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For The Record  

FTR#1207 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 14

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FTR #1207 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: 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. 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.

When the fail­ures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and piv­ot­ing away from the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese cause, the amal­gam of cor­po­rate, crim­i­nal, jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal inter­ests that had empow­ered the Kuom­intang coun­ter­at­tacked: “ . . . . the Chi­ang gov­ern­ment poured mil­lions of dol­lars into a coun­terof­fen­sive. Zeal­ous Amer­i­cans who joined the pro-Tai­wan cru­sade became the fund-rais­ers, the orga­niz­ers, the tele­phon­ers, the leg­men, the gofers, the pub­li­cists, the con­gress­men, the tycoons, the hosts and host­esses of the shad­owy soci­ety called ‘the Chi­na Lob­by.’ Its man­age­ment, its direc­tion, and its pri­ma­ry finances were not Amer­i­can. The Chi­na Lob­by belonged to the Soong clan and the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple involved thought they were work­ing for the greater glo­ry of God, or for ‘the sur­vival of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.’ They were real­ly work­ing for a Chi­nese pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the pri­ma­ry pipeline con­nect­ing Amer­i­can spe­cial inter­ests with Tai­wan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chi­ang devot­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gies to the lob­by and some­times gath­ered for strat­e­gy ses­sions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”

The domes­tic polit­i­cal result in the U.S. was summed up by Ster­ling Sea­grave: “  . . . . Small won­der that a large seg­ment of the Amer­i­can pub­lic believed that Chi­ang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Sim­i­lar amounts were spent dur­ing the Kore­an War and the peri­od­ic crises over the defense of the For­mosa Strait. Guess­es at the grand total spent by Tai­wan to stu­pe­fy Amer­i­cans ran as high as $1 bil­lion a year. . . .”

The unique nature of the man­i­fest Chi­na Lob­by was summed up: “ . . . . Mar­quis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nation­al­ist Chi­na has used the tech­niques of direct inter­ven­tion on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the cam­paign was to pour gaso­line on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”

The com­po­nent ele­ments of the Chi­na Lob­by:

  • “ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
  • “ . . . . it hired adver­tis­ing agen­cies . . . . Allied Syn­di­cates count­ed among its clients the bank of Chi­na (with H.H. Kung as direc­tor). . . . Hamil­ton Wright, worked for six years as a reg­is­tered agent for Nation­al­ist Chi­na, writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing sto­ries, news arti­cles, pho­tographs, and movies to cre­ate a favor­able image of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
  • “. . . . T.V.’s wartime Uni­ver­sal Trad­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was list­ed in 1949 as a for­eign agent work­ing for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, with assets of near­ly $22 mil­lion. The Chi­nese News Ser­vice based in Tai­wan estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York, Chica­go, and San Fran­cis­co. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
  • “ . . . . ‘Hen­ry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his life­time in dan­ger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of Chi­na and of Chris­tian­i­ty and the Asian hege­mo­ny of the Unit­ed States, but also his own peace of mind and rep­u­ta­tion. Chi­ang-in-Chi­na was to have been the crown­ing of a decade and a half of plan­ning in the Chrysler build­ing and Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and of count­less thou­sands of words of Luce­press pro­pa­gan­da. The night­mare rise of Mao-in-Chi­ina brought a pow­er­ful Luce counter-strat­e­gy.’. . .”
  • “ . . . . News­cast­er Robert S. Allen report­ed, . . . . Luce has been pro­pa­gan­diz­ing and agi­tat­ing for anoth­er two-bil­lion dol­lar U.S. hand­out for Chi­ang for a long time. . . . And in Wash­ing­ton, prac­ti­cal­ly the whole Luce bureau has been work­ing full blast as part of the Chi­ang lob­by.’. . .”
  • “ . . . . Many of the activists in the lob­by were peo­ple whose fam­i­lies had worked in Chi­na as mis­sion­ar­ies, and now thought their her­itage was being thrown away. Among them were the direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Chi­na Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion and the Com­mit­tee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aid­ing Anti-Com­mu­nist Chi­na . . . . .”
  • “ . . . . These groups were peri­od­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by cam­paigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the exec­u­tive coun­cil of the AFL-CIO, the Amer­i­can Legion, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, and Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom. To many con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, Tai­wan became syn­ony­mous with anti-Com­mu­nism. In the atmos­phere of the 1950s, the fear of Red Chi­na kept nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble peo­ple from won­der­ing where all the mon­ey was com­ing from. . . .”
  • “ . . . . As prin­ci­pal direc­tor of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was dri­ven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Colum­nist Drew Pear­son, one of the few jour­nal­ists who main­tained an inter­est in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of Chi­na the “nerve cen­ter of the Chi­na Lob­by . . . .”
  • “ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is almost as astute as his knowl­edge of Chi­nese finance, and well before he entered the Tru­man cab­i­net, Kung picked Louis John­son as his per­son­al attor­ney. It may or may not be sig­nif­i­cant that, lat­er, when John­son became Sec­re­tary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advo­cates of Amer­i­can sup­port for For­mosa. . . .”
  • “ . . . . [From a Drew Pear­son column—D.E.] A move by a Chi­ang broth­er-in-law. . . . to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket at the expense of the Amer­i­can pub­lic . . . The broth­er-in-law is T.L. Soong, broth­er of For­eign Min­is­ter T.V. Soong, who for­mer­ly han­dled much of the three and a half bil­lion dol­lars worth of sup­plies which the Unit­ed States sent to Chi­na dur­ing the War. The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dal­las oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest mem­bers of the clan. Dur­ing Richard Nixon’s 1950 sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign, Dad­dy Kung dis­patched Younger Son to Los Ange­les to give the sen­a­tor dona­tions and encour­age­ment. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petro­le­um hold­ings, with oil prop­er­ties across Texas, Okla­homa, and Louisiana. At the (Nation­al­ist) Chi­nese embassy in Wash­ing­ton in 1956, Louis orga­nized the Cheyenne Oil Com­pa­ny. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for exam­ple, to John Daly, then vice-pres­i­dent for news of the (ABC Net­work), did poor­ly, Louis guar­an­teed that Daly would have his invest­ment back; if the well turned out to be a suc­cess, then the prof­its were divid­ed with Daly. . . .”

