What Were John Foster Dulles and Kodama Yoshio Doing in Seoul on the Eve of the Outbreak of the Korean War?

In our last post, we high­light­ed 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. In the con­text of the fan­tas­tic sums loot­ed by Japan under the aus­pices of Gold­en Lily and the incor­po­ra­tion of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Kore­an War raise some inter­est­ing, unre­solved ques­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the loot­ing of occu­pied Asia dur­ing World War II was the remark­able Kodama Yoshio. Net­worked with the pow­er­ful Yakuza Japan­ese orga­nized crime milieu, the Black Drag­on soci­ety (the most pow­er­ful of the patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties), the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese mil­i­tary and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, Kodama loot­ed the Chi­nese under­world and traf­ficked in nar­cotics with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fas­cist nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship. We can but won­der about Kodama Yosh­io’s pres­ence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Fos­ter Dulles at nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War. ” . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . ”

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#‘s 1349 & 1350 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 23 & 24

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346)  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.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

2. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

 . . . . 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? . . . .

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

. . . . When the war end­ed, Chi­na was in utter chaos. Thou­sands of Japan­ese troops wan­dered around the coun­try­side, ful­ly armed, with no one accept­ing their sur­ren­der. John F. Mel­by [a State Depart­ment offi­cer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflect­ed in bewil­der­ment upon this anom­aly. On Decem­ber 27, 1945, he not­ed: “I still don’t under­stand about the Japan­ese. Offi­cial­ly they are being dis­armed, but the fact is they nev­er seem to be. In Shang­hai, fif­teen thou­sand still walk the streets with full equip­ment. In Nanking, the high Japan­ese gen­er­als are bosom bud­dies of the Chi­nese. In the north, tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers are used to guard rail­roads and ware­hous­es and to fight the Com­mu­nists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more can­did moments a ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ ” In anoth­er entry on Jan­u­ary 30, 1947, a good six­teen months after V‑J Day, Mel­by not­ed that, though it was being kept “very qui­et,” there were “eighty thou­sand hold­out Japan­ese troops in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria, who are ful­ly equipped, fight­ing the Com­mu­nists.” . . . .

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

3c. Japan’s loot­ing of Korea took place over cen­turies. In Gold War­riors, the Sea­graves present the his­to­ry of Japan’s rape of Korea, begin­ning with their account of the gris­ly mur­der of Kore­an Queen Min in 1894. (For more about the Japan­ese con­quest, sub­ju­ga­tion and loot­ing of Korea, see FTR#1141.) ” . . . . the defense­less queen was stabbed and slashed repeat­ed­ly, and car­ried wail­ing out to the palace gar­den where she was thrown onto a pile of fire­wood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An Amer­i­can mil­i­tary advi­sor, Gen­er­al William Dye, was one of sev­er­al for­eign­ers who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace com­pound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. . . .”

A snap­shot of the Japan­ese colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, a focal point of crit­i­cism of the late Park Won-soon:” . . . . [Gen­er­al] Ter­auchi was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bru­tal, set­ting a prece­dent for Japan­ese behav­ior in all the coun­tries, it would occu­py over com­ing decades. Deter­mined to crush all resis­tance, he told Kore­ans, ‘I will whip you with scor­pi­ons!’ He set up a sadis­tic police force of Kore­an yakuza, order­ing it to use tor­ture as a mat­ter of course, for ‘no Ori­en­tal can be expect­ed to tell the truth except under tor­ture’. These police were close­ly super­vised by Japan’s gestapo, the kem­peitai. . . . ‘Japan’s aim,’ said Kore­an his­to­ri­an Yi Kibeck, ‘was to erad­i­cate con­scious­ness of Kore­an nation­al iden­ti­ty, roots and all, and thus to oblit­er­ate the very exis­tence of the Kore­an peo­ple from the face of the earth.’ . . . the penin­su­la was stripped of every­thing from art­works to root veg­eta­bles. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the trans­fer of cul­tur­al property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal some­thing that already belongs to you? . . .”

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 19 and 20

These pro­grams begin an 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.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

2. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er 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? . . . .

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

. . . . When the war end­ed, Chi­na was in utter chaos. Thou­sands of Japan­ese troops wan­dered around the coun­try­side, ful­ly armed, with no one accept­ing their sur­ren­der. John F. Mel­by [a State Depart­ment offi­cer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflect­ed in bewil­der­ment upon this anom­aly. On Decem­ber 27, 1945, he not­ed: “I still don’t under­stand about the Japan­ese. Offi­cial­ly they are being dis­armed, but the fact is they nev­er seem to be. In Shang­hai, fif­teen thou­sand still walk the streets with full equip­ment. In Nanking, the high Japan­ese gen­er­als are bosom bud­dies of the Chi­nese. In the north, tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers are used to guard rail­roads and ware­hous­es and to fight the Com­mu­nists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more can­did moments a ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ ” In anoth­er entry on Jan­u­ary 30, 1947, a good six­teen months after V‑J Day, Mel­by not­ed that, though it was being kept “very qui­et,” there were “eighty thou­sand hold­out Japan­ese troops in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria, who are ful­ly equipped, fight­ing the Com­mu­nists.” . . . .

