Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Kodama Yoshio' is associated with 7 posts.

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

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

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 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:

1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . 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. . . .”
3.–“. . . . 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. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘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.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . 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.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . 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 . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . 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. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . 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 . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘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. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [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. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . 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 . . .”


FTR#1206 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 13

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.

First, we high­light Fred J. Cook’s ana­lyt­i­cal account of the McCarthy peri­od, The Night­mare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Depart­ment [Com­mu­nist] treach­ery had “lost” Chi­na to Mao and his forces.

Exploit­ing the meme that “pinko” State Depart­ment offi­cials were respon­si­ble for Mao’s ascen­dance, McCarthy and his team suc­cess­ful­ly purged the State Depart­ment of offi­cials whose out­look on Chi­ang Kai-shek was real­is­tic.

The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Orga­nized Crime as well as in ear­li­er pro­grams in this series, illus­trates this kind of activ­i­ty.

In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed the piv­otal influ­ence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of Don­ald Trump. We won­der what influ­ence Cohn and the McCarthy lega­cy may have had on Trump’s pol­i­cy toward Chi­na.

Aside from the airy pre­sump­tion that Chi­na was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s the­sis ignored the effects of U.S. pol­i­cy in that coun­try before, dur­ing and after, World War II. (This trans­gres­sion is, of course, sup­ple­men­tal to Tail­gun­ner Joe’s fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against those he tar­get­ed.)

In addi­tion to sup­port for Chi­ang Kai-Shek, whom Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well com­pared to Mus­soli­ni, U.S. pol­i­cy of using scores of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants was loath­some to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion, who had felt the full mea­sure of Japan­ese atroc­i­ty dur­ing years of war­fare.

Leaf­ing through Night­mare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a pas­sage read into the record in AFA #11.

More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the offi­cial con­clu­sion of the hos­til­i­ties of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was coun­te­nanc­ing the use of 80,000 Japan­ese troops (rough­ly eight divi­sions) as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria alone!

The tran­si­tion to the Cold War from the Sec­ond World War also saw the inci­dent that became the sig­na­ture ele­ment of the John Birch Soci­ety.

In AFA#11, we set forth the event: ” . . . . Soci­ety fig­ure­head John Birch was the intel­li­gence offi­cer for Gen­er­al Claire Chenault’s Fly­ing Tigers in World War II, sub­se­quent­ly serv­ing with the OSS Chi­na con­tin­gent. Birch was killed recruit­ing Chi­nese col­lab­o­ra­tionst troops to fight the Chi­nese com­mu­nists. (These col­lab­o­ra­tionist forces had served the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II.) Com­ing lit­tle more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacif­ic, his death was her­ald­ed by the Amer­i­can right as ‘the begin­ning of World War III.’ . . . .”

One of the sig­na­ture pro­pa­gan­da gam­bits in the New Cold War against Chi­na is the Uighur Geno­cide myth. A polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy, root­ed in decades of manip­u­la­tion of the Chi­nese Uighur minor­i­ty, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort in Xin­jiang province, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort derives from dynam­ics dat­ing to the Chi­nese civ­il war over­lap­ping and fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War.

(We have cov­ered the Uighur desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paigns in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing [most recent­ly] FTR#’s 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179 and 1180.)

Isa Yusuf Alptekin is the patri­arch of the Uighur sep­a­ratist move­ment. He was aligned with Chi­ang Kai-shek dur­ing the Chi­nese civ­il war, espous­ing the doc­tri­naire Anti-Com­mu­nism char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Kuom­intang milieu and endear­ing Alptekin’s move­ment and suc­ces­sors to Amer­i­can and West­ern Cold War­riors.

“ . . . . The found­ing father of this sep­a­ratist move­ment was Isa Yusuf Alptekin. His son, Erkin Alptekin, found­ed the WUC and served as the organization’s inau­gur­al pres­i­dent. The senior Alptekin is referred to as “our late leader” by the WUC and cur­rent Pres­i­dent Dolkun Isa. . . . Dur­ing the Chi­nese Civ­il War that raged between the nation­al­ists and com­mu­nists from 1945 to ’49, Alptekin served under the nation­al­ist Kuom­intang (KMT) admin­is­tra­tion in Xin­jiang. Through­out this peri­od, the KMT received mas­sive mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic back­ing from the Unit­ed States — includ­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in cash and mil­i­tary hard­ware, along with the deploy­ment of tens of thou­sands of US marines — in an effort to quash the Chi­nese rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, the Uighur sep­a­ratist milieu incor­po­rates Islamists allied with both Al-Qae­da and ele­ments of ISIS, as well as Pan-Turk­ists allied with the Nation­al Action (also Nation­al Move­ment) Party—a doc­tri­naire fas­cist, revan­chist body whose youth wing—the Grey Wolves—constitute the “Stay Behind” NATO cadre in Turkey.

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:

1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . 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. . . .”
3.–“. . . . 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. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘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.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . 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.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . 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 . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . 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. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . 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 . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘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. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [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. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . 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. . . .”


FTR#1201 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 8

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

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

The broad­cast begins with review of the denoue­ment of the Siang inci­dent, detailed in FTR#1200.

Points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Eventually, Chi­ang grudg­ing­ly agreed to the coali­tion, appar­ent­ly after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chi­ang got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. “ . . . . The Young Mar­shal gal­lant­ly accept­ed all blame for the Sian Inci­dent, allow­ing Chi­ang to wash his hands in pub­lic and wipe them on him. (Inter­est­ing­ly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done Chi­na a his­toric ser­vice by bring­ing about the long-sought unit­ed front, what­ev­er its lat­er fail­ings. . . .”
2.–Chiang’s reluc­tant agree­ment was trum­pet­ed by Hen­ry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chi­ang and Mme. Chi­ang] on the cov­er of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chi­ang now became an even big­ger inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. . . .”
3.–As was his wont, Chi­ang broke his promise to the Young Mar­shal and Gen­er­al Yang. Laud­ed by Hen­ry Luce and his asso­ciates as an Exem­plary Chris­t­ian, Chi­ang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he prompt­ly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Fri­day mes­sage to Chi­na that spring of 1937, Chi­ang referred to the Sian Inci­dent and said pious­ly, ‘Remem­ber­ing that Christ enjoined us to for­give those who sin against us until sev­en­ty times sev­en and upon their repen­tance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
3.–Similar treat­ment was afford­ed Gen­er­al Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-con­spir­a­tor, Gen­er­al Yang, despite the Good Fri­day amnesty, was impris­oned when he came back from Euro­pean exile and lan­guished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s spe­cial deten­tion camps near Chungk­ing. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve her­self to death. . . .”

