-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Inside The League
Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson©1986
Dodd, Mead & Company
79 Madison Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
ISBN 0-396-08517-2
322pps — out-of-print/one edition
[re-print/first edition available from:
W. Clement Stone, P M A Communications, Incorporated]
--[5]--
FIVE
I am the world's wealthiest fascist.
-Ryoichi Sasakawa
IN AUGUST 1945, thirteen Japanese fascists climbed to a hilltop above Tokyo.
>From the hill, they looked out at shimmering Tokyo Bay and saw the
surrounding snowcapped mountains, the brilliant green of the rice paddies,
and the tiny hamlets whose coal fires sent little black spumes into the blue
sky. But the men hadn't come to admire the view. The empire they had spent
their lives creating lay in ruins. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been
obliterated by atomic bombs. American troops were massed just over the
horizon, ready to invade. The talk in Tokyo was of surrender. For the men on
Atagoyama Hill, that would be the ultimate disgrace. Better to die than bear
witness to the final humilation.
As thousands of their countrymen throughout Japan and on untold numbers of
islands in the Pacific had already done, twelve of the men, members of the
ultra-right Sonjo Doshikai ("Association for the Reverence of the Emperor and
the Expulsion of the Barbarians") had come to the hill to commit suicide. The
thirteenth member of their party was apparently there to dissuade them. It
was to no avail the men on Atagoyama held hand grenades to their stomachs and
pulled the pins. Only one man, Yoshio Kodama, came down from the hill.
Kodama had a lot to live for. Thanks to the war and the patronage of a
political leader, Ryoichi Sasakawa, he was sitting on a fortune of over $200
million. In the years ahead, he would help create the dominant political
party of Japan, make and destroy prime ministers, fund the World
Anti-Communist League, and be the principal figure in the greatest scandal in
modern Japanese history. Working alongside him would be Sasakawa, his old
mentor.
The lives of Kodama and Sasakawa, the pre-eminent fascist leaders in postwar
Japan, are closely intertwined. Born in 1899, Ryoichi Sasakawa, the son of a
small sake (rice whiskey) brewer, became a millionaire at thirty by
speculating on rice futures. In 1931, he formed the Kokusui Taishuto, a
militarist political movement and, according to a U.S. Counter-Intelligence
Corps (CIC) report after World War II, was "one of the most active Fascist
organizers prior to the war."
Yoshio Kodama started life more abjectly. An orphan who had survived by
toiling in sweatshops, he found his calling among the various right-wing
movements that sprouted up throughout Japan in the 1930s. Often these yakuza
groups functioned more as criminal bands than as genuine ideological
movements; modeling themselves after the legends of the samurai warriors,
they displayed their allegiance to a particular leader by covering their
bodies with tattoos, they repented errors by cutting off the tips of their
little fingers. Bankrolled by conservative businessmen and politicians, these
private yakuza armies broke up labor unions, "protected" factories and
offices from vandalism, and assassinated opposition leaders. The young Kodama
excelled at these activities and by the time he was fifteen was a terrorist
leader in his own right. In 1931, he sent a dagger to a former Japanese
minister of finance. "Allow me to present you with this instrument," the
accompanying note read, "so appropriate for our troubled times. I leave you
to make up your mind as to how to use it-to defend yourself, or to commit
ritual suicide."[1]
The threat landed the twenty-year-old Kodama in jail, but it was not in vain;
the day he was released, another yakuza succeeded in killing the former
minister.
In the 1930s both of the future League benefactors ran afoul of the law and
were imprisoned, Sasakawa for plotting the assassination of a former premier,
Kodama for another murder plot, this time against the prime minister.
As the forces of fascism took over Japan and as the war in Manchuria got
under way, the talents of men like Sasakawa and Kodama were suddenly needed.
Both were released in order to further the cause of the empire—Kodama to
carry out intelligence missions in China and Sasakawa to resurrect his
Kokusui Taishuto movement, whose followers were now clad in blackshirts, the
symbol of international fascism they were to rally forces behind the
government's plans to rule Asia. Sasakawa even flew to Rome for a personal
audience with Mussolini, a man he would later describe as "the perfect
fascist." In 1942 Sasakawa was elected to the Japanese Parliament (Diet) on
the promise of expanding the war throughout Asia.
In the meantime, Kodama was making a name for himself in China. Entrusted
with the task of keeping the Japanese navy supplied with raw materials,
Kodama made a fortune of at least $200 million by seizing materiel, often at
the point of a gun, and then selling it back to his own government at
exorbitant prices.
