AP reports that newly declassified CIA documents reveal efforts by the CIA to recruit known Japanese war criminals in the immediate post-war years. OK, the fact that the CIA recruited Japanese war criminals after the war should probably shock nobody, but the story is still fascinating to read.
(HT to Japundit)
31 Comments
Well why not, the CIA was already recruiting former Nazis, what’s a few more fascists among friends?
I recall reading about this years ago, and I thought it was already an established fact, but I guess some AP reporter was given the task of going through the newly released batch of documents and had to find something newsworthy in it…
So, who is the ‘firm’ recruiting these days?
Yeah, that 辻（Tsuji), one of the most notorious millitary officer in the Japanese military history became a spy for the CIA is also a well known fact here in Japane.
Frankly speaking I don’t why he was hanged.
This subtopic of history interests me from time to time.
What level of - say - Baathist party association should prevent an Iraqi from holding public office or receiving any kind of developmental funds from the new Iraqi government or directly from the US?
This is one of those topics that used to get my juices flowing, much like it seems it does others, but at some point years ago, I started to wonder just what we mean with it — and I honestly don’t know.
It is like the School of the Americas or whatever that still gets paraded out as evidence of the evil of the CIA and US government - how X number of South and Central American thugs went to school there. It sounds really bad. But, at some point, after seeing the item paraded out the same way each time, I thought, “What did those guys learn there?” President Syngman Rhee graduated from Yale. Ivy League colleges of the US or top schools of the UK have been the destination for the off-spring of the wealthy in other nations who gained their wealth through not so nice means for decades…It just seemed to me after all the years of reading these School of the Americas stories, which I bought without much thought for years, some investigative reporters would have dug up some juicy evidence demonstrating how these thugs leanred their craft in the school - something like a class listing of “How to rape a woman with a coke bottle 101″ or “Electric shock 305″ or something.
The former Nazi issue is the same for me: something I also bought for many years without much thought, but once I started to think about it, I got lost…
For example, the first Japanese war criminal the article lists seems like an easy call - what the hell was this guy still doing walking around…
But, what about the German scientists the US had work on missiles and the atomic bomb? Does the fact they were members of the Nazi party in and of itself mean they should have been blocked?
How far was Nazi party membership necessary for any social mobility in Germany at the time? If you wanted any kind of job tied to the government, say, a high school principle in a city in Germany, did you have to be a member of the Nazi party?
And this makes me think of Korea and South Korea today and the hot debate over pro-Japanese collaborators —- but perhaps more importantly in connection to this topic - North Korea.
North Korea has been praised by some South Koreans, and Bruce Cumings, for purging all its pro-Japanese out of its society.
Can we think of any other nation that can be creditied with being thorough with a purge with undesirables something like North Korea? Is North Korea our guide on how the undesirables should be weeded out?
I honestly can’t get far into the topic without getting twisted around. For example, and this one is slighly off, if I had been in charge of the US situation in Iraq, I would have taken Sadr out early on. He wasn’t a Baathist or war criminal or whatnot, but I’d have taken him out. I can guess at the reasons why they chose not to take him out, but it doesn’t change my mind.
And I look at the dire situation South Korea faced in 1945, and I think they were better off not doing a wholesale purge of “pro-Japanese” like their cousins in the North did.
I don’t know enough about post-WWII Germany or Japan to give a firm guess about where I think the purge marker should have been placed.
If the AP did an apt job in its early description of the first man mentioned in the article, I’d have had him up on war crimes, but the AP article (unless it was at the end after I quit reading it) doesn’t explain why he wasn’t brought before the court or more details about the man’s connections to war crimes than the quick hitter at the top.
And I can give an uneducated guess that just being the personal secretary of the prime minster (who was brought before the court and executed) isn’t in and of itself reasons enough to put the sec on trial and in prison…..
And if isn’t put on trial and put in prison for his actions as part of the Japanese government, what is wrong with trying to use him as an intel source?
Then, we can take the discussion into a whole other direction if we start to ask questions about how not just governments but also law enforcement agencies collect intel…
The press and people like me gave the FBI hell for giving Sammy the Bull Gravano such a short jail term for numerous murders in exchange for information leading to the take down of much of the John Gotti mob family.
But, being a hypocrit, I thought it was wrong for Clinton’s administration to tie the hands of the CIA and other intel orgs by saying they couldn’t use people to gain information on bad guys if they had been one of the real bad guys themselves.
