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Democracy's Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan's Transwar Regime (Part I)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Close to the lotus-filled expanse of Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo's Ueno Park, a narrow back street leads into a driveway that curves between mossy walls to the top of a small hill. At the summit stands an imposing mansion whose neo-Jacobean facade, fronted by tall palm trees, would look more at home in the streets of a nineteenth century European spa town than in the midst of twenty-first century Tokyo.
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References
Notes
1 Yamada Zenjirō, Amerika no Supai, CIA no Hanzai: Kaji Wataru Jiken kara Tokushū Shūyōjo made, Tokyo, Gakushū no Tomo Sha, 2011, p. 12.
2 Some sources spell the name ‘Cannon’, but this is incorrect. Joseph Young Canon was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1914. He enlisted in the military in 1941, and was sent to New Guinea with the CIC during the war. He was first posted to Japan by the CIC early in the occupation period. Unit Z was officially disbanded early in 1952, but many of its operations continued thereafter, and Canon continued to visit Japan at least until the mid-1950s. He also served in various postings in the Middle East, including Cairo, during the 1950s. In the late 1950s he was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was a provost marshal, and in November 1958 he was sent for court martial on charges of misappropriation of goods, threatening behaviour and shooting local livestock. After the court was presented with a voluminous army file, which it examined in camera, Canon was acquitted. During the 1970s he lived in Texas, where he experimented with the design of explosives and ammunition and acquired extensive landholdings. He was also associated with far right groups established in the postwar US by the former head of G2 in Japan, Charles Willoughby. On 8 March 1981, Canon was found shot dead at his home in Edinburg, Texas. His death was officially recorded as suicide. See Duval A. Edwards, Jungle and Other Tales: True Stories of Historic Counterintelligence Operations, Tucson TX, Wheatmark, 2008; Han To-pong, “My Recollection as an Agent of the Canon Organ”, CIA Freedom of Information Act Declassified files, CIA-RDP75-00001R000300470028-4; Lubbock Evening Journal 17 December 1958; Brownsville Herald 15 January 1959.
3 Itagaki Kōzō, testimony to the 31st hearing of the Diet Lower House Justice Committee [Shūgiin Hōmu Iinkai], 5 August 1953.
4 Kaji Wataru and Yamada Zenjirō, Damare Nihonjin! Sekai ni Tsugeru “Kaji Jiken” no Shinjitsu, Tokyo, Rironsha, 1953.
5 Han To-Bong, “Kyanon Kikanin toshite no Kaisō”, Shūkan Shinchō, 11 July 1960; see also English translation by CIA, Han To-pong, “My Recollection as an Agent of the Canon Organ”, CIA Freedom of Information Act Declassified files, CIA-RDP75-00001R000300470028-4; Yeon Jeong [Japanese name reading - En Tei], Kyanon Kikan kara no Shōgen, Tokyo, Banchō Shobō, 1973; Charles A. Willoughby, eds. Yeon Jeon and Hiratsuka Masao, GHQ Shirarezaru Chōhōsen: Wirobī Kaikoroku, Tokyo, Yamakawa Shuppan, 2011.
6 See for example, Kaji and Yamada, Damare Nihonjin!; Yamada Zenjirō, Watashi to Kaji Jiken soshite Kyūenkai, Tokyo, Nihon Kokumin Kyūenkai, 1999; Yamada, Amerika no Supai, CIA no Hanzai. Also, Yamada Zenjirō, testimony to the 31st hearing of the Diet Lower House Justice Committee [Shūgiin Hōmu Iinkai], 5 August 1953.
7 See Inomata Kōzō, Senryōgun no Hanzai, Tokyo, Tosho Suppansha, 1979.
8 For example, Arima Tetsuo, CIA to Sengo Nihon: Hoshū Gōdō, Hoppō Ryōdo, Saigunbi, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2010, particularly pp.164-170; Erik Esselstrom, “From Wartime Friend to Cold War Fiend: The Abduction of Kaji Wataru and US-Japan Relations at Occupation's End”, Journal of Cold War Studies, 2014 (forthcoming).