At war's end, both men were sent to prison by the American Occupation Forces,
classified as Class A war criminals. "Sasakawa," a CIC report concluded in
1946, "appears to be a man potentially dangerous to Japan's political
future.... He has been squarely behind Japanese military aggression and
anti-foreignism for more than twenty years. He is a man of wealth and not too
scrupulous about its use.... He is not above wearing any new cloak that
opportunism may offer. "[2]
Yoshio Kodama was, in the eyes of the Americans, just as potentially
dangerous: "His long and fanatic involvement in ultra-nationalistic
activities, violence included, and his skill in appealing to youth make him a
man who, if released from internment, would surely be a grave security
risk.... Persistent rumors as to his black-market profits in his Shanghai
period, plus his known opportunism, are forceful arguments that he would be
as unscrupulous in trade as he was in ultra-nationalism.[3]
But just as they did with the Nazis in Europe, the American occupation
authorities had a change of heart about Japan's war criminals. As the Cold
War began, the enemy was no longer the fascists but the communists. In Japan,
as for example in Italy, the political left emerged from the war as a major
power bloc with the potential for becoming the dominant political force and
even, it was feared by the Americans, for leading the nation into the Soviet
camp. Sasakawa, Kodama, and other prominent Japanese war criminals were
quietly released from prison in 1948 and became some of the prime-movers,
organizers, and funders of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, a
conservative pro-American party that has controlled the political life of
Japan ever since. Through this maneuver, the old ruling circles of Japan, the
men who had allied with Nazi Germany and plunged their nation into a war of
military imperialism throughout Asia, were resurrected and brought back into
leadership roles.
Many observers feel that a deal was struck, in which the United States
released the war criminals in return for use of their connections and money
to undercut the growing left. There is some evidence of this change of heart
in declassified American documents from the period. Frank ONeill, an American
lieutenant attached to the International Military Tribunal, concluded in 1946
that Kodama "committed numerous acts of violence in China in the acquisition
by foul means or fair of commodities and goods [belonging to] the Chinese",
in 1948, the same Mr. ONeill predicted that "ten years from today this man
Kodama is going to be a great leader of Japan. [4]
Besides being two of the prime backers of the Liberal Democratic Party,
Sasakawa and Kodama extended their influence to other fields. Sasakawa
rebuilt his personal fortune through the establishment of the Japan Motorboat
Racing Association* and maintained his contacts in the right-wing underworld
through an organization called the National Council of Patriotic
Organizations, or Zenai Kaigi. On the board with him were "several yakuza
bosses and at least three right-wing terrorists convicted of the
assassinations of Prime Ministers in the 1930's."[5] [ * Sasakawa got a bill
passed through the Diet in 1959 establishing this monopoly with himself as
head. The prime minister at the time was Kishi Nobosuke, another former Class
A war criminal and Sasakawa's cellmate at Sugamo Prison, Kishi was the prime
mover in the establishment of APACL-Japan and was active in the WACL
throughout the 1960s, including serving as chairman of the planning committee
in 1970.]
Kodama, meanwhile, added to his wealth by becoming one of the supreme bosses
of the Japanese underworld, mediating disputes between rival yakuza and
receiving protection money from Japanese industry. He, too, had his own
organization, the Sheishikai, nicknamed "Kodama's Club," which was composed
almost entirely of underworld groups.
If the backgrounds of Sasakawa and Kodama are less than illus-trious, that of
the Reverend Sun Myung Moon is downright bizarre. The son of middle-class
parents from what is now North Korea, Moon's life took a dramatic turn when,
walking through the hills around his village, he was visited by Jesus Christ.
"You are the son I have been seeking," Christ informed the startled
sixteen-year-old, "the one who can begin my eternal history."
Moon clearly took this sign from heaven to heart- today his Unification
Church, operating under a bewildering maze of religious, cultural, political,
and economic front groups, spreads the word and influence of the "Heavenly
Father" on five continents.
Unification theology is a potpourri of Christianity, Confucianism, mysticism,
patriotism, anti-communism, and Moon's own megalomania. In Moon's eyes,
Christ technically falls into the category of a failure, for although he
established a spiritual kingdom, he didn't establish a physical or political
one. Moon is here to rectify that oversight—he is anointed as the man to
complete Jesus' original mission.
