90 Chalmers Johnson , Norbert A. Schlei and Michael Schaller
his special envoy to negotiate a revision of the treaty. After exten-
sive negotiations between Nixon and Prime Minister Nobusuke
Kishi, a new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was
concluded to replace the 1952 treaty. The new treaty was in due
course ratified by the Senate and came into effect on June 23,
1960.
With the revision of the Security Treaty, Vice President Nixon
agreed to turn over exclusive control of the M-Fund to Japan. It
has been alleged that this action by Nixon was part of a corrupt
political bargain, whereby it was agreed that if Japan would assist
him to become President of the United States, Nixon would agree
to release control of the Fund to Japan and, if he became Presi-
dent, would return Okinawa to Japan. However, the ostensible
reason for ceding control of the Fund to Japan was Japan’s need
for an emergency source of funds in the event that war should
break out. In such an eventuality, Japan would be especially vul-
nerable because its constitutional prohibition on military force
would severely hamper financial preparation for defense, in
order to make the Fund an even better source of defense funds in
time of need, the Japanese negotiators agreed that after the Fund
was released to Japanese control, they would add substantially to
the amount of the Fund.
The task of adding to the M-Fund, which is believed to have
amounted to ¥12.3 trillion (about $35 billion) in 1960, was dele-
gated to Kakuei Tanaka, Finance Minister in the Ikeda Cabinet.
The plan was to obtain the necessary amount by selling the
Japanese real estate that the government had confiscated during
the war from enemy aliens (i.e., citizens of the United States and
other Allied Powers) who had failed to qualify for postwar resti-
tution.
During the ten-year period from 1960 to 1970, Tanaka sold
1,681 properties through nominees at a total profit of ¥7.9 trillion
($22 billion). Tanaka’s technique was to sell the properties pri-
vately to nominees at a low price, then have the nominees sell at
market value, remitting the profit to the Fund. This program
was terminated in 1970 by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in order
to avoid public disclosure after questions were raised in the Diet
by the Komeito Party.
The Fund has today grown to the staggering size of more
than $500 billion. It dominates Japanese politics and is a major
The CIA and Japanese Politics 91
force in the Japanese economy. And yet, amazingly enough, it
remains a secret fund, unknown to most of the world and to the
vast majority of Japanese citizens. Even more amazing, as I dis-
cuss below, the Fund is not controlled by the government of
Japan or even by the Liberal Democratic Party, but is, rather, the
private preserve of a small group of individuals.
Control of the Fund and Resulting Abuses
The exact nature of what Nixon did or intended to do when
he yielded control of the M-Fund to the Japanese negotiators in
the waning days of the Eisenhower Administration has never
been made public. It seems inconceivable that he knowingly
“gave” the Fund to Prime Minister Kishi and his associates as
individuals, free of any governmental or institutional control.
The fact is, however, that beginning with Prime Minister Kishi,
the Fund has been treated as the private preserve of the individ-
uals into whose control it has fallen. Those individuals have felt
able to appropriate huge sums from the Fund for their own per-
sonal and political purposes. The Fund has not been deemed an
asset of the nation or subjected to governmental or even institu-
tional control.
The individuals who have controlled the M-Fund since 1960
have all been affiliated with the Liberal Democratic Party and
have had an interest in that Party’s continued control of the
Japanese government. However, those individuals have not
been under the control of the party as such, and frequently the
controller or controllers of the Fund and the leaders of the party
have been quite different. For example, it is known that the con-
trol over the Fund by Kakuei Tanaka and his appointees lasted
until 1986, many years after Tanaka was convicted of bribery in
the Lockheed scandal and ousted from power.
Today’s [that is, in 1991] Prime Minister, Toshiki Kaifu, has
virtually nothing to say about the governance of the Fund. Even
the man who is the nation’s most influential political leader
behind the scenes, Noboru Takeshita, has not yet been able to
wrest control of the Fund from former Prime Minister Yasuhiro
Nakasone and his appointees, who gained control in 1986 and
still retain a somewhat tenuous hold on control even though
92 Chalmers Johnson, Norbert A. Schlei, and Michael Schaller
they have long since lost their status in government and in the
Liberal Democratic Party.