On his last trip through Chi­na before decamp­ing to Tai­wan, Chi­ang ordered the exe­cu­tion of Gen­er­al Yang and his sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly: “ . . . . As long as he was in Chunk­ing any­way, the Gen­er­alis­si­mo stopped by police head­quar­ters to fin­ish off one remain­ing bit of ‘per­son­al’ busi­ness. In the Chunk­ing prison, there was still a pris­on­er who was very spe­cial. It was Yang Hu-Cheng, the war­lord who had joined the Young Mar­shal to kid­nap Chi­ang in the Sian Inci­dent. . . . For eleven years, Yang, a son, and a daugh­ter (along with a loy­al sec­re­tary and his wife) lan­guished in Tai-Li’s con­cen­tra­tion camp out­side Chunk­ing. Now, before leav­ing Chi­na for good, Chi­ang made this spe­cial trip just to sign Yang’s death war­rant. The old man, his son, his daugh­ter, his sec­re­tary, and the secretary’s wife were all tak­en out and shot. . . .”

A sig­na­ture episode in China’s World War II his­to­ry is what became known as the New Fourth Army Inci­dent.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–When the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Fourth Army, act­ing under the aus­pices of the accord wrest­ed from Chi­ang at Sian, was prepar­ing a cam­paign that would have dis­turbed a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese and Tu Yueh-sheng, it was ambushed by Kuom­intang gen­er­al Ku Chu‑t’ung. Ku Chu‑t’ung was the broth­er of Tu Yueh-sheng’s pow­er­ful har­bor boss Ku Tsu-chuan. “ . . . . Chiang’s defense of Chi­na was being por­trayed by T.V. Soong as a valiant defi­ance against Japan­ese hordes car­ried out assid­u­ous­ly by KMT gen­er­als. If so, it was pro­ceed­ing in a curi­ous fash­ion. Chi­ang was engag­ing in as lit­tle actu­al fight­ing as pos­si­ble. . . . Chi­ang was hus­band­ing his resources for a renew­al of his war with the Com­mu­nists. Once holed up in Chungk­ing, he let the peo­ple fend for them­selves. . . .”
2.–Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Chi­nese troops were capa­ble of defeat­ing the Japan­ese in bat­tle and enjoyed cel­e­bra­to­ry sup­port from the country’s pop­u­lace when they did so. This dynam­ic became cen­tral to the entreaties made (in vain) by Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well lat­er in the war and his sub­se­quent dis­missal and replace­ment: “ . . . . On only one occa­sion, a KMT army under Gen­er­al Li Tsung-jen proved that Chi­nese sol­diers could whip the Japan­ese when they had the will to do so, in the bat­tle of Taier­chuang in April 1938. Th Japan­ese in this instance were bad­ly beat­en and the peo­ple of Chi­na were elat­ed. But Chi­ang ordered the army not to pur­sue, and with­in weeks of Taier­chuang the Japan­ese had recov­ered the ini­tia­tive. . . .”
3.–Typical of the lethal­ly incom­pe­tent con­duct of the war by Chiang’s KMT armies was the Yel­low Riv­er dikes inci­dent. “ . . . . One of Chiang’s few attempts to slow the Japan­ese led him to dyna­mite the dikes on the Yel­low Riv­er. With­out warn­ing of any kind, three provinces, eleven cities, and four thou­sand vil­lages were flood­ed, two mil­lion peo­ple were made home­less, and all their crops were destroyed. The Japan­ese were only bogged down for three months. . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment tried to put the blame on the Japan­ese and the Tai­wan gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to do so today. [1985—D.E.] . . .”
4.–Taking prece­dence over fight­ing the Japan­ese was Chiang’s political/military pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of wag­ing civ­il war against the Com­mu­nists: “. . . . By 1940–41, Chiang’s sphere of influ­ence had shrunk while the Com­mu­nists’ area had, expand­ed at the expense of the Japan­ese. In the red area, sol­diers, gueril­las, and peas­ants were fight­ing furi­ous­ly and with results. But, each time the reds enlarged their perime­ter, Chi­ang had his army attack the Com­mu­nists instead of the Japan­ese, to keep his rivals from mak­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains. It was a war with­in a war. Chi­ang had half a mil­lion sol­diers occu­pied blockad­ing the red area in the North­west. . . .”
5.–Chiang’s anti-com­mu­nist strat­e­gy reached an extreme with the New Fourth Army Inci­dent. When a com­mu­nist army moved into an area in which the Green Gang and Japan­ese had estab­lished a coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship, it was ambushed: “ . . . . Part of the Unit­ed Front agree­ment involved putting Mao’s Red Army under joint KMT com­mand. . . . In 1941, the [Com­mu­nist] New Fourth Army was assigned to oper­ate under joint KMT-CCP com­mand along the south bank of the Yangtze Riv­er with­in the orbit of the Green Gang. . . .”
6.–Green Gang’s dope rack­ets had con­tin­ued in the area: “ . . . . The gang’s oper­a­tions had not seri­ous­ly dimin­ished because of the war. The gang oper­at­ed under the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion much as it had before, although Big-eared Tu, bear­ing the rank of gen­er­al in the KMTR, wide­ly moved to Chunk­ing. In his absence, the Shang­hai gang head­quar­ters was left in the hands of Tu’s har­bor boss, Ku Tsu-chuan. As a com­ple­ment Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang gave all mil­i­tary respon­si­bil­i­ties for the low­er Yangtze riv­er to Ku’s broth­er, Gen­er­al Ku Chu‑t’ung. . . .”
7.–The New Fourth Army was going to move against a rail­way. “ . . . . This was an area in which there was coop­er­a­tion between the Green Gang and the Japan­ese. In return for per­mit­ting its opi­um smug­gling and under­world oper­a­tions to go on unin­ter­rupt­ed, the Green Gang guar­an­teed the secu­ri­ty of Japan­ese gar­risons and enter­pris­es in the Yangtze Val­ley. . . .”
7.–“ . . . . Gen­er­al Ku, in con­sul­ta­tion with Chi­ang Kai-shek, decid­ed that the New Fourth Army was a threat to this fief­dom. . . .”
8.–Taking a safer route—to avoid being sent to an area which would have fed them into a Japan­ese ambush, the New Fourth Army left key parts of its troops and sup­port per­son­nel behind.
9.–“ . . . . sud­den­ly, ear­ly in Jan­u­ary, 1941, Gen­er­al Ku fell upon it with a much greater force and mas­sa­cred all but the head­quar­ters con­tin­gent and its women cadres and nurs­es. All five thou­sand com­bat sol­diers left behind as a guard were slain. Accord­ing to sur­vivors, the men of the head­quar­ters staff were then butchered. The KMT gen­er­al who had been com­mand­ing the New Fourth was arrest­ed, while the CCP polit­i­cal com­mis­sar of the unit—who had escaped the 1927 Shang­hai Massacre—was bru­tal­ly mur­dered. Mean­while the Com­mu­nist nurs­es and women polit­i­cal cadres, many of them school­girls, were being and raped repeat­ed­ly by hun­dreds of sol­diers. They were kept in army broth­els near the attack site for a year and a half. The women con­tract­ed vene­re­al dis­eases and some com­mit­ted sui­cide, singly and with each other’s help. . . .”
10.–General Ku Chu‑t’ung was reward­ed for this by Chi­ang, who made him com­man­der-in-chief of al KMT armies.

