Okay, Chelsea, what do you got for us?
I'm just gonna say the title.
I don't care if it ruins it for you or not,
it's gonna help me out.
How deadly bird flu sparked explosive outbreaks in 2022
and why it matters for global health.
So if you're not aware of anything going on in the world
right now or in your local area,
or one or the other, it extends to both.
Throughout the last decade,
the global spread of bird flu has been a growing concern
in Canada, around the world, not just Canada.
It is a global pandemic at this point, it's crazy.
But most farms managed to avoid outbreaks.
The situation changed in 2022.
So we're now out of 2022.
Where is this article from?
December 17, 2022, so not that long ago.
This year, a highly contagious strain
of avian influenza tore across the country,
hitting close to 270 farms and production facilities,
sparking concern over poultry shortages
and exposing workers from coast to coast
to a potential deadly pathogen.
So far, roughly 4.7 million domestic birds
have caught the virus.
That's not counting untold numbers of wild birds falling ill,
whose numbers are far tougher to track.
Well, I would describe the scope as explosive
and sort of all-encompassing, end quotes,
at Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the vaccine
and infectious disease organization
at the University of Saskatchewan.
So you know it's a good one.
Quote, I mean, it really does.
If it's about farming, they know they're fast.
It's true.
Quote, it really is a huge problem globally
and it's here in Canada, end quote.
And it's a brewing crisis on two fronts,
both the global bird populations
and potentially to human health.
This highly infectious form of influenza virus
eventually evolves to better transmit between people
in the decades ahead.
Eventually, it could mutate itself
such that it would gain the capacity
and capability to transmit from poultry to humans.
Says Dr. Shian Sharif, a professor
of the Ontario Veterinary College
at the University of Gelf in Southern Ontario.
And unfortunately, this sort of worst case scenario
that we don't want to happen.
Since 2003, a particularly deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain
has led to higher number of deaths in poultry
and wild burns around much of the world,
including Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
In 2014, Canada had its first detection
of what's known as a highly pathogenic form
of avian influenza virus linked to poultry
at a farm in British Columbia.
A dozen farms and production facilities
wound up dealing with cases that year
according to data provided to CBC News
by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
FYI, this is a CBC article.
I'm really good at citing sources midway through.
It is very Canada oriented.
It is, yeah.
So I'm just gonna finish this, let me just see.
So far from what I heard, like just in the US,
billions of birds have been called
to make sure that this doesn't spread any further.
And it's actually spread to wild bird populations as well.
Like apparently it's taking its toll
on like eagles and falcons.
Oh my God, that's terrifying.
So it's a long article.
I just wanna jump quickly
because that's very Canadian-esque.
And I just wanna jump quickly to a France.
It's not in French, thank God,
because we're just like bordering fluent and not.
So I'm just gonna read it in English.
It's france24.com.
And their article is from January 13, 2023.
And its title's largest global bird flu outbreak
in history shows no sign of slowing.
So I just wanted to take a little bit.
There's not a complete other side of the world,
but different than North America.
And this one says,
a highly contagious and lethal strain of bird flu
has killed millions of wild and farmed bird life
in the past year.
As global infections show little sign of slowing down,
scientists, wildlife protectors and legislators
are looking for a new solution to a global pandemic.
A lethal bird flu outbreak
that has been circling the globe since 2021,
peaked in Japan this week
as an agriculture ministry official said on Tuesday,
the country plans to cull more than 10 million chickens
at risk of exposure to the virus.
Flu is a common illness among wild birds,
yet the H5N1 strain now sweeping Japan
is uniquely contagious and deadly.
It poses such a high risk to farm birds,
such as chickens and turkeys,
that a single infection on a farm
condemns the entire flock to be killed.
As outbreaks in Japan have reached a record high,
the cull is the largest ever planned for the yearly flu season
that runs from October to May.
Around the globe, record breaking death tolls
due to the virus are becoming the norm.
In the US, more states than ever
before have reported instances of bird flu
with an all-time high of nearly 58 million poultry affected
as of January, 2023.
Meanwhile, Europe is in the midst of its worst ever spat,
spate, bat, of bird flu infections
with 25,000 outbreaks on farms,
stretching across 37 countries from October, 2021
to September, 2022.
Some 50 million birds have been culled across the continent,
although the vast majority of poultry infections
occurred in France.
So yeah, next quote, dead birds everywhere.
I just wanted to put that
because the Canadian one was mostly focusing on Canada.
This one is focusing more on what's going on.
There is a lot to it.
