Жапон милиардері және құпия қызметтердің байланысы: Кодама Ёсионың өмірі мен қызметі

Japanese ultranationalist and organized crime power broker

Yoshio Kodama was born on February 18, 1911, in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima, Japan to a family formerly of samurai status. to engage in large scale plunder in Manchuria and China and sell the stolen goods at a high profit in Japan. He is also said to have distributed opium and narcotics. Kodama publicly regarded this activity as purely idealistic and patriotic. By 1945, Kodama had become one of the richest men in Asia with assets equivalent to $175 million US dollars. Towards the end of the Pacific War, Kodama was promoted to Rear Admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

At the end of World War II, the defeat of Japan initially represented an enormous setback for Kodama. Shortly after the announcement of the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945, he witnessed the ritual suicide of Admiral Ōnishi, but was subsequently unable to bring himself to commit seppuku. A little later he acted as an advisor to the Japanese interim government of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni. Since Kodama feared the confiscation of his property by the US occupation authorities, he gave parts of it to the yakuza chief Karoku Tsuji. Other possessions were kept on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. In March 1946, Kodama was arrested by the United States as a suspected Class A war criminal. He was held in Sugamo Prison with Ryoichi Sasakawa, where the two formed a long friendship. Kodama also formed a close relationship with fellow suspected Class A war criminal (and future prime minister) Nobusuke Kishi. Since he had a lot of time, Kodama was able to keep himself up to date on current events and far reaching political changes in East Asia in all available daily newspapers. He realized that the new democratic forces in Japan were weak, observing that "in the midst of all this rapid change, there is one thing which is lagging behind. This is parliamentary power." While imprisoned, Kodama wrote Sugamo Diary (a chronicle of his experience in prison) and I Was Defeated (an autobiographical work). Like many other alleged Japanese war criminals, Kodama was recruited by the US G 2 (Intelligence) under Charles A. Willoughby while in custody. In 1948, the US intelligence community was able to drop all charges against him on the condition that he would support all anti communist activities of the G 2 CIC division in Asia. On December 24, 1948, he left Sugamo Prison as a free man and was never imprisoned again for the rest of his life. Kodama spent a total of six and a half years of his life in prisons. Kodama, being a right wing ultranationalist, eagerly fulfilled his end of the bargain, using his fortune and network of contacts to quell labor disputes, root out Communist sympathizers and otherwise fight socialist activities in Japan. In 1949, the CIA paid him to smuggle a shipment of tungsten out of China. The shipment never arrived but Kodama kept his money. to covertly influence electoral politics in postwar Japan. In 1955, Kodama's Sugamo Prison acquaintance Nobusuke Kishi, with the covert backing of the CIA, engineered the formation of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) via the merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA spent millions to support the LDP, for intelligence gathering and to make Japan a bulwark against communism in Asia. Right wing groups also staged counter protests in favor of the Treaty. However, due to the violent June 15th Incident, in which female university student Michiko Kanba was killed, Kishi was forced to cancel Eisenhower's visit and Kodama's force was not needed. In response to the Anpo protests, Kodama and other right wing leaders established the All Japanese Conference of Patriotic Associations (全日本愛国者団体会議), an umbrella organization of 80 right wing groups and yakuza groups. Zen'ai Kaigi carried out a variety of counter protest activities in support of the conservative Kishi government, and by the end of the protests had grown to include more than 100 organizations. In this way, the 1960 Anpo protests helped cement the interlocking relationships between right wing nationalists, yakuza gangsters, and conservative political interests, with Kodama playing a starring role. In April 1961, Kodama formed his own sub faction within the Zen'ai Kaigi called Seinen Shiso Kenkyukai (Society for the Study of Youth Ideology), which represented a hard core within the umbrella organization, mainly yakuza. At the end of the 1960s, the Shiso Kenkyukai split from Zen'ai Kaigi Its members received military training and were used to intimidate unpopular journalists and book authors. One of the victims of this organization was the journalist Hisatomo Takemori (久友竹森), whose book entitled Black Money was not published after multiple threats. In 1963, Kodama attempted to form a coalition of Japan's organized crime groups. However, Kazuo Taoka withdrew the Yamaguchi gumi early on in talks, leaving Kodama with a Tokyo centered group that would become known as the Kanto kai. The organization was formed of seven yakuza groups (including the Sumiyoshi kai and Matsuba kai), with the purpose of fostering relations between the groups and promoting rightist goals. With Kodama unable to smooth over its internal conflicts, the Kanto kai dissolved in January 1965. Kodama was able to grow his fortune until the mid 1970s. He owned shares in Hisayuki Machii's Ginza nightclub empire, a shipping company, a baseball team, a film studio, and several sports magazines. Kodama maintained close relations with LDP politicians, such as the yakuza connected LDP Vice President Banboku Ōno, and his influence did not suffer until he was identified as the key kuromaku in the Lockheed Corporation bribery scandal. Kodama had been a paid agent of Lockheed since 1958 and received $U. S.7 million for his help in arranging the TriStar aircraft deal.

In the 1970s, it came to light that Kodama had played a role in the Lockheed L 1011 bribery scandal, which effectively ended his career as a right wing fixer. Maeno hit the second floor of Kodama's mansion and died in the plane crash, but Kodama was unharmed in a different room. He was recovering from a stroke at the time. In June 1977, charges were brought against Kodama for tax evasion related to the scandal, but the trial was never completed before he died. Kodama died in his sleep of a stroke in Tokyo on January 17, 1984.