Because it rejected Jesus, Israel is no longer God's chosen land (though the
Jews were finally cleansed by suffering six million dead in World War II),
God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam country. Moon and Korea were
uniquely designed for this purpose, for one of the most original aspects of
Unification-ism is its attribution of spirituality and gender to nations
based upon their topography. "It [Korea] is a peninsula, physically
resembling the male.... Japan is in the position of Eve. Being only an island
country, it cannot be Adam. It yearns for male-like peninsular Korea on the
mainland.... America is an archangel country. Its mother is England, another
island country in the position of Eve. "[6]
Today, Unification Church disciples, or "Moonies," are, according to former
members, "love-bombed" upon induction, fed high-carbohydrate diets, and kept
awake for long periods. These are basic forms of brainwashing designed to
lower a person's resistance to coercion or suggestion. Initiates are kept
under close surveillance, told to report their every action, even their
dreams, to their leaders, and, when finally trusted, offered "redemption" by
going out to raise funds for the Church. The fund-raisers, called "Mobile
Teams," best known for relentlessly selling flowers, American flags, and
magazines in airports, send to headquarters a payment of ten percent "for
family support."
Virtually every action a Moonie makes is scrutinized, analyzed, and
regulated. Moonies are constantly berated to save money, to tighten their
belts, and to function on little food and sleep. "It's a sin to call long
distance necessarily," Moon proclaimed in a confidential 1983 paper entitled
"Instructions from Father." "When you are going to call, first, write down
each point you wish to convey. Then, record the response. After you
acknowledge the message, say goodbye and quickly hang up. I seldom call. If
you misuse phone calls you are commiting the crime of misusing your brother's
blood."
Throughout Moonie indoctrination, the "Heavenly Father" holds himself up as
an example to be emulated. "Initiate an austerity program," the instruction
memo goes on. "In eating, be tasteful, not excessive. I never eat snacks. You
don't need any snack. Also, we never eat as we walk. It's unhealthy. Divide
the eating, walking and talking time. I abhor eating and walking at the same
time. I never carry food in my pocket or buy chewing gum.... I'm not fat. I
have a special muscle for speaking long periods of time."
Moon never would have developed that "special muscle" if it hadn't been for
the intervention of the Korean CIA or the financial largesse of Japanese
underworld bosses Sasakawa and Kodama.
After studying electrical engineering in Japan during World War II, Moon
returned to Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) to found his first
church. "It was no different from many other unorthodox Christian sects
except for the ritual of 'blood separation/ involving female members of the
Church. They were required to have sexual relations with Moon, to clear
themselves of 'the taint of Satan.' "[7]
Moon was arrested by the communist authorities twice and in 1947 was
sentenced to five years in Hungnam Prison. Although he maintains that this
was just another example of communist persecution of religion, other sources,
including former Korean government officials, say the charges were in
response to the Church's reported orgiastic practices.
Eventually freed by United Nations troops in their advance north during the
Korean War, Moon fled to Pusan, in South Korea. There he founded the Holy
Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or, simply, the
Unification Church.
Moon's ministry found quite a few converts among the homeless and
impoverished refugees who flooded Pusan, but the strange tenets he espoused
were met with suspicion and hostility by both the rulers of South Korea and
the established Catholic clergy. Moon could count among his disciples,
however, a number of well-connected young army officers. When he was again
arrested in 1955, this time on a morals charge for staying the night in a
"love hotel" with a follower, Moon's military contacts managed to get the
charge changed to violation of military conscription law and it was
eventually dropped.
A major boon for Moon's Church came in 1962 when Kim Jong Pil, director of
the newly formed Korean Central Intelligence Agency, went to the United
States on an official visit. His interpreter was Kim Sang In, a Moon
lieutenant. Coordinating his visit from the Korean Embassy in Washington was
Colonel Bo Hi Pak, who is today Moon's chief aide.
Impressed by Pak's access to influential American government officials, Kim
Jong Pil held a secret conference with Unification Church leaders in the
United States at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. According to Robert
Boettcher, former staff director of the House Subcommittee on International
Relations, which investigated Moon's ties to the KCIA, Kim Jong Pil "decided
the Unification Church should be organized satisfactorily to be utilized as a
political tool whenever he and KCIA needed it.... It was a situation
favorable both to Moon's plan for expanding via the good graces of the
government and to Kim Jong Pils plans for building a personal power base."[8]
This was the attainment of one of Moon's most important aims.
In order to rule the world, Moon had to start with Korea. It was essential
that he have loyal cultists inside the government. They had to be well placed
so they could sway powerful persons and become influential themselves. They
must be skillful in portraying the Unification Church as a useful political
tool for the government without revealing Moon's power goals. By Moon's
serving the government, the government would be serving him.... The
government could come to need him so much that he would be able to take
control of it. [9]
In order to gain greater influence and to serve the Korean government, it was
necessary to expand Unification activities in the United States. Entrusted
with this program was Colonel Bo Hi Pak, KCIA agent, member of the
Unification Church since 1957, and assistant military attache in the Korean
Embassy in Washington.
