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1. Just as the post-war Ger­man econ­o­my is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, the Japan­ese econ­o­my is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the flight cap­i­tal pro­gram set up by Koichi Kido, the prin­ci­pal assis­tant to Emper­or Hiro­hi­to. The eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many and much of the rest of the world. (It was cre­at­ed and run by Mar­tin Bor­mann, the orga­ni­za­tion­al genius who was the “the pow­er behind the throne” in Nazi Ger­many.)

2. The Bor­mann group is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the For the Record pro­grams.

3. This pro­gram sets forth the facts con­cern­ing the Kido flight cap­i­tal pro­gram, the con­ti­nu­ity between the zaibat­su (fam­i­ly trusts) of Impe­r­i­al Japan and the Keirest­su (the con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese cor­po­rate pow­ers) and the truth of Hiro­hi­to’s cen­tral role in the Japan­ese war of aggres­sion and the eco­nom­ic loot­ing of Asia.

4. Much of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of a very impor­tant arti­cle about “the M‑fund,” a clan­des­tine fund alleged­ly set up by the post­war Japan­ese eco­nom­ic inter­ests and the CIA. (“Mis­chief or Con­spir­a­cy?” by Gillian Tett; Finan­cial Times; 4/7–4/8/2001; p. 10.)

5. This alleged fund came to light as the result of the appear­ance of alleged­ly coun­ter­feit Japan­ese gov­ern­ment bonds. “It looks innocu­ous enough: a sim­ply word­ed warm­ing about “fic­ti­tious bonds” sits on Japan’s Min­istry of Finance web site. In fact, it is a gate­way into a world swirling with explo­sive accu­sa­tions of fraud, con­spir­a­cy and polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. . . . But that has­n’t stopped these mys­te­ri­ous ‘qua­si-bonds’ from turn­ing up in finan­cial cen­ters around the world. In total, their pur­port­ed face val­ue comes to tril­lions of yen. And their ori­gin is the sub­ject of mys­tery and con­tro­ver­sy. Are these qua­si-bond cer­tifi­cates part of a com­plex polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy, or are they sim­ply a ploy to trap for­eign investors?” (Idem.)

6. A for­mer Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial is con­vinced the funds are real and has faced severe legal prob­lems as a result. “One man con­vinced the cer­tifi­cates are real is Nor­bert Schlei, a senior U.S. lawyer and for­mer advis­er to Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy. In 1995, he was appre­hend­ed in Flori­da for han­dling these cer­tifi­cates and charged with secu­ri­ties fraud.” (Idem.)

7. “Schlei main­tained that these cer­tifi­cates were valid, and that they were part of a com­plex scheme by the Japan­ese right and the CIA to recy­cle hid­den cap­i­tal from Japan­ese World War II loot. In his defense, he told the courts the cer­tifi­cates were legit­i­mate and owned by a dozen of his Japan­ese clients. Then he dropped his bomb­shell by claim­ing Japan’s Min­istry of finance had secret­ly issued the cer­tifi­cates in the 1980’s to con­ceal a hid­den polit­i­cal slush fund. And this slush fund was linked to mon­ey that the CIA alleged­ly had used to fund rightwing polit­i­cal groups in Japan, as part of an anti-com­mu­nist dri­ve.” (Idem.)

8. Although Schlei’s account has been attacked, there is evi­dence that his account is cor­rect. “But Schlei’s ver­sion of events is the one sup­port­ed in a book, yet to be pub­lished, by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, two U.S. authors who have writ­ten exten­sive­ly on Asia. ‘When the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pub­lic find out what has been going on all these years, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to covert finan­cial mis­chief, there will be a huge pub­lic out­cry,’ they say. In fact, finance and pol­i­tics in Japan are deeply murky and the com­plete truth may nev­er emerge. But there are two main the­o­ries as to where the bonds came from.” (Idem.)