I've been hearing about it every now and then,
and then when I hear about it,
it's just it's not passed to humans
so long as you're cooking your meat.
So there's no real worry for us.
And I don't eat chicken, so.
No, exactly.
So you wouldn't have noticed that.
Just last week when I was at the grocery store,
we were looking for chicken
and the entire chicken section was empty.
Like it was bizarre.
The only thing left there was some halal chicken.
So we got halal.
Not really a fan of how they kill that animal,
but that's all that was there.
And it's definitely being seen both in chicken prices
as well as eggs.
So you're gonna see egg prices are skyrocketing right now.
I've been noticing that there has,
because I do eat eggs,
that I've been noticing that they've been going up
and are hard to get.
And I do just want to read this part.
There's a ton of wild birds also dying.
In the autumn, fall-barn barnacle,
east, which migrate south
from their arctic breeding ground also started dying.
I'm jumping in here.
Obviously, halfway through the,
but I just wanted this set has to do with the wild birds
that are dying.
Numbers were going up by the tens, then hundreds,
then more than 1600 were confirmed dead,
says Claire Smith, policy officer
for UK bird protection charity, the RSPB.
I'm giving you not a lot of context here.
I just jumped right into the middle of the article.
By spring, the organization estimated a third
of the total population had died.
Esamun, Great Skuas, Gnets, Gals, Geese,
and even Eagles continued through the summer
by then impacting both migratory and domestic species.
I didn't know this.
By July, the Scottish government had closed off access
to some seabird islands.
There were just dead birds everywhere.
Oh my God.
Well, that's fun.
Yeah.
Oh, dead, yeah.
And then just the more interactions humans have
with sick birds, the higher likelihood
that it does spread to humans.
And you know how we handle pandemics, just glowingly.
Yeah, we've, yeah.
If you want to read more, obviously, like I said,
I read like a quarter to half of one, like one quarter,
and then jumped in halfway to the other one.
We'll post them up on the episode notes
if you're interested to learn more,
because obviously there's a lot more than we're hearing
and just, you know, a recap of the news.
When they're talking about bird flu,
probably something to keep your eye on as well as Japan.
And with that, let's get onto the bigger
and brighter Japanese shady nets.
Yeah, let's do that.
From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us
on a journey to the fringe.
Hello, and welcome to Journey to the Fringe,
where sometimes we do back-to-back episodes.
We don't always have time to come up with catchy phrases,
so you get what you get.
We are your hosts for those keeping track at home,
same as the hosts of the last episodes, Taylor and Chelsea.
Here today to talk with you
about Japanese post-World War II history
with the little-known parts.
Now, last episode, we went over the kind of overarching
Cole's notes of what happened
during the post-war era in Japan.
Today, we're gonna talk about
some of the lesser-known stuff.
I think I just need to get into it
because there are a lot of things I need to talk about.
Okay, and I just think it's funny
that now we're doing the lesser-known stuff
because I didn't know any of this stuff
we found out in the last episode.
Yeah.
Okay, let's learn some new stuff.
But it's important.
So first and foremost,
do you remember when Kennan came to Japan and said,
like, oh, you guys are giving them too much good stuff?
We need to cut back.
We need to do a course change and do austerity.
Well, that actually, that period of time
is known as the reverse course.
Okay, that makes sense.
I didn't call it that just because there's other things
that happen in there that are the real reverse course.
And I'm just gonna get right into it
why it's called the reverse course.
The CIA and US military intelligence
played a pivotal role in the 1947 reverse course policy shift
and the subsequent end of the purge policy
concerning classified war criminals.
In conjunction with the Japan lobby
and American corporate interests,
US American intelligence engaged in pressure campaigns
to reverse Douglas MacArthur's policies
about the Zybottsus and civil service officials
purged during the US occupation.
The KGB in several documents accused the CIA
and SCAP of staging attacks
on Japanese infrastructure, including Matsukawa derailment
in order to justify these policy changes.
Do you remember those three-chain incidents
during the red purge?
I was just gonna say, I think I remember those.
Yeah, so the KGB is like,
I'm pretty sure the CIA staged that.
Oh, okay.
Right off the bat.
I don't get back to that one, so let's just remember.
That one was likely done by the Yakuza.
Okay, okay, because I was like,
I was pretty sure that seemed like it would be Japan.
And basically all of the train incidents
were probably done by the Yakuza.
Well, no way to prove it, but they were probably false.
Okay.
And yeah, that's just,
I could only do that part in passing
because I have 14 pages of notes I gotta get to.
