In the latest Patreon talks, Mr. Emory connects many dots, including Covid-19 in Asia, the Abe assassination, the Moonies, the LDP, and the return to power of the Marcos clan in the Philippines. In addition we discuss what it really means to “support the troops” and the July 4th shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The latest Patreon talks parse the clandestine global economic landscape, highlighting the election of Ferdinand Marcos’ son as president of the Philippines, the new Pacific, anti-China alliance and the impending fallout from sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
On Sunday, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Monday, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memorial Day Weekend by featuring Dave Emory’s research on the fundamental interrelationship of fascism, money, war and murder. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
We suspect that a dynamic in the controversy over China’s claim of sovereignty over the South China Sea has little or nothing to do with “Freedom of Navigation” or any other pretensions by the U.S. and its allies. An aspect of the postwar global economy that has largely eluded public awareness concerns the Japanese looting of the liquid wealth of Asia during the Second World War. Interested researchers are emphatically encouraged to read “Gold Warriors” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. The volume is a heroic, masterful analysis and penetration of the Asian wing of the cartel system that spawned fascism, as well as the realities of the post-World War II economic landscape. In addition to treasure deliberately and masterfully secreted in elaborately disguised and booby-trapped sites all over Japanese-occupied Asia, much of the loot was scuttled at sea and also lost when ships carrying the treasure were sunk. It may well be that some of the inhabited islands in the South China Sea are sites for Golden Lily ships deliberately scuttled for later salvage and recovery. ” . . . . In the last year of the war, Japan also hid large quantities of bullion at sea, deliberately scuttling ships including the cruiser Nachii, sunk with all hands in Manila Bay by a Japanese submarine that then machine-gunned all the Japanese crew members who came to the surface. The gold aboard the Nachii was recovered from its hulk in the late 1970s by President Marcos. . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The “Deep Politics” detailed by the brilliant Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott in his opus “American War Machine” set forth the involvement Japanese war criminals Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in the Indonesian coup of 1965. That epic bloodletting saw the engineers of the event kill a million people (some put the toll as high as three million.) In addition to being prime movers behind the Unification Church, Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio were lynchpins of the perpetuation of the operational foundation of Japanese fascism under the auspices of the LDP in the postwar period. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
In numerous programs, we have covered the re-institution of Imperial Japanese fascism in the aftermath of World War II. That re-constitution embraced the political, financial and industrial elements of the Japanese power elite prior to, and during, World War II. Reviewing a recent film set against the background of Unit 731 (a relative rarity in, and of, itself), “The New York Times” noted the institutionalized historical revisionism that is part of contemporary Japanese life. ” . . . . In Tokyo, black vans often prowl the streets spouting propaganda that rewrites the country’s role in the war. And publishers churn out books disputing the most basic facts about atrocities. . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
This program concludes the series.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
Next, the program highlights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.
Sister of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chiang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remarkable career.
For the purposes of this description, we re-print material from FTR#1202.
The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a persistent critic of Chiang Kai-shek, was predictable.
Disillusioned with Communism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen partnered with Teng Yen-ta, who recognized Chiang’s fascism and, yet, felt that the Chinese Communist Party (at that point in time) was overly loyal to Moscow and wasn’t doing enough for the Chinese peasantry.
Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alternative to both Kuomintang fascism and the Chinese Communist Party.
Finding the democratic socialism proposed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unacceptable, Chiang had the British and American police authorities arrest him in the International Concession in Shanghai, after which he was tortured for many months.
Ching-ling was reported to have visited Chiang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chiang had already dealt with him in characteristic fashion: “ . . . . Days earlier, on November 29, 1931, nearly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been taken from his cell at Chiang’s command and was slowly strangled with a wire. The executioner was said to be famous for keeping victims alive for half an hour while he tightened his grip. In his office, Chiang had remained silent while Ching-ling pleaded for a man already dead, enjoying the spectacle of her momentary vulnerability. . . .”
Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.
After rebuffing his political approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demolished his political persona.
. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it simply means that you admit you are not wrongly accused. But whatever you do, do it openly like me, don’t . . . surround me with spies.’
Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.
Soong: ‘Further conversations would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’
As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flicking over dry lips (he was a very nervous man)—hissed out a parting bit of venom: ‘If you were anyone but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’
Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the revolutionaries you pretend to be, you’d cut it off anyway.’. . .”
Information presented by Sterling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not previously aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Americans have been led to believe.
