McTojo
Banned
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2006
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- 185
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- Yokohama
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- Very Conservative
Subject: sasakawa; The Man Who Tried to Buy Respect !
For those interested in the sordid history of Ryoichi Sasakawa, there is an excellent article about him in the March 1994 issue of Asia, Inc. titled, "The Man who Tried to Buy Respect" and authored by Hans Katayama.
In addition, they might want to look at the dossier compiled on Sasakawa by U.S. Occupation authorities in December 1995, file no. 185, declassified by the U.S. Army in 1977, which formed the basis of his arrest as a Class A war criminal, confined in Sugamo Prison until 1948 when he was let go, untried, with the onset of the Cold War.
Some lengthy excerpts from the Katayama article:
"Sasakawa is a man of many faces: jailed for war crimes, accused of pillaging China, soulmate of yakuza gangsters. Now Sasakawa claims he is campaigning for peace though critics insist that what truly inspires him is his bid for a Nobel prize. Had he stepped inside China 45 years ago, his fate would have beeen a bullet in the neck. But today, 'Chinese officials roll out the red carpet for him,' beams a Sasakawa associate of 20 years. 'They always tell me that they will do anything for that man.' Of course they will he's doled out millions for charitable causes across six continents. As chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Founcation and histrionic, iron-fisted czar of the nation's $18 billion motorboat-race gambling industry, he alone decides how to spend $600 million each year. He has done so for more than three decades. His empire and its philanthropic arm commonly known as the Sasakawa Foudnation rank among the most powerful institutions in Japan....
In 1931, Sasakawa took over leadership of an ultranationalist group, the Patriotic People's Mass Party, and its membership grew from 1,000 to 15,000. He dressed his followers in sinister black uniforms and built an airport with funds he extorted from an Osaka business group. The landing strip was home to a fleet of 22 aircraft, one of which Sasakawa piloted to Rome in 1939 to meet Benito Mussolini, whose 'Black Shirts' inspired the PPMP attire, allegedly as a private envoy of Tokyo. Sasakawa's infamous recollection of the Italian: 'He was a first-class person, the perfect fascist and dictator.' Sasakawa ran the party not only for show, but as a tool to advance his quest for affluence and influence. The fastest way to both was to insinuate himself with the increasingly bellicose Japanese government. He was notorious for his jingoistic speeches and hounded those suspected of 'thought crimes.' He felw goods into newly annexted Manchuria and had the Imperial Navy use his planes to train military pilots. When the Pacific war broke out in 1941, Sasakawa quickly seized upon a lucrative business opportunity: He bought as many mines in Japan as possible and sold the strategic minerals to the military for profit. The scope of his activities soon expanded to include China, and he made frequent jaunts to Shanghai. As the Imperial Army pushed deeper into China, Sasakawa went along for the ride, ransacking gold, diamonds and other valuables along the way. By 1945, a Sasakawa crony, Kodama Yoshio [a name also associated with sordid things Japanese], had enough plunder, including three large sacks of industrial diamonds from Shanghai and Singapore, to fill two planes to take back to Japan. 'The cargo was so heavy,' one eyewitness later recalled, 'the aircraft's wheel shaft warped under the load.' Sasakawa has consistently denied any wrongdoing during the war. 'I have not exploited one yen or one penny,' he once told reporters. 'What I did was to donate several million tuberculosis injections in China.' Yet the Allied Occupation forces felt differently, arresting him as a class-A war criminal in 1945 and confiscating the loot he stole from China...Sasakawa was never tried and in 1948 he was releated. Many suspect he made a deal with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, transforming himself from proto-fascit to vehement anti-Communist. During the 1950s and 1960s, he spent millions beefing up Japan's anti-Communist movement and hobnobbed with Asian strongmen like South Korea's Syngman Rhee and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek....
