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COMMENT: Mr. Emory does not share his fel­low “Baby Boomers’ ” infat­u­a­tion with the late John Lennon.

That notwith­stand­ing, Lennon’s mur­der appears to have been a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed assas­si­na­tion and Mark David Chap­man was­n’t the killer.

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and rel­e­vant aspects of the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing Lennon, his mur­der and the behav­ior of Yoko Ono con­cerns the back­ground of the wife/widow, her father’s work as a banker for Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pri­or to World War II and his piv­otal work in the finan­cial indus­try after the war.

The arti­cle below is on Mr. Emory’s Patre­on plat­form.

What Did Yoko Ono’s Father Do in World War II?

The sto­ry of Yasu­ki Ono (the spelling varies with translit­er­a­tion) is the sto­ry of Japan­ese pow­er structure—the pow­er of the zaibat­su and that of the Emper­or of Japan. (The zaibat­su are the giant fam­i­ly trusts that have dom­i­nat­ed the Japan­ese econ­o­my since the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry).

Yasu­ki Ono is the father of Yoko Ono.

The role of the zaibat­su in Japan is detailed in one of the mag­nif­i­cent books authored by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave: “ . . . . Each zaibat­su was a self-con­tained com­mer­cial empire, with its own mines, work­ers, fac­to­ries, banks, insur­ance com­pa­nies, ocean fleets and export agen­cies. They were mod­elled on the long-estab­lished Mit­sui fam­i­ly com­mer­cial empire. . . . These four new zaibat­su were Mit­subishi, Sum­it­o­mo, Yasu­da and Iwasa­ki. . . .” (1)

Yasu­da Zen­z­aburō is the adopt­ed son of Yasu­da, the founder of the pow­er­ful Yasu­da zaibat­su. He is also the mater­nal grand­fa­ther of Yoko Ono. “ . . . . Yasuda’s adopt­ed son, Yasu­da Zen­z­aburō is the mater­nal grand­fa­ther of artist and singer Yoko Ono, the wid­ow of musi­cian John Lennon. . . .” ) (2)

As not­ed above, Mit­subishi is one of the most pow­er­ful of the zaibat­su. “ . . . . Mit­subishi’s mar­ket posi­tion at the war’s end in 1945 was described by a West­ern econ­o­mist as being equiv­a­lent to the merg­er of U.S. Steel, Gen­er­al Motors, Stan­dard Oil, Alcoa, Dou­glas Air­craft, Dupont, West­ing­house, AT & T Nation­al City Bank, Wool­worth Stores and Hilton Hotels. . . .” (3)

Before turn­ing to the sub­ject of Yosu­ki Ono and the Yoko­homa Specie Bank, renamed the Bank of Tokyo, we take note of Mitsubishi’s cen­tral role in the var­i­ous aspects of Japan’s pros­e­cu­tion of WWII, the use of slave labor to fur­ther its wartime enter­pris­es and its role in Japan’s sys­tem­at­ic drug­ging of Asia with hero­in.

The cen­tral firm in the pro­duc­tion of ships for Japan’s Navy in World War II, Mit­subishi was very close to Admi­ral Yamamo­to (who led the attack on Pearl Har­bor), who checked in on the firm’s projects to make sure they were pro­gress­ing prop­er­ly. (4)

Mit­subishi was deeply involved with the hero­in trade used to sub­ju­gate Japan­ese-occu­pied Asia and to enrich the zaibat­su and asso­ci­at­ed crim­i­nal and nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments. “ . . . . The [opi­um] was con­vert­ed into mor­phine and hero­in at fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea and Tai­wan, then smug­gled direct­ly across the strait on motor­ized junks, to main­land ware­hous­es owned by Mit­sui, Mit­subishi and oth­er con­glom­er­ates. An army fac­to­ry in Seoul that pro­duced over 2,600 kilos of hero­in in 1938–1939 was only one of sev­er­al hun­dred fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea, Tai­wan, and in Japan­ese con­ces­sions in main­land cities like Han­kow. . . .” (5)