The pro­gram then reviews Gen­er­al Ku Chu-t’ung’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kodama Yoshio and the Japan­ese to–among oth­er things–re-sell them Amer­i­can Lend Lease goods that were flown Over the Hump or trav­el­ing via the equal­ly per­ilous Bur­ma Road. 

T.V. Soong’s broth­er T.L. Soong was in charge of the Lend-Lease pro­gram to Chi­na dur­ing World War II.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Japan­ese and the Kuom­intang offi­cer corps—who, it must be remem­bered, were also king­pins of the Green Gang crim­i­nal syndicate—was a con­sis­tent pat­tern. The KMT avoid­ed fight­ing the Japan­ese when­ev­er pos­si­ble, and formed com­mer­cial rela­tion­ships with the invaders:  “ . . . . bar­ter­ing Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­ri­als for Japan­ese con­sumer goods. For­tunes were made. The only KMT armies that did fight were those under Stilwell’s con­trol in Bur­ma . . . .”

Embody­ing the cor­rup­tion that was part and par­cel to the Kuom­intang military’s offi­cer corps (mint­ed at the Wham­poa acad­e­my), was Gen­er­al T’ang En-po. In addi­tion to his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Japan­ese invaders, he viewed his mil­i­tary com­mis­sion as license to steal and betray the men under his com­mand, as well as Chi­na and the Amer­i­can and oth­er Allies with which Chi­ang was offi­cial­ly arrayed.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis:

1.–General Tang En-po’s close asso­ci­a­tion with the Ku broth­ers and the Green Gang.
2.–General Tang En-po’s role in blow­ing up the Yel­low Riv­er dikes.
3.–His bar­ter­ing of Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­ri­als to the Japan­ese.
4.–His plun­der­ing of the peas­ants in areas under his mil­i­tary com­mand.
5.–His theft of pay from the troops under his com­mand.
6.–His army’s total capit­u­la­tion to the Japan­ese when the invaders launched their Oper­a­tion Ichi­go offen­sive of 1944.
7.–General Tang En-po was reward­ed by Chi­ang with the com­mand of 14 KMT divi­sions com­pris­ing the Third Front Army.
8.–His cozy rela­tion­ship with the Japan­ese who sur­ren­dered to his army at the war’s end.

Although the U.S. polit­i­cal leadership—as a whole—were blind to Chiang’s fas­cism, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic behav­ior and the insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion of his regime, the same was not true of many U.S. fight­ing men.

One of Chiang’s detrac­tors was a cel­e­brat­ed Marine Corps fli­er and mem­ber of Claire Chennault’s Fly­ing Tigers named Gre­go­ry “Pap­py” Boy­ing­ton.

Boy­ing­ton despised Chi­ang, Mme. Chi­ang and was loath to die in a P‑40 for some­one he rec­og­nized as a tyrant.

When the Gen­er­alis­si­mo and Mme. Chi­ang vis­it­ed the base of the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Corps (“The Fly­ing Tigers”), Boy­ing­ton and sev­er­al of his fel­low “Tigers” got liquored up and buzzed Chi­ang and wife, forc­ing both to “hit the deck.”

There was a prime-time TV series craft­ed on the tem­plate of Boyington’s Marine Corps squadron called “Ba, Ba Black Sheep” with the late Robert Con­rad play­ing Pap­py Boy­ing­ton.

Among the vehe­ment crit­ics of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek were U.S. fly­ers who had to make the run “Over the Hump”—the dan­ger­ous air sup­ply route that crossed the Himalayas.

(As we have already seen, U.S. Lend Lease mate­r­i­al that was flow through that route into Chi­na was often sold to the Japan­ese ene­my by cor­rupt Kuom­intang offi­cers, politi­cians and Green Gang func­tionar­ies.)

Fly­ing “Over the Hump” caused high casu­al­ties among Army Air Corps fly­ers, and when they dis­cov­ered the lux­u­ry items that Mme. Chi­ang includ­ed in her per­son­al bag­gage, they were out­raged. That out­rage found expres­sion.