Pak returned to Korea in 1963 and retired from the army. Although he was now
a private citizen and thus subject to South Korea's strict passport laws, he
was able to return to Washington on a diplomatic visa with a letter from the
National Defense Ministry stating he was on a diplomatic mission.
Upon his return, Pak created the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation
(KCFF), an organization ostensibly dedicated to furthering cultural ties
between the United States and Korea. Pak quickly lined up an impressive list
of names for the letterhead, including former Presidents Truman and
Eisenhower, as honorary presidents, and Richard Nixon as an adviser. What
these and many other prominent Americans did not know was that the foundation
was actually a front behind which the Unification Church and the KCIA gained
access to American policymakers.
The foundation scheduled tours of the Little Angels, a Korean singing company
and "unofficial goodwill ambassadors," an idea Pak got after watching a
concert of the Vienna Boys' Choir. Although the tours also served the
Koreans' goals of winning influence abroad (the Little Angels gave a private
performance for former President Eisenhower in Gettysburg and appeared at the
United Nations and before Oueen Elizabeth II), there was another, hidden
bonus for Bo Hi Pak.
He discovered the Little Angels could be convenient vehicles for bringing
cash for the KCFF into the United States.... Large amounts could be divided
among members of the company before passing through Customs.... In 1972, a
little Angels travelling group delivered 18 million yen [$58,000]."[10]
Pak had also mastered the art of lining up prominent Americans for seemingly
legitimate causes, then using the respectability that those Americans lent to
raise money for the Unification Church. A particularly bold example was the
launching of Radio of Free Asia (ROFA) in 1966. Contacting anti-communist
American supporters for a radio station that would broadcast propaganda from
South Korea into North Korea, mainland China, and North Vietnam, Pak placed
these Americans in the directorship and put their names on the ROFA
letterhead, which was sent out in mass mailings across the United States
asking for donations. Pak maintained actual control of the project,
neglecting to tell the American chairman that the Korean government had
already agreed to the free use of transmitters or that the operations
director in Korea was a KCIA agent. In this way, Americans continued to send
in financial contributions to Radio of Free Asia, a KCIA operation, for nine
years; most of their money was diverted to the Unification Church, which used
it to finance its increased proselytizing activities in the United States.
It would appear, then, that along with ardent anti-communism and nationalism,
the Reverend Moon also shared with Sasakawa and Kodama, his future Japanese
underworld benefactors, a lack of reverence for legitimate business practices.
One Moon mission was to rally anti-communist, pro-Korean forces in Asia. With
the backing of the Korean government and with funds coming partly from his
share in state-controlled Korean industries, including the Tong-il Armaments
Company, an armaments manufacturer, Moon established the International
Federation for the Extermination of Communism. Although the dramatic name
probably endeared him to the Korean military, it was a little much for other
countries; the U.S. branch was called the Freedom Leadership Foundation.
It was in Japan that Moon found his bonanza. Membership in the Japanese
Unification Church had quickly surpassed that of the original Church in
Korea. Even today, with Church membership declining rapidly in the United
States and the Korean chapter virtually dormant, the Unification Church in
Japan remains a powerful force.
Ryoichi Sasakawa was the first Japanese leader to see the advantages of the
Unification Church. In 1958, the Unification Church was begun in Japan under
the name Genri Undo by a man named Nishikawa Masaru. It soon turned out that
Masaru was not Japanese at all but was rather a Korean, Choi Sang Ik, who had
entered Japan illegally. During Choi's subsequent immigration trial, Sasakawa
interceded as his legal guarantor. From that time on, Sasakawa played an
important role as adviser to Genri Undo.
Neither Moon nor Sasakawa was content merely to promote a church, however, in
keeping with Sasakawa's lifetime involvement in ultra-nationalist activities
and Moon's holy quest to establish a "physical mission" on earth, it was
necessary to establish a political arm or, even better, to take over an
existing one, like the World Anti-Communist League.
In July 1967, Sasakawa arranged a secret cabal at a building he owned on a
lake in Yamanashi Prefecture. Among those attending were Reverend Moon,
Shirai Tameo, and Osami Kuboki. Tameo was an underworld lieutenant of Yoshio
Kodama and secretary of the innocuously named Japan Youth Lectures, a Kodama
organization that indoctrinated and trained young members of the yakuza
gangs. Kuboki was secretary-general of Japan's Genri Undohe also served as an
adviser and lecturer to Kodama's Youth Lectures.