It seems obvious that the people who are going to have the information and evidence to put the ring leaders and others behind bars are most likely not going to be squeaky clean…
So, where do we draw the line?
I pray I am never in a situation where I have to make such decisions……is the only firm conclusion I can draw on most of this….
b
Don’t let Koreans read this. They already assume that CIA started the Korean War, Park ChungHee regime, ChunDoHwan regime and ordered the tank driver to ride over two girls in the rice patch.
“Yet the ex-war criminals failed to rebuild a militarist Japan. “Prewar right-wing activists who escaped war crime charges in fact did not have much influence in the postwar period,” said Eiji Takemae, historian and author of The Allied Occupation of Japan” -Nah. They had money,power and connection. With occupying force who was benign and could not speak the language, these former military officers ran the local government through the form of threats and intimidation (Yakuza). Much like what goes in Russia right now. They are still running it.
The same handful of guys may even run Korea underneath. How much? I don’t know. Only those high up in the government or in a big corporation do.
boring old “news”
I agree with #2, the winter interns at AP must have finished their project.
not that regular AP reporters are much better.
As Roberto Calvi used to say before he was found hanging under Blackfriar’s bridge, if you want to understand internaional affairs, read the Godfather.
Drug dealing, death squads, false-flag terror ops and co-opting the most odious scum on Earth has been the purview of CIA since its inception. Unit 731, the Gehlen Org, Italian fascists, Turkish terrorists, Osama and Co., Saddam, Noriega, the list goes on and on.
The info is all documented and out there for anyone who wants to look.
It isn’t “hating America” to speak the truth. I love America, but hate the criminal trash cabal who use America to play their demented power games.
And America isn’t the only victim. Russia, China, Saudi, England, North Korea etc. are run by full-on gangsters.
Unfortunately, there are still some deluded people taken in by vacuous appeals to patriotism.
True patriotism is standing up to tyranny, whatever label it wraps itself in.
has anyone read this? I did.
So much for the Japanese being a staunch ally for the United States in the Far East.
It says the Japanese gave the US only useless information, sold the information to multiple US services at the same time to maximize their spying income, and used spying money instructed to be used for spying operations for other uses that had no relation whatsoever to the spying operation.
Still think Japan is a very valuable US ally?
I think to paraphrase the article, it was so obvious the Japanese spys were using the US for their own profit that it was comical. The author also notes that the spying operations in Europe were different in that they were actually productive.
Should have hanged these people instead.
“So much for the Japanese being a staunch ally for the United States in the Far East.”
You’re basing this on one article talking about a CIA initiative - probably one in a long list of ‘intelligence’ misadventures over the years - in the mid/late-40’s, early-50’s. Got anything else that seriously brings the American/Japanese alliance into question?
“Still think Japan is a very valuable US ally?”
Yes. So do the United States and Japan.
Atonement.
“North Korea has been praised by some South Koreans, and Bruce Cumings, for purging all its pro-Japanese out of its society.
Can we think of any other nation that can be creditied with being thorough with a purge with undesirables something like North Korea? Is North Korea our guide on how the undesirables should be weeded out?”
Well, Kim Jong Il was a political imposter (some have even accused him, Kim Sun Ju (his birth name) of having stolen the identity of the real Kim Il Sung). This minor resistance leader took advantage of the fact that many of the older communist leader had died. North Korea then purged every Korean communist leader of his generation, including South Korean communist leaders, that were a threat to the myth of Kim Il Sung being the sole leader of the communist resitance against the Japanese occupation. Kim Jong Il (Kim ‘Yura’), has purged his own political opponents over the years, starting in the early 80s, thus unofficially announcing his claims to the ‘throne’.
#15 that was kind of the subtext of my question…
#13 after the latest nuke deal and how it went down, I’m not sure if I were Japan I’d be feeling all warm and fuzzy about my American ally…
historically, military alliance with Japan resulted in putting more into it than receiving much from it.
I’d rate even the current US-Japan situation as, Japan getting the better end of the deal out of it.
Just note that when Japan is called to show something for it. They’ll do barely what’s acceptable to keep the alliance going.
Perhaps, wjk, but the Japanese exhibit rationality and display little arrogance, while keeping anti-American sentiment to a minimum. That’s worth something.
wjk #17, Unfortunately you are correct except that you are anatomizing the wrong American alliance next to the Sea of Peace.