The fount that pays for Sasakawa's antics is the motorboat racing business, one of three state-sanctioned gambling concessions in Japan. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, boat races were held sporadically and a proposal was aired to unify them under one entity, with a portion of the winnings used to help fund the reconstruction of Japanese industry. Sasakawa learned of the bid through his ties to the LIberal Party, a forerunner to the Liberal-Democratic Party, and fought a fierce battle to gain control of the new entity. Sasakawa settled the issue in 1951 with a $13,800 payoff to keep the contenders quiet. Political approval came later the same year, and with it Sasakawa established the Japan Motorboat Racing Association. In a flash of brilliance in 1962, he made himself chairman of the newly created Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation. According to the deal with teh government, 75% of the total take is refunded back to motorboat fans as winnings while the rest covers operating expenses and is distributed among local governments and local racing associations. 'Basically, he set up a system where he controls both ends of the cash flow,' said a Sawakawa-watcher in the financial industry. The Foundation receives 3.3% of total earnings to rebuild Japanese shipping interests, though the sum was supposed to fall under the Finance Ministry's jurisdiction at some point in the future....
As the Japanese economy took off, so did Sasakawa's fortunes. In 1976, motorboat racing raked in $4.5 billion; in 1983, $8.4 billion, and in 1992, it more than doubled again. In 1983, a US publication estimated his personal net worth at $1 billion, a figure unquestionably higher today... His LDP connections weren't the only reason he got away with it. Unlike the gambling franchises for horse and bicycle racing, which are directly controlled by bureaucrats, the JMRA has a patron, the Ministry of Transport, which acts as little more than a rubber stamp. Sasakawa keeps the ministry happy by hiring retiring officials as directors at Sasakawa-affiliated foundations. This explains why its bureau chiefs, among the most feared civil servants in Japan, line up and greet him in front of the ministry office every time he pays a New Year's visit. At teh same time, Sasakawa has been diverting some of the foundation's money to internationl donations, in particular to Asia and Africa. His philanthropy has won him kudos from the United Nations and the gratitude of high-profile do-gooders like former US President Jimmy Carter [Sasakawa helped build the Jimmy Carter library in Atlanta and there is a bust of him in the lobby] and AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor. Much of hs charity has been aimed at Asia hundreds of millions since the 1970s. Recent disbursements include $1million endowments to Beijing, Jilin, Lanzou, Fudan and Nanjin universities in China; $1 million to the University of Malaysia; and $2 million to the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women in Thailand. In addition, the Foundation has dished out a whopping $106 million since 1989 to establish the Japan-based Sasakawa Japan-China Friendship Fund and the Sasakawa Southeast Asia Cooperation Fund...
__________________
For those interested in the sordid history of Ryoichi Sasakawa, there is an excellent article about him in the March 1994 issue of Asia, Inc. titled, "The Man who Tried to Buy Respect" and authored by Hans Katayama.
In addition, they might want to look at the dossier compiled on Sasakawa by U.S. Occupation authorities in December 1995, file no. 185, declassified by the U.S. Army in 1977, which formed the basis of his arrest as a Class A war criminal, confined in Sugamo Prison until 1948 when he was let go, untried, with the onset of the Cold War.
Some lengthy excerpts from the Katayama article:
"Sasakawa is a man of many faces: jailed for war crimes, accused of pillaging China, soulmate of yakuza gangsters. Now Sasakawa claims he is campaigning for peace though critics insist that what truly inspires him is his bid for a Nobel prize. Had he stepped inside China 45 years ago, his fate would have beeen a bullet in the neck. But today, 'Chinese officials roll out the red carpet for him,' beams a Sasakawa associate of 20 years. 'They always tell me that they will do anything for that man.' Of course they will he's doled out millions for charitable causes across six continents. As chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Founcation and histrionic, iron-fisted czar of the nation's $18 billion motorboat-race gambling industry, he alone decides how to spend $600 million each year. He has done so for more than three decades. His empire and its philanthropic arm commonly known as the Sasakawa Foudnation rank among the most powerful institutions in Japan....