Although resisting membership in the Communist Party and attempting to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chiang’s capitulation and flight to Taiwan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chairmen of the government.
Again, this is not something of which Mr. Emory was aware until reading this book.
“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remaining possessions to support programs of the China Welfare League she had founded. In 1948, with the Chiang regime ready to flee and the Communists on their way to victory, she took part in a last attempt to organize an alternative to both communism and fascism—a new version of the Third Force. It was called the Revolutionary Committee, and Ching-ling was named its honorary chairman. Its constituency was the powerless. . . .”
“ . . . . When the People’s Republic came into existence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Communist political leaders chosen as Vice-Chairmen of the Central Government in Peking. . . .”
Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) manifested a strongly independent ideological stance, which, while anti-fascist and anti-imperialist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Communism and Chiang’s narco-fascism.
That independence of mind, demonstrated through decades of social struggle, plus outright jealousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defamation and persecution during the disastrous Cultural Revolution, with Mme. Sun narrowly escaping the ravages of the Red Guard.
“ . . . . During the Red Guard rampages of the 1960’s, the job of protecting Madame Sun became nerve-racking. Posters appeared denouncing her, and it was not safe for her to go anywhere. . . .”
“ . . . . In the summer of 1966, Premier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their verbal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accusing her of being a bourgeois reactionary. On September 21, 1966, in Shanghai where the Red Guard movement frequently got out of control, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Joffre and looted it. Ching-ling was not in Shanghai at the time. She let the incident pass without comment. Her chief adversary was the wife of Chairman Mao, who apparently resented the fact that Ching-ling was always mentioned as the woman of highest rank in China.
“ . . . . When the Red Guard movement abated, and Madame Mao and the celebrated Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as counterrevolutionaries, Ching-ling’s life settled back into a tranquil twilight. . . .”
“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named honorary President of China. . . . She succumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an interview once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the legacy she had learned most bitterly from the time of the Soongs:
The Soong Dynasty concludes with an epilogue which is noteworthy in several respects. The prose is of a character that one does not see anymore. Eloquent, poignant, passionate and yet, at the same time, bitingly, ironically humorous, Seagrave’s writing is remarkable in, and of, itself.
Beyond the prose, the epilogue is remarkable for the elaborate historical metaphor that it presents: discussion of the corruption and brutality of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowager Empress, whom Seagrave refers to as “The Old Buddha.” (He later published a volume about her reign titled The Dragon Lady.)
Seagrave’s discussion of the Dowager Empress’s intrigues and brutal murder of the Pearl Concubine constitutes a metaphor for the lethal, consummately corrupt government of Chiang Kai-shek and his puppet masters, the Soongs.
As foreign armies were approaching Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, “The Old Buddha” made arrangements to flee the palace known as The Forbidden City, donning a disguise and taking the Emperor with her.
When the Emperor sought to remain in Peking to negotiate with the foreign armies and enlisted the assistance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to persuade the Dowager Empress.
The Pearl Concubine had resisted conforming to the will of the Dowager Empress, and “The Old Buddha” took this occasion to eliminate this element of resistance to her palace intrigues, a longtime obstacle to her political orders.
“ . . . . The Pearl Concubine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, interfering with palace intrigues by giving independent advice to the Emperor. It was time to dispose of her. The Dowager bellowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Concubine. In terror, the Emperor went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs carried the struggling girl to the narrow well by the Palace of Peace and Longevity, turned her upside down in her shimmering cocoon of silks, and flung her shrieking into its maw. Because the well was so narrow, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”
Sterling Seagrave then sets forth the murderous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowager Empress—a metaphor for the bloody corruption of Chiang’s fascist government.
“ . . . . The Forbidden City is a graveyard of souls, drowned, beheaded, throttled, flayed alive, to silence them in the interests of state. Here, murder was not an act of passion but an instrument of rule. Judicial murder. Imperial murder. Silence by assassination. To stifle those who would interfere, who would object, who would question, who would say no. . . .”
Sterling Seagrave then pivots to the Soong family: “ . . . . The others passed through life like a team of pickpockets through a carnival crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chickens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained innocent throughout by virtue of her tunnel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these people also believe in virgin birth.
“They were a family that could stand together in front of a mirror (Ching-ling missing from the group by choice), all casting reflections except Ai-ling. She cast no reflection at all. What medieval conclusion can we draw? . . . .”