Pre­sent­ing an overview updat­ing the oper­a­tions of T.V. Soong, Ster­ling Sea­grave recounts his ascent to the pin­na­cles of pow­er, his cor­po­rate largesse in Amer­i­ca derived from clever invest­ment and his major par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crim­i­nal under­world of Kuom­intang nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and klep­toc­ra­cy and his pur­loin­ing of mas­sive amounts of U.S. aid to Chi­na dur­ing World War II.

Note, T.V.’s role in the Chi­na Lob­by: “ . . . . Although T.V. avoid­ed Tai­wan, and devot­ed most of his atten­tion to his expand­ing finan­cial empire, he did back the Chi­na Lob­by finan­cial­ly because it was in his inter­est to do so. The levers of the Chi­na Lob­by could be worked in many direc­tions. . . .”

Note, also, his grav­i­tas with the lethal, pow­er­ful Chi­nese orga­nized crime milieu in the U.S.: “ . . . . It was not so much implied that T.V. him­self was dan­ger­ous but that the slight­est word from him could bring about ter­ri­ble con­se­quences from the Chi­nese tongs or syn­di­cates, the Chi­nese banks, and name­less oth­er objects of fear. . . .”

The remain­der of the pro­gram recaps infor­ma­tion from FTR#1142 about some of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the out­break of the Kore­an War.

This is pre­sent­ed as con­text for T.L. Soong’s remark­ably pre­scient cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket on the eve of the out­break of that con­flict: ” . . . . The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”

In FTR#1142, we detailed the lit­tle-known involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek in the 1943 con­fer­ences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek was the sis­ter of T.V. Soong, one of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ters and the rich­est man in the world at one time.)

This low-pro­file involve­ment appar­ent­ly gave them con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas in help­ing to shape the post­war geopo­lit­i­cal agen­da.

In that con­text and in rela­tion to the ongo­ing series on Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist gov­ern­ment, it is worth not­ing the deep polit­i­cal agen­da that was gov­ern­ing U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy by Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945–the day on which the treaty end­ing World War II in the Pacif­ic was signed on board the deck of the U.S. S. Mis­souri. 

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? . . . .”

In FTR#1142, 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.

As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams in an inter­view with Daniel Junas, the Kore­an War was a huge eco­nom­ic boom for Japan, and gen­er­at­ed con­sid­er­able prof­it for Ger­man firms as well. Thyssen, for exam­ple, won lucra­tive con­tracts for mak­ing steel for the war effort. Is there some con­nec­tion between the Kodama/Dulles pres­ence in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of war linked to the Gold­en Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus and/or T.L. Soong’s cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket on the out­break of the war?

Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, John Fos­ter Dulles made a star­tling­ly pre­scient speech in South Korea, augur­ing North Kore­a’s inva­sion short­ly there­after.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in delib­er­ate­ly lur­ing the North Kore­ans to invade, in a man­ner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambas­sador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have bait­ed Sad­dam Hus­sein into invad­ing Kuwait.

Note, also, Dulles’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Syn­g­man Rhee and Chi­ang Kai-shek as Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men. Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Chris­t­ian cre­den­tials are record­ed in detail in the ongo­ing series.

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.

“. . . .  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. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes 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. “. . . . 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 . . .”

1. When the fail­ures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and piv­ot­ing away from the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese cause, the amal­gam of cor­po­rate, crim­i­nal, jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal inter­ests that had empow­ered the Kuom­intang coun­ter­at­tacked: “ . . . . the Chi­ang gov­ern­ment poured mil­lions of dol­lars into a coun­terof­fen­sive. Zeal­ous Amer­i­cans who joined the pro-Tai­wan cru­sade became the fund-rais­ers, the orga­niz­ers, the tele­phon­ers, the leg­men, the gofers, the pub­li­cists, the con­gress­men, the tycoons, the hosts and host­esses of the shad­owy soci­ety called ‘the Chi­na Lob­by.’ Its man­age­ment, its direc­tion, and its pri­ma­ry finances were not Amer­i­can. The Chi­na Lob­by belonged to the Soong clan and the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple involved thought they were work­ing for the greater glo­ry of God, or for ‘the sur­vival of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.’ They were real­ly work­ing for a Chi­nese pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the pri­ma­ry pipeline con­nect­ing Amer­i­can spe­cial inter­ests with Tai­wan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chi­ang devot­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gies to the lob­by and some­times gath­ered for strat­e­gy ses­sions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”

The domes­tic polit­i­cal result in the U.S. was summed by Ster­ling Sea­grave: “  . . . . Small won­der that a large seg­ment of the Amer­i­can pub­lic believed that Chi­ang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Sim­i­lar amounts were spent dur­ing the Kore­an War and the peri­od­ic crises over the defense of the For­mosa Strait. Guess­es at the grand total spent by Tai­wan to stu­pe­fy Amer­i­cans ran as high as $1 bil­lion a year. . . .”

The unique nature of the man­i­fest Chi­na Lob­by was summed up: “ . . . . Mar­quis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nation­al­ist Chi­na has used the tech­niques of direct inter­ven­tion on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the cam­paign was to pour gaso­line on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”

The com­po­nent ele­ments of the Chi­na Lob­by:

  • “ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
  • “ . . . . it hired adver­tis­ing agen­cies . . . . Allied Syn­di­cates count­ed among its clients the bank of Chi­na (with H.H. Kung as direc­tor). . . . Hamil­ton Wright, worked for six years as a reg­is­tered agent for Nation­al­ist Chi­na, writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing sto­ries, news arti­cles, pho­tographs, and movies to cre­ate a favor­able image of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
  • “. . . . T.V.’s wartime Uni­ver­sal Trad­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was list­ed in 1949 as a for­eign agent work­ing for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, with assets of near­ly $22 mil­lion. The Chi­nese News Ser­vice based in Tai­wan estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York, Chica­go, and San Fran­cis­co. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
  • “ . . . . ‘Hen­ry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his life­time in dan­ger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of Chi­na and of Chris­tian­i­ty and the Asian hege­mo­ny of the Unit­ed States, but also his own peace of mind and rep­u­ta­tion. Chi­ang-in-Chi­na was to have been the crown­ing of a decade and a half of plan­ning in the Chrysler build­ing and Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and of count­less thou­sands of words of Luce­press pro­pa­gan­da. The night­mare rise of Mao-in-Chi­ina brought a pow­er­ful Luce counter-strat­e­gy.’. . .”
  • “ . . . . News­cast­er Robert S. Allen report­ed, . . . . Luce has been pro­pa­gan­diz­ing and agi­tat­ing for anoth­er two-bil­lion dol­lar U.S. hand­out for Chi­ang for a long time. . . . And in Wash­ing­ton, prac­ti­cal­ly the whole Luce bureau has been work­ing full blast as part of the Chi­ang lob­by.’. . .”
  • “ . . . . Many of the activists in the lob­by were peo­ple whose fam­i­lies had worked in Chi­na as mis­sion­ar­ies, and now thought their her­itage was being thrown away. Among them were the direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Chi­na Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion and the Com­mit­tee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aid­ing Anti-Com­mu­nist Chi­na . . . . .”
  • “ . . . . These groups were peri­od­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by cam­paigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the exec­u­tive coun­cil of the AFL-CIO, the Amer­i­can Legion, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, and Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom. To many con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, Tai­wan became syn­ony­mous with anti-Com­mu­nism. In the atmos­phere of the 1950s, the fear of Red Chi­na kept nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble peo­ple from won­der­ing where all the mon­ey was com­ing from. . . .”
  • “ . . . . As prin­ci­pal direc­tor of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was dri­ven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Colum­nist Drew Pear­son, one of the few jour­nal­ists who main­tained an inter­est in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of Chi­na the “nerve cen­ter of the Chi­na Lob­by . . . .”
  • “ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is almost as astute as his knowl­edge of Chi­nese finance, and well before he entered the Tru­man cab­i­net, Kung picked Louis John­son as his per­son­al attor­ney. It may or may not be sig­nif­i­cant that, lat­er, when John­son became Sec­re­tary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advo­cates of Amer­i­can sup­port for For­mosa. . . .”
  • “ . . . . [From a Drew Pear­son column—D.E.] A move by a Chi­ang broth­er-in-law. . . . to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket at the expense of the Amer­i­can pub­lic . . . The broth­er-in-law is T.L. Soong, broth­er of For­eign Min­is­ter T.V. Soong, who for­mer­ly han­dled much of the three and a half bil­lion dol­lars worth of sup­plies which the Unit­ed States sent to Chi­na dur­ing the War. The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dal­las oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest mem­bers of the clan. Dur­ing Richard Nixon’s 1950 sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign, Dad­dy Kung dis­patched Younger Son to Los Ange­les to give the sen­a­tor dona­tions and encour­age­ment. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petro­le­um hold­ings, with oil prop­er­ties across Texas, Okla­homa, and Louisiana. At the (Nation­al­ist) Chi­nese embassy in Wash­ing­ton in 1956, Louis orga­nized the Cheyenne Oil Com­pa­ny. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for exam­ple, to John Daly, then vice-pres­i­dent for news of the (ABC Net­work), did poor­ly, Louis guar­an­teed that Daly would have his invest­ment back; if the well turned out to be a suc­cess, then the prof­its were divid­ed with Daly. . . .”

The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Harp­er & Row 1985 [HC]; Copy­right 1985 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; ISBN 0–06-015308–3; pp. 443–448.

2.  Pre­sent­ing an overview updat­ing the oper­a­tions of T.V. Soong, Ster­ling Sea­grave recounts his ascent to the pin­na­cles of pow­er, his cor­po­rate largesse in Amer­i­ca derived from clever invest­ment and his major par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crim­i­nal under­world of Kuom­intang nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and klep­toc­ra­cy and his pur­loin­ing of mas­sive amounts of U.S. aid to Chi­na dur­ing World War II.

Note, T.V.’s role in the Chi­na Lob­by: “ . . . . Although T.V. avoid­ed Tai­wan, and devot­ed most of his atten­tion to his expand­ing finan­cial empire, he did back the Chi­na Lob­by finan­cial­ly because it was in his inter­est to do so. The levers of the Chi­na Lob­by could be worked in many direc­tions. . . .”

Note, also, his grav­i­tas with the lethal, pow­er­ful Chi­nese orga­nized crime milieu in the U.S.: “ . . . . It was not so much implied that T.V. him­self was dan­ger­ous but that the slight­est word from him could bring about ter­ri­ble con­se­quences from the Chi­nese tongs or syn­di­cates, the Chi­nese banks, and name­less oth­er objects of fear. . . .”

The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Harp­er & Row 1985 [HC]; Copy­right 1985 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; ISBN 0–06-015308–3; p. 453.

3. In FTR#1142, we detailed the lit­tle-known involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek in the 1943 con­fer­ences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek was the sis­ter of T.V. Soong, one of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ters and the rich­est man in the world at one time.)