9 Esselstrom, “From Wartime Friend to Cold War Fiend”.
10 Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (NWCJIGRIWG), Final Report to the United States Congress, Washington DC, National Archives and Records Administration, 2007, accessed 3 September 2014; Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, Implementation of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act:mAn Interim Report to Congress October, 1999, Washington DC, National Archives and Records Administration, 1999, accessed 3 September 2014.
11 Arima Tetsuo, Nihon Terebī to CIA: Hakkutsu sareta “Shōriki Fairu”, Tokyo, Takarajima Sha, 2011; Arima Tetsuo, CIA to Sengo Nihon; Yoshida Noriaki, Ogata Taketora to CIA, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2012; for the general background to the occupation era, this essay also draws particularly on Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ, New York, Continuum Publishing, 2002 and John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two, New York, W. W. Norton, 1999.
12 Chalmers Johnsons' book Conspiracy at Matsukawa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972) examined claims of the Canon Unit's involvement in the 1949 Matsukawa Incident, a train derailment which was blamed on Communist saboteurs, though the accused were ultimately found innocent, and more briefly in other incidents including the Kaji kidnapping. The Mitaka and Shimoyama Incidents, the first involving another fatal train accident and the second the apparent murder of the president of Japan National Railways, also occurred in 1949 and were also publicly blamed on Communist subversion, but were rumoured to have been events staged by US intelligence to justify the “Red Purge”. See also Haruna Mikio, Himitsu no Fairu, (2 vols), Kyōdō Tsūshinsha, 2000. Documents declassified since the publication of both Johnson's and Haruna's books help to clarify some aspects of the mysteries they discussed.
13 One work that refers briefly to some important aspects of these cross-border actions is Stephen C. Mercado's The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School, Dulles VA, Potomac Books, 2002.
14 Michael Kaufman, “Differential Participation: Men, Women and Popular Power”, in Michael Kaufman and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso eds., Community Power and Grassroots Democracy: The Transformation of Social Life, London, Zed Books / Ottawa, International Development Research Centre, 1997, pp. 151-169, quotation from p. 159.
15 This point is highlighted, for example, by the work of Darius Rejali, who has explored the evolving political use of torture in democratic states; see Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2009.
16 Giorgio Agamben (trans. Kevin Attell), State of Exception, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008; Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press. 2002.
17 The process is not one-sided, of course. As the Wikileaks and Edward Snowden affairs show, the world of global online media also creates new ways to undermine the state's monopoly of secret knowledge.
18 See Richard Breitman, “April, 2001 Historical Analysis of 20 Name Files from CIA Records”, on the web site of the US National Archives and Records Administration, accessed 2 September 2014; I am grateful to Dr. Christine Winter for drawing my attention to this article; see also Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali and Robert Wolfe, US Intelligence and the Nazis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
19 See for example Andrew Gordon, “Consumption, Leisure and the Middle Class in Transwar Japan”, Social Science Japan Journal, vol. 10, issue 1, 2007, pp. 1-21; Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State, Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 2011.
20 Report from Head of Station to Chief, FDZ, JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, 11 May 1951, in CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Hattori Toshushiro, vol. 1 document 18, p. 6.
21 Takemae, Inside GHQ, p. 161; see also Matthew M. Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War: From the Approach of War to the Communist Intervention”, in Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yen T. Rawnsley eds., The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-1965: Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations, London, Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 16-62, particularly p. 17.
22 Letter from Charles A. Willoughby to Walter Bedell Smith, 21 May 1951, CIA-RDP80B0167R002600080060-2; Charles A. Willoughby, “Cuba: The Pack's in Full Cry -Attacks on the Pentagon and Intelligence”, Foreign Intelligence Digest, 19 May 1961.
23 Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War” p. 18.
24 According to Matthew Aid, “General MacArthur's relationship with the CIA prior to the North Korean invasion can only be described as acrimonious and strained, a situation which had long prevailed”; see Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War”, p. 20.
25 Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War” p. 22; Cable from Collins, DEPTAR (CSUSA) to CINCFE Tokyo, 14 February 1951, CIA-RDP80B01676R002600080003-5.