The secrecy surrounding the M-Fund and the absence of
governmental or institutional controls over it have led to abuses
so great as to dwarf any governmental scandal within memory
in any part of the world. The litany of abuses begins with Kishi,
who, after obtaining control of the Fund from Nixon, helped
himself to a fortune of ¥1 trillion (then nearly $3 billion). Kakuei
Tanaka, who dominated the Fund for longer than any other
individual, took from it personally some ¥10 trillion which he
invested through the Union Bank of Switzerland.
Others who are said to have obtained personal fortunes
from the Fund include Mrs. Eisaku Sato, widow of the former
Prime Minister (¥300 billion), and Masaharu Gotoda, a Naka-
sone ally and former Chief Secretary of the Cabinet (¥60 billion).
Although the people of Japan and the world do not yet know
it, the Fund under Mr. Nakasone’s control was responsible for the
Recruit scandal. So far as the public is aware, the Recruit scandal
concerned relatively small sums of money distributed by the
Recruit Company to some 200 politicians in order to influence
governmental policy. Prime Minister Takeshita resigned because
approximately $1.5 million was received by him or his associates
as political contributions or in other ways that involved no illegal
conduct on Takeshita’s part. However, the real abuse underlying
these events is that the Recruit Company itself was, in effect, cre-
ated and financed by the M-Fund to serve Nakasone’s personal
and political interests.
When Nakasone obtained control over the M-Fund in 1986,
the Recruit Company was a small company doing business in
the fields of information, advertising, and real estate. The com-
pany was controlled by Hiromasu Ezoe, a longtime friend and
supporter of Nakasone. At the insistence of Nakasone, the M-
Fund was utilized to make available bank loans to Recruit
amounting to some ¥1.7 trillion (more than $10 billion). (By w
of comparison, the bank debt of Shin Nippon Steel Company
the largest steel maker in the world, then was ¥1.2 trillion. T
bank debt of Seibu Department Stores Group, a company hun
dred of times larger than Recruit was at the time, was ¥1.0 tril-
lion.) In essence, the money handed out to politicians by Recru
came from the M-Fund.
The CIA and Japanese Politics 93
The M-Fund is reported to have been the cause of several
political murders. Many people in Japan believe that former
Prime Minister Eisaku Sato was murdered, the victim of deliber-
ate poisoning rather than a digestive upset as reported to the
press. According to these widely circulated reports, Sato’s death
occurred at the height of a contest with Kakuei Tanaka for con-
trol over the M-Fund. The dispute was, ultimately, settled and a
major scandal averted by the payment from the Fund to Sato’s
widow of a huge death benefit of ¥300 billion.
In more recent times Mr. Takeshita’s assistant, Mr. Aoki,
supposedly a suicide, is said to have been assassinated by per-
sons having a vital interest in preserving the secrecy of the M-
Fund. In the days before his death, Aoki, who was known to
have detailed knowledge of the Fund’s operations, made the
mistake of telling several friends that the Recruit scandal was a
minor matter compared to another scandal that was about to
become public through his impending testimony.
From a national and international perspective, abuse of the
M-Fund has had even more far-reaching consequences than any
of those mentioned above. It is not too much to say that the M-
Fund, controlled as it is by individuals free of any significant
governmental or institutional restraints, has prevented Japan
from becoming a truly democratic country. Japan today, scan-
dals notwithstanding, remains under the iron control of the
same political party that has controlled the nation for more than
forty years without a break.
The enormous money power of the M-Fund has prevented
the development of political parties able to compete with the
Liberal Democratic Party. All parties in Japan other than the
Communist Party, including the Socialists, have shared in and
become dependent on the largesse of the M-Fund. None can
compete with the LDP, and none ever will be able to compete so
long as the M-Fund silently subverts the political processes of
the nation.
Similarly, Japan’s economy has been both artificially stimu-
lated and gravely distorted by the money power of the M-Fund.
Among other things, the Fund has created a class of economic
barons, individuals having a net worth of $20 billion or more that
exists nowhere else on earth. It is these barons, more than any
other group or class, who run the country, using their wealth to
94 Chalmers Johnson, Norbert A. Schlei, and Michael Schaller
subvert normal political and economic processes. It is they who
are able to eliminate problems such as Mr. Sato and Mr. Aoki
(and Mr. Tanaka’s chauffeur and others) with seemingly complete
immunity from detection and prosecution.
