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Raw Blame History

Occupation-era files

A CIA name file on Kodama, released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, contains a profile sheet stating that Kodama "was instrumental in founding the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)," "had a hand in naming several ministers," and "commands the allegiance of Japan's ultrarightists and is blood brother to a number of yakuza (leaders of the Japanese underworld)."² A second profile sheet in the file states that Kodama, "notorious since the 1920's for his connections with right-wing and underworld groups, is widely reported to have high-level connections in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)," that he has been described by many sources as "a powerful figure in behind-the-scenes political maneuvering," and that he was allegedly visited at his residence by cabinet ministers and by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. The sheet also records a reported close relationship with Ichiro Kono and Bamboku Ono.³ The file's background summary describes Kodama (alias Moshakoji Takeharu) as a rightist with underworld connections ("gambling and gangster groups") and with important LDP political figures, and gives his birth as February 18, 1911 in Fukushima Prefecture.⁴

A counter-intelligence memorandum dated October 3, 1945, filed in the same name file, identifies Kodama as the publisher of a nationalistic journal.⁵ A document dated April 24, 1950, excerpted verbatim in the file, states that on December 24, 1948, Shumei Okawa, Sasagawa Ryoichi, Kodama and a fourth man "were released from prison by the allies and charges against them of being class 'A' war criminals were dropped," and that these men "are reported to be planning in secret the reconstruction of the Japanese military," with an initial aim of "a volunteer corps to join the Chinese Nationalists in their defense of Formosa."⁶ A CIA office memorandum of June 29, 1950 states that Kodama was released on December 24, 1948 along with 13 other suspects and that the Legal Section of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers announced that no additional trial would be brought. The same memorandum states that Kodama had apparently led underground right-wing movements since his release, that a magazine writer's list of released "Class A" suspects included Kodama, Sasagawa and others, and that Kodama was in fact a "Class B" suspect. It also lists Kodama among officers reported in a recruitment program in Japan for Chiang Kai-shek and the CC Clique, with 123 recruited on November 11, 1949, and states that when he was picked up by SCAP in 1945 he reportedly turned over radium that was placed in the Bank of Japan vaults.⁷

Counter-intelligence reports in the file note Kodama's close contact after his release from Sugamo Prison with Tsuji Masanobu, whom the same reports describe as involved in recruiting Japanese soldiers and weapons for Chinese Nationalist forces.⁸ Handwritten notes of an interview with Kodama, attached to a CIA station dispatch of January 10, 1950 that describes him as a former naval intelligence officer in China and a known member of the revised JIS, record him proposing an espionage net whose members would be natives of Korea and China with whom he had business connections. According to the notes, he had promised Mr. Carpenter of the SCAP Legal Section to stay in Tokyo, and a former colonel then working in a G-2 section could vouch for him.⁹

A document dated April 7, 1950 and excerpted in the file describes a merger of the groups of General Maki, Kodama, a network whose name is obscured in the copy, and probably General Doi, together with a former Foreign Office intelligence group under Tsuchida, working covertly with GHQ and CIC.¹⁰ The file's background summary states that Kodama was one of the high advisers in Prince Higashikuni's administration in 1945, was the first man to make a personal connection with General Douglas MacArthur and the Premier, was arrested as a Class A war criminal for dealings in war materiel, and spent three years in jail before being found not guilty.⁴

A 1953 record in the file identifies Sasagawa as a former head of the Nationalist League who was increasingly active behind the scenes in political and financial circles and was said to be Kodama's "political adviser." The same record states that Sasagawa founded in 1951, with the backing of Osaka and Kansai financiers, an enterprise to promote motorboat racing.¹¹ A 1952 record in the file describes Taketora Ogata, a former editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, as in contact with leading members of the pre-war Genyo-sha, in particular with Sasakawa and Kodama.¹²

The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, which administered the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act, records in its 2007 final report that the Simon Wiesenthal Center lobbied for release of U.S. documents on amnesties granted to Japanese war criminals, including amnesties granted to supervisors of Japan's biological and chemical warfare program in exchange for data from experiments on humans in Unit 731.¹³