Domastically, the agency pressured
the State Department and military
by authoring a report titled, quote,
strategic importance of Japan, quote,
arguing that control over Japan was invaluable
as a stabilizing force in Asia,
that agency being the CIA.
The report warned that a hypothetical
Soviet alignment of Japan,
which it warned was likely with the loss of Southeast Asia,
would, quote, tip the balance of the Cold War,
end quote, in favor of the USSR.
The report urged the State Department to make a shift
from, quote, monopoly breaking, unquote,
policies towards an approach
incentivizing the development of, quote,
large financing and trading concerns, unquote.
As part of the reverse course,
thousands of conservatives and nationalist wartime leaders
were depurged and allowed to reenter politics
and government ministries.
In the industrial sector,
plans for further antitrust actions
against the remaining old Zybatzu were scrapped.
Those vertical monopolies,
turns out they didn't get rid of all of them.
And some earlier antitrust policies were partially undone.
MacArthur had originally planned to break up 325
Japanese companies as Zybatzu.
How many do you think he got to, Chelsea?
Well, I wouldn't have thought in the first place
there was so many, but I'm gonna go with one or two.
He broke up 11.
So, look at him go.
Okay, so now I'm impressed.
I set myself off to be impressed.
It's the plight of the pessimist.
Exactly.
Expect the negative and you'll never be disappointed.
Exactly, exactly.
So here we are.
And in the realm of self-defense,
the United States began pressuring Japan immediately
to eliminate Article 9 and remilitarize.
To this end, SCAP established the National Police Reserve,
the NPR in 1950 and the Coastal Safety Force,
the CSF in 1952.
And they later became the ground in maritime branches
the Japanese self-defense force.
So basically, Japan gets around.
They don't have a military by having a defense force.
Ah, yes, classic.
SCAP also attempted to weaken the labor unions
they have recently empowered,
most notably issuing edicts,
stripping public sector workers of the right civil strike.
We did know that one.
The biggest part we're talking about now
with the reverse course are the people
who got let out of military prison,
the Class A war criminals.
There are three names that are really important.
So yeah, they just said of those people
that weren't killed,
like they did a good job killing some of them.
At one point they're just like,
no, these people actually seem important.
Let's keep them around.
So it really was a reverse.
Yes, it was a true reverse course.
That's okay.
Of the Class A war criminals
we're gonna focus on in this episode.
There are three names you might recognize
two of them from the last episode.
Kishi Nabusuke, Prime Minister of Japan in 1960.
Yoshio Kadama and Ryochi Sesekawa.
The other guys sounds familiar too.
Ryochi actually doesn't come up a lot,
but yeah, Yoshio Kadama,
he did come up in the last episode.
Just briefly though, I will cover him further.
But I'm gonna give you a background
on who Kishi is, Kishi Nabusuke.
So he has been described as the mastermind
behind the industrial development
of Japan's puppet state of Manchuria or Manchukuo.
Kishi had first come to the attention
of the Kwong Tong Army officers
as a rising star in the Ministry of Commerce
and industry who openly touted the policies
of Nazi Germany and called for policies
of industrial rationalization
to eliminate capitalist competition
in support of state goals,
ideas that accorded with the army's idea
of national defense state.
In 1935, Kishi was appointed Manchukuo's
Deputy Minister of Industrial Development.
Kishi was given complete control of Manchukuo's economy
by the military with the authority to do whatever he liked
just as long as industrial growth increased.
In 1936, Kishi was one of the first drafters
of Manchukuo's first five year plan.
He studied all over, he even studied a little bit in Russia
and he really liked the idea of their five year
industrial plan.
So he came up with five year industrial plans
for Manchuria.
Manchukuo's five year plan was intended
to dramatically boost heavy industry
in order to vastly increase production of coal,
steel electricity and weapons for military purposes.
In order to enact the new plan,
Kishi persuaded the military to allow private capital
into Manchukuo, successfully arguing that the military's
policy of having state owned corporations
leading Manchukuo's is costing the Japanese state
too much money.
One of the new public private corporations founded
to assist in carrying out the five year plan
was Manchuria Industrial Development Company,
established in 1937, which attracted a staggering
5.2 billion yen in private investment,
making it by far the largest capital project
in the entire Japanese empire.
By comparison, the total annual budget
of Japan's national government was 2.5 billion,
so over double the annual budget.
The man handpicked by Kishi to lead the MIDC,
that's that company that we just said,
was his distant relative in old first high school
class eight, Nissan Group founder,
Ayukawa Yashisuke.