FTR#1200 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 7

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

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

The pro­gram begins with review of the struc­ture of Chiang’s fas­cist infra­struc­ture, his secret police cadres in par­tic­u­lar.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Chiang trans­lat­ed his admi­ra­tion of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni into the most sin­cere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chi­ang believed that fas­cism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Max­i­mum Leader, and the spar­tan mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the cit­i­zens. The New Life Move­ment [the chief pro­mot­er of which was Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek] was the pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was com­ic enough not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by for­eign­ers in gen­er­al. The mis­sion­ar­ies . . . . were now eager­ly climb­ing aboard the New Life band­wag­on. . . .”
2.–There were three over­lap­ping orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments to Chiang’s fas­cist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics) which was run by the Ch’en broth­ers and the MBIS (the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en broth­ers and Tai Li were Green Gang asso­ciates of Chi­ang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hitler result­ed in the cre­ation of a new secret soci­ety mod­eled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chi­ang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their exis­tence repeat­ed­ly. They were an off­shoot of his two secret ser­vices, the par­ty gestapo under the Ch’en broth­ers, and the mil­i­tary secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret polit­i­cal police: “ . . . . Chi­ang came to depend heav­i­ly on the two nephews of his Green Gang men­tor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The old­er nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had orga­nized and head­ed the dri­ve that recruit­ed sev­en thou­sand Green Gang youths for the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my had since then been giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a gestapo orga­ni­za­tion with­in the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Orga­ni­za­tion Depart­ment, his job was to puri­fy the par­ty and the Nanking gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­al­ly. To guar­an­tee the loy­al­ty of each par­ty mem­ber, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy net­work that touched every gov­ern­ment agency. To run this new appa­ra­tus, he select­ed his younger broth­er, Ch’en Li-fu [edu­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en broth­ers were “blood broth­ers” of Chi­ang Kai-shek, hav­ing tak­en part in a Green Gang cer­e­mo­ny after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the direc­tor of Chiang’s secret service—the Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (CBIS), the euphemism cho­sen for the KMT’s polit­i­cal secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, con­duct­ed purges and polit­i­cal exe­cu­tions with­in the par­ty, large-scale pub­lic ter­ror­ism was the province of its mil­i­tary coun­ter­part the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himm­ler,” Tai Li—for twen­ty years the most dread­ed man in Chi­na. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was edu­cat­ed at Tu’s per­sona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Wham­poa Acad­e­my. . . . All clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Chi­na, except those con­duct­ed by the Ch’ens, were his respon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and over­lap­ping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police orga­ni­za­tions were sup­ple­ment­ed by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a repli­ca of the Euro­pean fas­cist cults, the Blue Shirts also emu­lat­ed Japan’s dread­ed Black Drag­on Soci­ety, the most mil­i­tant secret cult of the Impe­r­i­al Army. [The orga­ni­za­tion that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform Chi­na the hard way, by knock­ing heads togeth­er, car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, liq­ui­dat­ing cor­rupt bureau­crats and “ene­mies of the state.” . . . . They were offi­cered by old Green Gang class­mates from Wham­poa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homi­ci­dal bru­tal­i­ty of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liq­ui­da­tion of six of China’s most impor­tant writ­ers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the hor­rif­ic end of six of China’s fore­most writ­ers, all fol­low­ers of the lead­ing lit­er­ary fig­ure of the [1911] rev­o­lu­tion [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chi­ang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writ­ers. Lu Hsun elud­ed arrest but six young lead­ers of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were tak­en into cus­tody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”

A fun­da­men­tal dynam­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime was his stead­fast refusal to use his mil­i­tary forces to fight the invad­ing Japan­ese. (Japan invad­ed Manchuria in 1931 and the Sino-Japan­ese War preceded—and then overlapped—World War II.)

Chi­ang and his forces fre­quent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese and “the Gen­er­alis­si­mo” stead­fast­ly refused to com­mit Kuom­intang armies against them, pre­fer­ring to hus­band his com­bat­ants for use against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists. (This ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s dic­ta­tor­ship won him favor with the Axis pow­ers, as well as dom­i­nant ele­ments of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite. As will be seen in future pro­grams, Chiang’s stance led to the replace­ment of Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well with Albert C. Wede­mey­er as chief mil­i­tary advis­er to the KMT.)

Chief among Chiang’s crit­ics was T.V. Soong, who—correctly—forecast that Chiang’s mil­i­tary pos­ture would pro­pel the Chi­nese pop­u­lace into align­ment with the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty whose fierce, suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary resis­tance to the Japan­ese was rec­og­nized as man­i­fest patri­o­tism.)

“ . . . . Shak­en by what he had observed of the Japan­ese assault, T.V. Soong began to draw some dan­ger­ous con­clu­sions. ‘If Chi­na is placed before the alter­na­tive of com­mu­nism and Japan­ese mil­i­tarism with its mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion, then Chi­na will choose com­mu­nism.’ This rather dar­ing state­ment, giv­en dur­ing an inter­view with Karl H. von Wie­gand in March, 1932, placed T.V. in direct oppo­si­tion to Chi­ang Kai-shek. It was all the more icon­o­clas­tic for being made by a rich financier and Finance Min­is­ter. . . .”

T.V. Soong—in that same interview—noted that the West­ern pow­ers had pas­sive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese attacks on Manchuria and Shang­hai: “ . . . . ‘The League [of Nations—D.E.] and the big pow­ers looked on. They even per­mit­ted the Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ment to be used as a base of oper­a­tions. Can you be sur­prised that Chi­na would turn to Com­mu­nism or Sovi­etism, if that were to unite the coun­try, rather than sub­mit to for­eign mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion?’ . . . .”

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of a major event in the his­to­ry of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s con­ser­va­tion of his mil­i­tary resources to fight the Communists–what has become known as the Sian inci­dent.

 The Sian Inci­dent was very important—though lit­tle recognized—event in the his­to­ry of Chi­na: the “kid­nap­ping” of Chi­ang Kai-shek by Kuom­intang mil­i­tary offi­cers who were intent on form­ing an anti-Japan­ese coali­tion called for by Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s wid­ow and the for­mer Ching-ling Soong.)

