FTR#‘s 1371 & 1372: Korea on Our Minds, Parts 4 & 5

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the fright­en­ing events occur­ring in Korea, these pro­grams detail the attempts by South Kore­an pres­i­dent Yoon to estab­lish mar­tial law, includ­ing appar­ent false flag attacks on South Kore­an politi­cians, as well as Amer­i­can instal­la­tions and per­son­nel.

Impor­tant dis­cus­sion con­cerns the appar­ent launch­ing of hos­til­i­ties in the Kore­an War by South Korea, there­by lur­ing the North into a well-laid trap. Of para­mount impor­tance in this con­text is the fact that Gen­er­al Kim Suk-won (who fought for Japan dur­ing World War II) was in charge off the bor­der forces for Syn­g­man Rhee’s forces:

. . . . He [John Gun­ther] says that “two impor­tant mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion” went along on the excur­sion to Nikko and that “just before lunch” one of them “was called unex­pect­ed­ly to the tele­phone.” He came back and whis­pered, ‘A big sto­ry has just bro­ken. South Korea has attacked North Korea.’” . . . .
. . . . In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 25, 1950, South Korea’s Office of Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion report­ed a South Kore­an mil­i­tary attack on the bor­der city of Hae­ju, which North Korea con­firmed but South Korea lat­er retract­ed.
On June 25, 1950, South Kore­an troops had pro­voked the Kore­an War by cross­ing into the DPRK at sev­er­al points along the 38th par­al­lel and intrud­ing 1 to 2 kilo­me­ters into the DPRK.

Of para­mount impor­tance is John Fos­ter Dulles’ use of the Kore­an War to resus­ci­tate the Axis pow­ers of WWII in order to use them in the Cold War”: . . . . Dulles feared that peace would fatal­ly inter­fere with the plan to rebuild the old Axis pow­ers for a new anti-Sovi­et cru­sade. . . .”

Key Ele­ments of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Dis­cus­sion of Yoon’s pres­i­den­tial body­guard (formed by Japan­ese col­lab­o­ra­tor Park Chung-Hee) helped block his arrest; The “Stop the Steal/MAGA” res­o­nance between the Trump forces in the U.S. and Yoon’s back­ers in Korea; The South Kore­an intel­li­gence service’s back­ing of the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agency’s alle­ga­tion that North Kore­an sol­diers were fight­ing in Kursk; Detailed analy­sis from the Moon of Alaba­ma blog cast­ing seri­ous doubt on the verac­i­ty of the Ukrainian/South Korean/U.S. alle­ga­tion about North Kore­an sol­diers fight­ing in Rus­sia; Indi­ca­tions that it was South Korea that attacked the North first, there­by lur­ing the North into a strate­gic trap; Review of Gen­er­al Kim Suk-Won’s role as com­man­der of bor­der forces for Syn­g­man Rhee; Dis­cus­sion of the crit­i­cal strate­gic gains the Kore­an War pro­vid­ed to the West; Dis­cus­sion of the cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket by polit­i­cal allies of Chi­ang Kai-shek on the eve of out­break of the war; The revival of the UN Com­mand struc­ture and its augur­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the resump­tion of hos­til­i­ties; Review of mate­r­i­al from FTR#1142; Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty’s recount­ing of a deci­sion to launch hos­til­i­ties against Com­mu­nist nations arrived at pur­suant to the Cairo Con­fer­ence of 1943; Prouty’s recount­ing of the Oki­nawa har­bor master’s state­ment that the mil­i­tary equip­ment stock­piled on that island in prepa­ra­tion for the inva­sion of Japan would be divid­ed between Korea and Indochi­na (direct­ly fore­shad­ow­ing the wars that would be fought there in 1950 and 1965; The U.S.-backed assas­si­na­tion of Kore­an patri­ot Kim Koo, who advo­cat­ed for a reuni­fi­ca­tion of Korea; The meet­ing of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Kore­an Yakuza leader Machii Hisayu­ki in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the war; The use of yakuza and Japan­ese vet­er­ans of WWII as sol­diers fight­ing in South Kore­an uni­forms dur­ing the war; The Japan­ese polit­i­cal view that the Kore­an War was “a gift from the gods.”

FTR#‘s 1368, 1369 & 1370: Korea on Our Minds, Parts 1, 2 & 3

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams set forth devel­op­ments in Korea, past and present. FTR#1368 relies heav­i­ly on excerpts from FTR#1141, set­ting forth the his­to­ry of Japan’s cen­turies-long loot­ing of Korea, cul­mi­nat­ing in its bru­tal col­o­niza­tion. Fol­low­ing the end of World War II, the Japan­ese influ­ence in Korea remained dom­i­nant.

That influ­ence derives from the pre­em­i­nent posi­tion in Kore­an soci­ety of col­lab­o­ra­tors with Japan dur­ing its decades-long occu­pa­tion.

Those col­lab­o­ra­tors dom­i­nat­ed the mil­i­tary, police, polit­i­cal cul­ture and cor­po­rate life of South Korea.

A key per­son involved in cement­ing the Japan­ese dom­i­nance over post-World War II Korea is Nobusuke Kishi, whose rise to promi­nence took place dur­ing the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Manchuria.

The Japan­ese dom­i­nance of South Korea is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in Pres­i­dent Yoon’s recent attempts at declar­ing mar­tial law, stag­ing provo­ca­tions to jus­ti­fy his actions and (appar­ent­ly) using false-flag attacks on U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel and instal­la­tions in an attempt at re-start­ing the Kore­an War.