Covert funding of Japanese politicians

The editorial note to the 1964 to 1968 Japan volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States series states that the U.S. Government approved four covert programs in Japan between 1958 and 1968. The note states that the Eisenhower administration authorized the CIA, before the May 1958 elections for the Japanese House of Representatives, to provide a few key pro-American and conservative politicians with "covert limited financial support and electoral advice." The recipients were told only that they were getting support from American businessmen. A 1959 program to split the moderate wing of the leftist opposition received $75,000 for 1960. The note states that "the subsidy program for Japanese political parties was phased out in early 1964," and that a broader program divided almost equally between propaganda and social action was funded at $450,000 for 1964 and continued "throughout the Johnson administration."¹⁴

The New York Times News Service reported on October 9, 1994 that retired intelligence officials and former diplomats said the CIA gave money to the Liberal Democratic Party and its members in the 1950s and 1960s. "We financed them," said Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., who ran the CIA's Far East operations from 1955 to 1958. Roger Hilsman, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the Kennedy administration, said the payments were by the early 1960s "so established and so routine" that they were a part of American policy toward Japan, and U. Alexis Johnson, Ambassador to Japan from 1966 to 1969, said: "We were financing a party on our side." The report states that the Liberal Democrats have always denied that the support existed.¹⁵

Lockheed

The CIA file contains a background summary on Kodama, titled as concerning his involvement in the Lockheed scandal with former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka.⁴ The summary states that it was brought to light during the Lockheed scandal that Kodama received a bribe in connection with a sale, that he was not arrested because of illness but was prosecuted for tax evasion, that after his release from Sugamo he was involved in LDP fund-raising for Ichiro Hatoyama, and that he died of heart failure on the evening of January 17, 1984. It adds that an actor in pornographic films crashed a small plane into Kodama's home and that Kodama's autobiography, translated into English as "I Was Defeated," was a best seller.⁴

Sasakawa and the Unification Church

The Unification Church founded the International Federation for Victory over Communism in Japan and named Sasakawa its honorary chairman, according to a 2023 article on the church's relations with the LDP. That article states that Sasakawa had close ties to former prime minister Kishi Nobusuke and to the conservative wing of the LDP.¹⁶

Treasury designations

Executive Order 13581 of July 24, 2011, issued by President Barack Obama, blocks the property of significant transnational criminal organizations. Its Annex lists four entities: the Brothers' Circle, the Camorra, the Yakuza (a.k.a. Boryokudan; a.k.a. Gokudo) and Los Zetas.¹⁷

On February 23, 2012, the Treasury Department designated the Yamaguchi-gumi, its leader Kenichi Shinoda, and Kiyoshi Takayama. The release called these the first designations under Executive Order 13581. It states that the Yakuza was listed in the Annex for its involvement in serious criminal activities, including weapons trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, fraud and money laundering, and that "The Yamaguchi-gumi is the largest and most prominent of the Yakuza’s crime families."¹

On September 27, 2012, Treasury designated the Sumiyoshi-kai, which the release calls "the second-largest clan within the Japanese Yakuza criminal network," together with two of its leaders, Shigeo Nishiguchi and Hareaki Fukuda.¹⁸ An OFAC listing under the Transnational Criminal Organization program, dated December 2016, names the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi under the heading "YAKUZA" and lists Tadashi Irie as previously designated on December 19, 2013 as a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi.¹⁹ On October 2, 2018, Treasury designated two Kobe-based companies, Yamaki, K.K. and Toyo Shinyo Jitsugyo K.K., and four individuals under the same order, describing the companies as real estate firms tied to Yamaguchi-gumi operations.²⁰

Goto and the UCLA transplants

Tadamasa Goto underwent a successful liver transplant in July 2001 at the UCLA Medical Center, performed by Ronald W. Busuttil, executive chairman of the university's surgery department, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times reported in articles of May 30 and May 31, 2008 that four surgeries on Japanese men were done between 2000 and 2004, that the most prominent recipient, Goto, had been barred from entering the United States because of his criminal history, and that Goto leads the Goto-gumi, which the journalist David Kaplan describes in his book as an offshoot of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Goto flew from Narita to Los Angeles on May 18, 2001 with his son and, according to his lawyer Yoshiyuki Maki, had hepatitis C.²¹

Jim Stern, a retired chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Asian criminal enterprise unit, told the Times that the FBI helped Goto obtain a visa to enter the United States in 2001 in exchange for leads on potentially illegal activity in this country by Japanese criminal gangs. Stern said: "I don't think Goto gave the bureau anything of significance." Stern said the FBI did not help Goto arrange his surgery at UCLA, and a law enforcement official told the Times that Goto was again barred from reentering the United States after the transplant.²¹

