What is on the Moon?
AGENDA 21 RADIO
longtime CIA asset and KMT stooge Ray S. Cline (top) and General Curtis LeMay (bottom) As I hope these two examples illustrate, Chiang Kai-shek and his drug traffickers were able to wield an enormous degree of influence over American foreign (and even domestic) policy for years. And the scary part is, Chiang Kai-shek likely wasn’t even the most powerful figure behind the WACL. Such an honor probably resided with the mysterious figure of Yoshio Kodama.
Kodama was an underworld figure who, with the backing of his patron Ryoichi Sasakawa, would become obscenely wealthy and powerful in Japan during the 1930s-1940s period, especially during the war years.
“Kodama had a lot to live for. Thanks to the war and the patronage of a political leader, Ryoichi Sasakawa, he was sitting on the 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 of modern Japanese history. Working alongside him would be Sasakawa, his old mentor…
“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 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 fingers. Bankrolled by conservative businessmen and politicians companies, 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 15 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.’
“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 the 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 black shirts, the symbol of international fascism; they were to rally forces behind the government plans to rule 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 material, often at the point of a gun, and then selling it back to his own government at exuberant prices.
“At war’s end, both men were sent to prison by the American Occupation Forces, classified as Class A war criminals…
“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 fascist, 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 for 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 the nation into a war of military imperialism throughout Asia, were resurrected and brought back into leadership roles.”
(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 59-63)
Kodama made far more than a measly $200 million off of the war. In point of fact he became deeply involved in the Golden Lily project, Imperial Japan’s attempt to systematically loot all of the Asian nations they conquered during the war years.
“In the closing months of World War II in the Philippines, while General Yamashita Tomoyuki fought a delaying action in the rugged mountains of Luzon, several of Japan’s highest-ranking imperial princes were preparing for the future. They were busy hiding tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in nearby caves and tunnels, to be recovered later. This was the property of twelve Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years. Expert teams accompanying Japan’s armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan’s top gangsters looted Asia’s underworld and black economy. In this, the Japanese were far more thorough than the Nazis. It was as if a giant vacuum cleaner passed across East and Southeast Asia. Much of the plunder reached Japan overland through Korea. The rest, moving by sea, got no further than the Philippines as the U.S. submarine blockade became complete in early 1943. Hiding the treasure there was crucial, so that if Japan lost the war militarily, it would not lose financially. In whatever settlement concluded the war, Japan always expected to keep the Philippines. Overseen by the princes, 175 ‘imperial’ treasure vaults were constructed throughout the island…
“Japan’s looting of Asia was overseen by Emperor Hirohito’s charming and cultured brother, Prince Chichibu. His organization was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the Emperor’s poems…”
(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 2-3)
Golden Lily gold found in the Philippines Kodama initially became involved with the Golden Lily while working in Shanghai but his operation soon branched out across various nations.
“Another great fortune discovered by US intelligence services in 1946, was $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a ‘rear admiral’ in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war, to get out of Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave $100 million to the CIA, which was added to the M-Fund’s coffers. Kodama then personally financed the creation of the two political parties that merged into Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly backed to this day by Washington.”
(ibid, pg. 8)
Estimates of the total value of the Golden Lily go into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Kodama likely had access to far more of these funds than the $13 billion that he managed to accumulate during the Second World War. This black market gold was not his only source of income, however. He was also one of the largest drug lords in the world for decades.
“While literally an employee of the U.S. Government, Kodama continued to oversee Japan’s postwar drug trade. Heroin labs were moved back not only from Taiwan, but from North China, Manchuria and Korea. Chinese who had collaborated with Japan in drug processing and distribution, were given sanctuary and began operating from Japanese soil. Two of the three major players in Asia narcotics soon died: Nationalist China’s General Tai Li was assassinated in a 1946 plane crash; Shanghai godfather Tu Yueh-sheng died in Hong Kong of natural causes in 1951. Kodama was left as Asia’s top druglord, while on the U.S. payroll. This could have been embarrassing, for Japan’s dominant role in narcotics was widely known and undisputed, but a Cold War hush descended over it like an Arctic whiteout. During the occupation, U.S. propaganda characterized Asia’s drug trade as exclusively the enterprise of leftist and communist agents. In truth, it was dominated by Kodama in Japan, and by Generalissimo Chiang through the KMT opium armies based in the Golden Triangle, who were under the direct control of the generalissimo’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT chief of military intelligence at the time…”
(ibid, pgs. 108-109)
old Kodama
Thus, Kodama and Chiang Kai-shek were effectively the two largest drug lords in Eastn Asia for decades – From roughly the 1930s until the mid-1970s, specifically. Kodama, especially with the access he had to revenues generated both by his opium trade as well as his black market gold, had phenomenal amounts of money at their disposal. When Kodama became involved with the World Anti-Communist League in the late 1960s, it was through a curious individual: the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.
From the very early years of his mission Reverend Moon had established close ties to the South Korean power structure, especially within the intelligence community. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency has been known as a major backer of the Unification Church for years, but it alone could not account for the phenomenal amount of money the Reverend Moon has spent in his various endeavors over the decades. Kodama’s black market gold and drug money, however, would be capable of managing the largess the Reverend Moon has been known to show to various conservative causes the world over throughout the years. It would seem that Moon and Kodama did form such an alliance and that the World Anti-Communist League was their first significant collaboration together. Kodama’s former patron, Ryoichi Sasakawa, was seemingly the architect of this partnership.
“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 in underworld lieutenant of Yoshio Kodama, and secretary of the innocently named Japan Youth Lectures, an organization that indoctrinated and trained young members of the yakuza gangs. Kuboki was secretary-general of Japan’s Genri Undo; he also served as an advisor and lecturer to Kodama’s Youth Lectures.
“The purpose of the meeting was to create in Japan a Korean-style 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 façade. Shokyo Rengo, or ‘Victory Over Communism,’ was born. Ryoichi Sasakawa was made overall chairman of Shokyo Rengo, and Yoshio Kodama was its chief advisor.
“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.”
(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pg. 69)Ryoichi Sasakawa
It’s curious to note that so many of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League founders were connected to cults or secret societies. Of course Moon himself was most definitely a cult leader, despite the mainline Christian image the Unification Church often assumes in public.
“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 Unificationism is its attribution of spirituality and gender to nations based upon their topographic.
‘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. It’s mother is England, another island country in the position of Eve.’
“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 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 headquarters a payment of ten percent ‘for family support.’”
(ibid, pg. 64)the Reverend Moon