This became known as the Sian inci­dent, named after the locale in which Chi­ang was tak­en into cus­tody and held.

Inspired by the suc­cess of Mao Tse-Tung’s forces in fight­ing the Japan­ese, a mass stu­dent protest move­ment pre­cip­i­tat­ed the call by Mme. Sun Yat-sen, which was put into action by “The Young Mar­shal,” Chang Hsueh-liang. He was sup­port­ed in this by the forces of Gen­er­al Yang Hu-cheng.  “ . . . . Mean­while, Mao Tse-Tung’s Com­mu­nist forces reached Yenan at the end of the Long March, and began ral­ly­ing anti-Japan­ese nation­al­ism to their side. To many stu­dents, the authen­tic hero­ism of the Red Army com­bined with this blunt stand against Tokyo was a siren call. On Decem­ber 9, 1935, ten thou­sand Peking stu­dents demon­strat­ed against Japan. The protest drew nation­wide atten­tion and Madame Sun Yat-sen emerged from seclu­sion in Shang­hai to sup­port the stu­dents by launch­ing a Nation­al Sal­va­tion League. . . .”

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–The Young Marshal’s return to Chi­na after kick­ing nar­cotics admin­is­tered to him Tai-li’s secret police (this dur­ing a recu­per­a­tive sojourn in Europe): “ . . . . When the Young Mar­shal returned to Chi­na in 1934„ he was trans­formed. Gone were the nar­cotics, and in their place was a tough new nation­al­ism. He decid­ed that China’s sal­va­tion lay in per­suad­ing Chi­ang to stand firm against Tokyo. He had long talks with T.V. Soong in Shang­hai about how to engi­neer this, and T. V., who must have real­ized that a pow­er­ful mil­i­tary lever had fall­en into his hands, burned the mid­night oil with the dap­per Manchuri­an gen­er­al, explor­ing all pos­si­ble maneu­vers against Chi­ang . . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Ear­ly in 1936, the Young Mar­shal qui­et­ly instruct­ed his troops on the fron­tier to stop shoot­ing at red guer­ril­las. He had reached the con­clu­sion that most of China’s Com­mu­nists were dri­ven into the arms of the CCP by the degra­da­tion of the coun­try at the hands of Chi­ang and the for­eign pow­ers. Chi­nese, he decid­ed, should no longer fight Chi­nese while the nation was being rav­ished by for­eign invaders. . . .”
3.–The Young Mar­shal then met, and reached agree­ment with Chou En-Lai, lat­er the For­eign Min­is­ter of Chi­na under Mao Tse-tung. “ . . . . That June, he met pri­vate­ly with Chou En-Lai to see if they could put aside dif­fer­ences and devel­op a joint strat­e­gy. He came away with his con­vic­tion reaf­firmed that the answer lay in a unit­ed front He was good to his word. All mil­i­tary action halt­ed, liai­son was set up between their two head­quar­ters, and bureaus of the Nation­al Sal­va­tion League were orga­nized through­out north­west­ern Chi­na. . . . Word of this ‘treach­ery’ reached Chi­ang Kai-shek at Nanking. . . .”
4.–Chiang refused to join the nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . When the Gen­er­alis­si­mo arrived, the Young Mar­shal told Chi­ang that his anti-red cam­paign that his anti-red cam­paign should be scrapped and a unit­ed front formed with Mao Tse-Tung. The time had come for a patri­ot­ic war, not a civ­il war. Chi­ang hot­ly reject­ed the argu­ment . . . .”
Chi­ang pub­li­cized his deter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue with his anti-com­mu­nist anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign: “ . . . . On Decem­ber 4, 1936, the Gen­er­alis­si­mo returned to Sian to announce that he was going ahead with the anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign, to begin on Decem­ber 12. . . .”
5.–In com­bi­na­tion with Gen­er­al Yang, the Young Mar­shal decid­ed to take Chi­ang hostage and extract his con­sent to a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At 5:30 in the morn­ing of Decem­ber 12—the day the new anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign was to begin—Chiang Kai-shek was star­ing out the back win­dow of his bed­room at the moun­tain beyond the gar­den wall. In the dark­ness, four trucks loaded with 120 armed sol­diers rum­bled to a halt at the gates. The bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the lead truck demand­ed that the gates be opened. The sen­tries refused. The men in the trucks opened fire. . . .”
6.–Despite being tak­en cap­tive, Chi­ang refused to form a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At Sian, Chi­ang stub­born­ly resist­ed the Eight Demands. ‘He refused to turn our guns against the ene­my,’ the Young Mar­shal explained in a pub­lic address to a huge crowd in a Sian park on Decem­ber 16, ‘but reserved the for use against our own peo­ple.’ . . .”
7.–Eventually, Chi­ang grudg­ing­ly agreed to the coali­tion, appar­ent­ly after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chi­ang got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. “ . . . . The Young Mar­shal gal­lant­ly accept­ed all blame for the Sian Inci­dent, allow­ing Chi­ang to wash his hands in pub­lic and wipe them on him. (Inter­est­ing­ly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done Chi­na a his­toric ser­vice by bring­ing about the long-sought unit­ed front, what­ev­er its lat­er fail­ings. . . .”
7.–Chiang’s reluc­tant agree­ment was trum­pet­ed by Hen­ry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chi­ang and Mme. Chi­ang] on the cov­er of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chi­ang now became an even big­ger inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. . . .”
8.–As was his wont, Chi­ang broke his promise to the Young Mar­shal and Gen­er­al Yang. Laud­ed by Hen­ry Luce and his asso­ciates as an Exem­plary Chris­t­ian, Chi­ang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he prompt­ly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Fri­day mes­sage to Chi­na that spring of 1937, Chi­ang referred to the Sian Inci­dent and said pious­ly, ‘Remem­ber­ing that Christ enjoined us to for­give those who sin against us until sev­en­ty times sev­en and upon their repen­tance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
9.–Similar treat­ment was afford­ed Gen­er­al Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-con­spir­a­tor, Gen­er­al Yang, despite the Good Fri­day amnesty, was impris­oned when he came back from Euro­pean exile and lan­guished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s spe­cial deten­tion camps near Chungk­ing. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve her­self to death. . . .”