Sad to say, Japan today retains a significant totalitarian qual-
ity in its political and economic life. In large measure this is so
because the M-Fund, provided by a benevolent U.S. government,
has been subverted and misused by those into whose control it
has fallen.
America’s Favorite War Criminal: Nobusuke Kishi and the
Transformation of U.S.-Japan Relations
Michael Schaller
Evidence in a variety of open and still classified U.S. govern-
ment documents strongly indicates that early in 1958, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, making what he and his aides earlier
called a “big bet,” authorized the CIA to provide secret campaign
funds to Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke – formerly an
accused war criminal – and selected members of the Liberal
Democratic Party. This fateful decision followed Kishi’s June 1957
visit to the United States, where he had addressed both Houses of
Congress, thrown out the first pitch at a New York Yankees base-
ball game, and joined Eisenhower in a round of golf at an other-
wise racially segregated country club. In private discussions, the
president and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles also gave
Kishi a crucial political reward: their pledge to renegotiate the
unpopular 1951 security treaty imposed upon Japan as the price
of ending the Occupation.
The honors bestowed upon the prime minister could only
be described as remarkable, given the fact that as a member of
General Tojo’s cabinet in 1941 Kishi had co-signed the declara-
tion of war against the United States. As Minister of Commerce
and Industry and later head of the Munitions Ministry, he had
overseen the forced conscription of hundreds of thousands of
Korean and Chinese laborers and been responsible for military
production. When American Occupation troops entered Japan
in August 1945, they arrested Kishi as a suspected Class A war
The CIA and Japanese Politics 95
criminal and he spent three years in Sugamo Prison under
investigation.
As much as anyone, Kishi represented everything the Unit-
ed States detested about Imperial Japan and had pledged to
eradicate. His political resurrection symbolized the transforma-
tion of Japanese- American relations during the 1950s. In a literal
sense, Kishi’s life mirrored Japan’s evolution from enemy to
ally, the emergence of the cold war in Asia, and the role played
by the United States in forging Japan’s postwar political and
economic structure.
Kishi first came to the attention of American officials shortly
before the Pearl Harbor attack when, as a rising star in the Min-
istry of Commerce and Industry, he struck up a friendship with
Ambassador Joseph C. Grew. Grew’s admiration was evident in
1942 when, while under detention and awaiting an exchange of
diplomats, the ambassador commented on Kishi’s offer to release
the detained American to play a round of golf. “Kishi has always
been one of my highly valued friends in Japan and nothing can
ever change my feeling of personal friendship and affection for
him,” Grew wrote. “That feeling will endure permanently, no mat-
ter what has happened or what may happen in the future.” This
testimonial served Kishi better than he could ever have dreamed.
Kishi’s release from prison in December 1948 reflected the
dramatic reversal of Occupation priorities during the previous 18
months. American forces arrived in Japan armed with a bold plan
to demilitarize, democratize, and economically reorganize the
nation. By the summer of 1947, enthusiasm for the radical restruc-
turing of Japan waned. With China wracked by a civil war and
Europe politically divided and economically prostrate, the Tru-
man administration viewed Japan, like Germany, as a power vacu-
um into which Soviet influence might flow. Soviet control of Ger-
man and Japanese industrial potential, men such as State Depart-
ment Policy Planner George Kennan, Army Undersecretary
William Draper, and Navy (later Defense) Secretary James Forre-
stal believed, would tilt the global balance in Moscow’s favor. In
simplest terms, Forrestal put it, real security against communism
required the “restoration of commerce, trade and business” world-
wide. This meant putting “Japan, Germany and other affiliates of
the Axis back to work.”
George Kennan argued that Japan must be redeveloped as the
96 Chalmers Johnson, Norbert A. Schlei, and Michael Schaller
“cornerstone of a Pacific Security system.” The “radically changed
world situation,” Kennan resolved in 1947, “required that Japan be
made internally stable, amenable to American leadership, and
industrially revived as a producer … of consumer goods and sec-
ondarily of capital goods.” Had it not been for the opposition of
Occupation commander General Douglas MacArthur – whose
stubborn commitment to the initial reform program was part of
his strategy to seek the American presidency – the Truman admin-
istration would have “reversed course” in Japan by the end of
1947, as it did in Germany. Instead, it postponed action until mid-
1948, after MacArthur’s defeat in a series of presidential primary
elections and his withdrawal from the race.