This low-pro­file involve­ment appar­ent­ly gave them con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas in help­ing to shape the post­war geopo­lit­i­cal agen­da.

In that con­text and in rela­tion to the ongo­ing series on Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist gov­ern­ment, it is worth not­ing the deep polit­i­cal agen­da that was gov­ern­ing U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy by Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945–the day on which the treaty end­ing World War II in the Pacif­ic was signed on board the deck of the U.S. S. Mis­souri. 

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.

One of the best-kept and least-dis­cussed secrets of ear­ly Cold War plan­ning took place some­time before the sur­ren­der of Japan. It had a great impact upon the selec­tion of Korea and Indochi­na as the loca­tions of the ear­ly “Cold War” hos­til­i­ties between the Com­mu­nists and the anti-Com­mu­nists.

Despite the ter­rif­ic dam­age done to main­land Japan by aer­i­al bom­bard­ment, even before the use of atom­ic bombs, the inva­sion of Japan had been con­sid­ered to be an essen­tial pre­lude to vic­to­ry and to “uncon­di­tion­al” sur­ren­der. Plan­ning for this inva­sion had been under way for years. As soon as the island of Oki­nawa became avail­able as the launch­ing site for this oper­a­tion, sup­plies and equip­ment for an inva­sion force of at least half a mil­lion men began to be stacked up, fif­teen to twen­ty feet high, all over the island.

Then, with the ear­ly sur­ren­der of Japan, this mas­sive inva­sion did not occur, and the use of this enor­mous stock­pile of mil­i­tary equip­ment was not nec­es­sary. Almost imme­di­ate­ly, U.S. Navy trans­port ves­sels began to show up in Naha Har­bor, Oki­nawa. This vast load of war mate­r­i­al was reloaded onto those ships. 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? . . . .

4. The Cold War in Asia, includ­ing the Kore­an War and atten­dant insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the Amer­i­can­iza­tion of Gold­en Lily prof­its had its gen­e­sis in the influ­ence of the Kuom­intang in the Cairo and Tehran talks dur­ing 1943.

In addi­tion to Chi­ang Kai-shek him­self, his wife (the for­mer Mei-Ling Soon, sis­ter of T.V. Soong) played an impor­tant part in the nego­ti­a­tions.

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; p. 13.

. . . . Although the alliance between the West and the Sovi­et Union dur­ing WWII had been weld­ed in the heat of bat­tle, it had nev­er been on too firm a foot­ing. This was espe­cial­ly true of its struc­ture in the Far East. The Chi­nese leader, Chi­ang Kai-shek, was as much a dic­ta­tor as either Hitler or Mus­soli­ni. . . .

. . . . In this cli­mate, Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt maneu­vered to have Chi­ang Kai-shek join him in Cairo or a Novem­ber 22–26, 1943, meet­ing with Churchill. Roo­sevelt want­ed to cre­ate the atmos­phere of a “Big Four” by plac­ing Chi­ang on the world stage. Chi­ang appeared in Cairo, along with his attrac­tive and pow­er­ful wife, Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek—nee Mei- Ling Soong, daugh­ter of Char­lie Jones Soong and sis­ter of T.V. Soong, at that time the wealth­i­est man in the world [and Chi­ang Kai-shek’s finance minister—D.E.]. Few pic­tures pro­duce dur­ing WWII have been more strik­ing than those of Chi­ang and Roo­sevelt “appar­ent­ly” jok­ing with each oth­er on one side and an “appar­ent­ly” con­vivial Churchill and Madame Chi­ang smil­ing togeth­er on the oth­er. . . .

. . . . With the close of the Cairo Con­fer­ence, the Churchill and Roo­sevelt del­e­ga­tions flew to Tehran for their own first meet­ing with Mar­shal Stal­in. This much was released to the pub­lic. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chi­ang and the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion were also present at the Tehran Con­fer­ence of Novem­ber 28-Decem­ber 1, 1943. . . .

5. In FTR#1142, 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.

As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams in an inter­view with Daniel Junas, the Kore­an War was a huge eco­nom­ic boom for Japan, and gen­er­at­ed con­sid­er­able prof­it for Ger­man firms as well. Thyssen, for exam­ple, won lucra­tive con­tracts for mak­ing steel for the war effort. Is there some con­nec­tion between the Kodama/Dulles pres­ence in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of war linked to the Gold­en Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus?