FTR#1199 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 6

In this pro­gram we con­tin­ue our analy­sis and his­tor­i­cal dis­cus­sion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

Encap­su­lat­ing the nature of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime and the pub­lic rela­tions per­son­ae con­struct­ed for it by the Soong fam­i­ly, Ster­ling Sea­grave appro­pri­ate­ly describes it as a “Tro­jan horse.” ” . . . . . . . . The Nanking gov­ern­ment was quite sim­ply a Tro­jan horse, paint­ed in bright col­ors by the Soong clan [and Hen­ry Luce—D.E.]. In its bel­ly were hid­den the gen­er­als, secret police­men, and Green Gang who actu­al­ly wield­ed pow­er in Chi­na.  It was skill­ful­ly done, and one of T.V.’s major accom­plish­ments. Amer­i­cans, more so than oth­er West­ern­ers, were tak­en in. . . .”

Lion­ized as a suc­cess­ful tycoon and giant of inter­na­tion­al finance and com­merce, T.V. Soong (who also served as Finance Min­is­ter and oth­er cab­i­net posts for Chi­ang Kai-shek) was deeply involved with the Green Gang/Kuomintang nar­co-fas­cist oper­a­tion: “. . . . Shang­hai police reports indi­cate that in 1930, T.V. Soong per­son­al­ly arranged with Tu to deliv­er 700 cas­es of Per­sian opi­um to Shang­hai under KMT mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion to sup­ple­ment deplet­ed Chi­nese stocks. All par­ties involved in set­ting up the ship­ment and pro­tect­ing it dur­ing transit—including T.V.—received fees. . . .”

Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing giant Hen­ry Luce of Time, Inc. was the son of Amer­i­can mis­sion­ar­ies in Chi­na, where he spent much of his youth.

His posi­tion toward Chi­na might be said to embody “the Mis­sion­ary Posi­tion.”

A doc­tri­naire fas­cist him­self, he saw the busi­ness tycoon as an Amer­i­can iter­a­tion of the fas­cist strong­man, exem­pli­fied by his idol Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni.

Luce’s por­tray­al of Chi­ang Kai-shek, Mme. Chi­ang and their regime are utter­ly fan­tas­tic in nature, bear­ing no rela­tion what­so­ev­er to the real­i­ty of the Kuom­intang. Luce’s por­tray­al could be said to have set the tem­plate for cov­er­age of Chiang’s regime in the U.S.

As we con­tem­plate the cov­er­age of con­tem­po­rary Chi­na in this coun­try, it is worth recall­ing the depth of decep­tion in which our jour­nal­ists have indulged.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–The influ­ence of Hen­ry Luce’s mis­sion­ary par­ent­ing in Chi­na on his per­spec­tive on Chi­ang: “ . . . . ‘The trou­ble with Har­ry,’ observed the writer Lau­ra Z. Hob­son, wife of one of his class­mates at Yale, ‘is that he’s torn between want­i­ng to be a Chi­nese mis­sion­ary like his par­ents and a Chi­nese war­lord like Chi­ang Kai-shek.’ . . . .”
2.–Luce com­pro­mised: “ . . . . he could do the next best thing—he could adopt the Soongs and make Chi­ang over into a mis­sion­ary-war­lord. . . .”
3.–“ . . . . By the spring of 1933, when T.V. was ready to vis­it Amer­i­ca, Luce was rapid­ly becom­ing the world’s most pow­er­ful pub­lish­er. With him [Luce] to take care of their pub­lic rela­tions and image build­ing in Amer­i­ca, the Soongs, Chi­angs and Kungs were in for a sen­sa­tion­al ride. . . .”
4.–For Luce, T.V. Soong’s pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness per­sona man­i­fest­ed in the same man­ner as the fas­cist strong­men he idol­ized. “. . . . The busi­ness tycoon, Luce believed, was America’s answer to the need for fas­cism. . . . He found jus­tice in the sur­vival of the fittest, and saw quite clear­ly that a soci­ety build on greed was more dynam­ic than one based on char­i­ty. . . . ‘The moral force of Fas­cism,’ Luce pro­nounced, ‘appear­ing in total­ly dif­fer­ent forms in dif­fer­ent nations, may be the inspi­ra­tion for the next gen­er­al march of mankind.’. . .”
5.–For Luce, there­fore, T.V. Soong served the same func­tion as Mus­soli­ni: “. . . . Luce char­ac­ter­ized T.V. as a car­toon super-tycoon. Luce had a soft spot for super­heroes that enabled him prac­ti­cal­ly to ven­er­ate Chi­ang Kai-shek. ‘The hero-wor­ship­per in him,’ said his biog­ra­ph­er W.A. Swan­berg, ‘respond­ed to the Fas­cist super­man who could inspire the alle­giance and coop­er­a­tion of the mass­es. . . . He point­ed to the suc­cess of Mus­soli­ni in revi­tal­iz­ing the aris­to­crat­ic prin­ci­ple in Italy, ‘a state reborn by virtue of Fas­cist sym­bols, Fas­cist rank and hence Fas­cist enter­prise.’ . . . . Luce admired strong regimes in which the ‘best peo­ple’ ruled for the good of all . . . . In Mus­soli­ni, he saw such great­ness and in Fas­cism, such dra­mat­ic polit­i­cal inno­va­tions that he could not con­tain his excite­ment. . . .’”