Oh no.
And as part of the deal,
the Nissan Group's entire operations
were supposed to be transferred over to Manchuria
to form the basis of the new MIDC.
The system that Kishi pioneered in Manchuria
of a state guided economy,
where corporations made their investment
on government orders later served
as a model for Japan's post 1945 development
and subsequently that of South Korea and China as well.
In 1937, Kishi signed a decree calling for the use
of slave labor to be conscripted both in Manchukuo
and in Northern China,
stating that in these times of emergency,
such as wars with China,
which we technically were in,
industry needed to grow at all costs
while guaranteeing healthy profits
for state and private investors.
Starting in 1938 and continuing to 1945,
about 1 million Chinese were taken every year
to work as slaves in Manchukuo.
The harsh conditions of Manchukuo
were well illustrated by the Fushun coal mine,
which at any given moment had about 40,000 men
working as miners,
of whom about 25,000 had to be replaced every year
as their predecessors had died due to poor working conditions
and low living standards.
So over half of the entire slave crew
had to be replaced every year
because they died of horrible conditions.
So is this now what they're doing with the large population?
No, that's what they're doing with the Chinese population,
like exclusively the Chinese population.
Oh my God, what did I miss there?
Geez.
They took a million slaves like from around China
and brought them into Manchuria to work
and they all basically died after the Mundaia.
Oh my, yeah, okay.
Yeah, Kishi showed little interest
in upholding the rule of law in Manchukuo.
Kishi expressed views typical of his fellow colonial bureaucrats
when he disparagingly referred to the Chinese people
as, quote, lawless bandits
who were incapable of governing themselves.
According to Kishi's subordinates,
he saw little point in following legal
or judicial procedure
because he felt the Chinese were more akin to dogs and humans
and would only understand brute force.
According to Driscoll, Kishi always used the term Manchukuo
instead of Manchukuo,
which reflected his viewpoint that Manchukuo
was not actually a state,
but rather just a region rich in resources
and 34 million people to be used for Japan's benefit.
In his later years, Kishi recalled how inhuman treatment
of Chinese people became naturalized
among the Japanese colonial elite,
turning human beings into, quote, mechanical instruments
of imperial army, non-human automatons,
absolutely obedient to the Japanese masters.
It's not actually stated whether in this quote,
he thinks it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Way to go to Japan.
Like it's reflecting on it, but that's all I know.
Like he's saying, oh yeah,
we really dehumanize those people.
And that's bad, right?
Who knows?
Just for clarification, we've backtracked
from where we ended off on the last episode, right?
This is back at the start
and that's why I had to cover Manchuria
at the beginning of the last episode.
He was in charge of Manchuria once they took it over.
Okay, I felt like I knew that,
but I just needed to clarify.
Yeah, no, that's fine.
Sorry, I probably should say.
There was like two, you did say,
but I just was clarifying here.
So there's kind of like two different things
happening at once.
There kind of is.
And I do just need to say,
this is why I needed to cover Manchuria
in our last episode because of this guy.
Yeah, okay.
Manchukuo was a place where Manchu's Chinese,
Japanese, Koreans and Mongols
would all come together to live harmoniously
in Pan-Asian peace.
Prosperity and brotherhood meant little to Kishi.
Kishi didn't give a shit about that.
Kishi only associated with other Japanese
during his time in Manchuquo
and did not mix socially with Chinese
or other ethnic groups.
Instead, Kishi's dinner companions were fellow bureaucrats,
businessmen, seeking government contracts,
army officers and Yakuza gangsters.
Nice.
The presence of the latter was due
to Kishi's involvement in the opium trade.
The Manchuquo state opium monopoly
needed to be distributed to move its products
around the world, which in turn required contacts
within the underworld in the form of the Yakuza.
Additionally, Kishi used Yakuza thugs
to terrorize Chinese workers in Manchuquo's factories
into submission and ensure that there were no strikes
caused by the long hours, low pay
and poor working conditions.
Because the Kwantung army expected to settle Manchuquo
with millions of Japanese
solved the problem of overpopulation in Japan.
After the Manchurian incident,
the army generals had sought to curtail
on Chinese migration to Manchuquo.
However, Kishi reversed this policy in 1935,
arguing successfully to the generals
that the Yakuza would keep the Chinese workers in line
and that to grow Manchuquo's industries
required cheap Chinese labor to be exploited.
So he's the one who said,
no, we're not actually gonna settle this.
We're just gonna use it as a slave call.