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: The tac­tic of tar­ring all oppo­nents of the sit­ting regime as “communists”–a tac­tic that dates to the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Korea; even­tu­al Sec­re­tary of State Dean Rusk’s role in draw­ing the 38th Par­al­lel as the divid­ing line between the Kore­as; Rusk’s posi­tion as a key mem­ber of the Chi­na Lob­by; Gen­er­al Kim Suk-won’s role as a key Japan­ese offi­cer dur­ing World War II, as well as his posi­tion as the com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; Japan­ese-occu­pied Manchuria as a dom­i­nant pro­duc­er of opi­um and hero­in for the glob­al mar­ket and Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang.

FTR#‘s 1351 & 1352 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 25 & 26

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350)  explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

FTR#1321 The Assassination of John Lennon

Intro­duc­tion: As the title sug­gests, this pro­gram sets forth facts about John Lennon’s mur­der.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion of Lennon’s Killing Include: The fact that the bul­lets that killed Lennon entered from his left side, where­as pat­sy Mark David Chap­man was on Lennon’s right; The door­man at Lennon’s res­i­dence, who was stand­ing on Lennon’s left was José San­jenís Per­do­mo, a “for­mer” oper­a­tive for the CIA; Per­do­mo’s back­ground in the CIA’s Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion and pri­or ser­vice as a chief of police in pre-Cas­tro Cuba; Per­do­mo’s alleged links to Water­gate bur­glar and JFK assas­si­na­tion par­tic­i­pant Frank Stur­gis; Per­do­mo’s six-hours of con­ver­sa­tion with Chap­man pri­or Lennon’s return from the record­ing stu­dio; an eye­wit­ness’s alle­ga­tion that Per­do­mo did the shoot­ing; Per­do­mo’s seiz­ing of the alleged mur­der weapon, which was not test­ed for fin­ger­prints; Chap­man’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a music club in Hawaii, to which Amer­i­can Nazi, Rea­gan shoot­ing pat­sy and Bush asso­ciate John Hinck­ley, Jr. also belonged; The extreme­ly unlike­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty that Chap­man could have per­formed the marks­man­ship required to kill Lennon; The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Chap­man may have been a mind-con­trolled pat­sy; Chap­man’s prison vis­its by MKULTRA asso­ciates Bernard Dia­mond and Nathan Kline; Yoko Ono’s cre­ma­tion of Lennon’s corpse with­in 36 hours of the killing; Ono’s strong links to the Yasu­da Zaibat­su; Ono’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recon­se­cra­tion of a Japan­ese Shin­to tem­ple, destroyed in the after­math of the attack on Pearl Har­bor; Ono’s asso­ci­a­tion with an antique deal­er and alleged CIA con­tract agent.

FTR#1214 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 21

This pro­gram con­cludes the series.

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram high­lights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.

Sis­ter of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remark­able career. 

For the pur­pos­es of this descrip­tion, we re-print mate­r­i­al from FTR#1202.

The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a per­sis­tent crit­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek, was pre­dictable.

Dis­il­lu­sioned with Com­mu­nism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen part­nered with Teng Yen-ta, who rec­og­nized Chi­ang’s fas­cism and, yet, felt that the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (at that point in time) was over­ly loy­al to Moscow and was­n’t doing enough for the Chi­nese peas­antry.

Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alter­na­tive to both Kuom­intang fas­cism and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Find­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism pro­posed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unac­cept­able, Chi­ang had the British and Amer­i­can police author­i­ties arrest him in the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ces­sion in Shang­hai, after which he was tor­tured for many months.

Ching-ling was report­ed to have vis­it­ed Chi­ang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chi­ang had  already dealt with him in char­ac­ter­is­tic fash­ion: “ . . . . Days ear­li­er, on Novem­ber 29, 1931, near­ly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been tak­en from his cell at Chiang’s com­mand and was slow­ly stran­gled with a wire. The exe­cu­tion­er was said to be famous for keep­ing vic­tims alive for half an hour while he tight­ened his grip. In his office, Chi­ang had remained silent while Ching-ling plead­ed for a man already dead, enjoy­ing the spec­ta­cle of her momen­tary vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. . . .”

Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.

After rebuff­ing his polit­i­cal approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demol­ished his  polit­i­cal per­sona.

. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it sim­ply means that you admit you are not wrong­ly accused. But what­ev­er you do, do it open­ly like me, don’t . . . sur­round me with spies.’

Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.

Soong: ‘Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’

As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flick­ing over dry lips (he was a very ner­vous man)—hissed out a part­ing bit of ven­om: ‘If you were any­one but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’

Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies you pre­tend to be, you’d cut it off any­way.’. . .”

Infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ster­ling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Amer­i­cans have been led to believe.

Although resist­ing mem­ber­ship in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and attempt­ing to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chi­ang’s capit­u­la­tion and flight to Tai­wan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chair­men of the gov­ern­ment.

Again, this is not some­thing of which Mr. Emory was aware until read­ing this book.

“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remain­ing pos­ses­sions to sup­port pro­grams of the Chi­na Wel­fare League she had found­ed. In 1948, with the Chi­ang regime ready to flee and the Com­mu­nists on their way to vic­to­ry, she took part in a last attempt to orga­nize an alter­na­tive to both com­mu­nism and fascism—a new ver­sion of the Third Force. It was called the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mit­tee, and Ching-ling was named its hon­orary chair­man. Its con­stituen­cy was the pow­er­less. . . .”