In 1931, Sasakawa took over leadership of an ultranationalist group, the Patriotic People's Mass Party, and its membership grew from 1,000 to 15,000. He dressed his followers in sinister black uniforms and built an airport with funds he extorted from an Osaka business group. The landing strip was home to a fleet of 22 aircraft, one of which Sasakawa piloted to Rome in 1939 to meet Benito Mussolini, whose 'Black Shirts' inspired the PPMP attire, allegedly as a private envoy of Tokyo. Sasakawa's infamous recollection of the Italian: 'He was a first-class person, the perfect fascist and dictator.' Sasakawa ran the party not only for show, but as a tool to advance his quest for affluence and influence. The fastest way to both was to insinuate himself with the increasingly bellicose Japanese government. He was notorious for his jingoistic speeches and hounded those suspected of 'thought crimes.' He felw goods into newly annexted Manchuria and had the Imperial Navy use his planes to train military pilots. When the Pacific war broke out in 1941, Sasakawa quickly seized upon a lucrative business opportunity: He bought as many mines in Japan as possible and sold the strategic minerals to the military for profit. The scope of his activities soon expanded to include China, and he made frequent jaunts to Shanghai. As the Imperial Army pushed deeper into China, Sasakawa went along for the ride, ransacking gold, diamonds and other valuables along the way. By 1945, a Sasakawa crony, Kodama Yoshio [a name also associated with sordid things Japanese], had enough plunder, including three large sacks of industrial diamonds from Shanghai and Singapore, to fill two planes to take back to Japan. 'The cargo was so heavy,' one eyewitness later recalled, 'the aircraft's wheel shaft warped under the load.' Sasakawa has consistently denied any wrongdoing during the war. 'I have not exploited one yen or one penny,' he once told reporters. 'What I did was to donate several million tuberculosis injections in China.' Yet the Allied Occupation forces felt differently, arresting him as a class-A war criminal in 1945 and confiscating the loot he stole from China...Sasakawa was never tried and in 1948 he was releated. Many suspect he made a deal with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, transforming himself from proto-fascit to vehement anti-Communist. During the 1950s and 1960s, he spent millions beefing up Japan's anti-Communist movement and hobnobbed with Asian strongmen like South Korea's Syngman Rhee and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek....
The fount that pays for Sasakawa's antics is the motorboat racing business, one of three state-sanctioned gambling concessions in Japan. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, boat races were held sporadically and a proposal was aired to unify them under one entity, with a portion of the winnings used to help fund the reconstruction of Japanese industry. Sasakawa learned of the bid through his ties to the LIberal Party, a forerunner to the Liberal-Democratic Party, and fought a fierce battle to gain control of the new entity. Sasakawa settled the issue in 1951 with a $13,800 payoff to keep the contenders quiet. Political approval came later the same year, and with it Sasakawa established the Japan Motorboat Racing Association. In a flash of brilliance in 1962, he made himself chairman of the newly created Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation. According to the deal with teh government, 75% of the total take is refunded back to motorboat fans as winnings while the rest covers operating expenses and is distributed among local governments and local racing associations. 'Basically, he set up a system where he controls both ends of the cash flow,' said a Sawakawa-watcher in the financial industry. The Foundation receives 3.3% of total earnings to rebuild Japanese shipping interests, though the sum was supposed to fall under the Finance Ministry's jurisdiction at some point in the future....
As the Japanese economy took off, so did Sasakawa's fortunes. In 1976, motorboat racing raked in $4.5 billion; in 1983, $8.4 billion, and in 1992, it more than doubled again. In 1983, a US publication estimated his personal net worth at $1 billion, a figure unquestionably higher today... His LDP connections weren't the only reason he got away with it. Unlike the gambling franchises for horse and bicycle racing, which are directly controlled by bureaucrats, the JMRA has a patron, the Ministry of Transport, which acts as little more than a rubber stamp. Sasakawa keeps the ministry happy by hiring retiring officials as directors at Sasakawa-affiliated foundations. This explains why its bureau chiefs, among the most feared civil servants in Japan, line up and greet him in front of the ministry office every time he pays a New Year's visit. At teh same time, Sasakawa has been diverting some of the foundation's money to internationl donations, in particular to Asia and Africa. His philanthropy has won him kudos from the United Nations and the gratitude of high-profile do-gooders like former US President Jimmy Carter [Sasakawa helped build the Jimmy Carter library in Atlanta and there is a bust of him in the lobby] and AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor. Much of hs charity has been aimed at Asia hundreds of millions since the 1970s. Recent disbursements include $1million endowments to Beijing, Jilin, Lanzou, Fudan and Nanjin universities in China; $1 million to the University of Malaysia; and $2 million to the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women in Thailand. In addition, the Foundation has dished out a whopping $106 million since 1989 to establish the Japan-based Sasakawa Japan-China Friendship Fund and the Sasakawa Southeast Asia Cooperation Fund...
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