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.

FTR#1261 Bong-Bong and the Marcos Continuum

Explor­ing a deep polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ic, this pro­gram sets forth fun­da­men­tal aspects of what the late, bril­liant Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave called “The Mar­cos Dynasty.”

This pro­gram excerpts two of their excel­lent books–which Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends. There are links pro­vid­ed with each text excerpt to facil­i­tate the acqui­si­tion of the books, which, again, Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends.

Recent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines (with close rel­a­tives of for­mer pres­i­dent Duterte as aides), Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has net­worked with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invig­o­rat­ed, anti-Chi­na alliance.

Essen­tial for an under­stand­ing of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liai­son is aware­ness of Mar­cos, Jr.’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his dic­ta­tor father’s phe­nom­e­nal­ly lucra­tive recov­er­ies of Gold­en Lily war gold secret­ed in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. 

This sub­ject is cov­ered in the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Fer­di­nand, Sr.’s rise was aid­ed by his “god­fa­ther,” Judge Chua, who was his bio­log­i­cal father in an out-of-wed­lock liai­son. This was rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in the Philip­pines and not stig­ma­tized as in many oth­er soci­eties.

Judge Chua’s posi­tion in the Chua fam­i­ly gave him great influ­ence. In turn, the clan asso­ci­a­tions of Chi­nese in the Philip­pines were fun­da­men­tal to the pro­fes­sion­al and social under­tak­ings of mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the strong affil­i­a­tion of the clans with the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-shek, impart­ing a fas­cist ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to them. This was a major deep polit­i­cal influ­ence on Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr., the out-of-wed­lock son of the influ­en­tial Judge Chua.

Next, we present the deep polit­i­cal back­ground that shaped Fer­di­nand Mar­cos and an explo­ration of the man­ner in which eco­nom­ic class con­sid­er­a­tions shaped alliances dur­ing the Japan­ese fas­cist occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines and its after­math.

In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among oth­er pro­grams, we explored how the U.S. reha­bil­i­tat­ed and resus­ci­tat­ed the Japan­ese fas­cist infra­struc­ture from that nation’s World War II impe­r­i­al state.

We have spo­ken of promi­nent Japan­ese fas­cists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numer­ous pro­grams.

Com­bined with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s reac­tionary stance, those reha­bil­i­tat­ed Japan­ese fas­cists con­sti­tut­ed the crit­i­cal foun­da­tion of America’s Cold War in Asia.

The MacArthur team in the Philip­pines dur­ing the Cold War was culled from the col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu who worked with the Japan­ese dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. This includ­ed the head of the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment, Jose Lau­rel, as well as Benig­no Aquino Sr. and Manuel Rox­as.

Fol­low­ing the ouster of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr. the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment was head­ed by Cory Aquino, the wid­ow of slain CIA agent Benig­no Aquino, Jr. and Sal­vador Lau­rel, the son of Jose Lau­rel.

Col­lab­o­ra­tor Manuel Rox­as was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to man­age post­war Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.

Golden Lily Veterans Involved with 1965 Indonesian Coup

The “Deep Pol­i­tics” detailed by the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott in his opus “Amer­i­can War Machine” set forth the involve­ment Japan­ese war crim­i­nals Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in the Indone­sian coup of 1965. That epic blood­let­ting saw the engi­neers of the event kill a mil­lion peo­ple (some put the toll as high as three mil­lion.) In addi­tion to being prime movers behind the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio were lynch­pins of the per­pet­u­a­tion of the oper­a­tional foun­da­tion of Japan­ese fas­cism under the aus­pices of the LDP in the post­war peri­od. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1209 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 16

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we begin by draw­ing 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. Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!

I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.) It is appar­ent­ly avail­able from Ama­zon on Kin­dle.

We also draw on anoth­er, alto­geth­er remark­able work by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Seagrave–Gold War­riors.

As we approach the close of this series, we “dol­ly out” and present aspects of how U.S. pol­i­cy in Asia dur­ing the Cold War grew direct­ly out of the “mis­sion­ary posi­tion” that Amer­i­ca took toward China–a posi­tion that led direct­ly to war in Korea and Viet­nam.

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, we recap an ele­ment of dis­cus­sion from FTR#1208.

Net­work­ing with Isa Yusuf Alptekin at the Ban­dung (Indone­sia) con­fer­ence was Ruzi (or “Ruzy”) Nazar, an Uzbek nation­al who fought in var­i­ous Third Reich mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, includ­ing the SS Dirlewanger Brigade. After the war, Nazar was a CIA oper­a­tive net­work­ing with the Nation­al Action Par­ty (or Nation­al Move­ment Par­ty) of Alparslan Turkes.

Nazar rep­re­sent­ed the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations at the 1984 WACL con­fer­ence in Dal­las.