Once the general ceased to be a political threat, President
Harry Truman moved swiftly to implement the economic and
political policies advocated by Kennan and Draper. By the end of
1948, the United States ended war crimes trials, abandoned plans
to break up the zaibatsu, and stopped the flow of reparations to
Japan’s wartime victims. Washington encouraged the Japanese
government to rein in organized labor and named Detroit banker
Joseph Dodge “economic czar” to “crank up” Japan’s economy by
imposing central planning designed to maximize export produc-
tion at the expense of domestic consumption. Dodge encouraged
the creation of powerful government planning and trade min-
istries, such as MITI, to promote export production by large, inte-
grated firms. These new priorities, resembling many of Kishi’s
wartime economic control measures, led directly to Kishi’s release
from prison and his return to politics by the time the Occupation
ended.
Kishi’s prewar friendship with Ambassador Grew assisted
his political rehabilitation. A small but influential group of pri-
vate Americans, who played a key role in drafting the reverse
course policy, identified Kishi as among those best suited to lead
the new Japan. In 1947, Newsweek foreign affairs editor Harry
Kern, Newsweek Tokyo bureau chief Compton Packenham, cor-
porate lawyer James L. Kauffman, the retired Joseph C. Grew,
and Eugene Dooman, a retired diplomat who served under
Grew in Tokyo, took the lead in creating the “American Council
on Japan” (ACJ) with the aim of changing occupation policy.
These men had prewar ties with numerous Japanese business
and political leaders purged after 1945 and served as mediators
The CIA and Japanese Politics 97
between them and American officials. The AC J members, like
their Japanese counterparts, were bitterly critical of SCAP policy
and resented Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida’s resistance to
rearmament and military cooperation with the United States.
During its years of operation from 1947 to 1952, ACJ mem-
bers such as Kern, Dooman, Kauffman, and Packenham consult-
ed regularly with Kennan and Dulles, influencing their policy
views and arranging meetings in Tokyo between the visiting
American envoys and their Japanese friends, who included
members of the emperor’s household, former military officers,
purged business leaders and politicians. As part of their effort to
“polish” Kishi’s image in the early 1950s, Packenham tutored
Kishi in English and Kern served as a public relations consul-
tant, arranging trips for Kishi to Europe and the United States.
By 1953, with financial backing from industrialist Aiichiro
Fujiyama and Yoshio Kodama (a fellow Sugamo inmate who
amassed a fortune in wartime China and began working with
U.S. intelligence officials during the Korean war when he smug-
gled tungsten out of China), Kishi emerged as leader of the
Democratic Party, one of two major conservative groups vying
for power.
By the end of 1954, the economic dislocation caused by the
end of the Korean War, combined with American frustration over
Yoshida’s reluctance to rearm, eroded the prime minister’s base of
support and forced his resignation. U.S. Ambassador John Allison
pressed the conservative parties to select Nobusuke Kishi as his
replacement. Kishi had ingratiated himself with Allison by work-
ing to unify the fractious conservatives (a goal achieved in 1955)
and by reassuring the ambassador that “for the next twenty-five
years it would be in Japan’s best interests to cooperate closely
with the United States.” Despite American pressure, another con-
servative and former purgee, Ichiro Hatoyama, was elected prime
minister.
To America’s disgust, Hatoyama proved nearly as reluctant
as Yoshida to amend the “no war” clause of the constitution,
speed rearmament, accept strict limits on trade with China, or
passively accept the security treaty. Hatoyama’s effort to negoti-
ate a peace treaty with the Soviet Union drove Dulles wild. When
it appeared likely Tokyo and Moscow would reach a compromise
over the disputed “northern territories,” Dulles scuttled
chance by threatening to occupy Okinawa permanently.