Dur­ing WWII, Mit­subishi was a pro­lif­ic user of Allied POWs as slave labor. The company’s ongo­ing clout is exem­pli­fied by the hir­ing of for­mer U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan William T. Foley as a lob­by­ist:  “. . . . After retir­ing as ambas­sador and return­ing to Wash­ing­ton, Foley open­ly became a paid lob­by­ist for Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion as a mem­ber of its advi­so­ry pan­el on strat­e­gy. Mit­subishi was among the biggest employ­ers of Amer­i­can slave labor dur­ing the war. . . .” (6)

“Rut­land of Jut­land,” Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence and Mit­subishi

One of the pio­neers of naval avi­a­tion, Fred­er­ick Rut­land gained fame fly­ing a plane from the tur­ret of a British bat­tle cruis­er dur­ing the bat­tle of Jut­land dur­ing World War I. Fol­low­ing the con­flict, an affair with a mar­ried woman sul­lied his rep­u­ta­tion and social stand­ing. Decamp­ing to Japan (a mil­i­tary ally of Britain dur­ing the First World War), Rut­land found a dif­fer­ent call­ing.

Rut­land went to work for Mit­subishi, engaged in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of over­lap­ping activ­i­ty on behalf of Japan. “. . . . The attaché arranged for Rut­land a job in Japan with Mit­subishi, teach­ing Japan­ese avi­a­tors how to con­duct deck land­ings on air­craft car­ri­ers.²⁹ . . . .” (7)

Rutland’s har­nessed his exper­tise on behalf of Japan­ese Naval air pro­cure­ment. “ . . . . He con­fessed that after World War I he had accept­ed a lucra­tive con­tract with Mit­subishi to help devel­op air­craft under­car­riages for the Impe­r­i­al Navy. . . .” (8)

He also obtained train­er air­craft for Mit­subishi: “ . . . . In 1936, he took a posi­tion as a sales agent for the Secu­ri­ty Air­craft Com­pa­ny (lat­er mov­ing to Fletch­er Air­craft) and sold sev­er­al train­er planes to Mit­subishi in Japan. . . .” (9)

Opin­ions dif­fer as to the sig­nif­i­cance of Rutland’s spy­ing for the Japan­ese war effort. Some see his role as piv­otal. “ . . . . In a notable 2006 arti­cle, Max Ever­est-Phillips expan­sive­ly claimed that Rut­land was a key Japan­ese agent who ‘did indeed facil­i­tate Japan’s capac­i­ty to devel­op air­craft car­ri­ers, the tech­nol­o­gy that enabled Japan in 1941 to launch a ‘first strike’ attack on the U.S. Pacif­ic,’. . . . Ever­est-Phillips essen­tial­ly claims that Rut­land was a major cause of Pearl Har­bor. . . .” (10)

Rutland’s pay­mas­ter for his activ­i­ties was Yoko Ono’s father (again, the spelling of his first name varies with translit­er­a­tion.) “. . . . By 1933, Rut­land was a high­ly com­pen­sat­ed employ­ee of the Japan­ese Navy and, as not­ed, was in per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the direc­tor of Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence and oth­er high-rank­ing Navy offi­cers. . . . The pay­mas­ter for the Japan­ese Navy after Rut­land moved to Los Ange­les was Eiichi Ono, father of singer Yoko Ono. . . .” (11)

Going For Gold: Ono’s Post-World War II Career

Yosu­ki Ono’s career tra­jec­to­ry is, per­haps, even more inter­est­ing in the post-Sec­ond World War peri­od. To prop­er­ly under­stand that tra­jec­to­ry, it is nec­es­sary to syn­op­size Emper­or Hirohito’s per­son­al wealth and its rela­tion­ship to the suc­cess­ful, mas­sive loot­ing of occu­pied Asia by Japan under the Gold­en Lily pro­gram.