Seagrave concludes with a reference to Harry Truman’s launching of an FBI investigation of the Soong family. (We discussed this in FTR#1205 .)
“ . . . . Of all the people who might have acted, I wondered why Harry Truman did nothing. . . . . Perhaps he concluded that so many prominent people were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So nearly everyone stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the victims. Who, then, will speak for the concubine in the well? . . .”
The program reviews the death threats and intimidation that the authors of Gold Warriors received over the publication of this and other books.
“. . . . Many people told us this book was historically important and must be published—then warned us that if it were published, we would be murdered. An Australian economist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were. . . .
“. . . .
We have been threatened with murder before. When we published The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA official that a hit team was being assembled in Taiwan to come murder us. He said, ‘I would take this very seriously, if I were you.’ We vanished for a year to an island off the coast of British Columbia. While we were gone, a Taiwan hit team arrived in San Francisco and shot dead the Chinese-American journalist Henry Liu.
When we published The Marcos Dynasty we expected trouble from the Marcos family and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Washington. Others had investigated Marcos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Government was secretly involved with Marcos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Treasury Department and its Internal Revenue Service, whose agents made threatening midnight phone calls to our elderly parents. Arriving in New York for an author tour, one of us was intercepted at JFK airport, passport seized, and held incommunicado for three hours. Eventually the passport was returned, without a word of explanation. When we ran Freedom of Information queries to see what was behind it, we were grudgingly sent a copy of a telex message, on which every word was blacked out, including the date. The justification given for this censorship was the need to protect government sources, which are above the law.
During one harassing phone call from a U.S. Treasury agent, he said he was sitting in his office watching an interview we had done for a Japanese TV network—an interview broadcast only in Japanese, which we had never seen. After publishing The Yamato Dynasty, which briefly mentioned the discovery that is the basis for Gold Warriors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a European clinic briefly for a medical procedure, the head nurse reported that “someone posing as your American doctor” had been on the phone asking questions.
When a brief extract of this book was published in the South China Morning Post in August 2001, several phone calls from the editors were cut off suddenly. Emails from the newspaper took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an associate nearby arrived instantly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.
What have we done to provoke murder? To borrow a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “combating official amnesia.” We live in dangerous times, like Germany in the 1930’s when anyone who makes inconvenient disclosures about hidden assets can be branded a “terrorist” or a “traitor. . . .”
Despite the best efforts of the American and Japanese governments to destroy, withhold, or lose documentation related to Golden Lily, we have accumulated thousands of documents, conducted thousands of hours of interviews, and we make all of these available to readers of this book on two compact discs, available from our website www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encourage others with knowledge of these events to come forward. When the top is corrupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from people like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decided they had to ‘do something.’ As a precaution, should anything odd happen, we have arranged for this book and all its documentation to be put up on the Internet at a number of sites. If we are murdered, readers will have no difficulty figuring out who ‘they’ are. . . .”
Sterling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peggy’s proximity to Spain–the seat of that organization’s power turned out to be prescient. On Christmas Day of 2011, he narrowly escaped assassination while returning home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been motivated by the publication of the Spanish language edition of Gold Warriors.
. . . . Seagrave will be remembered warmly by Verso staff for his lively correspondence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that followed the Spanish publication of Gold Warriors:
“A hired thug tried to murder me on the serpentine road leading up to our isolated house on the ridge overlooking Banyuls-sur-Mer, and nearly succeeded. (We’ve had several serious death threats because of our books.) The road was very narrow in places, with tarmac barely the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christmas night, in 2011, after visiting Peggy at a clinic in Perpignan, as I turned the final hairpin, I clearly saw a guy sitting on a cement block path leading up to a shed for the uphill vineyard. He was obviously waiting for me because we were the only people living up there on that mountain shoulder. He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fabric that totally blocked the narrowest turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not knowing whether he also had a gun), and my right front drive wheel went off the tarmac and lost traction in the rubble.
The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vineyard on my right side, rolling and bouncing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it finally came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seatbelt and air bag, I survived. I don’t know how many concussions I got on the way down, but I managed to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rubble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoulder caved in. (Turned out later that I had fractured my right shoulder, and all the ligaments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained unconscious for 14 hours. After 12 hours, a vigneron driving up the next morning saw my wrecked car and body.