The Times reported, citing a law enforcement official, that Busuttil performed liver transplants on three other men barred from entering the United States because of criminal records or suspected affiliation with Japanese organized crime groups, whom it did not name because they could not be reached. UCLA and Busuttil said in statements that they do not make moral judgments about patients and treat them based on medical need.²¹ Maki said that Busuttil traveled to Japan, examined Goto on more than one occasion and evaluated him while he was in custody in 2006, and that Busuttil's medical opinion was cited in a court petition to have Goto released for medical care.²¹ The former Yomiuri Shimbun reporter Jake Adelstein told the Times that after he made inquiries in 2005 about the circumstances of Goto's transplant, men visited him and told him: "Erase the story or be erased."²¹

In its follow-up, the Times reported that Goto donated $100,000 to the hospital less than three months after the surgery, that a plaque dated November 2001 recognizes the "Goto Research Fund," and that a second man from the group of four donated $100,000 in 2002. UCLA spokeswoman Dale Tate said the university had "no reason to question" the source of the money, and when asked whether the money had any bearing on the transplants said: "Absolutely not." Senator Charles Grassley said he would demand additional information from the university.²² Goto was arrested in Japan in May 2006 on suspicion of real estate fraud and was acquitted in March 2008.²³

Federal prosecutions

On February 21, 2024, federal prosecutors in the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced a superseding indictment charging Takeshi Ebisawa with trafficking nuclear materials from Burma. Prosecutors alleged that Ebisawa is a leader of a Japan-based international crime syndicate and that he and others showed samples of the material to an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration who was posing as a trafficker with access to an Iranian general.²⁴ In a Justice Department release of March 3, 2026, Ebisawa was reported sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty before Judge Colleen McMahon to six counts, including nuclear materials trafficking, narcotics trafficking, weapons and money laundering offenses. The release states that the DEA investigated him from about 2019 until his arrest on or about April 4, 2022, and that he laundered $100,000 of what the undercover agent described as narcotics proceeds for a 15 percent commission.²⁵

Fukushima decontamination work

The Asahi Shimbun reported that at least two gangsters were arrested in 2011 on suspicion of sending laborers to construction sites in Iwate Prefecture, one a senior member of a Sumiyoshi-kai affiliated gang arrested in July and the other a member of a Yamaguchi-gumi affiliated gang arrested in October. It reported that on January 31, 2013 police arrested a senior member of a gang affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai on suspicion of sending laborers in November to a decontamination project in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, which it described as the first arrest of a gangster over suspected involvement in a project to remove radioactive substances.²⁶

Jake Adelstein, writing in The Atlantic Wire, reported that Makoto Owada, identified as a high-ranking member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, was charged with dispatching workers to the Fukushima reconstruction site from May to July 2011. According to Adelstein, Owada first sent the workers to a Tokyo Electric Power Company subcontractor in Tochigi Prefecture, and some of the hazard pay the workers received was allegedly kicked back to the Sumiyoshi-kai as "association dues." Adelstein wrote that Owada admitted in initial statements to police that he had dispatched workers, including his own yakuza soldiers, to nuclear plant construction sites around Japan from as early as 2007, and that police suspected he worked with the Yamaguchi-gumi in a joint labor-supply venture.²⁷

Okimoto and the Octopus

The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that FBI wiretap summaries revealed a government drug trafficking operation that included high-ranking La Cosa Nostra figures, the Gambino Crime Family, and the Yakuza.²⁸ Seymour wrote that the FBI wiretap summary on Robert Booth Nichols, part of the affidavit of FBI agent Thomas Gates, connected Nichols to the Yakuza as a money launderer.²⁸ Seymour also wrote that Michael Riconosciuto alleged that Nichols was the "godson" of Harold Okimoto, whom Seymour describes as a 67-year-old car dealer in Hawaii believed by some sources to be a top Japanese organized crime figure and a top agent of the Yakuza overseas.²⁸

Seymour wrote that Okimoto's company, Island Tobacco, sold cigarettes at the Casino du Liban, which was controlled by the Syrian mob and used as a front by narcotics people.²⁸