A use­ful start­ing place would be the Yoko­homa Specie Bank, lat­er renamed the Bank of Tokyo. Emper­or Hiro­hi­to owned 25 per­cent of the bank, which was the most impor­tant Japan­ese finan­cial insti­tu­tion for trans­fer­ring sig­nif­i­cant amounts of cap­i­tal abroad. “. . . . Hiro­hi­to owned near­ly one-fourth of the Yoko­homa Specie Bank, Japan’s offi­cial for­eign-exchange bank, known today as the Bank of Tokyo. He also held large stock port­fo­lios in twen­ty-nine con­glom­er­ates, includ­ing the Mit­sui, Mit­subishi, Sum­it­o­mo and Yasu­da zaibat­su, which prof­it­ed rich­ly from pro­duc­ing weapons, air­craft and muni­tions for the Japan­ese Army, and doing busi­ness in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. . . .” (12)

It was this insti­tu­tion which trans­ferred the bulk of the impe­r­i­al wealth abroad: “. . . . The fam­i­ly owned a 25 per­cent con­trol­ling inter­est, and there­fore it was the major instru­ment used in the move­ment of large cur­ren­cy cred­its and oth­er liq­uid assets to Switzer­land, where Yoko­homa Specie Bank had a branch and cor­re­spon­dent rela­tions with Swiss and Ger­man banks. . . . once [Lord Privy Seal Koichi] Kido had dis­patched a Japan­ese impe­r­i­al couri­er plane with fight­er escort to Hong Kong and Macao and oth­er sites with impe­r­i­al kilo bars they quick­ly became a deposit cred­it in the Swiss receiv­er bank. 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 to var­i­ous zaibat­su com­pa­nies . . . .” (13)

As men­tioned above, the Yoko­homa Specie Bank (lat­er renamed the Bank of Tokyo) was used to move the Emperor’s wealth abroad. That wealth accrued, in part, from the mas­sive loot­ing of Asia under the Gold­en Lily pro­gram. “ . . . . it became evi­dent that over a peri­od of decades Japan had loot­ed bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of gold, plat­inum, dia­monds, and oth­er trea­sure, from all over East and South­east Asia. Much of this had reached Japan by sea, or over­land from Chi­na through Korea, but a lot had been hid­den in the Philip­pines.” (14)

It is in the oper­a­tional con­text of the immense amount of loot­ed wealth and its exfil­tra­tion to clan­des­tine hid­ing places and legit­i­mate repos­i­to­ries that we can appre­ci­ate the posi­tion of Yosu­ki Ono in the post-war finan­cial land­scape.

When the clan­des­tine Japan­ese war loot was re-cycled into the post­war eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture of the West, the Bank of Tokyo with Yosu­ki Ono as its head was of pri­ma­ry impor­tance.

The Unit­ed King­dom is exem­plary in this regard. Schroder­bank of Lon­don was a point ele­ment in the re-insti­tu­tion of Japan­ese finance. “. . . . An espe­cial­ly strong bond was forged with the Bank of Tokyo. Their rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Yosu­ki Ono . . . .” (15)

Again, this was a key ele­ment in the post­war ascent of Japan­ese eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture: “. . . . Anoth­er impor­tant devel­op­ment was the open­ing of a branch by the Bank of Tokyo [the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank] of a Lon­don Branch in 1952 . . . .” (16)

Fol­low­ing in the Bank of Tokyo’s wake, oth­er key Japan­ese banks re-entered the UK, includ­ing the San­wa Bank, which held the fab­u­lous­ly wealthy and secre­tive Showa Trust. (17)

Exem­pli­fy­ing the political/financial land­scape to which Yosu­ki Ono belonged, the Showa Trust gives us an idea of the scale of the monies that clan­des­tine­ly under­wrote the post-World War II world. “ . . . . We doc­u­ment how a secret trust was set up at San­wa Bank, joint­ly held by Gen­er­al MacArthur and his old adver­sary Emper­or Hiro­hi­to. This account, known as the Showa Trust after Hirohito’s reign title, was so big that by 1982 it was pay­ing near­ly $1 bil­lion inter­est per year. . . .” (18)

Yoko Ono and the Assas­si­na­tion of John Lennon

Yosu­ki Ono’s back­ground casts his daughter’s behav­ior vis a vis the assas­si­na­tion of John Lennon in an inter­est­ing light.