Hatoyama’s tacit support of efforts by Japanese firms to
expand trade with China also offended Washington. The Eisen-
hower administration’s outlook was epitomized by Treasury
Secretary George Humphrey, who declared “we could not hope
to keep Japan as a loyal ally … if it became dependent economi-
cally on Communist China.” Trade would hand the “Chinese
Communists a terrible club to hold over Japan.” At the same
time, Dulles believed that American consumers would shun
Japanese products as merely “cheap imitations of our own.” The
only “solution” for Japan, Dulles argued, was to sell goods to
and obtain raw materials from “presently underdeveloped areas
such as Southeast Asia.”
When Hatoyama resigned in December 1956, U.S. represen-
tatives in Japan renewed their campaign for Kishi. Over the pre-
vious three years he had further ingratiated himself to the
Americans by providing “inside” information about LDP poli-
cies, finances and personalities. He convinced American diplo-
mats that he was the only politician capable of halting Japan’s
drift toward neutrality abroad and toward Socialism at home.
In a close party vote, Tanzan Ishibashi, the least pro-Ameri-
can among the major LDP leaders, edged out Kishi. One Ameri-
can diplomat complained that the United States put its “money
on Kishi, but the wrong horse won.” If Hatoyama proved a disap-
pointment, Ishibashi terrified the Eisenhower administration. U.S.
diplomats described him as a “headstrong rabble rouser” who
had “never got over the personal affront of having been purged
during the Occupation.” When Ishibashi declared that the “era of
more or less automatic compliance with American wishes on
China was over,” Washington braced itself for battles with Tokyo
over China, and anticipated demands to recover Okinawa and
dump the security treaty.
Only Ishibashi’s declining health and resignation after two
months in office averted a crisis. When the LDP finally selected
Kishi as prime minister in February 1957, Washington heaved
an audible sigh of relief. Kishi reasserted his loyalty to Ameri-
ca’s cold war strategy, pledging to limit contact with China and,
instead, to focus Japanese economic attention on exports to the
United States and mutual development of Southeast Asia.
Still, American policymakers recognized that their troubles
The CIA and Japanese Politics 99
were hardly over. The recently emerged Japan Socialist Party
garnered public support with its calls for economic reform, an
opening to China, and a campaign to rid Japan of its humiliating
military pact with the United States. U.S. political analysts pre-
dicted that in the Diet election expected in the spring of 1958, the
JSP might win nearly as many seats as the factionalized LDP.
The recently appointed ambassador to Tokyo, Douglas
MacArthur II (the general’s nephew), described Kishi as the only
Japanese politician able to stem this tide. The United States
needed Kishi as prime minister, MacArthur informed Dulles,
but Kishi could only hold on to power if Washington agreed to
revise the security treaty. Japan, MacArthur warned early in
1957, faced a “turning point.” Without movement toward treaty
reform and Kishi’s hand on the tiller, relations with the United
States would deteriorate “in an atmosphere of acrimony and
mounting hostility.” Japan would turn toward neutralism or
even an accommodation with the communist bloc.
Dulles was persuaded that the United States had little
choice but to negotiate a new treaty if it hoped to retain base
rights and keep the LDP in power. He described himself “at the
point of having to make a Big Bet” on Japan and agreed with his
advisers that Kishi was the “only bet we had left in Japan.”
Dulles and Eisenhower resolved that “the time had come to take
the initiative in proposing a readjustment” to the security treaty
and to bolster Kishi. The decision led to both Kishi’s triumphant
June 1957 visit to Washington and the CIA payments.
In the aftermath of Kishi’s visit, it appears that Eisenhower
was persuaded to approve a plan for the CIA to begin influenc-
ing Japanese politics. With the aim of both strengthening Kishi’s
grip on the LDP and stemming Socialist gains in the upcoming
Diet election, the CIA utilized nominally “private” Americans to
deliver money to Kishi’s circle within the LDP. This allowed
both donor and recipient to deny any official foreign involve-
ment. Additional money reportedly went to so-called moderate
elements within the JSP, with the aim of securing political intel-
ligence, boosting their numbers, and encouraging ideological
warfare within the party. While the exact amount of secret fund-
ing remains uncertain, sums as high as $10 million may have
been spent annually between 1958 and 1960.