“ . . . . When the People’s Repub­lic came into exis­tence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Com­mu­nist polit­i­cal lead­ers cho­sen as Vice-Chair­men of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Peking. . . .”

Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) man­i­fest­ed a strong­ly inde­pen­dent ide­o­log­i­cal stance, which, while anti-fas­cist and anti-impe­ri­al­ist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Com­mu­nism and Chi­ang’s nar­co-fas­cism.

That inde­pen­dence of mind, demon­strat­ed through decades of social strug­gle, plus out­right jeal­ousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defama­tion and per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, with Mme. Sun nar­row­ly escap­ing the rav­ages of the Red Guard.

“ . . . . Dur­ing the Red Guard ram­pages of the 1960’s, the job of pro­tect­ing Madame Sun became nerve-rack­ing. Posters appeared denounc­ing her, and it was not safe for her to go any­where. . . .”

“ . . . . In the sum­mer of 1966, Pre­mier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their ver­bal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accus­ing her of being a bour­geois reac­tionary. On Sep­tem­ber 21, 1966, in Shang­hai where the Red Guard move­ment fre­quent­ly got out of con­trol, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Jof­fre and loot­ed it. Ching-ling was not in Shang­hai at the time. She let the inci­dent pass with­out com­ment. Her chief adver­sary was the wife of Chair­man Mao, who appar­ent­ly resent­ed the fact that Ching-ling was always men­tioned as the woman of high­est rank in Chi­na.

“ . . . . When the Red Guard move­ment abat­ed, and Madame Mao and the cel­e­brat­ed Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, Ching-ling’s life set­tled back into a tran­quil twi­light. . . .”

“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named hon­orary Pres­i­dent of Chi­na. . . . She suc­cumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an inter­view once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the lega­cy she had learned most bit­ter­ly from the time of the Soongs:

The Soong Dynasty con­cludes with an epi­logue which is note­wor­thy in sev­er­al respects. The prose is of a char­ac­ter that one does not see any­more. Elo­quent, poignant, pas­sion­ate and yet, at the same time, bit­ing­ly, iron­i­cal­ly humor­ous, Seagrave’s writ­ing is remark­able in, and of, itself.

Beyond the prose, the epi­logue is remark­able for the elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal metaphor that it presents: dis­cus­sion of the cor­rup­tion and bru­tal­i­ty of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowa­ger Empress, whom Sea­grave refers to as “The Old Bud­dha.” (He lat­er pub­lished a vol­ume about her reign titled The Drag­on Lady.)

Seagrave’s dis­cus­sion of the Dowa­ger Empress’s intrigues and bru­tal mur­der of the Pearl Con­cu­bine con­sti­tutes a metaphor for the lethal, con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his pup­pet mas­ters, the Soongs.

As for­eign armies were approach­ing Peking dur­ing the Box­er Rebel­lion, “The Old Bud­dha” made arrange­ments to flee the palace known as The For­bid­den City, don­ning a dis­guise and tak­ing the Emper­or with her.

When the Emper­or sought to remain in Peking to nego­ti­ate with the for­eign armies and enlist­ed the assis­tance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to per­suade the Dowa­ger Empress.

The Pearl Con­cu­bine had resist­ed con­form­ing to the will of the Dowa­ger Empress, and “The Old Bud­dha” took this occa­sion to elim­i­nate this ele­ment of resis­tance to her palace intrigues, a long­time obsta­cle to her polit­i­cal orders.

“ . . . . The Pearl Con­cu­bine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, inter­fer­ing with palace intrigues by giv­ing inde­pen­dent advice to the Emper­or. It was time to dis­pose of her. The Dowa­ger bel­lowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Con­cu­bine. In ter­ror, the Emper­or went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs car­ried the strug­gling girl to the nar­row well by the Palace of Peace and Longevi­ty, turned her upside down in her shim­mer­ing cocoon of silks, and flung her shriek­ing into its maw. Because the well was so nar­row, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then sets forth the mur­der­ous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowa­ger Empress—a metaphor for the bloody cor­rup­tion of Chiang’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

“ . . . . The For­bid­den City is a grave­yard of souls, drowned, behead­ed, throt­tled, flayed alive, to silence them in the inter­ests of state. Here, mur­der was not an act of pas­sion but an instru­ment of rule. Judi­cial mur­der. Impe­r­i­al mur­der. Silence by assas­si­na­tion. To sti­fle those who would inter­fere, who would object, who would ques­tion, who would say no. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then piv­ots to the Soong fam­i­ly: “ . . . . The oth­ers passed through life like a team of pick­pock­ets through a car­ni­val crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chick­ens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained inno­cent through­out by virtue of her tun­nel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these peo­ple also believe in vir­gin birth.

“They were a fam­i­ly that could stand togeth­er in front of a mir­ror (Ching-ling miss­ing from the group by choice), all cast­ing reflec­tions except Ai-ling. She cast no reflec­tion at all. What medieval con­clu­sion can we draw? . . . .”

Sea­grave con­cludes with a ref­er­ence to Har­ry Truman’s launch­ing of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the Soong fam­i­ly. (We dis­cussed this in FTR#1205 .)