No only does the avail­able evi­dence sug­gest that Mark David Chap­man was a mind-con­trolled pat­sy, but the facts of Lennon’s killing point in the direc­tion of a vet­er­an of the CIA’s anti-Cas­tro milieu. The phys­i­cal evi­dence con­tra­dicts the cov­er sto­ry of Lennon as the vic­tim of Chap­man: “ . . . . There is one major prob­lem with the sto­ry of Chap­man as Lennon’s lone assas­sin: Lennon was struck by four bul­lets on the left side of his body when Chap­man was on his right side. . . .” (19)

As will be seen below, Yoko Ono’s behav­ior with regard to John Lennon’s corpse is prob­lem­at­ic and rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­plic­i­ty. There was some­one who was posi­tioned to the left of Lennon: “There was a man who was stand­ing on Lennon’s left when Lennon was shot: the door­man. He was iden­ti­fied in 1987 by Peo­ple magazine’s James Gaines as José San­jenís Per­do­mo, an anti-Cas­tro sniper who was part of the CIA’s Cuban exile inva­sion of Cuba in April 1961. In pre-Cas­tro Cuba, Per­do­mo had been a Chief of Police under the regime of Car­los Prios and dic­ta­tor Ful­gen­cio Batista.[3] Alleged­ly, he helped coor­di­nate a CIA assas­si­na­tion squad in Cuba and was the con­trol offi­cer that CIA assigned to Frank Stur­gis when Stur­gis joined the CIA in 1958 (Stur­gis was involved in both the JFK assas­si­na­tion and Water­gate break-in). . . . ” (20)

It was the opin­ion of at least one eye­wit­ness that Per­do­mo may have been the gun­man: “ . . . . One of the first police offi­cers at the mur­der scene, Peter Cullen, believed that a handy-man had pulled the trig­ger but Per­do­mo con­vinced him oth­er­wise. A wit­ness point­ed to the left side of Lennon, say­ing he’s the one that did the shoot­ing,’ refer­ring to Per­do­mo. . . .” (21)

There are numer­ous indi­ca­tions of an intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­spir­a­cy to kill Lennon and the Covert Action Mag­a­zine arti­cle and the Gronow­icz text doc­u­ment those exten­sive­ly. For our pur­pos­es, the behav­ior of Yoko Ono in her husband’s mur­der and its after­math is sig­nif­i­cant.

Despite the fact that Chap­man was to Lennon’s right and the shots came in from his left, indi­cat­ing that Chap­man could not have been the actu­al trig­ger­man, Ono had her husband’s body cre­mat­ed 36 hours after the killing, pre­clud­ing a seri­ous foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion: “ . . . . Accord­ing to Gronow­icz, Lennon’s wid­ow Yoko Ono’s behav­ior was very sus­pi­cious around the time of the assas­si­na­tion. She had his body cre­mat­ed on Decem­ber 10, a mere 36 hours after Lennon was shot. . . .” (22)

Inter­est­ing­ly, short­ly before his assas­si­na­tion, Lennon backed a strike by work­ers against the Japan­ese Food Cor­po­ra­tion, part of the cor­po­rate milieu that spawned both Yoko Ono and her father: “ . . . . John was also resum­ing his polit­i­cal activism, trav­el­ing to the West Coast to sup­port a Japan­ese work­ers’ strike against the Japan Foods Cor­po­ra­tion (JPC), whose dynas­tic own­ers were peers of Ono’s fam­i­ly. . . .” (23)

Yoko Ono’s lat­er behav­ior sug­gests her affin­i­ty for Japan­ese fas­cism: “ . . . . Gronow­icz sees polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in Ono’s stand­ing by Chica­go May­or Rahm Emmanuel in June 2015 as he announced the restora­tion of a Shin­to tem­ple that had been burned down in retal­i­a­tion for the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor. Shin­to­ism had served as the state reli­gion in fas­cist Japan and was employed to jus­ti­fy the vast num­ber of Japan­ese atroc­i­ties. Gronow­icz writes that Ono’s actions ‘fit in well with Washington’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Japan to coun­ter­bal­ance the grow­ing pow­er of Chi­na.’ . . . .” (24)

