FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 23 & 24

Dave Emory's "For The Record"

Introduction: These programs continue (from FTR#'s 1345 & 1346) exploration of the history of U.S. involvement with Asian fascism from the pre-World War II period until the present. Critical background information on U.S. capital support for Japanese fascism and Japan's centuries-long subjugation of Korea may be found in FTR#'s 905 and 1141. 1. It is interesting to contemplate the text of a letter that Jack Ruby smuggled out of prison. In the letter, Ruby hints that Japanese fascists participated in the assassination of President Kennedy. Certainly, elements of what were to become the World Anti-Communist League (including the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League) were involved. The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Russell; Carroll & Graf [HC]; Copyright 1992 by Dick Russell; ISBN 0-88184-900-6; p. 684. . . . Don't believe the Warren [Commission] Report, that was only put out to make me look innocent. . . .I'm going to die a horrible death anyway, so what would I have to gain by writing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of people that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Nazi's [sic], and that is who is in power in this country right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South America is also full of these Nazi's [sic]. . . . if those people were so determined to frame me then you must be convinced that they had an ulterior motive for doing same. There is only one kind of people that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Master Race. . . . 2. While in Okinawa during Japan's surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletcher Prouty; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2011 by L. Fletcher Prouty; ISBN 978-1-51073-876-8; pp. 17-18. . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: 'Hell, no! They ain't never goin' to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.' In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965--yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943-45? . . . . 3a. The shooting war in Asia did not end with V-J Day. The Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copyright 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Random House [HC]; ISBN 0-394-46270-x; p. 219. . . . . When the war ended, China was in utter chaos. Thousands of Japanese troops wandered around the countryside, fully armed, with no one accepting their surrender. John F. Melby [a State Department officer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflected in bewilderment upon this anomaly. On December 27, 1945, he noted: "I still don't understand about the Japanese. Officially they are being disarmed, but the fact is they never seem to be. In Shanghai, fifteen thousand still walk the streets with full equipment. In Nanking, the high Japanese generals are bosom buddies of the Chinese. In the north, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers are used to guard railroads and warehouses and to fight the Communists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more candid moments a 'Shh, we don't talk about that.'" In another entry on January 30, 1947, a good sixteen months after V-J Day, Melby noted that, though it was being kept "very quiet," there were "eighty thousand holdout Japanese troops in eastern and northwestern Manchuria, who are fully equipped, fighting the Communists." . . . . 3b. Of great significance is the presence of John Foster Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayuki (head of the Korean Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War. Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave; Verso [SC]; Copyright 2003, 2005 by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave; ISBN 1-84467-531-9; p. 115. . . . . In October of 1949, the People's Republic of China came into being. Eight months later, in June of 1950, the Korean War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accompanied John Foster Dulles to negotiations in Seoul. The Dulles party also included Kodama's protege Machii Hisayuki, boss of the Korean yakuza in Japan. Efforts to discover under Freedom of Information what Kodama and Machii did during the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memorial archive we discovered a personal letter from Kodama to General MacArthur offering to provide thousands of yakuza and former Japanese Army soldiers to fight alongside American soldiers in Korea. According to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accepted and these men joined the Allied force on the Peninsula, posing as Korean soldiers. . . . 3c. Japan's looting of Korea took place over centuries. In Gold Warriors, the Seagraves present the history of Japan's rape of Korea, beginning with their account of the grisly murder of Korean Queen Min in 1894. (For more about the Japanese conquest, subjugation and looting of Korea, see FTR#1141.) " . . . . the defenseless queen was stabbed and slashed repeatedly, and carried wailing out to the palace garden where she was thrown onto a pile of firewood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An American military advisor, General William Dye, was one of several foreigners who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace compound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. . . ." A snapshot of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, a focal point of criticism of the late Park Won-soon:" . . . . [General] Terauchi was extraordinarily brutal, setting a precedent for Japanese behavior in all the countries, it would occupy over coming decades. Determined to crush all resistance, he told Koreans, 'I will whip you with scorpions!' He set up a sadistic police force of Korean yakuza, ordering it to use torture as a matter of course, for 'no Oriental can be expected to tell the truth except under torture'. These police were closely supervised by Japan’s gestapo, the kempeitai. . . . 'Japan’s aim,' said Korean historian Yi Kibeck, 'was to eradicate consciousness of Korean national identity, roots and all, and thus to obliterate the very existence of the Korean people from the face of the earth.' . . . the peninsula was stripped of everything from artworks to root vegetables. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the transfer of cultural property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal something that already belongs to you? . . ." 4. Topics and Points of Discussion For Inclusion in this series: The Cabinet Research Officer next to Ruby at the press conference; General Arisue and his myriad connections; Tsuji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also highlighting the death of Iris Chang in this discussion; Both Syngman Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japanese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japanese and their immediate successors; The dividing of Korea at the 38th parallel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bonesteel; Rusk’s work for Admiral Hillenkoetter at CIA, as well as any other intelligence links you have for him (There was at least another, but I can’t remember if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s later work in Vietnam as a General and for CIA; General Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Bandit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as commander of Syngman Rhee’s border forces; We will discuss I.F. Stone’s Hidden History of the Korean War, noting that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bating the North to counterattack; What the Korean War did strategically for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solidifying Rhee’s position in South Korea (which might have been ended by a popular referendum); JFK’s cutting loose of Syngman Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly another major reason for his assassination; Willoughby, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japanese fascists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert operations in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extricate us from Vietnam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japanese Naval Intelligence paymaster in the U.S. in1933; Frederick Rutland’s work for Mitsubishi and the operational links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rutland was the guy Ono was paying); The position of Ono in the post-WWII banking milieu inextricably linked with Golden Lily—The links to Tiarks, Norbert Bogdan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the successor to the Yokohama Specie Bank.