“ . . . . Of all the peo­ple who might have act­ed, I won­dered why Har­ry Tru­man did noth­ing. . . . . Per­haps he con­clud­ed that so many promi­nent peo­ple were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So near­ly every­one stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the vic­tims. Who, then, will speak for the con­cu­bine in the well? . . .”

The pro­gram reviews the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

“. . . . Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were. . . .

“. . . .

We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu.

When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expect­ed trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­i­ly and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gat­ed Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secret­ly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elder­ly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cept­ed at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for three hours. Even­tu­al­ly the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ing­ly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.

Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had nev­er seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­a­to Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clin­ic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse report­ed that “some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor” had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.

When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­er­al phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­den­ly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate near­by arrived instant­ly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.

What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.” We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be brand­ed a “ter­ror­ist” or a “trai­tor. . . .”

Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to Gold­en Lily, we have accu­mu­lat­ed thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­duct­ed thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decid­ed they had to ‘do some­thing.’ As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out who ‘they’ are. . . .”

Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to Spain–the seat of that orga­ni­za­tion’s pow­er  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

“A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the high­ly sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death (and prob­a­ble mur­der) of author Iris Chang. A ring­ing endorse­ment by Ms. Chang graces the cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Ms. Chang’s sig­na­ture work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the ini­tial events in Japan’s loot­ing of Chi­na dur­ing World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and prof­it­ed from in the post­war years.

At the time of her alto­geth­er sus­pi­cious death, she was work­ing on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that sur­vivors of that event and oth­er Japan­ese World War II atroc­i­ties were suing Japan­ese zaibat­sus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.

The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.

When Mr. Emory inter­viewed Ster­ling Sea­grave in 2009, he declined to dis­cuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be mur­der.

FTR#1203 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 10

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–“The Soong Dynasty” by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We begin by resum­ing analy­sis of the polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al destruc­tion of U.S. mil­i­tary and State Depart­ment ele­ments that cor­rect­ly gauged Chi­ang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, down­ward] tra­jec­to­ry of his regime.

Just as Gen­er­al Still­well was removed as top mil­i­tary offi­cer in the China/Burma the­ater because of his appro­pri­ate, accu­rate, vehe­ment crit­i­cism of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of fight­ing the Com­mu­nists over fight­ing the Japan­ese, State Depart­ment offi­cers who accu­rate­ly fore­cast the deci­sive ascent of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty over the KMT were pun­ished for their stance.

(Stilwell’s replace­ment by Gen­er­al Wede­mey­er was noteworthy—particularly in light of the back­ground and behav­ior of Wede­mey­er.

In addi­tion to being part of a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary milieu that infused iso­la­tion­ist ori­en­ta­tion toward involve­ment in World War II with pro-fas­cist sen­ti­ment, Wede­mey­er appears to have presided over an act of con­sum­mate treason—the leak of the Rain­bow Five Amer­i­can mobi­liza­tion plan for World War II to anti-FDR pub­lish­er Robert J. McCormick, of the Chica­go Tri­bune.)

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment in Chunk­ing were a hand­ful of old Chi­na hands . . . . The Chi­na watch­ers’ mes­sage essen­tial­ly was that no mat­ter how much Wash­ing­ton want­ed Chi­ang Kai-shek to ‘run’ Chi­na, he was about to lose it to the Com­mu­nists. . . . The observers in Chungk­ing were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of com­mu­nism. In fact, they were only warn­ing their gov­ern­ment of a course of events that now seemed cer­tain. . . . Wash­ing­ton react­ed with deep sus­pi­cion and hos­til­i­ty and insist­ed on nail­ing the Amer­i­can flag the more tight­ly to the mast of Chiang’s sink­ing ship . . . .”

As we shall fur­ther explore, the cog­ni­tive per­cep­tion of Chi­na in this coun­try was shaped by the Soong fam­i­ly.

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . Amer­i­can pol­i­cy was thus based upon the per­son­al­i­ties of the Chi­angs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the peo­ple. This was a trib­ute to the Soongs’ extra­or­di­nary stage­craft. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave filed a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heav­i­ly redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machi­na­tions on both sides of the Pacif­ic.

“ . . . . The Soong fam­i­ly . . . . ‘prac­ti­cal­ly had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been mon­ey mad and every move they made was prompt­ed by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigan­tic con­spir­a­cy to defraud the Chi­nese from mate­ri­als they would ordi­nar­i­ly receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert con­sid­er­able of this mon­ey to the Soong fam­i­ly.’. . .”

After dis­cussing the extreme mar­i­tal dif­fi­cul­ties of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek (the for­mer Mae-ling Soong, whose mar­riage to Chi­ang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machi­avel­lian wife Ai-ling—the for­mer Ai-ling Soong), the infor­mant iden­ti­fies Mrs. Kung as the sin­is­ter, dead­ly and manip­u­la­tive fig­ure that she was.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the scale of the treach­er­ous, cor­rupt prac­tices of the clan was a diver­sion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The infor­mant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. divert­ed Lend-Lease funds into his own pock­et was illus­trat­ed by reports reach­ing Chunk­ing that a freighter car­ry­ing six­ty new Amer­i­can bat­tle tanks and oth­er very expen­sive war materiel fur­nished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a mat­ter of fact this ‘freighter nev­er left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were nev­er made . . . . this is a pos­i­tive illus­tra­tion of the man­ner in which the Soongs have been divert­ing funds from Lend-Lease inas­much as the mon­ey was allo­cat­ed for the 60 tanks. . . .”