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. . . . 

6. Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, John Fos­ter Dulles made a star­tling­ly pre­scient speech in South Korea, augur­ing North Kore­a’s inva­sion short­ly there­after.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in delib­er­ate­ly lur­ing the North Kore­ans to invade, in a man­ner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambas­sador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have bait­ed Sad­dam Hus­sein into invad­ing Kuwait.

Note, also, Dulles’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Syn­g­man Rhee and Chi­ang Kai-shek as Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men. Chi­ang Kai-shek’s redemp­tion­ist cre­den­tials are high­light­ed in some of the pas­sages above.

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. 38–39.

. . . . It was this same John Fos­ter Dulles in Korea, serv­ing as no more than a “bipar­ti­san con­sul­tant” to the Depart­ment of State in June 1950, who had said, “No mat­ter what you say about the pres­i­dent of Korea [Syn­g­man Rhee] and the pres­i­dent of Nation­al­ist Chi­na [Chi­ang Kai-shek], these two gen­tle­men are the equiv­a­lent of the founder of the church . . . . they are Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men.”

Then, while still in Korea, on June 19, 1950, John Fos­ter Dulles made a most unusu­al speech before the Kore­an par­lia­ment: “The Amer­i­can peo­ple wel­come you as an equal part­ner in the great com­pa­ny of those who make up the free world. . . . I say to you: You are not alone. You will nev­er be alone so long as you con­tin­ue to play worthi­ly your part in the great design of human free­dom.”

The Kore­ans, tak­en com­plete­ly by sur­prise, won­dered what he meant by those words. Less than one week lat­er, when the North Kore­ans invad­ed South Korea, they found out. On the very next Sun­day, while Dulles was still in Japan, the Kore­an War broke out with an attack on the south by the North Kore­ans. For some­one of his stature—a senior part­ner of the largest law firm in New York City, Sul­li­van & Cromwell, and a man who had found a world­wide plat­form in the World Coun­cil of Churches—these had been most unusu­al state­ments on many counts. They were sur­passed only by his “pre­dic­tion” of the out­break of the Kore­an War at that time. As for his oth­er state­ment about “Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men,” few there are who have held the same opin­ion of Pres­i­dent Rhee and Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lat­ter. . . .

7. 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.

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.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 235–236.

. . . .  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. . . .

8. The pro­gram con­cludes 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. “. . . . 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 . . .”

“Paik Sun-yup, South Kore­an Gen­er­al Seen as Hero or Trai­tor, Dies at 99” by Choe Sang-Hun; The New York Times; 7/15/2020; p. A22.

Paik Sun-yup, South Kore­a’s first four-star gen­er­al, who was lion­ized as a Kore­an War hero by the South Kore­an and Unit­ed States mil­i­taries but dis­missed by many in his coun­try as a trai­tor, died here on Fri­day. He was 99. . . .

. . . . Though wide­ly cred­it­ed for lead­ing his troops in a piv­otal bat­tle of the Kore­an War, Mr. Paik was a divi­sive fig­ure in his home coun­try. In 2009, a South Kore­an pres­i­den­tial com­mit­tee put him on a list of “pro-Japan­ese and anti-nation” fig­ures who had col­lab­o­rat­ed with Japan­ese col­o­niz­ers dur­ing their rule of the Kore­an Penin­su­la. . . .

. . . . 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, though Mr. Paik said he had nev­er engaged in bat­tles with them.

He was a first lieu­tenant when Japan was defeat­ed in World War II and Korea was lib­er­at­ed. After the coun­try was divid­ed into the pro-Amer­i­can South and the Com­mu­nist North, Mr. Paik was among the Kore­ans in Japan’s colo­nial mil­i­tary who were recruit­ed when the Unit­ed States was help­ing to build a mil­i­tary for the South. . . .

. . . . IF Paik Sun-yup is called a ‘hero,’ what does that make Kore­an inde­pen­dence fight­ers who lost their lives at the hand of his old Manchuria unit?” asked Kim Won-woong, the head of Her­itage of Kore­an Inde­pen­dence, a group rec­og­nized by the gov­ern­ment for its mem­bers’ strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.

“If he real­ly want­ed to be treat­ed like ‘a Kore­an War hero,’ he should at least have expressed repen­tance and remorse for his pro-Japan­ese deed,” Mr. Kim added, in an inter­view pub­lished last year. “But he nev­er has.”

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