9. The Japan­ese MoF (Min­istry of Finance) main­tains that the bonds are fraud­u­lent and are the work of the Japan­ese under­world. (In fact, the yakuza—Japan­ese orga­nized crime—is close­ly linked to the Japan­ese cor­po­rate estab­lish­ment, as well as the fas­cist right wing.) The phys­i­cal evi­dence is incon­sis­tent with that hypoth­e­sis, how­ev­er. “The offi­cial expla­na­tion, by the MoF, is that a gang of Japan­ese crooks print­ed them in the 1980’s. Some of the gang were con­vict­ed in Japan for fraud in the mid-1980s, giv­en a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, and have now dis­ap­peared. But the cer­tifi­cates were dis­trib­uted to crim­i­nals over­seas, who con­tin­ued the fraud, say Japan­ese police. . . . It sounds credible—but con­tains odd details. No finan­cial insti­tu­tion has ever admit­ted los­ing mon­ey as a result of these bonds. And the MoF did not declare the cer­tifi­cates coun­ter­feit until 1993—a decade after they first appeared. It has also seemed reluc­tant to per­mit its bureau­crats to tes­ti­fy that the cer­tifi­cates were fake. At one tri­al in the U.S., a MoF wit­ness dis­ap­peared ear­ly, and the tape recorder col­lect­ing his evi­dence broke. The min­istry blames this on a ‘mis­un­der­stand­ing.’ Anoth­er odd­i­ty is the cer­tifi­cates’ design. Crim­i­nals usu­al­ly make fake bonds iden­ti­cal to real bonds and in small denom­i­na­tions, to avoid attract­ing atten­tion. The ‘qua­si-bonds,’ how­ev­er, do not even pre­tend to be a Japan­ese gov­ern­ment bond, but an IOU—of a type not seen in Japan. Each cer­tifi­cate is ded­i­cat­ed to a spe­cif­ic Japan­ese per­son, and says it can be exchanged for 15-year bonds in the future, via the Bank of Japan ‘and Dai-Ichi Kangyo bank as an agent of the Bank.’ They claim to have been issued in 1982—or Showa 57 in the Japan­ese cal­en­dar (they are some­times called ‘series-57 bonds’ by Amer­i­cans. . . .But if that looks sus­pi­cious, the oth­er expla­na­tion is far stranger and begins in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, when Japan invad­ed its Asian neigh­bors and loot­ed vast wealth.” (Idem.)

10. The “unof­fi­cial expla­na­tion” is root­ed in the clan­des­tine his­to­ry of the Japan­ese econ­o­my dur­ing World War II and its after­math. “After the Sec­ond World War, U.S. intel­li­gence forces secret­ly seized this wealth and lat­er used it to finance covert anti-Com­mu­nist operations—paying bribes, for exam­ple, to rightwing mem­bers of Japan’s Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Schlei told the Flori­da court that in the post­war U.S. ‘we came to feel that [such pay­ments] were OK because the Rus­sians were sub­si­diz­ing the com­mu­nists and social­ists.’ In the 1960’s, the U.S. returned con­trol of this fund—called the ‘M‑fund’—to Japan. Japan­ese politi­cians, such as Kakuei Tana­ka, a for­mer finance min­is­ter and lat­er prime min­is­ter, grabbed it, stole large sums and used it for their per­son­al use and to buy polit­i­cal sup­port with bribes. ‘For 25 years Tana­ka was known as the mon­ey man of Japan­ese pol­i­tics. My clients say the rea­son he had so much mon­ey was he got con­trol of this M‑fund,’ Schlei said. In the 1960’s, Tana­ka tried to hide some of the fund by buy­ing JGB’s and reg­is­ter­ing them in the name of his crones and sup­port­ers. But in 1976, he was sucked into a cor­rup­tion scan­dal and con­vict­ed of receiv­ing bribes from the U.S. Lock­heed com­pa­ny. In the fol­low­ing years, his cronies want­ed extra mon­ey and, in the late 1970s, the Tana­ka clique decid­ed secret­ly to print what have become the dis­put­ed cer­tifi­cates as part of a com­plex finan­cial scheme.” (Idem.)

11. In addi­tion to Tana­ka, Yoshio Kodama was deeply involved with the Lock­heed bribery scan­dal. Kodama had been interned by the Amer­i­cans as a war crim­i­nal at the end of World War II. Like anoth­er Japan­ese fas­cist, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Kodama had been deeply involved with the Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties that brought fas­cism to Japan. Both Kodama and Sasakawa were deeply involved with Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

12. In an attempt to redeem some of the cap­i­tal invest­ed in these bonds, the gov­ern­ment of Paraguay approached some Wall Street bankers who, in turn, attempt­ed to enlist the aid of for­mer White House chief-of-staff (under Nixon) and Sec­re­tary of State (under Rea­gan) Alexan­der Haig. “Some for­mer Wall Street bankers, who insist on remain­ing anony­mous, say that in the ear­ly 1990’s they were hired by gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Paraguay, who had acquired some ‘bonds’ and want­ed to off­set them against Paraguay’s debt to Japan. They hired Alexan­der Haig, a for­mer U.S. sec­re­tary of state, to find out whether Japan’s finance min­istry would accept a deal. The Sea­graves claim a deal was struck.” (Idem.)

13. Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Haig is close to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. The Nixon White House and the gov­ern­ment of Paraguay were also close to the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. “The Ger­man-South Amer­i­can group also had direct access to the Nixon White House through their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Wash­ing­ton, and were proud of the fact that Bebe Rebo­zo was Pres­i­dent Nixon’s clos­est friend. For, know­ing­ly or unknow­ing­ly, Rebo­zo processed mil­lions of their dol­lars through his Flori­da bank as part of nor­mal com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; P. 275.)

14. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram deals direct­ly with the Kido flight cap­i­tal pro­gram. With Japan’s mil­i­tary defeat clear­ly on the hori­zon, Hiro­hi­to aid Koichi Kido under­took to secret the emper­or’s for­tune out of the grasp of the Allies. Speak­ing to the afore­men­tioned Mar­tin Bor­mann, I.G. Far­ben head Her­mann Schmitz out­lined the Japan­ese flight cap­i­tal pro­gram. “Her­mann Schmitz, had eleven I.G. Far­ben com­pa­nies in Japan, as well as the intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion of Max Ilgn­er’s N.W. 7. The I.G. Verbindungs­man­ner, who were the liai­son offi­cers between Far­ben in Japan and the home office in Ger­many, let him in on some of the fis­cal secrets of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who had used Swiss banks to place his enor­mous liq­uid for­tunes beyond the reach of the Allies. So did the indus­tri­al and finan­cial lead­ers of Japan, who also knew how to move their wealth around the world.” (Ibid.; pp. 120–121.)

15. It should be not­ed that the actions of Koichi Kido were influ­enced by those of Bor­mann. “With his immense land hold­ings and the prof­its from his many invest­ments, Emper­or Hiro­hi­to was by far the wealth­i­est indi­vid­ual in Japan. With­in the struc­ture was the lord keep­er of the privy seal, the emper­or’s most impor­tant advi­sor, the only one who could offer unso­licit­ed com­ments. From 1940 to the end of the war the lord keep­er of the privy seal was Mar­quis Koichi Kido, who per­formed just as ably for Hiro­hi­to as Mar­tin Bor­mann did for Hitler. . . . And when Emper­or Hiro­hi­to received his two request­ed reports on the future of the war in the Pacif­ic from his army and navy chiefs of staff, he, too, con­curred that their war cold not be won. He asked Kido to pre­pare a peace plan for the Japan­ese nation; and Kido began work on it in Jan­u­ary 1944. The lord privy seal envi­sioned the first step in any peace plan as one that would pre­serve the impe­r­i­al throne and its impe­r­i­al wealth. Kido held meet­ings with key bankers and the trans­fers of impe­r­i­al mon­ey to Swiss accounts was effect­ed smooth­ly via bank tele­graph cred­it, inas­much as major Japan­ese banks had their own cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing rela­tion­ships with the impor­tant fis­cal insti­tu­tions of Switzer­land. Emper­or Hiro­hi­to and his impe­r­i­al house­hold zaibat­su had stock own­er­ship and deposits in four­teen of the major Japan­ese banks, all of which cher­ished the hon­or of act­ing as an impe­r­i­al depos­i­to­ry. The four­teen banks gave all assis­tance nec­es­sary, of course, to the Kido trans­fer.” (Ibid.; pp. 121–122.)

16. The flight cap­i­tal plan was more than suc­cess­ful, and the cap­i­tal on hand for both the emper­or and the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions (zaibat­sus) served as the foun­da­tion for post­war Japan­ese recov­ery and suc­cess. “By the end of the war, the deposits on hand were astro­nom­i­cal, and dur­ing the post­war reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Japan, the impe­r­i­al for­tune kept increas­ing from the inter­est charges for loans to var­i­ous zaibat­su com­pa­nies who were struggling—as were Ger­man firms—for a come­back in world mar­kets. As a result of these trans­fers Amer­i­can SCAP [Supreme Com­man­der, Allied Pow­ers] fis­cal inves­ti­ga­tors found the impe­r­i­al vaults pret­ty near­ly bare when they went pok­ing through the record­ed assets in the impe­r­i­al palace fol­low­ing Japan­ese sur­ren­der aboard the U.S.S. Mis­souri on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945.” (Ibid.; p. 123.)

17. As was the case with Ger­many, the wealth that Kido fun­neled out of the coun­try includ­ed the for­tunes of the nations con­quered and occu­pied by Japan. Those coun­tries’ assets were loot­ed and absorbed into the Japan­ese econ­o­my. “Like the Third Reich, the Japan­ese pat­tern of con­quest and pil­lage pre­vailed. As armies marched, fought, and con­quered, they were fol­lowed by the ubiq­ui­tous bankers and busi­ness spe­cial­ists who assumed eco­nom­ic con­trol of the lands and peo­ple and assets they cov­et­ed. They seized gold and formed com­pa­nies to mine for min­er­als, oil, coal, and all oth­er sub­stances nec­es­sary to a resource-poor coun­try like Japan. . . . But behind the slo­gans was a hard-head­ed com­mer­cial­ism ded­i­cat­ed to prof­its for the zaibat­sus, which includ­ed the impe­r­i­al house­hold zaibat­su, fun­neled through stock own­er­ship in the scores of cor­po­ra­tions estab­lished in bank­ing and indus­try of each con­quered coun­try.” (Ibid.; pp. 123–124.)