Again, a key fac­tor in the polit­i­cal clout wield­ed by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, great­ly aug­ment­ed by insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion, includ­ing (and espe­cial­ly) T.V. Soong’s appro­pri­a­tion of much of the Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al des­ig­nat­ed for Chi­na.

In addi­tion to the out­right theft of Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al by Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Green Gang gen­er­al staff and their sale of much of that to the Japan­ese ene­my they were sup­pos­ed­ly fight­ing, T.V. Soong—using his broth­er T.L Soong’s admin­is­tra­tive con­trol of the Lend-Lease pro­gram for China—maneuvered hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of U.S. aid into the pri­vate cof­fers of the Soong fam­i­ly.

As the KMT regime decayed and rela­tions between the Soongs and Chi­ang fol­lowed suit, T. V. increas­ing­ly turned his ener­gies to the Amer­i­can side of the Pacif­ic, and appoint­ed T.L. to over­see the Amer­i­can side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his posi­tion as For­eign Min­is­ter to issue his broth­er T.L. Soong a spe­cial diplo­mat­ic pass­port, and sent him hur­ried­ly to New York. T. L. was actu­al­ly being whisked out of Chi­na to take over as chief pur­chas­ing agent and admin­is­tra­tor of all U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies before they left for Chi­na. Since the very begin­ning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chi­nese end. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

The con­clud­ing seg­ments of the pro­gram are drawn on anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent work by the Sea­graves: Gold War­riors.

Before wind­ing up the broad­cast, we “dol­ly out” to syn­op­size the rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese invaders of Chi­na, the Green Gang gang­sters, the Kuom­intang regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek which front­ed for the Green Gang and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese, Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions and Japan­ese colo­nial inter­ests in Korea and Tai­wan.

This overview fore­shad­ows the polit­i­cal con­sor­tium that—in the post­war peri­od, became the Asian Peo­ples’ Anti-Com­mu­nist League, a key com­po­nent of what was to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s con­trol of Shanghai’s boom­ing gam­bling and over­lap­ping broth­el busi­ness­es; syn­op­tic review of the rela­tion­ship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chi­ang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanc­tion­ing of Tu to con­trol the KMT’s drug traf­fick­ing; the sym­bi­ot­ic, coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship between the invad­ing Japan­ese and the Green Gang, cement­ed by Gen­er­al Doi­hara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT oper­a­tives the Ku broth­ers (one of whom was Tu’s har­bor boss in Shang­hai and the oth­er of whom was a top KMT gen­er­al); review of the Japan­ese devel­op­ment of the nar­cotics busi­ness in Manchuria; the Japan­ese use of their Manchuri­an nar­cotics enter­prise to sub­vert Chi­na by increas­ing the population’s addic­tion rate; review of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Manchurian/Japanese nar­cotics enter­prise; the role of Japan­ese zaibat­su and oth­er col­o­nized areas in the Japan­ese nar­cotics busi­ness.

“ . . . . The [opi­um] was con­vert­ed into mor­phine and hero­in at fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea and Tai­wan, then smug­gled direct­ly across the strait on motor­ized junks, to main­land ware­hous­es owned by Mit­sui, Mit­subishi and oth­er con­glom­er­ates. An army fac­to­ry in Seoul that pro­duced over 2,600 kilos of hero­in in 1938–1939 was only one of sev­er­al hun­dred fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea, Tai­wan, and in Japan­ese con­ces­sions in main­land cities like Han­kow. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with analy­sis of pow­er broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped insti­tu­tion­al­ize the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Chi­nese KMT, Kore­an and Japan­ese fas­cists. Note­wor­thy, as well is Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship between with the CIA and the Japan­ese Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly in the postwar/Cold War peri­od.

Kodama Yoshio epit­o­mizes and embod­ies the oper­a­tional and ide­o­log­i­cal struc­ture of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Kodama’s accu­mu­lat­ed for­tune of 13 bil­lion dol­lars in World War II dol­lars; Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship with Japan­ese Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Impe­r­i­al Palace; Kodama’s dom­i­nant posi­tion in the nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing and after World War II; Kodama’s dona­tion of 100 mil­lion dol­lars to the CIA (equiv­a­lent to 1 bil­lion dol­lars in today’s cur­ren­cy); Kodama’s con­tin­ued dom­i­nance in the glob­al nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing the time he was on the CIA’s pay­roll; Kodama’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Prince Higashiku­ni, Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s uncle, who facil­i­tat­ed Kodama’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing his close rela­tion­ship with the U.S.

Cartels Uber Alles

One of the con­cepts cen­tral to the analy­sis pre­sent­ed by Mr. Emory on his pro­grams and on this web­site over the decades is the pre­em­i­nence of car­tels in inter­na­tion­al pow­er politics–the man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism in par­tic­u­lar. Fos­ter Dulles–Secretary of State under Eisen­how­er at the same time as his broth­er and fel­low Sul­li­van & Cromwell attor­ney Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA–delineated his world view and those of his fel­low “car­tel enablers” in a let­ter to a con­tem­po­rary: “The word ‘car­tel’ has here assumed the stig­ma of a bogey­man which the politi­cians are con­stant­ly attack­ing. The fact of the mat­ter is that most of these politi­cians are high­ly insu­lar and nation­al­is­tic and because the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion of the world has under such influ­ence been so back­ward, busi­ness peo­ple who have had to cope with inter­na­tion­al prob­lems have had to find ways for get­ting through and around stu­pid polit­i­cal bar­ri­ers.”