26 Letter from R. H. Hillenkoetter (Hilly) to E. K. Wright (Pinkie), 6 June 1949, CIA-RDP80R01731R000700130004-1
27 See for example the correspondence from June 1961, contained in the declassified CIA file CIA-RDP80B01676R002600080001-7.
28 Letter from Charles A. Willoughby to Allen Dulles, 2 June 1961, RDP80R01731R000700130004-1
29 Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War”.
30 Letter from Charles A. Willoughby to Walter Bedell Smith, 25 June 1951, CIA-RP80B0167R004000130016-9; Letter from Charles A. Willoughby to Walter Bedell Smith, 29 August 1951, CIA-RP80B0167R002600080044-0.
31 Makoto Iokibe ed. (trans. Robert D. Eldridge), The Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan, London, Routledge, 2013; Takemae, Inside GHQ, p. 42.
32 Takemae, Inside GHQ, p. 161.
33 “Intelligence Section Notes, Dated 6 May 1946, on Maj Gen'l Arisue Seizo”, in CIA Japanese Imperial Government Name Files, Arisue Seizo, document no. 14; also CIA Japanese Imperial Government Name Files, Arisue Seizo, document 2; see also Mercado, The Shadow Warriors of Nakano, p. 188 and 196.
34 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 23.
35 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 2.
36 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kawabe Torashirō, document 10.
37 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 23; on Tsuji's background, see CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Tsuji Masanobu, vol. 1, document 32.
38 Letter from Charles A. Willoughby to Walter Bedell Smith, 29 August 1951, CIA-RDP80B01676R002600080044-0.
39 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 25.
40 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 15.
41 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 4; also CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kawabe Torashirō, document 11.
42 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 27; CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 2; CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 7.
43 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 9; on Kawaguchi, see also CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 10; and JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, pp. 27, 30 and 33.
44 On Kodama, G2 and the CIA, see David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, (revised edition) Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012, pp. 50-55.
45 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 23.
46 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 4.
47 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Maeda Minoru, document 55.
48 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 14.
49 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 14.
50 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 17.
51 Honda Katsuichi, “Kokka Himitsu Hōan Saiteishitsu e no Haikei”, Asahi Shinbun, 4 February 1986, p. 3.
52 Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA, pp. 106-108.
53 Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA; CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 2, document 59.
54 JIS Groups and Japanese National Revival, p. 37.
55 Yeon Jeong, Kyanon Kikan kara no Shōgen; Arima, CIA to Sengo Nihon, pp. 164-173; Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA, pp. 153-154.
56 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 2, document 72; see also Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA, pp. 158-161.
57 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 52; on Ogata's relationship with the CIA, see also Arima, CIA to Sengo Nihon, pp. 164-210; Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA.
58 On Murai's relationship with Canon, see Yamada, Amerika no Supai, CIA no Hanzai, p. 65; Arima, CIA to Sengo Nihon, pp. 171-182.
59 Yeon, who ended his days in California, preserved his card and showed it on an NHK documentary made about Z Unit and the Kaji Incident in 2000; see the NHK ETV Documentary Senryōki no Nazo.
60 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Tatsumi Eiichi, document 74.
61 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 4, document 29; Yoshida, Ogata Taketora to CIA, pp. 180-183.
62 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 36; as the declassified CIA documents show, both Hatoyama and Kōno had their own close connections to the murky world of former senior imperial officers and private Japanese intelligence agencies during the occupation period. Both strongly favoured Japanese remilitarisation, but also sought a more independent relationship between Japan and communist countries such as the Soviet Union and China, which raised concerns in US intelligence circles. In a conversation with a CIA agent, Ogata is recorded as describing Prime Minister Hatoyama as “mentally sick”, and stating that the Japanese police had “very voluminous files on Kono's underhand activities” and could “start a case and do away with him without any trouble”, but “there was the possibility that so many big Democrats would be involved in the scandal that they have not taken any positive action”.
63 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 36.
64 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 41
65 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 11; CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 56.
66 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, vol. 5, document 57.
67 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 10.