Con­clu­sion

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing con­sid­er­a­tion in ana­lyz­ing “The Fam­i­ly Ono” is what the bril­liant Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott termed “Deep Pol­i­tics.” Yosu­ki Ono’s bank­ing career places him at the nexus of big inter­na­tion­al finance, nation­al secu­ri­ty and espi­onage. That his daugh­ter may have fol­lowed in his espi­onage foot­steps is some­thing to be con­sid­ered.

The Bank of Tokyo (for­mer­ly the Yoko­homa Specie Bank) is con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant in the con­stel­la­tion of big inter­na­tion­al finance and its foun­da­tion of loot­ed wealth tak­en from both Europe and Asia.

Yosu­ki Ono was also involved with Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence, an espi­onage man­i­fes­ta­tion.

His daughter’s posi­tion in the zaibat­su milieu and her [per­haps] telling behav­ior in cre­mat­ing Lennon’s corpse so soon after his mur­der and thus pre­clud­ing foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion that would have demol­ished the cov­er sto­ry and [per­haps] led to expo­sure of the real assas­sins might be deriv­a­tive of her father’s posi­tion at the finance/intelligence junc­tion.

 Notes

1.– The Yam­a­to Dynasty; Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Copy­right 1999 by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave; Broad­way Books [a divi­sion of Ran­dom House] [HC]; ISBN 0–7679-0496–6; p. 120.

2.—“Yasuda Zen­jirō;” Wikipedia.org.

3.– Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 55.

4.—For The Record #970: “Par­ty­ing Like It’s 1932.” https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-970-partying-like-its-1932-part-2-the-japanese-deep-state/

5.– Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. 35–36.

6.—Ibid.; p.242.

7.– “Agent Shinkawa Revis­it­ed: The Japan­ese Navy’s Estab­lish­ment of the Rut­land Intel­li­gence Net­work in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia” by Ron Drabkin & Bradley W. Hart; Tay­lor and Fran­cis Online; 04/09/2021. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2020.1871252#abstract.

8.—Idem.

9.—Idem.

10.—Idem.

11.—Idem.

12.– The Yam­a­to Dynasty; Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Copy­right 1999 by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave; Broad­way Books [a divi­sion of Ran­dom House] [HC]; ISBN 0–7679-0496–6; p. 223.

13.– Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 122–123.

14.– Gold War­riors-Amer­i­ca’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–85984-542–8; p. 96.

15.– Schroders: Mer­chants and Bankers by Richard Roberts; The Macmil­lan Press Ltd. [HC]; Copy­right J. Hen­ry Schroder Wagg & Co. Ltd. 1992; ISBN 0–333-4511–2; pp. 302–303.

16.—Ibid.; p. 335.

17.—Idem.

18.– Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 10.

19.– “What Three Let­ters of the Alpha­bet Link John Lennon’s Mur­der to the Mur­ders of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?” by Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 12/08/2023; Care­less Genius: John Lennon and His Mater­nal Demon by Antho­ny Gronow­icz; Palin­drome Books, 2022, p. 107.

20.— James R. Gaines, “In the Shad­ows a Killer Wait­ed” by James R. Gaines Peo­ple Mag­a­zine; March 2, 1987; Care­less Genius: John Lennon and His Mater­nal Demon by Antho­ny Gronow­icz; Palin­drome Books, 2022; p. 16.

21.– Care­less Genius: John Lennon and His Mater­nal Demon by Antho­ny Gronow­icz; Palin­drome Books, 2022; p. 16.

22.—Ibid.; “What Three Let­ters of the Alpha­bet Link John Lennon’s Mur­der to the Mur­ders of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?” by Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 12/08/2023.

23.—Idem.

24.– Care­less Genius: John Lennon and His Mater­nal Demon by Antho­ny Gronow­icz; Palin­drome Books, 2022; p. 141.