FTR#1175 Donovan’s Brain

In the 1950’s, a Hol­ly­wood “B” hor­ror film titled “Dono­van’s Brain” made the rounds. The title referred to the dis­em­bod­ied and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly res­ur­rect­ed brain of a busi­ness­man named Dono­van. His brain takes over and dom­i­nates peo­ple in the liv­ing world, bend­ing them to his crim­i­nal will.

This pro­gram focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on William “Wild Bill” Dono­van, a Wall Street attor­ney who ran the OSS, Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence agency.

Dubbed “Amer­i­ca’s orig­i­nal man in black,” Dono­van did not cre­ate the oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship between the crim­i­nal “Under­world” and the cor­po­rate “Over­world,” how­ev­er he deep­ened and insti­tu­tion­al­ized that rela­tion­ship through nation­al secu­ri­ty under­tak­ings, so much so that the cur­rent, benight­ed polit­i­cal land­scape might be said to have derived from “Dono­van’s Brain.”

The results are a real-life hor­ror movie.

Before dis­cussing William Dono­van, the pro­gram sets forth a dis­turb­ing his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist per­spec­tive on the Com­fort Women of World War II–women enslaved by the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army to be used as pros­ti­tutes.

J. Mark Ram­sey­er, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School, has authored a paper rein­forc­ing the dis­cred­it­ed Japan­ese pro­pa­gan­da line on the Com­fort Women–the alle­ga­tion that the vic­tims “vol­un­teered” for ser­vice!

Of sig­nif­i­cance, in that con­text, is the fact that Ram­sey­er enjoys the title of Mit­subishi Pro­fes­sor of Legal Stud­ies at Har­vard. One of the zaibat­su, Mit­subishi was a major employ­er of slave labor dur­ing World War II, includ­ing U.S. POW’s.

” . . . .  . . . . Mit­subishi’s mar­ket posi­tion at the war’s end in 1945 was described by a West­ern econ­o­mist as being equiv­a­lent to the merg­er of U.S. Steel, Gen­er­al Motors, Stan­dard Oil, Alcoa, Dou­glas Air­craft, Dupont, West­ing­house, AT & T Nation­al City Bank, Wool­worth Stores and Hilton Hotels. . . .”

Ram­sey­er also enjoys the Order of the Ris­ing Sun, bestowed on him by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment.

In addi­tion to his revi­sion­ist per­spec­tive on the Com­fort Women, he has endorsed the canard that the Japan­ese pogrom against eth­nic Kore­ans fol­low­ing the Great Kan­to Earth­quake of 1923 was sparked by Kore­an hooli­gan­ism.

Much of the pro­gram deals with Dono­van’s pivotal–though large­ly opaque–career.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Dono­van’s rela­tion­ship with Albert Lasker, whose tank cars facil­i­tat­ed the move­ment of Rock­e­feller oil on Har­ri­man railways–a sem­i­nal ele­ment in “Wild Bil­l’s” ascent; Dono­van’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Har­ry Anslinger, head of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Narcotics–a rela­tion­ship that was instru­men­tal in actu­al­iz­ing Dono­van’s strate­gic use of nar­cotics traf­fick­ing; Anslinger’s mar­riage to the daugh­ter of Andrew Mel­lon, one of the “Rob­ber Barons” who dom­i­nat­ed the U.S. polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic land­scape; The deci­sive role of key Wall Street lawyers and bankers in Dono­van’s OSS; the role of the Mel­lon fam­i­ly in select­ing the key mem­bers of the OSS (Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice); Dono­van’s posi­tion in the hier­ar­chy of the Vat­i­can’s order of Knights–another fac­tor in Dono­van’s pow­er port­fo­lio; Dono­van’s use of Mafiosi on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean through World War II and after­ward; Dono­van’s long-stand­ing, inti­mate rela­tion­ship with the CIA, long after he sup­pos­ed­ly retired from intel­li­gence mat­ters; Dono­van’s decades-long involve­ment with the Kuom­intang and Chi­ang-Kai Shek’s nar­cotics trafficking–the foun­da­tion of his fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship in Chi­na and Tai­wan; Dono­van’s rela­tion­ship with oth­er lumi­nar­ies of the Chi­na Lob­by; Dono­van’s role in admin­is­ter­ing the Black Eagle Trust–the repos­i­to­ry of loot­ed Axis wealth from World War II; Dono­van’s long pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion with the CIA’s finan­cial enti­ties, air­lines and ship­ping firms; Dono­van’s stew­ard­ship of the World Com­merce Cor­po­ra­tion (WCC)–described by one observ­er as an under­world ver­sion of the Mar­shall Plan; Dono­van’s groom­ing of the heads of Citibank and their con­se­quent roles in glob­al “dark mon­ey” oper­a­tions.