The investment paid off handsomely. In the May 1958 elee-
100 Chalmers Johnson , Norbert A. Schlei , and Michael Schaller
tion to the Diet’s lower house, the LDP retained nearly all its
seats while the frustrated Socialists fell to bickering, culminating
in a party split at the end of 1959. Meanwhile one of the Ameri-
cans involved in the operation remarked cynically that Japanese
politicians proved they were like those everywhere else – any-
one was welcome to play in their game as long as they put up
the money.
During the next 18 months Kishi collaborated closely with
Ambassador MacArthur in revising the security treaty. The
United States agreed to scrap many of the most unpopular ele-
ments of the 1951 pact in return for the right to retain air, naval,
repair, and logistic facilities in Japan – along with a secret proto-
col preserving the right to move nuclear weapons “through”
Japan. The importance of these bases, and those in Okinawa,
became abundantly clear during the Vietnam war.
In January 1960, Prime Minister Kishi flew to Washington to
sign a revised mutual security treaty. President Eisenhower wel-
comed him warmly and the American press lavished effusive
praise on the visitor, barely mentioning the demonstrations
against him and the treaty when he left Tokyo. Time magazine
graced its January 25, 1960, cover with a portrait of a smiling Kishi
against a background of humming industry. The prime minister’s
“134 pound body,” Time noted, “packed pride, power and pas-
sion – a perfect embodiment of his country’s amazing resurgence.”
Nezusweek trumpeted the arrival of a “Friendly, Savvy, Salesman
from Japan.” The revised treaty, along with the ubiquitous Sony
transistor radios shipped to America, Nezusweek explained, sym-
bolized the U.S. alliance with the “economic powerhouse of Asia.”
American leaders and journalists were baffled by the
tumultuous opposition to the security treaty that swept Japan a
few months later. Clearly, they mistook Kishi’s popularity in
Washington for broad acceptance of his policies by the Japanese
people. In part, this was a price the United States paid for its
manipulation of Japanese politics during the 1950s.
In June 1960, as soon as the new treaty became effective, the
United States withdrew its support from Kishi – who now seemed
like damaged goods. In a splendid irony, American officials secret-
ly approached the elderly Shigeru Yoshida, offering to provide
financial support to one of his proteges who might be able both to
calm protests in Japan and cooperate with Washington.
The CIA and Japanese Politics 101
Although the Kennedy administration in 1961 continued
secret payments to the LDP and other parties, it viewed trade
expansion as a better way to stabilize Japan and bind it to the Unit-
ed States. President John F. Kennedy’s advisers envisioned a
future in which Japan doubled or tripled its exports to the United
States, making Japan so dependent on American consumers that it
could never contemplate neutrality! But just as support for Kishi
had unintended consequences, this trade strategy contributed to
an economic transformation barely imaginable to leaders on either
side of the Pacific.
NOTES
- See the five-part series by Matsui and Dubro entitled “Panel-D-Jap
Amerika tai-Nichi senno kosaku no zenbo” (Panel-D-Japan: The Com
plete Story of America’s Brainwashing Operations Against Japan),
Views magazine, a Japanese-language monthly, starting with the Nov
ber 1994 issue and running through March 1995. Also see, in Englis
Alec Dubro and David E. Kaplan, “A Question of Intelligence: Forty-f
Years of the CIA in Japan/’ Tokyo Journal, March 1995, pp. 32-37. - The definitive study of the CIA’s attempts to influence cultural aff
and the contradictions inherent in clandestine state activities to pr
mote “freedom” is Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War:
CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 1999 - Jim Mann, “CIA Keeping Historians in the Dark About Its Cold W
Role in Japan,” Los Angeles Times , March 20, 1995. - Dower, as quoted in “C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Rig
in 50’s and 60’s,” New York Times, October 9, 1994. - Masaru Tamamoto, Reflections on Japan s rostwar btate, Daedalus,
Spring 1995, pp. 1-22. - Osamu Watanabe, Seiji kaikaku to kenpo kaisei (Political Reform and Con-
stitutional Change) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1994). - Sankei Shimbun, November 17, 18, 1994.
- Los Angeles Times, March 20, 1995.