Next, we exam­ine the sor­did, Machi­avel­lian, klep­to­crat­ic nature of the Soong fam­i­ly.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–H.Kung (Chiang’s Finance Min­is­ter at the time and the broth­er-in-law of T.V. Soong) and his finan­cial coup‑d’etat, real­iz­ing a takeover of much of China’s finan­cial infra­struc­ture and the banks com­pris­ing it. He did so in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T.V. Soong, his wife (the for­mer Ai-ling Soong) and Green Gang king­pin Tu Yueh-sheng.
2.–The bank­ing coup was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the dizzy­ing cor­rup­tion with which the Chiang/Tu/Soong axis dom­i­nat­ed the Chi­nese econ­o­my: “ . . . . The Bank of China’s new board [of direc­tors] was elect­ed on March 30. Among the new direc­tors were T.V. Soong, [his broth­er] T.L. Soong, and Big Eared Tu [Yueh-sheng]. When the Bank of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions held its first meet­ing after the coup, T.L. Soong was on its board. Both T.V. and T. L. acquired seats on the board of the Cen­tral Bank. The Bank coup of March [1935] was fol­lowed by the method­i­cal sub­ver­sion of three oth­er impor­tant Shang­hai com­mer­cial banks that June. . . . All three banks were placed under the super­vi­sion of H.H. Kung’s Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ Bank, on the board of which sat T.L. Soong, T.A. Soong, and T.V. Soong. Big-eared Tu became the new chair­man of the board of the Com­mer­cial Bank. . . . The list went on and on, as bank after bank, then com­pa­ny after com­pa­ny, came under con­trol of the clan. . . .”
3.–In addi­tion to T.V. Soong’s younger broth­ers T.L. and T.A., the Green Gang hier­ar­chy com­prised anoth­er, vital com­po­nent of the Kuom­intang eco­nom­ic axis: “ . . . . L. was also the head of the Wham­poo Con­ser­van­cy Board with juris­dic­tion over Shang­hai har­bor, which was dom­i­nat­ed by the Green Gang. Every­thing that hap­pened on the water­front was the busi­ness of Big-eared Tu’s man Ku Tsu-chuan. . . . Although it was not wide­ly known, and cer­tain­ly not talked about, this water­front gang­ster was the old­er broth­er of one of Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek’s senior mil­i­tary officers—General Ku Chu‑t’ung, who even­tu­al­ly rose to be chief of the gen­er­al staff and, because of the New Fourth Army Inci­dent, one of the most hat­ed men in Chi­na. (We will say more about this top­ic lat­er. It was high­light­ed in FTR#1142.) . . . .”

Hav­ing been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a crit­i­cal ele­ment of my polit­i­cal, civic and cog­ni­tive upbring­ing. I vivid­ly remem­ber watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary “Vic­to­ry at Sea” on tele­vi­sion as a child. As I have grown old­er, more knowl­edge­able and wis­er, learn­ing the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful.

In FTR #1095, we not­ed the his­tor­i­cal back­ground to the ongo­ing con­flict with China–the bru­tal Japan­ese onslaught and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship with Japan’s attack and occu­pa­tion.

As a boy, I was awed and moved by the hero­ism of Amer­i­can and Allied ser­vice per­son­nel who braved the dan­gers of fly­ing over the Hump to bring U.S. sup­plies to Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces. Although offi­cial­ly allied with the U.S., Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces were actu­al­ly work­ing “both sides of the street.”

We have encoun­tered noth­ing more grotesque­ly trag­ic and dis­il­lu­sion­ing than the aware­ness that Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er.

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

In the pas­sage below, it is impor­tant to note the role of the Black Drag­on Soci­ety in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Drag­on, along with Black Ocean, are key Japan­ese ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties and the appar­ent fore­run­ners of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and, pos­si­bly the over­lap­ping Shin­cheon­ji cult.

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

. . . . He [Kodama] was sprung from jail by [Gen­er­al] Doi­hara in April 1937, on the con­di­tion that he devot­ed his vio­lent ener­gies to loot­ing Chi­na’s under­world. This epiphany, the trans­for­ma­tion of Kodama from thug to super-patri­ot, was sug­gest­ed by Black Drag­on’s Toya­ma [Mit­su­ru], whose own stature as a patri­ot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s wed­ding. . . .

. . . . All pro­ceeds were divert­ed from Chi­nese rack­e­teers to Gold­en Lily, minus a han­dling charge for Kodama him­self. Ulti­mate­ly, Kodama was respon­si­ble to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne.

Princes were not equipped to deal with gang­sters. Kodama saved them from soil­ing their hands. He con­vert­ed nar­cotics into bul­lion by the sim­ple method of trad­ing hero­in to gang­sters for gold ingots. How bro­kers got the ingots was not his con­cern. He closed a deal with water­front boss Ku Tsu-chuan to swap hero­in for gold through­out the Yangtze Val­ley. Thanks to Ku’s broth­er, KMT senior gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung, Japan also gained access to U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies reach­ing west­ern Chi­na by way of the Bur­ma road, or on air­craft fly­ing over the Hump from India. Once in ware­hous­es in Kun­ming or Chungk­ing, the Lend-Lease was re-sold to the Japan­ese Army, with Kodama as pur­chas­ing agent. . . .

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

Next, we high­light the cen­tral role of Ger­man gen­er­al Hans Von Seeckt in Chi­ang Kai-shek’s mil­i­tary cam­paign against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–“ . . . . The mil­i­tary cam­paign . . . . was engi­neered for Chi­ang Kai-shek by one of the best-known strate­gists of Nazi Germany—General Hans von Seeckt. When Hitler came to pow­er in 1933, Chi­ang asked for mil­i­tary help. Hitler sent von Seeckt and Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Georg Wet­zell. The Generalissimo’s deter­mi­na­tion to fight Com­mu­nists, rather than Japan­ese, was to Hitler’s lik­ing. . . .”
2.–Unsurprisingly, the von Seeckt-engi­neered cam­paign was a slaugh­ter: “ . . . . [not­ed jour­nal­ist] Edgar Snow said the Com­mu­nists suf­fered 60,000 casu­al­ties, and that in all a mil­lion peo­ple were killed or starved to death. Of that mil­lion dead, there­fore, at least 940,000 were not ‘Com­mu­nist ban­dits.’ . . . .”

Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime net­worked exten­sive­ly with the fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ships of Europe. Com­mer­cial net­work­ing between Hitler, Mus­soli­ni and Chi­ang involved Kuom­intang Finance Min­is­ter H.H. Kung and his wife, the for­mer Ai-ling Soong.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: 

1.–” . . . . The Kungs then sailed to Europe and the most impor­tant part of their trip, the boom­ing Ger­man arms indus­try. H.H. arranged to pur­chase $25 mil­lion U.S. in weapons from Ger­many. Then, since fas­cism was fash­ion­able, and his broth­er-in-law [Chi­ang Kai-shek] was one of its lead­ing expo­nents, H. H. decid­ed to vis­it Mus­soli­ni . . .”
2.–The Kungs’ mis­sion to Italy was suc­cess­ful: “ . . . . When H.H. arrived, he cut a deal where­by the $2 mil­lion U.S. bal­ance of Box­er [Rebel­lion] indem­ni­ties still owed to Italy would be used to buy Fiat war planes. Mus­soli­ni left it to his hand­some, swarthy son-in-law, count Ciano, his Min­is­ter to Chi­na, to arrange the details. Ital­ian assis­tance to the infant Chi­nese air force was expand­ed to include a school to train pilots at Loyang and a Fiat air­craft assem­bly plant in Nan­chang. . . .”
3.–Chiang’s tac­tic of using his mil­i­tary to fight the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists instead of the Japan­ese was viewed favor­ably by the Axis—Nazi Ger­many, Fas­cist Italy and Impe­r­i­al Japan. Not even T.V. Soong could influ­ence Chi­ang to change strat­e­gy, one which Soong felt—correctly–would dri­ve the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of the Com­mu­nists. (Chiang’s anti-Com­mu­nism was a major sell­ing point used to cul­ti­vate sup­port in the U.S.: “ . . . . While T.V. Soong was try­ing to per­suade Chi­ang to for­get the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists and defend Chi­na against Japan­ese aggres­sion, the Japan­ese, Ger­mans, and Ital­ians were all encour­ag­ing Chi­ang to love Japan and kill reds. . . .”
4.–Chiang’s fas­cist infat­u­a­tion with Hitler’s Ger­many influ­enced his dis­patch­ing of his son to join the Wehrma­cht: “ . . . . The Gen­er­alis­si­mo dai­ly became more enam­ored of the Nazi mil­i­tary and police state. Even­tu­al­ly, he sent his younger son, Wei-kuo, to be schooled by the Nazis. . . . (Wei-kuo became a sec­ond lieu­tenant in the 98th Jaeger Reg­i­ment and before return­ing to Chi­na took part in the inva­sion of Aus­tria in 1938. . . .)

The pro­gram con­cludes by set­ting forth the struc­ture of Chiang’s fas­cist infra­struc­ture, his secret police cadres in par­tic­u­lar.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Chiang trans­lat­ed his admi­ra­tion of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni into the most sin­cere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chi­ang believed that fas­cism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Max­i­mum Leader, and the spar­tan mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the cit­i­zens. The New Life Move­ment [the chief pro­mot­er of which was Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek] was the pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was com­ic enough not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by for­eign­ers in gen­er­al. The mis­sion­ar­ies . . . . were now eager­ly climb­ing aboard the New Life band­wag­on. . . .”
2.–There were three over­lap­ping orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments to Chiang’s fas­cist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics) which was run by the Ch’en broth­ers and the MBIS (the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en broth­ers and Tai Li were Green Gang asso­ciates of Chi­ang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hitler result­ed in the cre­ation of a new secret soci­ety mod­eled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chi­ang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their exis­tence repeat­ed­ly. They were an off­shoot of his two secret ser­vices, the par­ty gestapo under the Ch’en broth­ers, and the mil­i­tary secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret polit­i­cal police: “ . . . . Chi­ang came to depend heav­i­ly on the two nephews of his Green Gang men­tor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The old­er nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had orga­nized and head­ed the dri­ve that recruit­ed sev­en thou­sand Green Gang youths for the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my had since then been giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a gestapo orga­ni­za­tion with­in the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Orga­ni­za­tion Depart­ment, his job was to puri­fy the par­ty and the Nanking gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­al­ly. To guar­an­tee the loy­al­ty of each par­ty mem­ber, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy net­work that touched every gov­ern­ment agency. To run this new appa­ra­tus, he select­ed his younger broth­er, Ch’en Li-fu [edu­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en broth­ers were “blood broth­ers” of Chi­ang Kai-shek, hav­ing tak­en part in a Green Gang cer­e­mo­ny after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the direc­tor of Chiang’s secret service—the Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (CBIS), the euphemism cho­sen for the KMT’s polit­i­cal secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, con­duct­ed purges and polit­i­cal exe­cu­tions with­in the par­ty, large-scale pub­lic ter­ror­ism was the province of its mil­i­tary coun­ter­part the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himm­ler,” Tai Li—for twen­ty years the most dread­ed man in Chi­na. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was edu­cat­ed at Tu’s per­sona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Wham­poa Acad­e­my. . . . All clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Chi­na, except those con­duct­ed by the Ch’ens, were his respon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and over­lap­ping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police orga­ni­za­tions were sup­ple­ment­ed by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a repli­ca of the Euro­pean fas­cist cults, the Blue Shirts also emu­lat­ed Japan’s dread­ed Black Drag­on Soci­ety, the most mil­i­tant secret cult of the Impe­r­i­al Army. [The orga­ni­za­tion that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform Chi­na the hard way, by knock­ing heads togeth­er, car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, liq­ui­dat­ing cor­rupt bureau­crats and ‘ene­mies of the state.’ . . . . They were offi­cered by old Green Gang class­mates from Wham­poa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homi­ci­dal bru­tal­i­ty of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liq­ui­da­tion of six of China’s most impor­tant writ­ers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the hor­rif­ic end of six of China’s fore­most writ­ers, all fol­low­ers of the lead­ing lit­er­ary fig­ure of the [1911] rev­o­lu­tion [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chi­ang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writ­ers. Lu Hsun elud­ed arrest but six young lead­ers of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were tak­en into cus­tody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”