He called the Gendarmerie on his portable, and I was hoisted out unconscious by a chopper and flown to an old Victorian-era hospital in Perpignan where they did nothing but keep me doped on morphine for two weeks — no X‑rays or serious medical care. Finally, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peggy) transferred to a clinic on the beach there, where Peggy and I shared a room while we both recovered. I got my right shoulder ligaments fixed by an excellent surgeon in Perpignan. (Peggy did not know it then but she had an early stage of cancer.) I still have a hairline fracture in my right shoulder.
I attribute the event to staying too long in one place, so the spooks eventually tracked me down. We had been living for years on a sailboat, moving from Holland to Britain to Portugal to Spain and finally to France, where we found — in Catalonia — an ideal village at the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees. In retrospect, I’m sorry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beautiful 43-foot boat I had built from a bare hull. It was very comfortable, but Peggy wanted a house. We never did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restoring a 13th century Templar ruin on the shoulder of the mountain. Made me an easy target. Definitely a bad decision. I think it was the Spanish edition of Gold Warriors that made me the easy target.
In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding the death (and probable murder) of author Iris Chang. A ringing endorsement by Ms. Chang graces the cover of Gold Warriors.
Ms. Chang’s signature work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the initial events in Japan’s looting of China during World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and profited from in the postwar years.
At the time of her altogether suspicious death, she was working on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that survivors of that event and other Japanese World War II atrocities were suing Japanese zaibatsus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.
The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.
When Mr. Emory interviewed Sterling Seagrave in 2009, he declined to discuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be murder.
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.)
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
The Rape of Nanking–the subject of Iris Chang’s best-selling, nonfiction book, saw the beginning of the Golden Lily operation. The looting of China (as well as the rest of Asia) by Japan and the subsequent American fusing of the Japanese war loot into the clandestine U.S. economy is undoubtedly a major irritant to the Chinese.
The looting of China by Japan–and by extension the U.S.–manifests on top of the centuries’ old looting of that country by Britain and the rest of the European colonial powers, the U.S. as a whole, the Chiang Kai-shek/Green Gang alliance and the overlapping Soong clan.
Chinese insistence on access to technologies developed by firms establishing manufacturing concerns on their soil may be seen as an historical reaction to what the country was subjected to at the hands of the above interests.
In the passage below, note the intellectual and cultural plundering of China by Japan, as well as the looting of their economic wealth–a phenomenon of which the American occupation forces were aware and with which they ultimately colluded.
Looting of China was compounded by joint U.S. and Kuomintang secreting of gold from soon to be Communist-occupied China in the post-World War II period (overlapping the Chinese civil war.) This episode could be seen as an extension of Chiang’s looting of the gold of private investors from the Bank of China (with the active collaboration of the Green Gang) just before the Generalissimo decamped for Taiwan.
” . . . . As Chairman Mao’s forces advanced through China in 1948 . . . Britain and the U.S. dreaded the prospect that one of the world’s largest stocks of gold–worth $83-billion at current prices–would fall into communist hands. So it was decided to extract the gold reserves from China before the communists could seize them. The CIA provided the means for this bullion rescue mission . . . .”
Note that the joint U.S./Kuomintang looting of gold from postwar China was done with the collaboration of elements of CIA, as well as the Strategic Air Command.
The Federal Reserve Notes and Federal Reserve Bonds were to be given to Chinese financial interests holding the gold in order to convince them to part with the bullion.
” . . . . These two CAT [Civil Air Transport–a CIA airline later renamed Air America] B‑29s, loaded billions of dollars’ worth of FRNs and FRBs, were on their way to Malaysia on a roundabout route to Southwestern China by way of Thailand and Burma. . . .”
Note, also, that one of the aircraft in a U.S. flight that was downed in the Philippines by a typhoon was carrying uranium for possible use in a “dirty bomb” attack on China.
” . . . . The B‑50, which had recently been built by Boeing to carry nuclear weapons for the Strategic Air Command (SAC), had a cargo of 117 canisters of Uranium. At this time, Washington was seriously considering dropping “dirty bombs” on Red China and North Korea. . . .”
As noted above, Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek (nee Mae-ling Soong) were aware of the operation and profited from it: ” . . . . He [CAT and former Flying Tiger pilot Eric Shilling] gold us Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek were fully informed of the flights . . . . Shilling was invited to the presidential palace where Mme. Chiang praised him, telling hi: ‘I did not go to bed until i knew that you had landed safely. . . .”