The purpose of the meeting was to create in Japan a Korean-styte
anti-communist movement that could operate under the umbrella of the World
Anti-Communist League and that would further Moon's global crusade and lend
the Japanese yakuza leaders a respectable new facade. Shokyo Rengo, or
"Victory Over Communism," was born. Ryoichi Sasakawa was made overall
chairman of Shokyo Rengo, and Yoshio Kodama its chief adviser.[11]
In April 1968, Shokyo Rengo was chosen as the official Japanese chapter of
the League. While theoretically unaffiliated with the Unification Church,
virtually its entire membership came from Moonie ranks or the yakuza minions
of Kodama and Sasakawa.
It was in the months preceding the 1970 (WACL) Congress that the general
public in Japan first became aware of the existence of Shokyo Rengo, when its
activists carried out a nation-wide campaign in the streets publicizing the
congress, passing out leaflets, collecting donations, etc.[12]
At the 1970 League conference, held in Kyoto and Tokyo, Osami Kuboki was
named chairman of the finance committee, and Sasakawa, the overall chairman.
Shokyo Rengo sponsored the conference its monetary generosity was considered
the chief reason for this being the biggest gathering in League history.
After their sponsorship of the 1970 League conference, both Sasakawa and
Kodama stayed in the spotlight. Although Sasakawa no longer plays a visible
role in the League, he remains a firm believer and important financier of
both the Unification Church and Shokyo Rengo in Japan. In 1974 he created the
World Karate Federation with Jhoon Rhee, another Moon lieutenant. Because of
his philanthropy, Sasakawa has been honored with the Helen Keller
International Award, the Linus Pauling Medal for Humanitarianism, and the
United Nations Peace Medal. Now he is reportedly angling for a Nobel Peace
Prize.
Yoshio Kodama remained one of the most powerful of Japan's yakuza bosses. In
the 1970s, he was also the Japanese and Korean agent for the Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation, his bribery efforts to get the Japanese government to
buy Lockheed airplanes made him the central figure in the Lockheed scandal in
1978. The scandal pulled down the government of Prime Minister Tanaka but
left the gangster, until his death in 1985, at least $7 million richer with
which to expand his domain. Today it seems that his yakuza successors might
consider the United States part of that domain.
In 1985, "federal immigration inspectors at Honolulu International Airport,
on special alert for Japanese gangsters, noted a curious similarity among
some of the hundreds of tourists arriving from Japan each week: a little
finger had been partly amputated. [13]
pps. 63-70
--[notes]--
FIVE
1. Hanzawa Hiroshi, "Two Right-Wing Bosses: A Comparison of Sugiyama and
Kodama," Japan Quarterly, (July-September 1976), vol. 23, p. 243.
2. Quoted in Alec Dubro and David E. Kaplan, "Soft-Core Fascism," The
Village
Voice (New York: October 4, 1983).
3. G-2 (Military Intelligence) Far East Command report to Colonel R. E.
Rudisill,
May 24,1947.
4. Quoted in Jim Hougan, Spooks (New York: Morrow, 1978), pp. 452-53.
5. Dubro and Kaplan, "Fascism," p. 42.
6. Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1980),
pp, 33-34.
7. David Silverberg, "Heavenly Deception," Present Tense, vol. 4 (Autumn
1976),
p. 53,
S. Boettcher, Gifts, pp. 39-40.
9. ibid., p. 38.
10. Ibid., p. 46.
11. Sasakawa and Kodama may have had another reason for their alliance
with Moon. Since the end of World War II, Japan has had extremely strict
gun-control laws, and weapons for the yakuza gangs have had to be smuggled in
one by one. Under the Korean government's patronage, the Unification Church
owned and operated Tong-il Industries. Tong-il is a weapons manufacturer that
makes rifles and components for M- 16 assault rifles. It also operates the
Yewha Air Gun Company in Kyonggi-Do, Korea.
In 1975, seven years after the Yamanashi conference, the Japanese importer of
air rifles from Korea was a shadow company, Angus Arms Company, which was not
registered or in any corporate directory. The rifles, according to political
analyst Pharris Harvey in a memorandum to the House Subcommittee on
International Relations in May 1978, "are sold, exclusively it seems to
members of Shokyo Rengo and UC [Unification Church]."
12. Pharris Harvey, memorandum to House Subcommittee on International Rela-
tions, May 24, 1978.
13. Robert Lindsey, The New York Times, January 25, 1985, p. A16,
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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