Mar­riott, a promi­nent Mor­mon who founded the hotel chain that bears his name-who donate money to their church.

“Mar­riott sup­ports the Mor­mon Church but no one who checks into a Mar­riott Hotel thinks they are deal­ing with Mor­monism,” he said. “In the same way I would hope that every busi­ness founded by a mem­ber based on inspi­ra­tion from Rev. Moon’s vision also would be in a posi­tion to sup­port the church.”

LEADER’S SEAFOOD STRATEGY

But links between Moon’s reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion and the fish busi­nesses are spelled out in court and gov­ern­ment records as well as in state­ments by Moon and his top church offi­cials. For one thing, Moon per­son­ally devised the seafood strat­egy, helped fund it at its out­set and served as a direc­tor of one of its ear­li­est companies.

Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is orga­nized under a tax-exempt non-profit entity called The Holy Spirit Asso­ci­a­tion for the Uni­fi­ca­tion of World Chris­tian­ity. The busi­nesses are con­trolled by a sep­a­rate non-profit com­pany called Uni­fi­ca­tion Church Inter­na­tional Inc., or UCI.

That company’s con­nec­tions to Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church go deeper than the shared name. A 1978 con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion into Moon’s busi­nesses con­cluded: “It was unclear whether the UCI had any inde­pen­dent func­tions other than serv­ing as a finan­cial clear­ing­house for var­i­ous Moon orga­ni­za­tion sub­sidiaries and projects.”

UCI as well as its sub­sidiaries and affil­i­ates such as True World are run largely by church mem­bers, Schanker said. The com­pa­nies were “founded by church mem­bers in line with Rev. Moon’s vision,” he said. “It’s not coincidence.”

Some­times the links are more direct. The boat­build­ing firm US Marine Cor­po­ra­tion shares its head­quar­ters offices with the church and lists the church as its major­ity share­holder, accord­ing to cor­po­rate records.

SERVING THROUGH BUSINESS

A por­tion of True World’s prof­its makes its way to the church through the lay­ers of par­ent cor­po­ra­tions, Yashiro said, adding: “We live to serve oth­ers, and this is how we serve by build­ing a strong business.”

Moon pre­dicted in 1974 that the fish­ing busi­ness would “lay a foun­da­tion for the future econ­omy of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.” In fact, while Moon and busi­nesses affil­i­ated with him report­edly have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into money-losing ven­tures includ­ing The Wash­ing­ton Times news­pa­per, the seafood ven­tures have cre­ated a profit-making infra­struc­ture that could last-and help sup­port the church-long after the 86-year-old Moon is gone.

Much of the foun­da­tion for that suc­cess has its roots in Chicago. True World Foods, Yashiro’s whole­sale fish dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness spawned near Lawrence and Elston Avenues, now oper­ates from a 30,000-square-foot com­plex in Elk Grove Village.

The com­pany says it sup­plies hun­dreds of local sushi and fine-dining estab­lish­ments. Even many who might have reli­gious reser­va­tions about buy­ing from the com­pany do so for one sim­ple rea­son: It depend­ably deliv­ers high-quality sushi.

“We try not to think of the reli­gion part,” said Haruko Ima­mura, who with her hus­band runs Katsu on West Peter­son Avenue. “We don’t agree with their reli­gion but it’s noth­ing to do with the business.”

Like Moon him­self, who served a 13-month prison sen­tence for tax fraud in the 1980s, the seafood com­pa­nies have at times run afoul of U.S. laws.

In June 2001, True World Foods’ Kodiak, Alaska, fish pro­cess­ing com­pany pleaded guilty to a fed­eral felony for accept­ing a load of pol­lock that exceeded the boat’s 300,000-pound trip limit. The firm was fined $150,000 and put on pro­ba­tion for five years under a plea agree­ment with prosecutors.

The com­pany also has been cited for san­i­ta­tion lapses by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. Last year, after repeated FDA inspec­tions found “gross unsan­i­tary con­di­tions” at True World’s sub­ur­ban
Detroit plant, the facil­ity man­ager tried to bar inspec­tors from pro­duc­tion areas and refused to pro­vide records, accord­ing to an FDA report. The plant man­ager told the inspec­tors that his True World super­vi­sor was “a great man, that he was a part of a new reli­gion, and that if we took advan­tage of him, then ‘God help you!’.”