(We have dis­cussed the de-sta­bi­liza­tion of Xin­jiang Province in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing: FTR#‘s 1143, 1144, 1145.  1154, 1178, 1179, 1180.)

Adri­an Zenz–whose pro­fes­sion­al milieu is the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee and its sub­sidiary ele­ment the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foundation–has also been mint­ed as an expert on Tibet.

Next, we detail infor­ma­tion on the Dalai Lama:

Impor­tant back­ground infor­ma­tion on this item of the pro­gram is con­tained in FTR#‘s 547, 548 among oth­er pro­grams. (Mr. Emory mis-iden­ti­fied the num­bers of the pro­grams in the audio file for this broad­cast.)

Key facts about the Dalai Lama were set forth by for­mer key aides of his.

In addi­tion to a belief in demons and a reliance on mag­ic rit­u­als (some of them sex­u­al in nature), the Dalai Lama’s brand of Tantric Bud­dhism espous­es a mil­i­tant, war­like and intol­er­ant nature toward oth­er reli­gions. As not­ed by the Tri­mondis, there are some sim­i­lar­i­ties between this per­vert­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of Bud­dhism and the Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood’s per­vert­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of Islam.

The Dalai Lama’s brand of Tantric Bud­dhism con­tains what might be a viewed as “Bud­dhist jihadism.” In addi­tion, the Tri­mondis take note of the sig­nif­i­cance of the Kalachakra Tantra cer­e­mo­ny per­formed by the Dalai Lama, a sub­ject to which we will return lat­er in the broad­cast. In addi­tion, Tantric Buddhism’s apoc­a­lyp­tic vision of a cli­mac­tic war of the reli­gions (“Sham­bala War”) bears some sim­i­lar­i­ties to the fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian vision of Armaged­don.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–” . . . . In con­trary to every demo­c­ra­t­ic cus­tom, the present Dalai Lama con­sults with the Nechung Ora­cle, a monk who is pos­sessed by a Mon­go­lian War God, on all-impor­tant state deci­sions. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Mur­der­ous super-weapons pos­sessed by the Bud­dhist Shamb­ha­la Army are described at length and in enthu­si­as­tic detail in the Kalachakra Tantra Text (Shri Kalachakra I. 128 ‑142) and employed against ‘ene­mies of the Dhar­ma (Bud­dha’s teach­ings).’ . . .”
3.–” . . . . The secret text of the Kalachakra explic­it­ly names the ‘lead­ers’ of Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam as the oppo­nents of Bud­dhism: ‘Adam, Enoch, Abra­ham, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muham­mad and the Mah­di’ describ­ing them as ‘the fam­i­ly of the demon­ic snakes’ (Shri Kalachakra I. 154). . . .”

Next, the Tri­mondis note the influ­ence of Tantric Bud­dhism (and oth­er East­ern reli­gions) on the phi­los­o­phy of SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler. They also note that well-known Ger­man Bud­dhist teach­ers Dur­ck­heim and Her­rigel have been doc­tri­naire Nazis. In addi­tion, the Tri­mondis note that the Dalai Lama has main­tained close con­nec­tions with oth­er Nazis and fas­cists over the years.

In addi­tion to SS vet­er­ans Hein­rich Har­rer and war crim­i­nal Bruno Beger, the Dalai Lama net­worked with “the French SS- col­lab­o­ra­tor, con­vinced anti-Semi­te, rec­og­nized Ori­en­tal­ist and Kalachakra Tantra expert Jean Mar­ques-Riv­iere (in his absence con­vict­ed and giv­en the death sen­tence for turn­ing Jews over to the Gestapo in France).” The Aum Shin­rikyo guru Shoko Asa­hara was also a friend of the Dalai Lama and was influ­enced by the ide­ol­o­gy of the Kalachakra Tantra. (For more about the Aum Shin­rikyo cult, includ­ing the influ­ence of Hitler on the Dalai Lama’s friend Shoko Asa­hara, see FTRs 35 and 69.)

Next, we review 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.

Next, we review the bril­liant Dou­glas Valen­tine’s syn­op­sis of the role of Kuom­intang drug traf­fick­ing in the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment drug-traf­fick­ing.

U.S. Ambas­sador to Thai­land (and for­mer OSS chief) William “Wild Bill” Dono­van worked with OSS and CIA oper­a­tive Paul Hel­li­well to dis­trib­ute the laun­dered prof­its of Agency-backed drug oper­a­tions to mem­bers of Con­gress, with Dono­van gift­ing Repub­li­cans and Hel­li­well sup­port­ing Democ­rats.

” . . . .Thai dic­ta­tor Phao Sriyanon, a drug traf­fick­er who was then alleged to be the rich­est man in the world; ‘hired lawyer Paul Hel­li­well . . . as a lob­by­ist in addi­tion to [for­mer OSS chief William] Dono­van [who in 1953–1955 was U.S. Ambas­sador to Thai­land]. Dono­van and Hel­li­well divid­ed the Con­gress between them, with Dono­van assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Repub­li­cans and Hel­li­well tak­ing the Democ­rats.’ . . . .”