18. Both Kido and Hiro­hi­to exhib­it­ed con­sid­er­able cyn­i­cism dur­ing the clos­ing phase of the war. Rec­og­niz­ing that it was essen­tial to deceive the Japan­ese peo­ple into pro­long­ing the con­flict, as well as deflect­ing blame for the defeat away from the emper­or and the zaibat­sus, both men engaged in a pro­gram of pro­pa­gan­da aimed at buy­ing time for the flight cap­i­tal pro­gram to be con­sum­mat­ed. “In 1944, while the lord privy seal was mak­ing his peace plans, Emper­or Hiro­hi­to wait­ed for the ulti­mate excuse for with­draw­al from the war. Kido had rec­om­mend­ed the removal of Prime Min­is­ter Tojo from office in 1944. Tojo had orig­i­nal­ly been placed in office on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Kido, but now he was to take the blame for the defeat and for the atroc­i­ties that Japan­ese forces had com­mit­ted when it was fore­seen that the war was lost. Actu­al­ly, the war had been planned in the War Room of the Impe­r­i­al Palace, from the attack and rape of Nanking to the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, with the emper­or an inter­est­ed par­tic­i­pant in all major strate­gic deci­sions. . . . Kido knew the peo­ple would have to be pre­pared for sur­ren­der. The fight­ing men had staked their hon­or on vic­to­ry or sui­cide, and vast num­bers had died in the emper­or’s name. If peace were pre­ma­ture, many would say that Hiro­hi­to lacked the courage to fight the war through to the end. Wid­ows and orphans would blame the emper­or for caus­ing their fathers and hus­bands to die in vain. The emper­or and Kido knew that the peo­ple had reached the point where they were eager to see an end to war. When the time arrived that they thought it was they who had fought poor­ly and let the emper­or down, then and only then, if Hiro­hi­to declared for peace, would the peo­ple feel oblig­at­ed to him.” (Ibid.; pp. 124–125.)

19. Ulti­mate­ly the plans of the emper­or and Kido were suc­cess­ful. “While the emper­or wait­ed for an excuse for with­draw­al from the war, he approved the many defen­sive mea­sures being under­tak­en to repel the invaders. . . . His pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter, like Dr. Goebbels in Berlin, fos­tered the notion of bat­tle to the last, but it was smoke of sorts, con­trived to make more stead­fast the flag­ging will of the peo­ple. . . . On August 7, 1945, the emper­or was pre­sent­ed with his rea­son to ini­ti­ate peace. He received the Japan­ese army report of the atom­ic destruc­tion of Hiroshi­ma. Two days lat­er, on August 9, a sec­ond A‑bomb was dropped on Nagasa­ki. Although the emper­or and Lord Privy Seal Kido had been think­ing about sur­ren­der for nine­teen months before the two atom­ic bombs fell, it took only days for Emper­or Hiro­hi­to to agree to sur­ren­der terms on the Pots­dam Dec­la­ra­tion. At this point in time, as in Berlin, the prepa­ra­tions for post-war com­mer­cial sur­vival for two defeat­ed nations had been com­plet­ed, and now only the final sce­nario had to be played out.” (Ibid.; pp. 126–127.)

20. As had been envi­sioned by the emper­or, Kido and the cor­po­rate lead­er­ship of the zaibat­sus, the flight cap­i­tal pro­gram achieved its aim. “. . . once the occu­pa­tion end­ed and Japan again became mas­ter of her own des­tiny, the fam­i­ly-con­trolled hold­ing com­pa­nies were to make their come­back big­ger and stronger than ever before, under the name ‘Ker­est­su,’ which also means ‘group.’ Today, the six big Ker­est­sus con­tol the econ­o­my; in fact they are the econ­o­my. The six largest groups con­trol 40 per­cent of the nation’s cor­po­rate cap­i­tal, and 30 per­cent of its cor­po­rate assets. The trad­ing com­pa­nies of these six Ker­est­su hold stock in more than 5,400 com­pa­nies in Japan, and the Keirest­su banks own even more. The Mit­subishi and Mit­sui fam­i­lies were zaibat­su before their hold­ing com­pa­nies were bro­ken up by MacArthur, but today they are com­fort­able Keirest­su. . . . As was proven in time, the wealth and the cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, on the one hand (in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many, 1 per­cent of the cor­po­rate lead­er­ship con­trols 40 per­cent of the indus­try and finance), and by the zaibatsu/Keirestsu, along with the hold­ings of the impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly, were the basic instru­ments that guid­ed both defeat­ed nations back to eco­nom­ic pow­er.” (Ibid.; pp. 127–128.)