Later, accord­ing to that FDA report, an employee wear­ing a ski mask approached one female inspec­tor, put his thumb and fore­fin­ger in the shape of a gun, pointed at her and said: “You’re out of uni­form. Pow!”

Say­ing they had been “hin­dered, intim­i­dated and threat­ened,” the FDA inspec­tors took the unusual step of secur­ing a court order com­pelling True World to let them inspect the facil­ity. Yashiro, chief exec­u­tive of True World Foods, said in a writ­ten state­ment that the “iso­lated instance ..... arose from a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” The plant is now closed; Yashiro said its oper­a­tions were con­sol­i­dated into the Elk Grove Vil­lage plant in Jan­u­ary, adding: “We main­tain the high­est stan­dards of food safety.”

THE OCEAN KING’S VISION

In the late 1970s, Moon laid out a plan to build seafood oper­a­tions in all 50 states as part of what he called “the oceanic providence.”

This dream of har­vest­ing the sea would help fund the church, feed the world and save the Amer­i­can fish­ing indus­try, Moon said.

He even sug­gested that the church’s mass wed­dings could play a role in the busi­ness plan by mak­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens out of Japan­ese mem­bers of the move­ment. This would help them avoid fish­ing restric­tions applied to foreigners.

“A few years ago the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment set up a 200-mile limit for off­shore fish­ing by for­eign boats,” Moon said in the 1980 “Way of Tuna” ser­mon. But by mar­ry­ing Japan­ese mem­bers to Amer­i­cans, “we are not for­eign­ers; there­fore Japan­ese broth­ers, par­tic­u­larly those matched to Amer­i­cans, are becom­ing ..... lead­ers for fish­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion” of his movement’s businesses.

Sushi’s pop­u­lar­ity had flow­ered enough by 1986 for Moon to gloat that Amer­i­cans who once thought Japan­ese were “just like ani­mals, eat­ing raw fish,” were now “pay­ing a great deal of money, eat­ing at expen­sive sushi restau­rants.” He rec­om­mended that his flock open “1,000 restau­rants” in America.

In fash­ion­ing a chain of busi­nesses that would stretch from the ocean to restau­rant tables across Amer­ica, Moon and his fol­low­ers cre­ated a struc­ture uniquely able to cap­i­tal­ize on the nation’s grow­ing appetite for sushi and fresh fish.

Some of the busi­ness start-up funds came from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. In a seven-month period from Octo­ber 1976 to May 1977, Moon signed some of the nearly $1 mil­lion in checks used to estab­lish the fish­ing busi­ness, accord­ing to a 1978 con­gres­sional report on alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­eties by Moon’s church.

After acquir­ing an ail­ing boat­mak­ing oper­a­tion, Mas­ter Marine, Moon and his fol­low­ers turned their atten­tion to estab­lish­ing the next link in the net­work. Church mem­bers who saw fish­ing as their call­ing took to the seas, many pow­ered by Mas­ter Marine boats. Moon’s Ocean Church would bring together mem­bers and poten­tial con­verts for 40-day tuna fish­ing trips every sum­mer in 80 boats he bought for his followers.

Many of the tour­na­ments took place off the coast of Glouces­ter, Mass., by no coin­ci­dence one of the first homes to a church-affiliated seafood pro­cess­ing plant. Moon proudly declared in his “Way of Tuna” speech that “Glouces­ter is almost a Moonie town now!” (The church has since rejected the term Moonies as derogatory.)

FROM ANGER TO ACCEPTANCE

Some­times work­ing sur­rep­ti­tiously, Moon affil­i­ates and fol­low­ers bought large chunks of the key fish­ing towns–in each case ini­tially spark­ing anger and sus­pi­cion from long­time residents.

The church and its mem­bers cre­ated an uproar when they bought a villa that had been a retire­ment home run by Roman Catholic nuns. Moon was hanged in effigy in the local harbor.

Even­tu­ally, such resis­tance with­ered away. In Bayou La Batre, Ala., Rus­sell Steiner was among com­mu­nity lead­ers who clashed with the new­com­ers. But like many in the town, Steiner has mel­lowed con­sid­er­ably since the church’s arrival. “They have been very active in the com­mu­nity and are very nice peo­ple, actu­ally,” he said.

The Alabama shrimp busi­ness is among the largest in the Gulf of Mex­ico, and the nearby boat-building plant has not only built more than 300 boats, but also done repairs on the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy ships, accord­ing to fed­eral documents.