U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Imposes Sanctions On Key Members Of The Yakuza And Brothers’ Circle Criminal Organizations," press release, February 23, 2012, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/tg1430. ↩︎
Central Intelligence Agency, name file "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, PDF p. 11 (profile sheet, "Rightist Leader"), copy at https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 7 (profile sheet, "Rightist Leader"), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 83 (background summary, "Background of KODAMA Yoshio, who was involved in the Lockheed Scandal with former prime Minister TANAKA Kakuei"), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 23 (counter-intelligence memorandum, October 3, 1945), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 46 (cross-file abstract of a document dated April 24, 1950, Attachment A, "Plans for Reconstruction of the Japanese Military"), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF pp. 48 to 49 (office memorandum, June 29, 1950, Request K-2202), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 60, https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF pp. 125 to 127 (dispatch to Chief, FE, January 10, 1950, with handwritten interview notes), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 155 (cross-file abstract of a document dated April 7, 1950), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 1, PDF p. 50 (activities of Sasagawa Ryoichi, September 10, 1953), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol01_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
CIA, "KODAMA, YOSHIO," vol. 2, PDF p. 6 (abstract of a document dated October 10, 1952 on Ogata Taketora), https://mansell.com/Resources/special_files/KIKAN/KODAMA_Yoshio_Vol02_CIA.pdf. ↩︎
Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, Final Report to Congress (April 2007), "Japan Under Scrutiny," pp. 20 to 21, https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/reports/final-report-2007.pdf. ↩︎
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XXIX, pt. 2, Japan, ed. Karen L. Gatz (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2006), Editorial Note, p. 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v29p2/d1. ↩︎
"CIA Spent Millions to Back Right Wing in Japan, Ex-Agents Say," New York Times News Service, Deseret News, October 9, 1994, https://www.deseret.com/1994/10/9/19135214/cia-spent-millions-to-back-right-wing-in-japan-ex-agents-say/. ↩︎
Power News, "An Unholy Alliance: How the Unification Church Penetrated Japan's Ruling Liberal Democratic Party," nippon.com, March 3, 2023, https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c12101/an-unholy-alliance-how-the-unification-church-penetrated-japan%E2%80%99s-ruling-liberal-democrat.html. ↩︎
Executive Order 13581 of July 24, 2011, Blocking Property of Transnational Criminal Organizations, 76 Fed. Reg. 44757 (July 27, 2011), Annex, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2011-07-27/pdf/2011-19156.pdf. ↩︎
U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Sanctions Members and Associates of Japanese Criminal Organization," press release, September 27, 2012, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/tg1722. ↩︎
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, "Transnational Criminal Organization Executive Order 13581," new designations, December 2016, https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/7026/download. ↩︎
U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Sanctions Individuals and Companies Associated with Japan's Major Organized Crime Syndicate, the Yakuza," press release, October 2, 2018, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm499. ↩︎
John M. Glionna and Charles Ornstein, "Japanese gang figures got new livers at UCLA," Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2008, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-30-me-ucla30-story.html. ↩︎
Charles Ornstein and John M. Glionna, "After livers, cash to UCLA," Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2008, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-31-me-ucla31-story.html. ↩︎
"Japanese gangsters got livers at L.A. hospital," NBC News, May 30, 2008, relaying the Los Angeles Times story, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/japanese-gangsters-got-livers-l-hospital-flna1C9463298. ↩︎
Associated Press, report of February 21, 2024 on the Ebisawa indictment, https://www.news4jax.com/news/national/2024/02/21/feds-accuse-alleged-japanese-crime-boss-of-conspiring-to-traffic-nuclear-material/; U.S. Department of Justice, "Justice Department Announces Nuclear Materials Trafficking Charges Against Japanese Yakuza," press release, February 21, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-nuclear-materials-trafficking-charges-against-japanese-yakuza. ↩︎
U.S. Department of Justice release of March 3, 2026 on the sentencing of Takeshi Ebisawa, as posted by the Internal Revenue Service, https://www.irs.gov/node/157161. ↩︎
Asahi Shimbun, "Police struggle to prevent gangsters from profiting in disaster areas," Asahi Asia & Japan Watch, January 31 to February 1, 2013, as archived by the Japan Disaster Archive, https://jdarchive.org/api/item/1698468. ↩︎
Jake Adelstein, "How the Yakuza and Japan's Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other," The Atlantic Wire, reprinted by TRANSCEND Media Service on July 22, 2013, https://www.transcend.org/tms/?p=32135. ↩︎
Cheri Seymour, The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal (TrineDay, 2010). ↩︎

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