We con­clude the pro­gram with analy­sis of anoth­er pow­er bro­ker who helped insti­tu­tion­al­ize the Underworld/Overworld syn­the­sis exem­pli­fied by “Dono­van’s Brain”–Kodama Yoshio.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Kodama’s accu­mu­lat­ed for­tune of 13 bil­lion dol­lars in World War II dol­lars; Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship with Japan­ese Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Impe­r­i­al Palace; Kodama’s dom­i­nant posi­tion in the nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing and after World War II; Kodama’s dona­tion of 100 mil­lion dol­lars to the CIA (equiv­a­lent to 1 bil­lion dol­lars in today’s cur­ren­cy; Kodama’s con­tin­ued dom­i­nance in the glob­al nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing the time he was on the CIA’s pay­roll; Kodama’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Prince Higashiku­ni, a mem­ber of the Japan­ese Roy­al Fam­i­ly, who facil­i­tat­ed Kodama’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing his close rela­tion­ship with the U.S.

Intellectual and Political Prostitution at Harvard (A “Zero” Sum Game) UPDATED ON 2/25 and 2/26/2021

In an exam­ple of the kind of intel­lec­tu­al and his­tor­i­cal skew­ing that can accom­pa­ny polit­i­cal rewards, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor has writ­ten a paper claim­ing that the Com­fort Women–slave pros­ti­tutes con­script­ed by the Japan­ese army before and dur­ing World War II–volunteered for that ser­vice. This fol­lows J. Mark Ram­sey­er’s receipt of The Order of the Ris­ing Sun award­ed by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment after World War II. In FTR #1140, we doc­u­ment­ed the enslave­ment of the Com­fort Women at length and in detail. “. . . . Worst of Japan’s slave pro­grams was that of the Com­fort Women. Young girls, many not even 13 years old, were shang­haied into sex­u­al slav­ery. After the war, Tokyo insist­ed all Com­fort Women were mere­ly pros­ti­tutes who vol­un­teered, and that the entire oper­a­tion was run by pri­vate enter­prise. Both state­ments are demon­stra­bly false. . . . Book­keep­ing was thor­ough, with forms for each woman list­ing dai­ly earn­ings and num­ber of clients. Up to 200,000 young women and ado­les­cent girls were forced into this sex­u­al slav­ery, to serve more than 3.5‑million Japan­ese sol­diers. Each was expect­ed to have fif­teen part­ners a day. . . .” Ram­sey­er is the Mit­subishi Pro­fes­sor of Legal Stud­ies at Harvard–manifesting the role of one of Japan’s zaibat­su in the world of acad­e­mia. One of the most impor­tant transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, Mitsubishi–manufacturer of the Zero fight­er in World War II–has ben­e­fit­ted from cor­po­rate influ­ence in the U.S. diplo­mat­ic corps: ” . . . . 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.’ . . . . After retir­ing as ambas­sador and return­ing to Wash­ing­ton, Foley open­ly became a paid lob­by­ist for Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion as a mem­ber of its advi­so­ry pan­el on strat­e­gy. Mit­subishi was among the biggest employ­ers of Amer­i­can slave labor dur­ing the war. . . .” Ram­sey­er has also revised his­to­ry in his analy­sis of the Kan­to mas­sacre fol­low­ing the Great Kan­to Earth­quake of 1923, in which eth­nic Kore­ans were sub­ject­ed to a bru­tal pogrom by the Japan­ese secu­ri­ty forces. ” . . . . Also in 2021, Ram­sey­er emerged at the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy over a forth­com­ing chap­ter in The Cam­bridge Hand­book of Pri­va­ti­za­tion, from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Writ­ing on the Kan­tō Mas­sacre in which thou­sands of res­i­dent Kore­ans in Japan were mur­dered, Ram­sey­er depict­ed the Kore­ans as ‘gangs’ that ‘torched build­ings, plant­ed bombs, [and] poi­soned water sup­plies.’ . . .”

FTR #1142 Deep Politics and the Death of Park Won-Soon, Part 3

Flesh­ing out the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the life and death of Park Won-soon, this pro­gram builds on the foun­da­tion of first two pro­grams in the series. Park Won-soon’s crit­i­cism of Japan’s colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, his advo­ca­cy of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the two Kore­as and his suit against the lead­er­ship of the fas­cist Shin­cheon­ji mind con­trol cult (over­lapped with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church), all bear on the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics of the Sec­ond World War, the Cold War, the Kore­an War, and the car­tel arrange­ments that con­sti­tute a crit­i­cal, though large­ly invis­i­ble, under­pin­ning of the events of the Twen­ti­eth and Twen­ty-First cen­turies.

Essen­tial to an under­stand­ing of these over­lap­ping events is the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Indeed, one can­not prop­er­ly ana­lyze the par­ti­tion of Korea after World War II, the Kore­an War and the Cold War as sep­a­rate events. They are inter­con­nect­ed and, in turn, are out­growths of the com­plex pol­i­tics of the Sec­ond World War and the actions and atti­tudes of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship.

Although nom­i­nal­ly a mem­ber of the Allied nations, Chi­ang’s Kuom­intang gov­ern­ment was pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with fend­ing off Mao Tse-Tung’s com­mu­nist armies and worked with the invad­ing Japan­ese in crit­i­cal areas. In par­tic­u­lar, the Kuom­intang’s pro­found involve­ment with the nar­cotics trade helped dri­ve its trad­ing with the Japan­ese.

The pro­gram begins with the obit­u­ary of gen­er­al Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose ser­vice in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army dur­ing World War II has been a focal point of con­tro­ver­sy in South Korea. Gen­er­al Sun-yup embod­ied the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy in Korea over Japan’s occu­pa­tion and the sub­se­quent unfold­ing of events lead­ing up to, and includ­ing the Kore­an War.