And the fish busi­nesses have thrived. Com­pany offi­cials say the whole­sale dis­tri­b­u­tion arm, True World Foods, had rev­enue of $250 mil­lion last year.

Accord­ing to True World Foods, its fleet of 230 refrig­er­ated trucks deliv­ers raw fish to 7,000 sushi and fine-dining restau­rants nation­wide. Dozens of those trucks leave each day from the Elk Grove Vil­lage ware­house, one of 22 dis­tri­b­u­tion facil­i­ties around the country.

True World Foods’ Alaska plant processes more than 20 mil­lion pounds of salmon, cod and pol­lock each year, the com­pany says. Its Inter­na­tional Lob­ster oper­a­tion in Glouces­ter ships monk­fish and lob­ster around the world from a 25,000-square-foot cold stor­age facil­ity that is among the largest on the East Coast.

And it is again in an expan­sion­ist mood. True World recently opened up shop in Eng­land and estab­lished offices in Japan and Korea, set­ting its sights on the world’s biggest mar­ket for sushi.

AN EMPIRE’S CHICAGO ROOTS

When Takeshi Yashiro arrived in Chicago in 1980 to help set up one of the ear­li­est out­posts of the fish­ing empire, the area had just a hand­ful of sushi joints. That num­ber has bal­looned to more than 200 restau­rants statewide, and Yashiro’s fish house has flourished.

The son of an Epis­co­palian Japan­ese min­is­ter, he immi­grated to the U.S. and joined the church as a stu­dent in San Fran­cisco. On July 1, 1982, Moon blessed Yashiro and his bride along with more than 2,000 other cou­ples in one of his mass wed­ding cer­e­monies, in New York City’s Madi­son Square Garden.

The Rain­bow Fish House that Yashiro and fel­low church mem­bers founded on Chicago’s North­west Side has become not only the city’s dom­i­nant sushi sup­plier but also the nation’s. The fish house became True World Foods, which buys so much tuna from around the world that it has seven peo­ple in Chicago solely ded­i­cated to sourc­ing and pric­ing the best grades.

One of True World’s advan­tages is that its sales force speaks Chi­nese, Korean and Japan­ese, mak­ing it easy for first-generation eth­nic restau­rant own­ers to do busi­ness with them.

“It’s kind of tough to com­pete in this indus­try with a com­pany that is so global, has a major pres­ence in almost every mar­ket and that is dri­ven by reli­gious fer­vor,” said Bill Dugan, who has been in the fish busi­ness for almost 30 years and owns the Fish Guy Mar­ket on Elston Avenue, near the orig­i­nal Rain­bow shop. “We should all be so blessed.”

But not all of True World’s employ­ees are church mem­bers. Tuna buyer Eddie Lin recently left True World for For­tune Fish Co., a local rival. Lin said his for­mer work­place was not overtly reli­gious, but he added that as a non-church mem­ber he felt his abil­ity to advance was lim­ited. “You can feel the dif­fer­ence between the way they see mem­bers and non-members,” Lin said.

FAITH-BASED BUSINESS CULTURE

While dis­put­ing such asser­tions, Yashiro noted that new employ­ees “have to know that the founder is the founder of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. It’s a very clear dis­tinc­tion between join­ing the church or not join­ing the church. There’s no dis­crim­i­na­tion, but I think our cul­ture is def­i­nitely based on our faith.”

It’s that faith that makes some uneasy. Wang Kim, a Chicago-area youth min­istry direc­tor and M
oon critic, was cer­tain he could find local Korean Chris­t­ian sushi restau­ra­teurs who didn’t use True World because they might con­sider his views hereti­cal. As Kim said, Moon “says that he is the Mes­siah, and we hate that.”

But Kim called back empty-handed. “I checked with sev­eral of my friends,” he said, “and they know it is from Moon but they have to use [them because] they have to give qual­ity to their customers.”

The sheer suc­cess of the ven­ture has left lin­ger­ing ques­tions even in the minds of Moon’s ded­i­cated fol­low­ers. Yashiro, the Chicago pio­neer who now heads True World Foods, remem­bers ded­i­cat­ing his career and life 26 years ago to achiev­ing Moon’s dream, which included solv­ing world hunger.

But that part of Moon’s grand vision has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. “I was won­der­ing if we are really here to solve the world’s hunger,” Yashiro said. “Every day I ..... pray on it.”

He still hopes True World Foods even­tu­ally will help end hunger. But until then, he said, his role will be to grow the busi­ness and make money.