- Details concerning these cases, as well as the early history or the M-
Fund, are contained in Hajime Takano, M Shikin, shirarezaru chika kin’yu
no sekai (M-Fund: The Unknown World of Underground Finance)
(Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbun Sha, 1980). Also relevant is a series of
articles in Asahi Journal, which were translated into English as “Lock-
heed Connection: The ‘M Fund’ Ghost,” Asahi Evening News, April 19-
1 02 Chalmers Johnson , Norbert A. Schlei, and Michael Schaller
21, 1976. Also see Yoko Shibata, “A Venerable Con Game’s New Vic-
tims/’ Global Finance, January 1995, pp. 44-45. - For further details, see Rick Bragg, “Stalwart of the Kennedy Justice
Dept. Finds His World in Ashes After a Trial,” New York Times, April
14, 1995; Karen F. Donovan, “The Upending of a Camelot Knight,” The
National Lazo Journal, April 10, 1995; and 14-page letter to the editor of
The National Law Journal by Norbert A. Schlei dated April 12, 1995, on
file at JPRI. - Some of the more important sources on the M-Fund include: “CIA
tainichi kosaku” (CIA Operations Against Japan), Yomiuri Shimbun,
August 7, 1995; “Amerika ni tobihishita M-shikin sodo no ‘nazo'” (The
“Puzzle” of the U.S.’s Uproar over the M-Fund), Foresight, October
1995, p. 95; Masaki Yasuda, Tsuiseki M-shikin (In pursuit of the M-Fund)
(Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo, 1995); Akihiro Kano and Hajime Takano,
Naimaku (Hidden Powers) (Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo, 1976); and Bruno
Bitter, Makasa no namida: Buruno Bitteru shimpu ni kiku (The Tears of
Mac Arthur: Listening to Father Bruno Bitter) (Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama,
1973). Bruno Bitter, SJ, was one of General Charles Willoughby’s chief
collaborators in the so-called red purge that started in 1950. He was a
member of the faculty at Sophia University, Tokyo. - For details on his life, see the treatments in David E. Kaplan and Alec
Dubro, Yakuza (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1986), part II “The
Kodama Years, pp. 41-123; Chalmers Johnson, Japan: Who Governs? (New
York: Norton, 1995), pp. 194-97; and Kodama’s own two books written
while he was an unindicted class-A war criminal in Sugamo Prison from
January 25, 1946, to December 24, 1948. They were translated into English
during the 1950s as part of the effort to rehabilitate him – from 1956 on he
was the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s chief fixer and wire-puller in
Japan – and were published as I Was Defeated, Taro Fukuda, trans.
(Tokyo: An Asian Publication, 1951), and Sugamo Diari f, Taro Fukuda,
trans. (Tokyo: Radiopress, 1960). The most important Japanese sources
are the study by the Mainichi Shimbun’s Political Department – Kuro-
maku Kodama Yoshio (Tokyo: Eru Shuppansha, 1976) – and Minoru
Omori’s long interview with him on May 25, 1974. See Omori, Nihon
hokai, sengo hisshi (Japan’s Collapse, Postwar Hidden History) (Tokyo:
Kodansha Bunko, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 248-312. Also see Jiro Nomura,
“Kodama Yoshio no shiryo” (Materials on Yoshio Kodama), Shosai no
mado No. 370 (December 198 7), pp. 46-47. - Szulc, “The CIA’s Actors in Postwar Japan,” New Republic, April 10,
1976, p. 11; Baerwald, “Lockheed and Japanese Politics,” Asian Survey,
September 1976, pp. 817-18. - For further details on the Lockheed scandal, see Jim Hougan, “The Busi-
ness of Buying Friends,” Harper’s Magazine, December 1976, pp. 43-62. - See John G. Roberts, “The Lockheed-Japan-Watergate Connection: A
‘Kwantung Army’ on the Multinational Front,” AMPO: Japan-Asia
Quarterly Review, March 1976, pp. 6-15.
The CIA and Japanese Politics 103 - On the three big cases plus SCAP’s covert action unit, the Cannon
Agency, and its kidnapping of the prominent writer Wataru Kaji, see
Chalmers Johnson, Conspiracy at Matsukaiva (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972); and Minoru Omori, Boryakn to reisen no jnjiro
(Plots and the Crossroads of the Cold War), which is volume 7 of his
Postwar Hidden History , 1981.