One can but guess if Mme. Chiang’s concern for Shilling’s well being was grounded in the fact that she and Chiang benefited greatly from the FRNs that were involved in the operation: ” . . . . A CIA friend told me that these FRNs were all over the world, not only in the Philippines. He said Chiang Kai-shek’s family owned large quantities. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that 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. . . .”
Was T.L. Soong’s Treasury consultancy executed in conjunction with the CAT gold extraction mission described above?
The program concludes with examination of the results of an investigation ordered by President Truman into the affairs of the Soong family and their kleptocratic associates in what became known as the “China Lobby.”
An FBI probe into the family’s doings (and, by extension, those of the Kuomintang) yielded a report that was still heavily redacted in 1983 when the Seagraves obtained a copy of it.
President Truman summed up the findings of the investigation into the Soongs, the Kungs and their associates: “ . . . . ‘They’re all thieves, every damn one of them. . . . They stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars out of the [$3.8] billion that we sent to Chiang. They stole it, and it’s invested in real estate down in Sao Paulo and some right here in New York. . . . And that’s the money that was used and is still being used for the so-called China Lobby.’ . . . .”
Truman’s gauging of the Soong family’s ill-gotten gains was underestimation: “ . . . . In May of 1949, a few months after May-ling’s visit [May-ling Soong, aka Mme. Chiang Kai-shek], Truman heard of allegations made by banking sources to members of Congress that the Soongs and Kungs actually had $2 billion salted away in Manhattan. . . .”
We note that even the FBI was dealt with in a less than candid fashion by some of the banks that held Soong and Kung family deposits: “ . . . . ‘It would appear,’ an FBI agent noted laconically, ‘that high bank officials had prepared a flat statement for issuance to the Bureau in this matter.’. . .”
Even Federal government agencies were also less than enthusiastic about cooperating with the FBI investigation: “ . . . . The FBI was reluctant to ask Treasury for a copy [of bureaucratic forms submitted by the Soong family] because it believed that senior Treasury officials were close to T.V. and might reveal the investigation to him. [Recall that his brother T.L. may well have been a consultant to the Treasury Department—D.E] . . .”
The FBI also ran across evidentiary tributaries that may well have run from the clandestine looting of Chinese gold reserves described in the second major element of this program. “ . . . . On the West Coast, other agents discovered the cold trail of a Chinese plot to fly huge quantities of gold from China to an out-of-the-way private airport in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. . . .”
Investigation of the digs of H.H. Kung’s family yielded some of the most sordid information. [H.H. was married to Ai-ling Soong, elder sister of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and sister to the Soong brothers—T.V., T.L. and T.A.]. “ . . . . According to the newspapers, several Chinese servants in the summer had been brought from Hong Kong ostensibly to work in the Chinese Embassy found themselves virtual prisoners of the Kungs in Riverdale. [At that point in time, the Chinese Embassy would have been that of the Taiwan-based Kuomintang.] . . . . In desperation, they escaped together, but were captured and brought back. . . . the hapless servants were taught a lesson when they were hung from the ceiling and whipped. . . H.H. Kung . . . did not deny any of his servants’ . . . charges. . . .”
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.)
We begin by resuming analysis of the political and professional destruction of U.S. military and State Department elements that correctly gauged Chiang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, downward] trajectory of his regime.
Just as General Stillwell was removed as top military officer in the China/Burma theater because of his appropriate, accurate, vehement criticism of Chiang Kai-shek’s prioritization of fighting the Communists over fighting the Japanese, State Department officers who accurately forecast the decisive ascent of the Chinese Communist Party over the KMT were punished for their stance.
(Stilwell’s replacement by General Wedemeyer was noteworthy—particularly in light of the background and behavior of Wedemeyer.
In addition to being part of a political and military milieu that infused isolationist orientation toward involvement in World War II with pro-fascist sentiment, Wedemeyer appears to have presided over an act of consummate treason—the leak of the Rainbow Five American mobilization plan for World War II to anti-FDR publisher Robert J. McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune.)
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Government in Chunking were a handful of old China hands . . . . The China watchers’ message essentially was that no matter how much Washington wanted Chiang Kai-shek to ‘run’ China, he was about to lose it to the Communists. . . . The observers in Chungking were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of communism. In fact, they were only warning their government of a course of events that now seemed certain. . . . Washington reacted with deep suspicion and hostility and insisted on nailing the American flag the more tightly to the mast of Chiang’s sinking ship . . . .”