At the same time, Kishi repeatedly expressed disain
for Chinese people as impure and unclean.
One of Kishi's closest friends and business partners,
the Yakuza gangster Yoshio Kadama,
summed up his bosses thinking about the Chinese as follows.
Quote, we Japanese are like pure water in a bucket,
different from the Chinese who are like
the filthy Yangza river.
But be careful, even the slightest amount of shit
gets into your bucket, we become fully polluted.
Since all the toilets in China empty into the Yangza,
the Chinese are soiled forever.
We, however, must maintain our purity.
That's how Kishi thinks of the Chinese.
Yeah, I was just gonna say,
that's a very nice poetic thought.
And as a self-described quote,
playboy of the Eastern world, end quote.
Kishi was known during his four years in Manchukuo
for his lavish spending amid much drinking,
gambling, and womanizing.
Kishi spent almost all of his time in Manchukuo's capital,
Qingqing, modern Changchun, China,
with the exception of monthly trips to Daliang
on the world-famous Asia Express Railroad Line,
where he indulged in his passion for women
in alcohol and sex-drenched weekends.
This is literally right from the Wikipedia page.
When not visiting the brothels of Manchuria,
Kishi was demanding sex from the waitresses
who served him at the expensive restaurants he patronized.
When he was locked up in Sugumo Prison in 1946,
awaiting his trial,
he reminisced about his Manchukuo years.
Quote, I came so much, it was hard to clean it all up.
End quote.
Yeah, according to Driscoll, quote,
photographs and written descriptions of Kishi
during this period never failed to depict
a giddy exuberance, laughing and joking,
while doling out money during the day
and looking forward to drinking and fornicating at night.
End quote.
And the Japanese government loves
what Kishi's doing in here so much
that in 1940, Kishi enters the cabinet
as a minister of commerce
under a new prime minister, Hideki Tojo,
less than one year later in October of 1941.
Kishi and General Tojo worked closely together in Manchuria
and Tojo regarded Kishi as his protege.
On December 1st, 1941,
Kishi voted in the cabinet for war
with the United States and Britain
and co-signed the declaration of war
issued on December 7th, 1941.
That's his history prior to getting put in jail
for war crimes.
He is a Class A war criminal.
I mean, it's not unfounded.
He goes on to become prime minister.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Japan is full of surprises.
For me at least, I mean, this is all history.
Not new surprises.
Also, his brother ends up becoming prime minister
and his grandson ends up becoming prime minister.
Good job Japan.
Next up, Yoshio Kadama.
Yoshio Kadama maintained a long-running relationship
with the Central Intelligence Agency
in the Japanese right.
Kodama first became relevant in an administrative role
due to his established connections
with the Imperial Japanese Navy High Command.
One of the people involved in MacArthur's team,
Willoughby, was in contact with Kodama
during his imprisonment, persuading him to write his memoir
called I Was Defeated, published through a CIA proprietary.
After serving a year in prison,
US authorities decided to end legal proceedings against him
and subsequently released him in late 1948
with his early release attributed to the G2's interest in him.
It is speculated that Kodama struck a deal
with intelligence officials in the G2 who secured his release
and US officials were allegedly interested
in Kodama's immense wealth
and his expansive intelligence network in China,
which G2 viewed as a valuable asset,
particularly for the upcoming operation Takamatsu,
which is basically just clandestine activity.
Cizo Arisue, in particular, head of the Kato Agency,
enlisted him in building an intelligence network
in North Korea and Manchuria.
He famously, as we just talked about,
was head of the opium trade in Manchuria.
He also set up a racket to basically plunder all of China.
He had agents all over China
and they stole all the artifacts and all the jewels
and all the gold and all the diamonds
and basically brought it all to Japan.
When he was arrested, he's allegedly one of,
if not the richest people in Japan
and he trusted all of his money and all of his goods
to the head of the Yakuza,
as well as a lot of his stuff is left
at the Imperial Royal Palace while he's in prison.
Like he's basically a billionaire at this time.
Remind me, he comes out of prison as a war criminal
and then becomes Prime Minister.
No, no, this is Yoshio Kodama.
So Kishi becomes Prime Minister.
Yoshio Kodama becomes a fixer for the LDP.
He's the guy, while the Anpo protests are going on,
Kishi went to Kodama and said,
hey, do you have some people we could get
to put this protest down?
And he says, yeah, I got right wing extremists
and Yakuza members.
And he spends all the money getting the Yakuza
to show up to these protests
and beat the shit out of protesters.
Oh my God.