Do you really think the Koreans are better allies than the Japanese at present?
#16,
I must have skipped that line. No matter, I provided more information on the subject.
ask any Vietnam war veteran. They rate the ROK marines pretty high.
At present, I wouldn’t put any new US weapons in South Korea, because Roh Moo Hyun and Uri will find a way to leak it to China.
“At present, I wouldn’t put any new US weapons in South Korea, because Roh Moo Hyun and Uri will find a way to leak it to China.”
Seems that ROK is also not a reliable ally, too.
I just wonder what happens when Japan will amend the constitution and try to be able to become a more “reliable ally”.
I don’t think that ROK and CPR (and ofcourse the PROK) would be happy with that.
“historically, military alliance with Japan resulted in putting more into it than receiving much from it.
I’d rate even the current US-Japan situation as, Japan getting the better end of the deal out of it.”
Possibly true. Same could be argued of the US-South Korean alliance.
“ask any Vietnam war veteran. They rate the ROK marines pretty high.”
Agreed. They were highly regarded by the US in Vietnam. The ROKMC is still highly regarded by a lot of American military guys I know.
“At present, I wouldn’t put any new US weapons in South Korea, because Roh Moo Hyun and Uri will find a way to leak it to China.”
Whether or not any new weapons systems, technology, etc. placed in South Korea would be leaked to China, it doesn’t change the reality - present, future, and probably past - of the US regarding Japan as a more essential and reliable ally.
As dogbertt pointed out, the Japanese have long figured out that rampant anti-American sentiment really isn’t in the national interest. They’re in the alliance for themselves, first and foremost, but who isn’t? I think the Japanese have a better grasp of the concept of an alliance as a potential ‘win/win’ relationship.
“As dogbertt pointed out, the Japanese have long figured out that rampant anti-American sentiment really isn’t in the national interest. They’re in the alliance for themselves, first and foremost, but who isn’t? I think the Japanese have a better grasp of the concept of an alliance as a potential ‘win/win’ relationship.”
Bingo. This is what the current Korean leadership and many Koreans just can’t seem to grasp.
Hear, hear, Snow.
“ask any Vietnam war veteran. They rate the ROK marines pretty high.”
The standards have apparently slipped, though. One of my students served in the ROK marines. He couldn’t have had more than 130 pounds on his 6 foot frame. Needless to say, he was far from being an athlete.
ask any Vietnam war veteran. They rate the ROK marines pretty high.
Uh, not what I heard. Da Vets I know say they wuz ladyboys.
That Japan was not ruled by US-supported military dictators since the war might have something to do with the relatively lower level of public outcry or anti-americanism. I think culture too plays a role in moderating tone. There have been peaceful demonstrations here in Japan for many decades against the US military presence, but it is not mainstream or outraged. The CIA funneled money to the LDP, however.
Uri Onara, I think you’re on the money, both in terms of the absence of American supported military dictators in Japan and cultural differences between Japan and Korea as being factors here. Interesting how with the last twenty years of free democratic elections - albeit commencing with one in ‘87 that a dictator’s successor managed to win, fair and square - anti-Americanism has only become more mainstream in South Korea.
Returning to the idea of ‘win/win’, whether it is a business deal, trade agreement, military alliance, decision about where people end up going for a meal or vacation, or whatever the topic, I’ve gotten the impression in my ten years or so in Korea that there is a popular notion that any such scenario has to have a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’. (Maybe I’m naive, but I’m not convinced that has to be the case.)
“ask any Vietnam war veteran. They rate the ROK marines pretty high.
Uh, not what I heard. Da Vets I know say they wuz ladyboys.”
Maybe. In any case, my friend’s dad, Australian SAS, worked with the Korean special forces in Vietnam and he said they were good soldiers (then again, they wouldn’t be in the special forces if they weren’t).
Would you be referring to this as part of the overall support of South Korea against the potential onslaught (again) of Kim Il Sung’s crew…
or…
would you be advocating that the US should have stopped supporting aforementioned dictators based in Seoul and washed its hand of South Korea altogether…
or…
would be advocating that the US should have actually used more influence in Korea to toss out this and that dictator until it found a fully democratic friendly Korean leader it would set up and possible defend against undermining by groups of South Koreans?