68 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 43; on Kaya and the CIA, see also Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, London, Penguin Books, 2007, pp. 139-140.
69 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 50.
70 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 53.
71 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 58.
72 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 74.
73 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Kaya Okinori, document 75. The final words of the note are badly blurred and very difficult to read but appear to refer to the possibility of cooperation on other CA and FI (Fake Intelligence) operations.
74 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Tatsumi Eiichi, document 40; see also Arima, CIA to Sengo Nihon, particularly pp. 184-185.
75 See Arima Tetsuo, Nihon Terebī to CIA: Hakkutsu sareta “Shōriki Fairu”, Tokyo, Takarajima Sha, 2011; CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Shoriki Matsutarō, particularly volume 3, documents 29, 50 and 599 Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun and 599, 50 and 5959rial Ga, so Arima, soshima and Japana Second Sun and 599, 50 an” hima and Japana Second Su, Vol 10, Issue 6, No 1., Feb 6, 2012.
76 The files on named individuals released by the CIA in response to the 2000 Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act relate to 27 Japanese individuals: Akiyama Hiroshi; Arisue Seizō; Aso Tatsuo; Endō Saburō; Fukumi Hideo; Hattori Takushirō; Higashikuni Naruhiko; Hirohito; Ishii Shirō; Kawabe Torashirō; Kaya Okinori; Kishi Nobusuke; Kodama Yoshio; Komiya Yoshitaka; Maeda Minoru; Nomura Kichisaburō; Ogata Taketora; Ōkawa Shūmei; Onodera Makoto; Sasakawa Ryōichi; Shigemitsu Mamoru; Shimomura Sadamu; Shōriki Matsutarō; Tatsumi Eiichi; Tsuji Masanobu; Wachi Takaji and Wachi Tsuneo. Some, including the files on Ishii, Kishi and Hirohito, are very brief and uninformative, but others contain a wealth of detail on complex relationships between these individuals and occupation era US authorities.
77 For example, the declassified files include a file on Kishi Nobusuke, but this contains nothing that is not already on the public record. Documents in other declassified CIA files, however, contain considerably more information on Kishi, and Tim Weiner, in his history of the CIA, cites extensively from Clyde McAvoy, a former Tokyo-based CIA officer, who describes important meetings and exchanges of information with Kishi in the period between 1955 and 1957. No reference to these meetings appears in the declassified documents; see Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, pp.133-139.
78 The documents revealing that Kaya had been engaged in intelligence gathering for the CIA and in collaboration with the CIA to disrupt the Okinawan elections were released in 2007. A search of the Nikkei Telecom database shows that this information was reported in five local newspaper: the Okinawa Times (1 October 2007, p. 7), the Akita Sakigake Shinpō (1 October 2007, p. 4), the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shinbun (3 October 2007, p. 3), the Tōō Nippō (published in Aomori Prefecture, 5 October 2007, p. 3) and the Saga Shinbun (13 October 2007, p. 2). The Mainichi Shinbun (8 March 2007, p. 2 and 26 July 2007, p 1) published two articles referring in general to the involvement of politicians including Kaya with the CIA, but not providing details. I can find no sign that any Japanese national newspaper has ever reported the fact of Kaya's involvement with CIA covert action in Okinawa, or that any national newspaper other than the Mainichi has ever mentioned his involvement with the CIA.
79 Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War” p. 19.
80 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Arisue Seizō, document 2.
81 Yamada Zenjirō, who had been employed as a cook for the household of Jack Canon, began to suspect that his employer was engaged in intelligence activities when, during Canon's absence from the house, a group of Japanese-Americans took over the drawing room, closed all the curtains, and began to type up transcripts of handwritten documents. Since they had difficulty reading some of the handwriting in the documents, one of them consulted Yamada, who recognised Russian place names in the script, and realised that these were records of the interrogation of returnees from the Soviet Union; interview with Yamada Zenjrō, 30 August 2014; see also Yamada, Amerika no Supai, CIA no Hanzai, pp. 65-66.
82 CIA Japanese Imperial Government name files, Ogata Taketora, file 3, document 7.
83 Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 2010, pp. 131-132.