I'm really glad we're doing this.
So Yoshio Kodama also,
is just a story that the CIA,
I call it the tungsten story.
And a bid with the CIA to enrich himself
participated in the scheme to smuggle tungsten
to US defense companies in exchange for CIA money.
The activities of his Kodama agency
had been built up during the Second Sino-Japanese War
by the Kempeitai, being heavily involved
in the opiate trade.
Kodama himself was involved in the IJA
tungsten smuggling ring as early as 1932.
Eugene Doomin, who was part of the Japan lobby
and who quit the agency in 1945
to support the reverse course,
engineered a plan to smuggle $10 million
with a military grade tungsten.
From the stores of Japanese military
and Chinese sources to Pentagon defense contractors.
So this guy is stealing tungsten
from the Japanese government
to give to the US military.
At the behest of the CIA,
Kodama's network was involved
with the physical process of actively moving the material
with the CIA underwriting the plots,
plying some $2.8 million to facilitate the operation.
The plot, however, ultimately fails
due to the tungsten being too low grade
and causing Doomin to blackmail the agency
over repayment by threatening to reveal the agency
that abducted two Japanese communists
and was actively involved in East Asian narcotics trade.
So Kodama ends up getting to keep the money.
Oh my God.
And during the 1960s, Ampo protests,
Nabusuke Kishi ordered his friend Yoshio Kodama
to put together a force of Yakuza
to protect US president Dwight Eisenhower
during his visit to Japan.
Kodama used some hidden money in the mass mobilization
to pay for the required manpower.
The State Department
and the US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II
were actively involved in planning the mass mobilization
evidenced by MacArthur's cable to Harrius Truman Building,
which details Kodama's plan to deploy tens of thousands
of Yakuza on the streets to greet Eisenhower
in his planned visit.
Okay, so this is connected.
Yes.
So he's not as innocent as,
I didn't think he was innocent, but...
No, MacArthur II kind of seems like an absolute asshole.
Yeah, and we're getting a better, clearer idea of what's...
Okay.
Yeah, and this is why I did the background first.
Yes, of course.
So can you imagine Eisenhower showing up in Japan
the first visit there since pre-World War II?
And all there is to greet him is Yakuza Prime members.
He didn't show up though, right?
No, he didn't end up going.
They canceled it.
Right, right.
But like he had set up for tens of thousands
of Yakuza members to stop any unrest
that could happen around Eisenhower if he was to show up.
I don't know if I'd feel terrified or safe.
Yeah, the LDP sent multiple emissaries to support the plan
meeting with heads of pretty much all of the huge right-wing
extremist groups as well as the Yakuza.
And these were grouped all under the All Japan Council
of Patriotic Organization, the Zenikagi,
which was composed primarily of right-wing veterans
and gangsters.
Despite the pressure and the encouragement of MacArthur
and the State Department to let the visit go ahead,
the LDP ultimately decided to cancel the visit
and to avoid a repeat of the Hagerty incident,
which they probably made the right move.
I feel like they really did.
Someone was thinking clearly.
And according to historian Sterling Seagrave,
Yoshio Kadama remained on the CIA payroll
until the presidency of Ronald Reagan
and Kodama's death in 1984.
So he gets paid that entire time.
I was worried he wasn't going to.
Like we don't know everything that he got paid for
or everything he did.
We just know some of the things that were released.
Like that's it.
Well, I mean, I'm glad to hear you said he's paid.
This is not the last time we're gonna talk
about Yoshio Kadama in this episode.
It is the last time for now,
but there's a more interesting story that comes up later
that you're going to be very happy
that I don't skip.
Okay, good.
And we're just elaborating on the war crimes
in which they were released.
Yes, by the CIA.
These are released CIA.
Great.
So, and then we're just gonna talk about the LDP in general.
Although I guess a political party
can't be a war criminal.
They can sure be involved with war criminals.
They sure can.
Nick Kaeper, author of the book,
Japan at the Crossroads,
Conflict and Compromise After Ampo,
argues that Nabusuke Kishi,
at the advice and encouragement
of the Central Intelligence Agency,
orchestrated the formation
of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955.
This party continuously held power from 1955 to present day,
except for a short while
when it was replaced by a new minority government.
LDP leadership was drawn from the elite
who had seen Japan through the defeat and occupation.
It attracted former bureaucrats, local politicians,
businessmen, journalists,
and other professionals, farmers,
and university graduates.
And the CIA absolutely pushed money into the LDP.
Of course they did.
They would give them millions
to make sure that the US looks good.