Again, the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Korea was a major focal point of Park Won-soon’s crit­i­cism. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence . . .”

A lit­tle known fac­tor in the devel­op­ment of the Kore­an par­ti­tion and Cold War pol­i­tics in Asia was the involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek, his wife (the for­mer Mei-Ling Soong, sis­ter of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ter T.V. Soong–the wealth­i­est man in the world at the time) and advis­ers in the Cairo Con­fer­ence of 1943 and the sub­se­quent Tehran Con­fer­ence with Stal­in and Churchill.

Accord­ing to Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, who flew the Kuom­intang inter­ests to Tehran from Cairo, Chi­ang and com­pa­ny were a dri­ving force in set­ting the stage for war in Korea and Indochi­na.

While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .”

To appre­ci­ate Chi­ang’s influ­ence in the Cairo and Tehran con­fer­ences, it is impor­tant to under­stand that he was “work­ing both sides of the street” in World War II.

Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road at great risk and cost to Allied ser­vice­men found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er.

Gen­er­al Ku Chu-Tung com­mand­ed a dev­as­tat­ing oper­a­tion against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist New Fourth Army, illus­trat­ing why the Sea­graves called him “one of the most hat­ed men in Chi­na.”

Although obscured by the sands of time and pro­pa­gan­dized his­to­ry, Ku-Chu Tung’s actions illus­trate why Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well held Chi­ang Kai-Shek in con­tempt. Still­well not only (cor­rect­ly) viewed Chi­ang Kai-Shek as a fas­cist, but (cor­rect­ly) saw him as an imped­i­ment to opti­miz­ing Chi­nese resis­tance to the hat­ed Japan­ese invaders.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Kodama Yoshio, the Japan­ese crime boss and Admi­ral of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Navy, the Ku broth­ers swapped U.S. lend lease sup­plies for drugs.

It is impor­tant to note the role of the Black Drag­on Soci­ety in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Drag­on, along with Black Ocean, are key Japan­ese ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties and the appar­ent fore­run­ners of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and, pos­si­bly the over­lap­ping Shin­cheon­ji cult that was sued by Park Won-soon.

Kodama played a key role in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 291  and 970.

Acquir­ing key strate­gic raw mate­ri­als for the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Naval Air Force, Kodama bought many of these direct­ly from the chief of Kuom­intang secret ser­vice, Gen­er­al Tai Li, who was paid direct­ly in hero­in.

Before turn­ing to the sub­ject of the Kore­an War and its deci­sive influ­ence on the dis­po­si­tion of glob­al wealth and the resus­ci­ta­tion of the glob­al car­tel sys­tem, we recount the assas­si­na­tion of Kim Koo, an impor­tant Kore­an patri­ot, whose advo­ca­cy of reuni­fi­ca­tion for Korea placed him in the crosshairs of Amer­i­can Cold War strate­gists. (Park Won-soon was called a “com­mie” for advo­cat­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the Kore­as.) ” . . . . In June 1949, Gen­er­al Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advi­sor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intel­li­gence Corps (CIC)—founded by and pat­terned after the CIA—conspired with Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cers and a young lieu­tenant to assas­si­nate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the sev­en­ty-three-year-old Kim was rest­ing in his sec­ond-floor bed­room, Lieu­tenant Ahn Do hi walked past three police­men stand­ing guard out­side, entered the house, pro­ceed­ed to Kim’s bed­room, and shot him to death. . . .”

On the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, John Fos­ter Dulles was in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio. It is not known just what they were doing, but Fos­ter direct­ly fore­shad­owed the impend­ing (and alleged­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed) North Kore­an inva­sion in a speech just before the com­mence­ment of hos­til­i­ties.

Kodama recruit­ed thou­sands of yakuza sol­diers and Japan­ese World War II vet­er­ans to fight for South Korea, dressed in Kore­an uni­forms.

Next, we high­light the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict.

Japan was not bank­rupt at all when John Fos­ter Dulles nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty. U.S. bomb­ing left crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture intact, and the infu­sion of war loot helped boost the 1951 Japan­ese econ­o­my above its pre-World War II peak.

Fos­ter Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curi­ous pres­ence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, his pre­scient fore­shad­ow­ing of the con­flict just before the North Kore­an inva­sion and the role of these events in shap­ing the post World War II glob­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal land­scapes may well have been designed to help jump­start the Japan­ese and Ger­man economies.

The Kore­an War did just that. ” . . . . A sub­stan­tial infu­sion of mon­ey into this new Fed­er­al Repub­lic econ­o­my result­ed from the Kore­an War in 1950. The Unit­ed States was not geared to sup­ply­ing all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pen­ta­gon placed huge orders in West Ger­many and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of boom­ing good times. . . .”

Indeed, John Fos­ter Dulles’s world view enun­ci­at­ed a phi­los­o­phy alto­geth­er con­sis­tent with those aims: ” . . . . He churned out mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles assert­ing that the ‘dynam­ic’ coun­tries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–‘feel with­in them­selves poten­tial­i­ties which are sup­pressed’ . . .”

Those economies, the car­tels that dom­i­nat­ed them and the Dulles broth­ers Cold War strate­gic out­look are dom­i­nant fac­tors in the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the life, and death, of Park Won-soon.