As we shall further explore, the cognitive perception of China in this country was shaped by the Soong family.
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . American policy was thus based upon the personalities of the Chiangs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the people. This was a tribute to the Soongs’ extraordinary stagecraft. . . .”
Sterling Seagrave filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heavily redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machinations on both sides of the Pacific.
“ . . . . The Soong family . . . . ‘practically had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been money mad and every move they made was prompted by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigantic conspiracy to defraud the Chinese from materials they would ordinarily receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert considerable of this money to the Soong family.’. . .”
After discussing the extreme marital difficulties of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek (the former Mae-ling Soong, whose marriage to Chiang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machiavellian wife Ai-ling—the former Ai-ling Soong), the informant identifies Mrs. Kung as the sinister, deadly and manipulative figure that she was.
Exemplifying the scale of the treacherous, corrupt practices of the clan was a diversion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The informant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. diverted Lend-Lease funds into his own pocket was illustrated by reports reaching Chunking that a freighter carrying sixty new American battle tanks and other very expensive war materiel furnished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a matter of fact this ‘freighter never left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were never made . . . . this is a positive illustration of the manner in which the Soongs have been diverting funds from Lend-Lease inasmuch as the money was allocated for the 60 tanks. . . .”
Again, a key factor in the political clout wielded by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, greatly augmented by institutionalized corruption, including (and especially) T.V. Soong’s appropriation of much of the Lend-Lease material designated for China.
In addition to the outright theft of Lend-Lease material by Chiang Kai-shek’s Green Gang general staff and their sale of much of that to the Japanese enemy they were supposedly fighting, T.V. Soong—using his brother T.L Soong’s administrative control of the Lend-Lease program for China—maneuvered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. aid into the private coffers of the Soong family.
As the KMT regime decayed and relations between the Soongs and Chiang followed suit, T. V. increasingly turned his energies to the American side of the Pacific, and appointed T.L. to oversee the American side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his position as Foreign Minister to issue his brother T.L. Soong a special diplomatic passport, and sent him hurriedly to New York. T. L. was actually being whisked out of China to take over as chief purchasing agent and administrator of all U.S. Lend-Lease supplies before they left for China. Since the very beginning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chinese end. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that 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 review the fact that 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. . . .”
The concluding segments of the program are drawn on another magnificent work by the Seagraves: Gold Warriors.
Before winding up the broadcast, we “dolly out” to synopsize the relationship between the Japanese invaders of China, the Green Gang gangsters, the Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-shek which fronted for the Green Gang and collaborated with the Japanese, Japanese corporations and Japanese colonial interests in Korea and Taiwan.
This overview foreshadows the political consortium that—in the postwar period, became the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, a key component of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s control of Shanghai’s booming gambling and overlapping brothel businesses; synoptic review of the relationship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanctioning of Tu to control the KMT’s drug trafficking; the symbiotic, cooperative relationship between the invading Japanese and the Green Gang, cemented by General Doihara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT operatives the Ku brothers (one of whom was Tu’s harbor boss in Shanghai and the other of whom was a top KMT general); review of the Japanese development of the narcotics business in Manchuria; the Japanese use of their Manchurian narcotics enterprise to subvert China by increasing the population’s addiction rate; review of Chiang Kai-shek’s collaboration with the Manchurian/Japanese narcotics enterprise; the role of Japanese zaibatsu and other colonized areas in the Japanese narcotics business.
“ . . . . 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. . . .”
We conclude the program with analysis of power broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped institutionalize the collaboration between Chinese KMT, Korean and Japanese fascists. Noteworthy, as well is Kodama’s close relationship between with the CIA and the Japanese Imperial family in the postwar/Cold War period.
Kodama Yoshio epitomizes and embodies the operational and ideological structure of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Kodama’s accumulated fortune of 13 billion dollars in World War II dollars; Kodama’s close relationship with Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Imperial Palace; Kodama’s dominant position in the narcotics traffic, during and after World War II; Kodama’s donation of 100 million dollars to the CIA (equivalent to 1 billion dollars in today’s currency); Kodama’s continued dominance in the global narcotics traffic, during the time he was on the CIA’s payroll; Kodama’s cozy relationship with Prince Higashikuni, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, who facilitated Kodama’s operations, including his close relationship with the U.S.
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.
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