Millions.
And nobody knows when that cuts off either.
Like they might still be getting money.
Nobody knows for sure.
It's probably still going.
And the person that they got to set up the LDP
is not just Nabusuke Kishi.
It is Yoshio Kadama.
Yoshio Kadama is constantly in the background
as the fixer for the LDP.
Because of his like very obvious attachment to the Yakuza,
he can't be a politician or prime minister,
but he basically runs the party the entire time he's alive.
I mean, that's like Kennedy's and the mafia.
Sure.
Not quite, but sure.
Not quite, but kind of.
Next up, other propaganda activities.
The CIA was involved in a multi-decade campaign
to strengthen the image of the United States in Japan
and promote the Japanese right.
In 1954, the CIA sponsored the creation
of a central intelligence agency,
meant to sway news reporting from Jiji Press and Kyoto News.
The CIA established a program called
the Psychological Strategy Plan for Japan.
The goal of the plan was the manipulation of Japanese media
into supporting the pro-US anti-communist
and pro-rearmament position to sway Japanese public opinion.
The United States Information Service
also confidentially financed the production
of Japanese media, pouring $184 million
into a program codenamed Panel D Japan.
The CIA and USIS also targeted the Japanese intelligence
media establishing magazines like Jiu.
One of the CIA's greatest media assets
was the Japanese media mogul Matsutaro Soriki.
Matsutaro owned the influential publication
Yomiori Shimbun.
Matsutaro established Japan's first private television
network, Mipon Television.
NTV would become a centerpiece
of US psychological operations in Japan.
Matsutaro operated under the CIA codename Podam
and Pojakpot One.
Operations by Pojakpot One included a program
to acquire 10 color TV receivers,
which were shipped to Japan.
The objective of this operation was to broadcast propaganda
for the LDP ahead of the 1958 general election
and demonstrate US advancements in consumer electronics.
However, the sets arrived too late
to be used in the 1958 election and the program wasn't.
Soriki also participated in a media campaign
to promote nuclear power in Japan.
His media organization established in the exhibition
to promote the benefits of nuclear power,
termed Adams for peace after Eisenhower's speech
at the UN General Assembly in 1953.
And the operation was obviously fully endorsed
and supported by the CIA, probably paid for as well.
So the CIA are fully why Japan relies so heavily
on nuclear power, which I mean, take it or leave it.
There are good and bad involved with that,
but if Japan would have been left to its own devices,
I guarantee you a country that had two nuclear bombs
dropped on it would not nuclearize its power.
Because they really don't like nuclear weapons.
Yeah, okay.
Like they saw, oh, and I don't even talk about this.
Do you know the nuclear testing
that happens at Bikini Atoll?
Okay, well, it's in the middle of the ocean.
You would see that famous mushroom cloud
that happens in the middle of the ocean.
Yeah, cause it sounds familiar.
Yeah.
That actually leads to fallout on a fishing boat
and all the fish that were caught and canned
and dispersed throughout Japan.
And it actually, it's a huge scandal
that I'm not even gonna cover,
but nuclear fallout is a huge worry in Japan
for most of the 1950s onwards.
The reason, okay.
Why are they doing this?
Well, one of the reasons is the Okinawa Military Base,
which Japan heavily opposes.
From 1955 to 2013, I believe was the stat I read.
I didn't write this down.
There have been over 200,000 criminal actions
done to Japanese individuals
by people at the military base in Okinawa.
200,000 crimes committed by military personnel in 60 years.
And they never get tried there.
They get tried in the US if they want to.
But like anywhere from like assaults to murder.
No, it's bad.
Like it's been all over the map.
That's bad.
And the reason I laugh is because Japan is not the one
to be accusing people of admitting things
and getting away with it.
Is there a pretty bad themselves?
Let's talk about Okinawa.
The CIA's influence in Okinawa became relevant
as it repeatedly attempted to influence
the course of elections on the island.
The American Friends Service Committee
accused the US of financing the LDP on the island
to the tune of $1.8 million.
This was corroborated by a secret action plan
declassified in 1997.
Detail and covert agency plans to influence elections
in the Ryukyus via the secret funding the LDP
in response to an escalation of protests over reversion.
More recently, after the end of the US military operation
in Okinawa prefecture,
the CIA continued attempts to sway Okinawa public opinion.
In a document obtained via a Freedom of Information Act
request, the CIA laid out a manual advising US officials
on how to shape Okinawa public opinion.
The CIA advised US officials to manipulate Okinawa pacifists
opinion by stating the military's role
in humanitarian and disaster relief.
This agency also advised that US officials
not mention military deterrence
as a reason for the continued military presence on the island
and deny any role of US servicemen
in discrimination against Okinawans.
The AFSC also accused the CIA of organizing the toppling
of Yukio Hatoyama's government in large part
due to its opposition to the construction
of the US military installations on Hanoko Bay.
Next up, Project Artichoke.
And by the way, one thing I have to bring up
just because it vaguely fits in here,
I didn't have time to do it though.
Do you remember the Kempeitai,
the Japanese military police?
Yes.
Yeah, they came up in your episode,
didn't come up in mine.
You would think that they were Class A war criminals.
I could not find a single name attached to Kempeitai.
All I know is that they set up clandestine cells
called Kikan, basically the US just said,
yeah, we're gonna keep these.
So they might have gotten rid of some of the Kempeitai,
but they did not get rid of their infrastructure at all.
Cool, okay.
Which brings me to Project Bluebird
and Project Artichoke.
Project Bluebird is a division of Project Artichoke
and it was a mind control operation
involving testing of human subjects with drugs
meant to induce hypnosis for the purpose
of enhanced interrogation.
At the start of Project Bluebird,
a team traveled to Japan in July of 1950
to test out the techniques on human subjects.
The subjects used were suspected double agents.
During the operation, the security office of the agency
ordered the operatives to conceal
and not disclose the reason
for their residence and employment in Japan.
Using a cover explaining they were part of a polygraph work.
In October of 1950, the program was expanded
to include North Korean prisoners of war
with 25 subjects being selected and chosen for the role.
The safe house used to perform the operation
was located in Etzugi, Kanagawa.
The experiments were intended to induce amnesia
by the injection of drugs such as sodium amadol
and other barbiturates.
The team judged the experiments in 1950 as a success,
causing the agency to expand and continue the program
across Europe and Southeast Asia.
So yay, using drugs to interrogate people.
That's where it was pioneered was in Japan.
Really?
Kevley talked about Project Artichoke before or Bluebird?
I don't think we have.
It must have been behind the bastards that I heard it.
Yeah, and actually there are a few episodes
of behind the bastards that are very pertinent to this.
This actually leads to the Canon organ,
which is, I'm just gonna read it.
News reports and declassified CIA documents
have repeatedly mentioned the existence
of Canon organ staffed by 30 persons.
The organization is also known as the Canon Agency
or the Zed Unit.
The agency was formed according to former member Han Topong
by the Counterintelligence Corp.
and was under the purview of the G2.
Topong stated that the intelligence gathering portion
of the organ answered to Alan Dulles or Alan Delay.
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Cannon led the agency.
The organization's headquarters was located
at the Hongo House in Tokyo.
It worked in conjunction with the Kato Agency.
A clique consisting of five former Imperial
Japanese Army officers, the Canon organ's primary focus
was gathering intelligence from Communist China.
So it basically set up its own CIA cell in Japan.
This also read the Kajiwataru incident.
Another incident?
Yeah, another incident.
They have a lot of incidents.
The CIA was implicated in the abduction of Kajiwataru,
a left-wing novelist.
Wataru had worked as a reeducator
concerning Japanese prisoners of war in Chongqing
due to his persecution under the Showa Statism.
Kaji alleged that he was abducted by US military
intelligence officers in the Kanagawa neighborhood
of Kuganuma and then confined in a facility to Yokohama
on the night of November 25th, 1951.
He was then extensively interrogated,
accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union
and was pressured to become a double agent
for the US intelligence.
Kaji was physically tortured and interrogated
over the next few days.
After Kaji was repeatedly physically abused
by the Canon Agency, he attempted suicide
by drinking a bottle of household cleaner.
Before his suicide attempt, he wrote a testament
to his friend Uchiyama Kanzo,
a bookstore owner in Shanghai.
At the time, Kaji was suffering from chronic tuberculosis
and was giving medical treatment
to assist in his recovery from a suicide attempt.
Kaji was then moved to a second safe house
in the Shibuya Ward.
Then he was moved to Chugasaki and then to Okinawa.
That's the Wataru incident.
I just wanted to say it because it's terrible.
Like that's some of the terrible things they're doing.
And I think we're gonna have to cut this here
because we have more to go, a lot more to go.
And this is still the short version of this.
I've been Taylor here with Chelsea.
You'll get more of it next week.
Thank you all for listening.
See you next week.
What?
Just say bye.
Oh, bye.
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